Foundational Ideas from Antiquity - The Life and Thought of Socrates

4 important questions on Foundational Ideas from Antiquity - The Life and Thought of Socrates

Who is apart from Plato the most famous student of Socrates?

Xenophon, historian

What is the connection between the function of a midwife and Socrates teaching abilities?

Midwife: bring forth the babies within mothers
Socrates: helped his pupils bring out the knowledge and wisdom that already resided within their psyches
Plato depicted this process in the dialogue Meno

Which myth of Socrates represents an extreme version of philosophical nativism?

His myth of reincarnation and recollection. Fully formed but forgotten knowledge lies within a psyche, and just needs help from empirical experience to bring it out
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What is the more moderate form of Socratic nativism that has had a greater staying power than the extreme nativism?

Questionable whether Socrates accepted the literal interpretation of extreme nativism
More moderate form: assertion that the human mind contains innately within itself features and predispositions that enable it to interpret and comprehend empirical experiences in ways that go far beyond their raw sensory input.
According to this view: path to wisdom was not simply to accumulate opinions and experiences through the external senses, but rather to "Know thyself" and interpret those experiences in light of one's own innate rational faculties

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