Is Socrates a Radical or a Conservative?

Excerpts from the Paper

Is Socrates a Radical or a Conservative?
In the Apology, Socrates uses the elenchus in a manner akin to a gadfly; he stirs his fellow citizens out of their complacency and urges them to think seriously about the moral order. At the same time, however, Socrates also defends the traditional moral virtues in both word and action, thus raising the question of whether or not he is a radical, a conservative – or both. In the end, it is manifest that Socrates is a radical only in the sense that he is committed wholeheartedly to revealing the truth – or, to be more accurate, he is whole-heartedly devoted to revealing the false knowledge to which men cling. Socrates, because the God at Delphi described him as the wisest of all men because he alone...

.....ding the Gods in contempt. Socrates may be many things, but he is devout in his religious faith (as religion existed in ancient Greece) and he is pursuing a path that will enable the Athenian republic to be as strong as possible; his whole objective is improvement for himself and for others. Although his methods may be irritating and harsh for those who become the targets of his inquisitions, his methods are entirely pure and it is impossible to conclude that he is exactly as this paper has presented him as being: a conservative who is radical in the pursuit of the truth.
Works Cited
Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates:
Euthyphro
, Apology,
Crito
, Death Scene from
Phaedo
. Trans. G.M.A
Grube
. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2000.