The Socratic Stone

The unpolished meanderings of a speculative street philosopher, poet, Spirit of '76-inspired rabble rouser, Socratic Seeker, poet.

[christopherphilosopher]

Event with Cornel West and Thrive Youth Center

I am beyond thrilled to share that I will be taking part with imminent public intellectual Dr. Cornel West -- dearest friend, kindred spirit, not to mention member of our nonprofit DemocracyCafe.org advisory board -- in what will surely be a beautiful, spirited Socratic give-and-take hosted by Thrive Youth Center in San Antonio. Thrive is a non-profit organization that serves the LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness throughout San Antonio; its singular mission is "to provide LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness with a safe and supportive environment to facilitate their empowerment toward transforming their lives". Brother West wrote the stirring foreword to my newest book, 'Soul of Goodness.' I can't wait to reunite with him in person after all this time, as well as with Thrive's extraordinary Executive Director, Justin Holley.

[christopherphilosopher]

The Spirit of '76 Cafe

What one of our nonprofit's latest initiatives, the Spirit of '76 Cafe, is all about https://open.substack.com/pub/christopherphillipsphd/p/the-spirit-of-76-cafe?r=1st87x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

[christopherphilosopher]

I am honored to be one of the featured presenters to launch the Spring semester "Civic Life" initiative at American University in Washington, D.C.

This invitation holds special meaning for me, as it renews a collaboration with AU President Jon Alger that began years ago in the most fitting of places: Montpelier, the Virginia home of James Madison. Jon and I first met at a "Civic Salon" at the Center for the Constitution—where I had the distinct privilege of sharing a table with the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. That gathering sparked a shared commitment to deep, democratic discourse. (Here's a link to a press release about that event: here's a link to a press release about it: https://www.prweb.com/.../montpelier_s.../prweb11287592.htm )

Following that unforgettable gathering, Jon invited me to be an inaugural speaker for his "Madison Series" during his tenure at James Madison University. We have stayed in close touch ever since, united by a belief that robust civic engagement is the heartbeat of a healthy society. It is a privilege to join him again, now at American University, to help bring his vision for the "Civic Life" initiative to fruition.

I look forward to engaging with AU's Civic Life Fellows, as well as prospectively other students, faculty, and the AU community -- and most of all to reunite with AU's amazing President and friend, Jon Alger, as we explore the vital questions that sustain our republic.

[christopherphilosopher]

What's in a name?

Be sure to check out my latest Substack post, 'Names, Namelessness, & Anonymity' - from my continued exploration of 'What's in a name?' posed in an outpouring by Shakespeare's Juliet - oh, and please subscribe :)

Names, Namelessness, Anonymity

What's In a Name? Part 4

[christopherphilosopher]

Can art even be revealed when there are attempts to homogenize it or us?...

[christopherphilosopher]

Is art something with which you feel a certain singular kind of connecti...

[christopherphilosopher]

It was such an honor to deliver the inaugural Presidential Speaker Series lecture -- here is my entire interactive presentation -- at Fairmont State University, at the kind invitation of its visionary president, Mike Davis, whom I've known since his days at James Madison University, where I was invited by its then-president, Jon Alger (for whom Mike had chief of staff) to be a speaker for their Madison Vision Series a bit over a decade ago.  My interactive presentation, "Building Bridges of Mutual Understanding in a World of Walls," stresses that disagreements across the political spectrum don’t have to lead to division, but instead can be transformative opportunities for one and all, and can enable those of us in America who will listen with all our being to become more informed voters, and hence more participatory democratic citizens - what we need, as the federal 2024 election approaches! This presentation is for my Dad, Alexander Phillips, who never was afforded the opportunity by those with him to say his goodbyes before his tragically unexpected death, as are all my good works and deeds. BE SURE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SOCRATES CAFE YOUTUBE CHANNEL :)

[christopherphilosopher]

"Let's let's talk about how we're going to make peace & mutual benefit" ...

[christopherphilosopher]

Podcast 1127: Learn How Christopher Phillips Uses Philosophy to Transfor...

