Original lesson: Socrates

In central place of Athens a man dirty and with long beard gone around, and a guy called him: “Socrates, Socrates, do you are going?”, and he answered, after some moment that he stopped him to look a sculpture, he anyway answered: “I am here, and I am looking this sculpture of Phidias, and it is very beautiful”, and the guy, whose name was Xenophon, called again him: “Socrates come here”, and Socrates gone to him, and he seen that the persons were much, gathered, and was astonished, and he asked: “Why how much persons, Xenophon?”, and he answered: “Because we want give to you some question”, and Socrates smiled and asked: “do you want ask me something’”, and a guy: “Yes! We want know why you have written nothing?”, and Socrates. “Because every philosopher has written something, but I could not nothing to teach, hence I haven’t written”, and other hearer: “You could teach something!”, and Socrates, seen to earth and he asked: “What?”, and the hearer: “I don’t know”, and Socrates: “I neither, but you are here and you can say to us something, that we can teach”, and the hearer: “I don’t know it, therefore I can’t  say it”, and Socrates: “Do you have some matter, argument, idea or…”, and hearer interfered: “No Socrates I haven’t it, I and we are waiting that you give it to us”, and Socrates: “What do you think around  that you haven’t matters or arguments?” and the hearer: “I think that I am again young to have some argument, I haven’t studied enough”, and Socrates: “Who said it? Who has judged it? How much we must study to speak around something?”, and hearer: “I don’t know”, and Socrates: “You can ask to yourself, and after you can believe it, this is to your thesis, but you must believe to it always”, and the hearer: “Can I change opinion?”, and Socrates: “Certainly, you must change ideas, but you must decide it no other that you have attended, do you have attended?” and the hearer: “Gorgias the sophist”, and Socrates: “His think is simple: you pay and I teach nothing”, and hearer: “He has taught the rhetorical science”, and Socrates: “Very good, and?”, and hearer: “Nothing alone the rhetoric”, and Socrates: “Hence you haven’t matters or arguments because Gorgias hasn’t given it”, and the hearer: “Yes, for this I am here, because I want that you to me something”, and Socrates: “Yourself”, and hearer: “What?”, and Socrates: “Yourself”, and hearer gazed around and other and asked: “I didn’t understand it”, and Socrates: “On doors of Apollos temple is written: γνϖθι σεαυτόν, that it is an advisement to whom want make sacrifice”, and the hearer: “What is mean?”, and Socrates: “It is if you want make sacrifice to Apollos or other gods”, and hearer: “But why do you uses this motto?”, and Socrates: “Because I want compel you, now, to search a truth that it is your truth and no of others, your truth”, and hearer: “But I must read and after I am going to have a ideas”, and Socrates: “It is the begin of a think, hence you can read much and after you can tell to us your think”, and hearer: “Think that you will denied!”, and Socrates: “No, the logic is going to deny it”, and hearer: “The logic?”, and Socrates: “Yes the logic, I am alone the bringer of logic, and I give questions, but I am not a master but alone the bringer of logic”, and the hearer: “You are hence the represent of logic”, and Socrates: “No I am a represent of ignorance that searched of know, and you are going to teach me something”.

Alessandro Lusana