Was Socrates the most intelligent human being to ever exist?

Was Socrates the most intelligent human being to ever exist?

>exist

>Not Aristotle
>Not Newton
>Not Gauss

Shit thread.

Why do you think he was all that intelligent?

I'd say his defining characteristic is stubbornness.

No he was a goofball

Dude was indeed pretty damn smart. A little schizo for my tastes, tho.

>there's a classic athenian play mocking him
>his name is in the Athenian records
>his name is in several spartan political lists
>the sophists' students criticized him and wrote about him
>Plato's work is a big intellectual fap marathon on Socrates' legacy
>a contemporary, Xenophon, goes into autistic details about his life
>statues of Socrates depicting his specific brand of ugly fat fuckness which is a contrast to representation of the Gods

At this point, you have to deny a lot of sources, events and depictions to doubt his existence. Just sayin'

We barely even know anything about him besides from Platos ramblings about him.

You have to memorize and assimilate a wide varierty of information, learn and apply nuances, spot abstract and concrete patterns and be reasonable and logical to be wise. You can be an idiot and be a little wise, but you can't go for hours with your fist on your chin and generate coherent, refined and original ideas if you're not smart. Socrates was pretty damn smart imo, and he was modest about it.

Shhhhh, let brainlets feel special in their philosophy 101 classes.

Probably not, but he certainly knew what to pay attention to.

Attention is probably more important than raw intelligence, because attention directs intelligence.

>and he was modest about it.

He wasn't being modest at all, he was being ironic.

Nigga didn't even know anything lmao

I genuinely feel angered when -mostly- ignorant people spit on philosophy. I can't blame them, tho, as declining civilizations cannot function without a dose of disdain for masculine intellectual pursuits. A society of feminized and decadent cowards will always belittle, mock and directly/indirectly murder philosophers.

Nowadays their almost automatic argument is ''hurr science haz all da answersss'' as if science can deal with the abstract, the ethical, the political and the metaphysical. Tomorrow it will be ''ZOMG THAT GUY ANNOYED ME WITH HIS MEAN THINKING ;_;''.

Philosophy kills little feewiiiings. That's why uber emotional societies hate it.

>Tomorrow it will be ''ZOMG THAT GUY ANNOYED ME WITH HIS MEAN THINKING ;_;''.

Just like when religion was in charge! History rhymes, yo.

Most religions are profoundly emotional in nature. Gotta give points to catholicism for eventually going against that and openly promoting reason and manliness.

So... humans are not emotional creatures? We must be if we are rational creatures.

Animals are neither emotional nor rational, they are without self-consideration.

He admitted he only knew that he knew nothing. So he was literally the most stupid.

>know thyself and thou shall know everyone else

Nah, he was a hack just like any other philosopher in existence.

Humans are emotional by nature. One of the goal of philosophy is to direct emotions to intelligence, logic and not acting like a retarded psychopath/whore. A society without philosophy is a society of blatantly hypergamous and agressive women and depressed, sometimes violent, broken and effiminate men.

But very few other people have caught on and realized they know next to nothing. Socrates was smart enough to realize this way back in the day, and proclaim it enough that they wrote about it back when writing was still voodoo magicks.

We are also rational by nature.

The goal of philosophy is to allow us to see the world as it truly is, to accomplish our goals with accurate information, and to give us perspective on our goals with respect to our overall well-being or satisfaction. This is as much an emotional exercise as a rational one.

A society cut off from it's emotional nature will be direction-less, easily led. So will a society cut off from rationality. I'm always surprised by how relevant this is, but one would be blind and the other lame.

>I sure love shitting on philosophers while living in what's left of a mostly free society imagined and promoted by philosophers who risked getting their asses BBQ'ed by doing so

I was not dismissing philosophy. I was calling your bullshit WIS vs INT bullshit that only justify faggots who have barley any knowledge but a lot of stupid opinions.

I get your point and I mostly agree with it.

I stand corrected.