Reviewer: The Plain Truth, a biography of the philosopher Socrates

The thing that leaps out at me is that even if the reviewer is right and wise men can always avoid poverty, we still need to assume that Socrates would choose to avoid poverty.


(A) Every individual who is wise desires to be a philosopher.
-> Out of scope. Reviewer's argument doesn't interact with this at all.

(B) Socrates would not have been executed by the city of Athens if he had not been influential.
-> So out of scope its crazy

(C) Conceptions of wealth vary over time, and what is now considered poor would have been very wealthy in Socrates' time.
-> This kind of seems to address our issue, but is actually flawed. My first issue with it is 'a biography of Socrates' implies Socrates wrote it. If the book stated he was very poor and he wrote that book, then that would mean Socrates considered himself poor within the context of the society he lived in. If it was just an autobiography written about him (say in the year 2022) then this explanation would bare a bit more consideration. However, even then it definitely wouldn't be the main flaw in the argument. Ultimately in the second case we could say the reviewer is still right in arguing the biography was incorrect, as it would present Socrates as poor when he really wasn't in his time.

(D) Many people who are considered wise are too preoccupied with pursuing wisdom to care about their economic status.
-> This is definitely the main flaw. The author assumes anyone who is wise would avoid poverty and this argument directly contradicts that assumption.

(E) Although Socrates was not wealthy, he had many wealthy friends who willingly took care of him.
-> This sounds like a way to avoid poverty to me. If he did this it would actually work with the reviewer's assumption that Socrates would have avoided poverty if he was so wise.