I'm intrigued by our differences of opinion on Socrates.
When I read Socrates, I follow his lead with a certain kind of faith that he is engaging the world in a rich and complex and mercurial way, and because of this faith, I am sceptical of my first impression. I try to stay open to the idea that Socrates is pointing to something beyond the words and beyond any given dialogue.
That said, he is not to be trusted. He may be ironic or duplicitous, or annoying, or arrogant, but these are, I like to think, in service of truth and wisdom. The true path to truth is going to reside beyond the surety of our categories and narratives.
The propositional landscapes with which we frame our perceptions, will always restrict our access to truth, wisdom and virtue.
So Socrates as gadfly or midwife is not a polite or reasonable man; he out flanks the categories of ‘polite and reasonable’ because those things limit access to what lies beyond them.
In your reading of Euthyphro, you are bummed that he comes off as "aggressive, less humble, and less open minded" than you hoped.
I get it, and part of me agrees. But I think he is more than those qualities. When he says he deeply desires to know the nature of piety, I think he earnestly would like to know. Partially the plot makes this clear. He is off to his own trial in which "the pious" claim to know that he is impiously corrupting the youth. In a real sense, this is life and death for him, but both piousness, and life and death are categories that Socrates will outflank and reinterpret as the dialogues continue.
I find this dialogue and the aporia around which it circles like a whirlpool, engrossing and strangely familiar. Familiar because it feels like the kinds of negotiations that go on in my mind as I negotiate and try to find balance and clarity in this world.
The complexity of the situation is arresting. Euthyphro is putting his own father on trial for brutally leaving a worker to die as he goes to grab the authorities. This is deeply fraught in just about every way. Emotionally and practically and legally and morally or just in terms of family dynamics, this is a ridiculous complex moral terrain..
But nonetheless, Euthyphro's reaction is sure and clear. He is certain that his pious insights are central to this dilemma, and he is not going to be sidetracked by ‘emotion’ or any moral duty beyond that of his pious framing. As a reader, I am divided. On one hand, as you seem to agree, I am sensitive to your Euthyphro’s emotional stickiness vis-à-vis his own father's trial. You suggest Socrates is being "insensitive” to his plight at this moment. But this adds to the complexity. Socrates is the one who suggests prying out and making salient the complexity of the familial aspect of this conundrum. Clearly this is an important part of the complexity in this moral landscape even while Euthyphro is pretty damn sure that the fact that his father is involved should have ‘no bearing’ on the right way to act.
It is Euthyphro in this dialogue that is taking the tact that "abstract concepts have staple definable meanings", and that we should act as if this is the case. Even if that means killing your own father as your family begs you not to.
Euthyphro is sure that piety, for which he is an exemplar, has a clear and consistent application in the world. He insists that this 'clear and consistent application' of piosness, cannot be corrupted or derailed by the complexity of living in the real world. It is Socrates who isn't so sure that abstract concepts are stable or dependable.
To me this is central to the aporia in his dialogue; he brings reason and logic to bear on Euthyphro’s faith in the virtue of piety, and it crumbles into an unsatisfactory slippery goo.
This aporia gains weight because Socrates is going to his own trial. Spoiler alert, he is going to die for the centrality of this aporia. He is going to die in the slippery goo that undergirds and outflanks our cultural surety and our faith in abstractions.
In my mind, Socrates is a kind of Jesus. He is a martyr who is willing to die to teach us something important. Our sin in his story lies somewhere in the intersection between our "unexamined life” and our attachment to abstractions and categories.
When I try to internalize the sagacity of Socrates, it is in the skill of soft focus. It is about seeing the importance of categories and abstractions, yet knowing that ultimately they dissolve into goo. It is kinda Neither Nor.
It reminds me of a particle physicist pushing the extremes of the materialist framing of the world until it breaks. A wise physicist’s soft focus would be malleable enough to find joy in the aporia that emerges as she recognizes that the central conceptual framework that undergirds the entire field of her beloved physics, materialism, just turned into goo. As a wise physicist, she can celebrate the Higgs field even as it turns her previous worldview into a mush that defies her conceptual apparatus.