[christopherphilosopher]

cannot cannot

© 2023

[christopherphilosopher]

terminality

he wonders 

what it will be like not to experience what it’s like to grow old

not to have to concern himself about planning (or failing to) for retirement

or make anything more or less of himself, his life, than he already has or hasn’t

wonders whether

before all is unsaid and undone 

he will get over her abandonment

when she learned of his terminality

wonders if he will go out of this world much like he came in 

cry-laughing with a baby’s abandon 

he wonders what it will be like

not to wonder

@2022

[christopherphilosopher]

Cancel Culture & ‘Soul of Goodness’

I write here in Medium my ruminations about how and why it is that, though my new book Soul of Goodness, in its Spanish iteration as ‘Hacia un alma de bondad’ is receiving the most gushing reviews and touchings messages from readers of anything I’ve ever written, it is largely being ‘cancelled’ in the U.S. by mainstream media (interviews and such). 

[christopherphilosopher]

Make Our Electoral College Great Again

Today is the big day when the electors of our Electoral College formally make Donald Trump our next president (be still my beating heart).   That’s how it’s set up. Now, how do we arrive at 535 Electors? Each state has allotment of Electors equal to the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for its Senators.  Plus the District of Columbia is allotted three Electors. Bringing the total to 538. So you have to garner 270 Electors to be the winning candidate for the highest office in the land. 

There has been an unusual amount of chatter about convincing a sufficient number of Electors to undo the voters’ choice -- not the popular vote, but the vote as calculated by the winner take all (in most states) system in which the candidate of each state who garners a majority of the votes (or a plurality) wins all the Electors.

Most notably, my nonprofit Socrates Cafe / Democracy Cafe’s own amazing advisory board member, Lawrence Lessig, a committed advocate for a truly open society if ever there was one, has been at the vanguard of the Electors Trust, aimed at getting a sufficient number of electors to vote their consciences and vote for a candidate other than Trump, who many feel is not of the right temperament, among other things, to be our president. 

As admirable as this effort may be, it ain’t gonna work -- and it ain’t even the best way to go about it (as fascinating as many of the proffered arguments are for the efficacy and legitimacy of this approach). What we must do first is to unfreeze our republic.

And to do that, we need to undo Public Law 62-5 -- which a bit over a century ago, by majority vote in both chambers of Congress, froze our number of members in the House of Representatives at 435 -- as I wrote about here in my Huffington Post column a good deal back. 

If we’d continued to gradually increasing the number of members of the House, as we’d done until 1911 when Public Law 62-5 was scandalously enacted in a Nativist-driven effort to keep the swelling immigrations in cities from having a political voice, we’d probably have about 2000 House members now, rather than the 435 we’ve been stuck with, each with constituencies (fiefdoms, really)  on average of well over 700,000 (and each with about 22 unelected staffers to keep their fiefdom unassailable). 

This was not how our republic was envisioned by our Framers, not how it was meant to be. 

What would the outcome of our latest election have been if we had far more ‘representativeness’ than we do today? What would the outcome have been If we enjoyed today around the 2,000 members of the House we would have had, if the numbers kept increasing after each 10-year census? (And don’t forget, our Constitution gives us the right to have one House member for every 30,000 constituents -- yet right now, we’ve ‘settled’ for one for every 710,000 or so, making it impossible to have the kind of intimate representativeness our Framers had bequeathed to our vast republic).

For one thing, we wouldn’t have just two major parties vying to be the leader of the ‘free world’ -- we’d have a number of viable candidates, and viable parties (or maybe even no political parties, since their efficacy would be so greatly diminished (and our Framers never envisioned the advent of such parties in the first place)). 

For another, this’d likely mean that a candidate for president would have won by a plurality rather than a majority, so there might be some horse trading to see to it that the one who was elected by Electors (there would have been at least 2,000 in this scenario). Likely a genuine statesman or -woman would have been the result - someone who authentically mirrored our higher democratic aspirations. 

