The Path Of Knowledge In Plato's Apology

Before one can examine a path to knowledge, one must try to understand, and define what knowledge is. In Plato’s Five dialogues, Socrates critiques the individuals who are thought to be the most knowledgeable, specifically in the Apology, when Socrates is explaining a conversation he had with a well-respected intellectual in the community. Socrates states: "When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise…I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know (Plato p 26)

Rousseau states, in his book, Discourse in inequality, that “One must not take the kind of research which we enter as the pursuit of truth of history, but solely as hypothetical and conditional reasonings, better fitted to clarify the nature of things than to
There is a disagreement among philosphers in the origin of man he does come up with, but there is not a disagreement in his path itself in that his path has similiarities to Plato’s path. In Discourse in Equality, Rousseau examines the genealogy of inequality in society. “The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!” The knowledge as owning property is seen as common knowledge, but Rousseau argues it wasn’t in a state of