Socrates was willing to die for the centrality of aporia because truth and wisdom and virtue and I suppose piousness, are all beyond concepts and categories and they are also the point of living.
Thanks so much for writing this response and for reading the Euthyphro! I really enjoyed hearing how it struck you. I like to think that I'm tolerant of philosophical weirdos, who are not polite or reasonable, and who point the way to something important. That's what I find in the Zhuangzi, especially. I also agree with you that Socrates does want to know what piety is. I'll give a fuller response soon — maybe in person!
I don't think it's true that aporia can only work if one accepts Socrates’ unstated but fundamental premise: that abstract concepts have stable, definable meanings. The Pyrrhonists make fine use of aporia while simultaneously rejecting the validity of Socratic definition and division,
Great point Doug! I might make a footnote about that. I think Sextus discusses its use? I don't remember it being in Diogenes Laertius on Pyrrho. Do you think Sextus would be able to reach aporia through elenchus? Somehow antithesis/equipollence seems different to me than what Socrates is doing. But I could imagine someone arguing that something similar is going on in Plato's Parmenides?
Our understanding of Pyrrhonism is heavily colored by Sextus' testimony and supplemented by that of Diogenes Laertius, who in turn was heavily influenced by Sextus. However, what little we know of the way Aenesidemus taught Pyrrhonism suggests a somewhat different approach. Sextus emphasized epoche whereas Aenesidemus emphasized aporia and perhaps didn't even say much of anything about epoche. Epoche and aporia are two of the three methods of practicing Pyrrhonism. The third method is zetesis.
Aenesidemus was originally an Academic Skeptic who became disgusted with trends in the Academy such that it had become like Stoics arguing with Stoics. He left the Academy to return to the roots of skepticism and revive Pyrrhonism (which probably wasn't quite dead, but close to it). So, the emphasis on Socratic aporia he seems to have carried over from the Academics, and presumably, he carried over elenchus, too, for inducing aporia.
The interesting thing here to me is that Aristotle specifically credits Socrates for introducing the importance of definitions into philosophy, whereas Sextus attacks the utility of definitions (e.g., chapter 16 of the Outlines).
SOCRATES: "Bear in mind then that I did not bid you tell me one or two of the many pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious, for you agreed that all impious actions are impious and all pious actions pious through one form, ***or don’t you remember?***"
two things:
1. "or don't you remember?" at the end - is socrates just the OG troll?
"In these Middle Dialogues, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato’s own views, abandoning his previous claim of having no views" - this made me wonder wonder: Do we trust Plato as a source of truth on Socrates? Because this seems to be quite a fundamental change of argument style and end goal for Socrates, who appears to have evolved from a humble (if provocative), almost Buddhist approach of "we know nothing", over to a much more declarative position (which is maybe more how Plato thinks?).
Thank you, I really learned a lot and enjoyed how this ended, I think you elegantly tie this up with balance and skill.
I'm intrigued by our differences of opinion on Socrates.
When I read Socrates, I follow his lead with a certain kind of faith that he is engaging the world in a rich and complex and mercurial way, and because of this faith, I am sceptical of my first impression. I try to stay open to the idea that Socrates is pointing to something beyond the words and beyond any given dialogue.
That said, he is not to be trusted. He may be ironic or duplicitous, or annoying, or arrogant, but these are, I like to think, in service of truth and wisdom. The true path to truth is going to reside beyond the surety of our categories and narratives.
The propositional landscapes with which we frame our perceptions, will always restrict our access to truth, wisdom and virtue.
So Socrates as gadfly or midwife is not a polite or reasonable man; he out flanks the categories of ‘polite and reasonable’ because those things limit access to what lies beyond them.
In your reading of Euthyphro, you are bummed that he comes off as "aggressive, less humble, and less open minded" than you hoped.
I get it, and part of me agrees. But I think he is more than those qualities. When he says he deeply desires to know the nature of piety, I think he earnestly would like to know. Partially the plot makes this clear. He is off to his own trial in which "the pious" claim to know that he is impiously corrupting the youth. In a real sense, this is life and death for him, but both piousness, and life and death are categories that Socrates will outflank and reinterpret as the dialogues continue.