For yet another, it would greatly reduce the odds that a candidate would win based on his or her ability to raise gazillions of bucks primarily in corporate dollars, or to win if he or she were fabulously wealthy (and maybe a demagogue to boot) based on his or her own ability to contribute massive amounts of personal wealth towards financing the campaign. 

By having a genuinely representative constitutional republic of the democratic variety, we’d have had at least some presidential candidates with their hats in the ring who would have put the interests of the country above all else -- and hence would have put the interests of open societies in general first and foremost, to make not only America but the promise of open societies for one and all great again. 

Rather than what we have, candidates like the two major candidates, with extraordinarily kinds of flaws that lead to patterns of tragic misjudgment and contribute to precipitating pernicious forms of factionalism that over time bring down the democratic curtain of the country down with them.

So here’s what we have to do in order not just to unfreeze, but to rescue  and revive our republic -- we have two years to cajole all candidates running for Congress in the 2018 election to sign a pledge promising irrevocably that the first thing they’ll do when they take office in Jan 2019 is pass a law that rescinds Public Law 62-5. Tell ‘em you’re not voting for them, not voting period, unless they sign the pledge.

All it takes is a mere majority vote -- perhaps a daunting feat, but not an impossible one required via a Constitutional amendment.

Join me in this effort. Write to me at [email protected] and tell me you’re in, and we’ll establish a grassroots movement in all precincts.  If our representative democracy means enough to you, and I bet it does, I bet you’ll join me and help make our Electoral College great again.

[christopherphilosopher]

The Irrational, Our Country, E.R. Dodds, and Socrates Cafe

This from my first book, Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy:

The “modern-day embrace of the irrational reveals that overall our civilization is hardly more rational than in the days when Roman commanders sought to predict their immediate future by examining the intestines of chickens. In a way, it is startling to me that otherwise rational people can give in so easily to the temptation to see a connection between independent phenomena that happen to coincide in time. But then, even the 4th-century Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived amid a resurgence of belief in supernatural phenomena, was not surprised by the citizenry's pervasive love affair with the irrational. Based on his observations of human nature, Aristotle came to the conclusion that few men "can sustain the life of pure reason for more than very brief periods." 

The classical Greek scholar E. R. Dodds noted in The Greeks and the Irrational that in the days of Aristotle, astrology and other irrational practices "fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls upon some remote island." Why? "For a century or more the individual had been face to face with his own intellectual freedom. And now he turned tail and bolted from the horrid prospect--better the rigid determinism of astrological Fate than that terrifying burden of daily responsibility." The fear of and flight from freedom--which goes hand in glove with a fear of honest questioning--that is taking place today does not simply parallel what happened in ancient times. Rather, it seems to be the same fear and same flight. Today we're not so much experiencing a return of the irrational as we are an upsurgence of the irrational elements in us--such as tendencies to build belief systems on foundations of quicksand, and proclivities for destruction and self-idealization--that are part of the human fabric. There are antidotes to the irrational. Though by no means perfect, and certainly not always skillfully handled, such antidotes can enable us to better understand ourselves, better overcome our fears, better come to grips with the irrational in us. One such antidote is the Socratic way of questioning utilized at Socrates Café. The Socratic method of questioning aims to help people gain a better understanding of themselves and their nature and their potential for excellence. At times, it can help people make more well-informed life choices, because they now are in a better position to know themselves, to comprehend who they are and what they want. It can also enable a thoughtful person to articulate and then apply his or her unique philosophy of life. This in turn will better equip a questioning soul to engage in the endless and noble pursuit of wisdom. The dialogues, as Socrates says in Plato's Republic, are "not about any chance question, but about the way one should live." So the discussions do not just enable us to better know who we are but lead us to acquire new tactics for living and thinking so we can work toward determining, and then becoming, who we want to be. By becoming more skilled in the art of questioning, you will discover new ways to ask the questions that have vexed and perplexed you the most. In turn you will discover new and more fruitful answers. And these new answers in turn will generate a whole new host of questions. And the cycle keeps repeating itself--not in a vicious circle, but in an ever-ascending and everexpanding spiral that gives you a continually new and replenished outlook on life. Wherever Socrates Café is held, those who take part form a community of philosophical inquiry. My fellow Socratics have an enduring curiosity that cannot be quenched or satisfied by the facile responses of know-it-all gurus or of psychologists who cubbyhole their existential angst into demeaning paradigms of psychological behavior. Those who take part in Socrates Café are more concerned with formulating fruitful and reflective questions than with formulating absolute answers. Everyone is welcome and virtually all topics are valid for debate. Together, and alone, we push our thinking in surprising directions. The possibilities are limited only by the questions your imagination and sense of wonder enable you to come up with. They don't have to be the "big questions." Or, at least, the big question may turn out to be something like "What are the big questions, and what makes them so?" During the hundreds of Socrates Cafés I've facilitated, I've often come to find that it's the unexpected, the seemingly trivial or inconsequential, or the offbeat question that might well be the most worth delving into and examining for all it's worth. By becoming a more adept questioner, by developing a lifelong love affair with the art of questioning, I'll wager that you'll be able to answer more expertly than ever that question of questions, "Who am I?" Contrary to popular belief, the more questions you have, the firmer the footing you are on. The more you know yourself. The more you can map out and set a meaningful path for your future.”

