Ineke Sluiter, “Anchoring the Radical New: the Case of Socrates”

Plato’s depiction of Socrates differentiates Socrates in stark terms from other contemporary intellectuals and teachers, while also emphasizing Socratic exceptionality in positive terms: the knowledge worker without knowledge, the questioner in search of the knowledge of his interlocutors, and the man for whom the search for knowledge and virtue was a way of life, rather than a way to make a living. In all these aspects Socrates is made to come across as distinctly odd and unique, and his outlook on life as radically new. Later reception of the figure of Socrates proves the success of Plato’s innovation and the acceptance of the Socratic model.