# Socrates didn't like Xanitippe?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 8, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533 "2013-01-08T20:54:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/21 "2013-01-10T23:02:48Z")

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> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#):
>
> I’m sure that you are correct. Socrates taught Plato to be the most important philosophical writer of all time over the din of him chipping and moving stone. And Xenophon to be a great general, Alcibiades to be an an enormous asshole, etc. etc. etc. None of these famous students were a full time job, nor the many more obscure students. Show us the stones Socrates masoned if he spent so much time on them. Socrates was famous, even among his detractors, like his friendly detractor, Aristophanes for being a full-time, meddlesome blowhard. He spent about as much of his life being a stone mason as Newt Gingrich spent being a full time professor of history.
> 
> Now I’ve just put forth a lot of evidence that he spent his time teaching students who demonstrated their education by leaving works we still have today. And those things are perishable. Showeth me Socrates’ stones and I will consider him not a man of leisure.

:rolleyes: Do you find time to make a living between posting stuff on the Dope? I am confident most Dopers do, even if not you. If you and they can find time to engage in smart (or smartass) conversation, so could Socrates.

Socrates did not provide a formal education to anyone; it was Plato who started that. Socrates inspired Plato and others with the cleverness of his conversation, and with his integrity, nothing more. (And although Xenophon may have thought that knowing Socrates had made him a better _man_, there is absolutely no reason to think that Socrates taught him, or anyone, anything about how to be a general.)

The evidence that Socrates was relatively poor, worked as a stonemason, and did not formally educate anyone, is in the writings of those who knew him, and those, such as Aristotle, who knew those who knew him. The evidence for your view of him is, so far as I can tell, non-existent.

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