[christopherphilosopher]

E.R. Dodds and the Irrational

As I read all the essays about by the polling experts and pundits about they got it wrong with Donald Trump’s ascendancy, something they were sure would be stymied, I find one thing -- they are all trying to offer rational explanations for why their prognostications were so way off the mark.  But sometimes there are no rational explanations. This is just the germ of a thought right now, I’ll expand on it later, but it may well be that we are entering a new ‘age of the irrational’ -- an unnerving thought that in the past, though not always, has preceded some of the most pernicious mass movements in human history. And these have often occurred in so-called open societies, in which the very mechanism that made them open were subverted for far different ends. 

And this makes me think of the late great classical scholar E.R. Dodds, whose keen insights into the days of antiquity revealed timeless insights into the irrational. Periods of great flourishing can be followed by periods of deep decent. It has happened time and again.

In his masterpiece The Greeks and the Irrational, Dodds pontficates on how this blossoming progressive society that embraced rational inquiry like no other, for a while, went on an irreversible downhill slide. Here’s what Dodds says: “What is the meaning of this recoil, this doubt? Is it the hesitation before the jump?...Was it the horse that refused, or the rider? That is really the crucial question. Personally, I believe that it was the horse—in other words, those irrational elements in human nature which govern without our knowledge so much of our behaviour and so much of our thinking.”

Until and unless we come to grips with the irrational elements within self and society (a kind of self), we may be destined and doomed to succumb to the irrational again and again.

[christopherphilosopher]

The World Within Your Heart

In The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming An Individual In An Age of Distraction,  the follow-up to his bestselling Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, the refreshing thinker Matthew Crawford makes the case that we are “living in a crisis of attention” - a sort of societal attention deficit disorder -- and responding in a way that makes it only worse, by embracing a kind of freedom that is all about having the greatest range of choices with the fewest outside-imposed limits. But far from liberating us, the choices lead to a pervasive blandness and deadening of the human soul and spirit, he asserts. 

The remedy? To Crawford, we must push back against this “highly mediated existence” of modern times in which “we increasingly encounter the world through representations” by “attending to real objects” and cultivating “skilled practices”-- learning to play a musical instrument, or mastering some sort of hands-on skill that requires great devotion and concentration and effort -- that enable us to reclaim the real deal of individuality -- rather than the specious kind to which we pay lip service today -- and, as a result, flourishing of a far different and more redeeming sort. 

