Socrates once said that all he knows is that he knows nothing. In Canto 44 of “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman seems to agree with this claim, as he writes: “What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.” Whitman feels that in order to embark on his journey of finding truth, reality and his innermost self, he must abandon all his fundamental beliefs that have been established by society and have been drilled into his mind. For only by clearing himself from all outer influence, can he “launch into the Unknown.” The unknown is capitalized in this line, meaning it is the ultimate Unknown he is looking for. The ultimate Unknown might be referring to the ultimate truth from which people have been ignorant of all this time. Whitman wants other people to progress forward with him on this journey, and acknowledges that he does not know any more than other people and has yet to learn and reveal the truth too. In that sense he is like Plato; he may have theories and ideas, but the one and only aspect in which Whitman is more knowledgeable than the rest, is not his superior knowledge, but his wisdom of knowing that he knows nothing.
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