And in what sense could he be called wise?
Can you please help me in this essay assignment?
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He could be called wise in starting from the position he knows nothing, and pursuing knowledge as something of worth he does not "own" already - instead of treating knowledge like property, as a kind of status symbol through the appearance of knowing "something", he treated knowledge as something to be gained through rigorous inquiry - and so treated knowledge as something of worth, instead of cheapening it through treating it like some kind of a status object, which, perhaps, was how the sophists treated knowledge, as my understanding is they were hired to train citizens in their art - cheapening knowledge to the position of a status object, instead of as something to be pursued at personal cost because of its inherent value to the individual person. In this sense, Socrates had wisdom, because he knew that knowledge could only be pursued at great personal cost, it could not be bought like property, but rather changed the individual person in his or her pursuit of it. In summary he could be called wise in relation to his approach to the question of knowledge, and in his appreciation of his own ignorance at the beginning of inquiry - he had an appreciation of his own "irrelevance" before the object of knowledge ... in other words, perhaps we could simply say he had an attitude of humility in inquiry (which could easily have been mistaken by others as arrogance, or simply being a nuisance!)
He changed his mind when he discovered that the wise were not wise but did not know that they were not wise . Socrates was wise only in the sense that he knew that he was not wise .