Crawford’s claim is that we have the Enlightenment in general, and (to me) the highly overrated German philosopher Immanuel Kant in particular, to blame for worshiping at the altar of the wrong kind of freedom. Above and beyond the fact that, while provocative, his claim at best is squishy, one might argue that all the world is and always has been ‘representational,’ that there always has been, for the leisure class, a world of distractions to keep us amused and at bay from more meaningful endeavors, everything is relational, try as one might to divorce oneself from such ‘restrictions,’ 

For me, an essential question is: How do we make ours a world in which ever more people can enjoy the kinds of individual pursuits that Crawford limns? Right now, while his audience of individuals looking to find more meaning of the kind that he espouses and that resonates with them is quite large, how might we make it far larger?  

Wealth and income inequality is on the upswing, a deep concern to most Americans, and poverty is on the rise in America in areas where you’d least expect it and most expect to find people who might have time to devote to the pursuits Crawford believes are the pathway to individual sculpting. And since Crawford intends for his message to be a universal one, then before it can be applied, one must address the tragic fact that half the world lives with restrictively low income, making it nearly impossible for these fellow humans enjoy the kind of leisure time needed for the skilled practices Crawford endorses. 

I know I must sound like a wet blanket or spoilsport, but while it may be a great intellectual exercise to note, as Crawford does, that corporate monoliths can be just as blameworthy as onerous government statutes as culprits for keeping the leisure class distracted and constricted, this actually can deflect us from asking: What can those of us fortunate enough to live in fairly privileged circumstances do to create a world in which all have time for creative and reflective and soul-kindling pursuits?  

And can it be that the act of creating such conditions, of digging into the world in ways that make it possible for more people in all parts of the globe to discover and cultivate their passions and talents, is itself one of the most meaningful and creative and individual-affirming acts of all, that leads to greater self and societal flourishing at one and the same time?  

Surely the kind of bland and guilt-assuaging mutual respect that Crawford seems to extol is not enough? Isn’t compassion (a word that fails to make a single appearance in his book) what we need far more of, and can’t it be at the core of individual blossoming of a kind that also leads to greater connectedness with other individuals and the world as a whole?

In the end, Crawford seems to me to extol a type of individualism that may seem sublime, but nonetheless is still ‘all about me.’ He’s mostly proselytizing an exalted and glorified and elevated form of individualism that places insufficient stress on the inculcation of any keen sense of duty (a term mentioned once in his book, and in a negative light) to others -- and how this duty can redound to greater individual unfolding.

The fact is that human autonomy and social conscience go hand in glove. They drive one another –  they are a tag team for impelling and inspiring a person to involve herself deeply as a civic or social entrepreneur, to undertake kinds of challenges that expand a person’s imaginative, physical, existential bounds, and that do so for others in the world itself as well. These kinds of practiced skills do not in any way diminish the kinds that Crawford speaks so highly of, and in fact there should be plenty of room for both. The process of putting into practice Crawford’s ideas for individual soulcraft, if undertaken by someone with social conscience, might be the ideal setting for the emergence of new ideas for how to dig into the world 

What is required is a kind of philia, or bond of affection, that goes far beyond individual friendships, and leads as a matter of course to a sense of communal caring, even for those one might never meet.

The Greeks of old, in their halcyon days, knew all about this. The practiced such expansive philia because it was part and parcel of arête. 

What’s arete?

iThe classic Greek scholar H.D.F. Kitto writes in The Greeks that arête means that a person is “an excellent all-rounder." Someone with arete has "a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life" along with an understanding that achieving harmony "exists not in one department of life but in life itself."

This "wholeness" and "oneness" are equivalent to the holistic "balance" and "order" and "harmony" of the Navajo philosophy of hozho. 

Kitto further writes, "What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism is not a sense of duty as we understand it -- duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself." Or rather, as I point out in my Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern Day Journey of Discovery Through World Philosophy, it is a duty towards self and other at one and the same time. 

To the Greeks of antiquity, for those males who enjoyed being democratic citizens, a big part of becoming all we can be is doing our part to create conditions that enable others to do so as well.We might recognize that the bounds are blurred between public and private self, and between the individual self and the societal variety. Such recognition is probably required if one is to practice fully arete. 

