Socrates mannaged to turn “Truth” into a religion.
He supposedly had direct intermediary with gods.
He preached all of the time, and tried to convert many.
He mixed up morality with divinity, again turning a philosophical moralist into a religious extremism.
Socrates, Plato, Paul, Jesus, and all of those other mystic fruit-baskets seem to be the backbone of Western “truth” these days, and that is somewhere between a catastrophe and a shit-sandwich.
Skitzophrenics with divine voices in their heads are often the leaders of massive religious movements and cultures such as found today.
Truth is just like philosophy in that both are born out of religion because they’re mere extensions of searching for purpose amongst a god creation spectacle made in man’s own image.
I remember when I first came to philosophy, that I practically worshipped Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and all of the ancient Roman stoics that came after them in my humble beginnings as a student.
It was only later on when I found out how these founding fathers destroyed genuine freedom with their ramblings where I came to despise them.
I think there is some formal agreement among scholars as to which dialogues convey Socrates fuller and which are merely Platonic confabulations.
This being said you’ll notice that the early-dialogues Socrates is a witty man focused on keeping philosophy grounded to more specific, ethical issues.
The later Socrates becomes excessively sagacious and prophetic - merely a mouthpiece for Plato, no doubt.
There is a visible contrast between the early Socrates and the later one, say the one arguing in The Republic. The early Socrates is always in his earnest and appears to put honest search for truth above everything. He is somewhat liberal in his conception and admits to being wise only insofar as he acknowledges his own ignorance.
The later dude is less concerned with disinterested arguing and is the advocate of some very bad political measures. The ideal state is tyrannical and its rulers are the safeguards of a Truth that closely resembles Dan’s description.
It is safe to say that Plato corrupted some of Socrates’ ideas while attempting to advance them.
If we take “The Clouds” to be a reasonable parody of Socrates (not too unreasonable, given that Aristophanes and Socrates were contemporaries, then I would have to say that Socrates may have been a little more loopy than we often give him credit for.
I’m not saying “The Clouds” is an accurate representation – but in order for comedy to work, there needs to be an element of truth to it. While Plato undoubtedly put words in Socrates’ mouth, I think that using that as a justification to create a perfect image of Socrates is . . . well, platonic amongst other things. . .