[anigbrowl]

Aristotle should not be your only point of reference here. Socrates had his life cut off early by an intellectually intolerant cabal, but we're certainly much better of for having had him around for a while, even if not as much as we might have hoped for.

It's also arguable that breakthroughs (philosophical, technological, or whatever) often take place in less-than-ideal contexts, because adversity is often synonymous with necessity. In a society where the majority of the population has it pretty good, there's opportunity for many flowers to flourish but it's hard to say whether any of them are very tenacious since the soil and growing conditions are ideal. If you're on the lookout for a rare flower, you're not likely to discover it in a greenhouse.

[EGreg]

How do you know Socrates even existed?

As an aside - Socrates and Jesus seem to have many things in common. Socrates never wrote anything himself, his teachings challenged the status quo, he was accused of "corrupting the youth" and executed for blasphemy by the religious ruling group from his own people...