I go on to note in Six Questions that in

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, Robert M. Pirsig, commenting on Kitto's book, concludes that this "motive of 'duty toward self' … is an almost exact translation of the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes described as the 'one' of the Hindus". Pirsig asks, "Can the dharma of the Hindus and the 'virtue' of the ancient Greeks be identical?"Pirsig clearly thinks they are one and the same. But what both Kitto and Pirsig fail to grasp is that for the ancient Greeks, there was no distinction of any sort between duty towards others and duty towards self; they were one and the same.  Every act, every deed in ancient Greece was committed by a member of its citizenry with a keen mindfulness of its impact on everyone else. Each recognized that one could not attain personal excellence at the expense of others, but only by paving the way for them to attain it as well. There was no private self as there is today, only a self that was part of a whole, part of an excellent citizenry and society. In that respect, arete is like the Hindu conception of Dharma, which, contrary to what Pirsig states, encompasses an individual's duty not just to himself, but to his religion, his society, his nation.This sense of duty towards others and oneself is equivalent to the hozho's underpinning philosophy of t-aa ho ajit-eego, in which the Navajo are inculcated from a young age to believe that there are no divisions between duty to themselves, to their tribe, and to the universe as a whole. They have the same respect and sense of duty for the wholeness or oneness of life" that Kitto ascribes to the ancient Greeks. In striving further to develop this individual wholeness, in becoming an "excellent all-rounder," one is at the same time furthering one's duty to one's community, contributing to greater social harmony.

So rather than, as Crawford exhorts us, strive to “reclaim the real” (one can argue ad nauseum about what that might amount to, and whether the world ‘in our mind’ and the world ‘out there’ is actually a false and fruitless dichotomy advanced for far too long), what one might do instead is regularly engage and encounter one’s fellow humans in places and spaces that lead a thoughtful and compassionate person to share and discover and sculpt new visions and ideas and ideals, and even work out strategies for making them a reality. 

We can also make more of the ‘compassionate real ‘by recognizing our rightful role and duty to become a co-creator of the universe in ways that enable others to do so as well.

A core traditional Navajo belief is that every move you make must be done with the idea of bringing yourself into harmony with your total environment, or ho, which is made up of things like nature, family, tribe, society, country, planet, universe. 

Rather than paralyze a person from acting, such a belief system can be a great impetus and inspiration to do so, in ways that make so much more of ‘the real’ than ‘the real’ is at any given moment.

The life of the mind, the spirit, the body, are interwoven not just with the individual self, but the world itself – and a sense of duty to do one’s utmost in one’s mortal moment to make ours a more connected world.

This calls, I believe, for the skilled and dedicated hands-on practice of duty to self and others. Or at least, that’s my code.

I put it this way in Six Questions: 

This sense of duty towards others and oneself is equivalent to the hozho's underpinning philosophy of t-aa ho ajit-eego, in which the Navajo are inculcated from a young age to believe that there are no divisions between duty to themselves, to their tribe, and to the universe as a whole. They have the same respect and sense of duty for the wholeness or oneness of life" that Kitto ascribes to the ancient Greeks. In striving further to develop this individual wholeness, in becoming an "excellent all-rounder," one is at the same time furthering one's duty to one's community, contributing to greater social harmony.

One of the few sensible and meaningful things Kant has ever said in his tortured writing and thinking that resonates with me was his dictum to treat people as ends in themselves, rather than primarily or only as means. To me, that is the real soulcraft of today, and that is where we should get our hands dirty – digging into the world and sculpting it in a way that makes everyone an end in themselves.What the Greeks knew was that by making the world one in which all are ends in themselves, we are making it more so for ourselves as well.

copyright 2015

[christopherphilosopher]

Philosophy: Out with the New, In with the Old?   (Part I)

What if so much that has been considered ‘philosophy’ since the days of antiquity is not really philosophy?  What if we’ve built on a foundation of quicksand?

Can we have a do-over? Should we consider such a possibility? What would Socrates think of what philosophy has become since his time?

