The quarrel between poetry and philosophy finds its first footing where most of Western philosophy originates, in the work of Plato, and it still reverberates from the assaults of Socrates on the poets when he exiled them from the Republic and claimed that the supreme music was no longer poetry but rather philosophy. There is a nearly journalistic thrill that comes from noting one further fact: the starting point of wisdom for that titanic human being, Socrates, instigator of the philosophical question, source of a new kind of human self-consciousness and critique, founder of true dialectical challenge to the status quo, and chief propagator of the assault on poetry, is accomplished at the temple of Apollo, god of poetry, when the oracle forgoes favoring of the poets and sophists and pronounces Socrates the wisest of men. Even more worthy of journalistic note is his own admission that the sum of his wisdom is that he knows that he does not know, that he is merely a seeker of wisdom. This admission is the very heart of what is most attractive about his engagement in the quarrel between poetry and philosophy, a quarrel and struggle that has a rich history and that constitutes one of the finest examples of humanity exploring the world through every means available to it, including attention to prophecy, oracular utterance, systematic questioning, and even truth uncovered through the instability of madness.