Socrates is a man of great controversy. He has been portrayed as many different personalities such as a sophist to a great philosopher to just a vocal old man. The true nature of Socrates is to be questioned. He spoke his thoughts on life and what his philosophy on life was. A couple arguments that he spoke about really stood out about lying. These arguments had brute force and were made very clear through his dialogue. According to his dialogue, he felt that there were two different types of lies.The first type called the true lie, in Socrates mind feels, as this type is impossible. The true lie consists of one simply not telling the truth, as they know it. Socrates says:When a man in speech makes a bad representation of whatgods and heroes are like, just as a painter paints somethingthat doesn’t resemble the things whose likeness he wishedto paint. (377e)As can clearly be seen in this sentence, Socrates is pointing out a painter that knows that truth about what he is painting but is making it look different than he knows it as. The painter is doing this to portray something other than the truth to other people because the truth may either hurt him or hurt others. It is more of a protection type, to protect himself or to protect others from coming into harm.One of Socrates examples of a true lie is shown in the following dialogue that talks about god.Do you suppose the god is a wizard, able treacherously to reveal himself at different times in different ideas, at onetime actually himself changing and passing from his ownform and to many shapes, at another time deceiving us andmaking us think such things about him? (380e)This idea is showing that God is playing with human kind, or appearing as a human form, which he may really not be. This also shows how some feel that God changes with out us knowing and deceives us to make us feel different from what he should be doing. Only God knows the truth of what his form. Socrates does n...
