Grats man. I smashed a paper on knowledge and the Socratic method, I pointed out that Socrates believed that the man who knows that he is ignorant knows more than the man who thinks he has knowledge, and that therefore, somewhat pradoxically, Socrates gives people knowledge by undermining what they thought they knew. They fucking loved that.
here's a snippit, the paper was heavily based on whether or not he was being honest in claiming ignorance, or if he was being insincere and knew he was wise (because God called him the wisest man in Athens)
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Again, we see a difference in knowledge, wisdom, and Socrates’ claimed ignorance. Clearly, Socrates has knowledge, or ideas, which he feels to understand as well as he can in his position, yet “I do not know how these things are” (Vlastos 1985, 5-6). The key is seeing Socrates in a light that allows for knowledge as separate yet compatible with wisdom; Socrates can contain knowledge and be unwise, conversely, he can be wise in knowing he has no perfect knowledge. The paradoxical account of understanding is what makes Socrates such an amazing thinking and the father of philosophy as we know it. Socrates was not resisting answering questions with his Socratic Method; he was forcing critical, free flowing conversation about difficult topics. Socrates even states he knows of moral truth, “I know this to be evil and base” – so he must then know some knowledge, he must contain some level of wisdom, his searching must eventually yield some truth (Vlastos 1985, 7). It’s the journey and the consistent asking, pondering, and inquiry that Socrates was placing an emphasis on.
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I think the importance is in the capabilities and differences inherent in knowledge, wisdom, etc, much the same as negative liberty and positive liberty. Vlastos hit it pretty well. Same way with his moral philosophy - or Kant's, the same way that satisfaction is necessarily different than happiness, but compatible and able to co-exist, or not to.
