Philosopher’s appeal for help acquiring case (8)
I believe the answer is:
socrates
'philosopher's' is the definition.
(Socrates is an example)
'appeal for help acquiring case' is the wordplay.
'appeal for help' becomes 'sos' (I've seen this in another clue).
'acquiring' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'case' becomes 'crate' (both can mean a container).
'sos' going around 'crate' is 'SOCRATES'.
(Other definitions for socrates that I've seen before include "Man philosophically questioning" , "Hemlocked philosopher" , "2 [PHILOSOPHER]" , "Gk. philosopher, took hemlock" , "Philosophical Greek" .)