To Socrates, the philosophical enterprise didn’t constitute the investigation of a certain narrow range and realm of questions -- though, to be sure, one of his truest loves was delving into what the virtues amounted to, with the end of discovering new answers to that question of questions, “How should we live?”

Rather, what distinguished something as ‘philosophical’ was the way that one went about questioning, into whatever areas of knowledge one was quizzical and curious about. A method is no mere prescriptive device, but usually is woven with an ethos, a spirit, and ends. He had a method that is kindred to the scientific way of inquiry, but that can be applied to any dimension. He was the antithesis of those who are studied to death and revered in academia. (Why oh why aren’t there courses in Socratic inquiry?)

The likes of Heidegger and Hegel and Kant are still considered the cream of the crop of philosophers in modern times, and profs and their students too often, and in my view tragically, still worship at their alter, and even are permitted to write doctoral dissertations about some aspect of their work, 

For instance, Heidegger’s Being and Time is gushed over by many of my philosopher friends, and I bite my lip about this. Heidegger’s work is an exercise in tortured writing and thinking, and is so poorly wrought that it can be interpreted (and is interpreted) in any way one sees fit, to mesh with one’s own point of view. One of my favorite moderns, a genuine Socratic, Walter Kaufmann, tried his best to show that this philosophical emperor had no clothes, but Heidegger is more idolized than ever. Kaufmann had a beef also with Kant, whom he agreeably called a “constipated casuist.” 

Kaufmann gave a relatively free pass, though, to Hegel, perhaps because he spent so many years studying and writing about him, but Hegel too needs to be classified in the same group.  There are kernels of decent pieces of writing in their excruciatingly awful writing, which is emulated by far less insightful thinkers. Many (including the director of a horrid ‘critical writing’ program in which I was once a fellow) believe Hegel’s “dialectic”of thesis, antithesis and synthesis is the gold standard for expanding the bounds of knowledge, when in fact it inhibits and even prohibits the discovery of the novel and unfamiliar. It is the epitome of Manichaean thinking.

But Socrates too, even by some of his most well-known acolytes today, often remains misunderstood when it comes to what his way of plumbing the world was all about.

Martha Nussbaum, whom I greatly admire and who considers herself a proponent of the Socratic method, characterizes it as an interplay of argument and counter-argument.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  

Rather, in a nutshell (a book needs to be written about this nutshell), his method  is an exploration and consideration of a variety of well-supported perspectives on any given question, looking at what speaks for and against each. In many or most cases, an array of perspectives might have elements of both rightness and wrongness, of truth and lack thereof. One considers perspective, alternative perspective, alternative perspective, and on an on, rather than argument and its antithesis of a counterargument. Socratic inquiry is an endless journey, with no arrival once and for all at a destination.  Even if one feels that one has arrived at a truth for all time, the love for and devotion to Socratic honesty one require one to keep testing and challenging this truth. 

Socrates thought and examined and interrogated  in a wide array of colors. He was by far our most colorful thinker. His best modern exemplar in the academic realm I believe was Justus Buchler (even if his writing at times is unnecessarily stiff at times). Buchler never lost his childlike curiosity and openness, and he revolutionized the way one might go about philosophizing, in the process undermining most of what constitutes philosophy today.

Alfred North Whitehead went so far as to say that “I think almost the entire history of philosophy is against such an idea” as that propagated by Buchler with his breathtaking philosophy of natural complexes (which I’ll go into in a later post), While noting Buchler’s “courage,” Whitehead has too much of a vested interest in the existing system to allow the ‘truthiness’ of Buchler’s insights to stake their just claim. Buchler was both methodical a la Socrates and systematic, while most are systematic and non-methodical (or use a method that is largely a logic-type chessgame that leads one to preconceived and foreordained ‘truths’).

 I’ll write much more on this later, but wanted to post this opening salvo, to start putting down my code. I’ll also write about other legitimate ‘Socratic’ approaches, including that of the Socratic gadfly, who may not be as faithful to the Socratic method as he should -- but would be even more fruitful in his approach if he was. 

copyright 2015