Socrates

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived in Athens in the fifth century BCE. He wrote nothing; what is known of him comes from the works of others, chiefly the dialogues of his student Plato. He was tried in Athens, sentenced to death and died by drinking hemlock in 399 BCE. The years and the other card facts of this entry come from outside the editions and are marked for verification.

The first two mentions are short. Issue.0 lists, among examples of what to ask a chatbot when researching a cultural topic, the question "What does Socrates say about truth". Issue.7, describing Athens in the time of Pericles, says philosophy featured some of the most renowned Western critical thinkers and that chief among these was Socrates. Issue.10 reproduces The Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David with a caption about his final moments, then uses the painting to argue that history remembers names and words, and closes its image of the metamodern philosopher with his maxim that we must always affirm that we know nothing.

Issue.13 lists him among the characters of the Symposium and summarises his speech: love as the pursuit of wisdom and beauty and a process of spiritual growth. It opens with a sentence about Aûsu that it presents as what Diotima of Mantinea said to him, and it tells how Alcibiades, once saved by Socrates in the Battle of Potidaea, bursts in to speak of his unrequited love for him.

Issue.26 begins with his account of akrasia, in which acting against one's better judgment is an error of knowledge, and the author answers that he would hold the horses there. It then transcribes a scene from Assassin's Creed Odyssey in which the character Socrates burns a student's notes and retells the story of Thamus and Theuth. The author agrees that written words cannot be defended, jokes that he writes anyway, and ends on the darkest twist: Athens accused Socrates of poisoning the minds of the youth and made him drink the hemlock, casting out its own medicine.