I find this dialogue and the aporia around which it circles like a whirlpool, engrossing and strangely familiar. Familiar because it feels like the kinds of negotiations that go on in my mind as I negotiate and try to find balance and clarity in this world.
The complexity of the situation is arresting. Euthyphro is putting his own father on trial for brutally leaving a worker to die as he goes to grab the authorities. This is deeply fraught in just about every way. Emotionally and practically and legally and morally or just in terms of family dynamics, this is a ridiculous complex moral terrain..
But nonetheless, Euthyphro's reaction is sure and clear. He is certain that his pious insights are central to this dilemma, and he is not going to be sidetracked by ‘emotion’ or any moral duty beyond that of his pious framing. As a reader, I am divided. On one hand, as you seem to agree, I am sensitive to your Euthyphro’s emotional stickiness vis-à-vis his own father's trial. You suggest Socrates is being "insensitive” to his plight at this moment. But this adds to the complexity. Socrates is the one who suggests prying out and making salient the complexity of the familial aspect of this conundrum. Clearly this is an important part of the complexity in this moral landscape even while Euthyphro is pretty damn sure that the fact that his father is involved should have ‘no bearing’ on the right way to act.
It is Euthyphro in this dialogue that is taking the tact that "abstract concepts have staple definable meanings", and that we should act as if this is the case. Even if that means killing your own father as your family begs you not to.
Euthyphro is sure that piety, for which he is an exemplar, has a clear and consistent application in the world. He insists that this 'clear and consistent application' of piosness, cannot be corrupted or derailed by the complexity of living in the real world. It is Socrates who isn't so sure that abstract concepts are stable or dependable.
To me this is central to the aporia in his dialogue; he brings reason and logic to bear on Euthyphro’s faith in the virtue of piety, and it crumbles into an unsatisfactory slippery goo.
This aporia gains weight because Socrates is going to his own trial. Spoiler alert, he is going to die for the centrality of this aporia. He is going to die in the slippery goo that undergirds and outflanks our cultural surety and our faith in abstractions.
In my mind, Socrates is a kind of Jesus. He is a martyr who is willing to die to teach us something important. Our sin in his story lies somewhere in the intersection between our "unexamined life” and our attachment to abstractions and categories.
When I try to internalize the sagacity of Socrates, it is in the skill of soft focus. It is about seeing the importance of categories and abstractions, yet knowing that ultimately they dissolve into goo. It is kinda Neither Nor.
It reminds me of a particle physicist pushing the extremes of the materialist framing of the world until it breaks. A wise physicist’s soft focus would be malleable enough to find joy in the aporia that emerges as she recognizes that the central conceptual framework that undergirds the entire field of her beloved physics, materialism, just turned into goo. As a wise physicist, she can celebrate the Higgs field even as it turns her previous worldview into a mush that defies her conceptual apparatus.
Socrates was willing to die for the centrality of aporia because truth and wisdom and virtue and I suppose piousness, are all beyond concepts and categories and they are also the point of living.
Thanks so much for writing this response and for reading the Euthyphro! I really enjoyed hearing how it struck you. I like to think that I'm tolerant of philosophical weirdos, who are not polite or reasonable, and who point the way to something important. That's what I find in the Zhuangzi, especially. I also agree with you that Socrates does want to know what piety is. I'll give a fuller response soon — maybe in person!
Is it your thesis that the process of collection and division is entirely socialized?
Or that the role of socialisation has been under acknowledged?
I don't think it's true that aporia can only work if one accepts Socrates’ unstated but fundamental premise: that abstract concepts have stable, definable meanings. The Pyrrhonists make fine use of aporia while simultaneously rejecting the validity of Socratic definition and division,
Great point Doug! I might make a footnote about that. I think Sextus discusses its use? I don't remember it being in Diogenes Laertius on Pyrrho. Do you think Sextus would be able to reach aporia through elenchus? Somehow antithesis/equipollence seems different to me than what Socrates is doing. But I could imagine someone arguing that something similar is going on in Plato's Parmenides?
Our understanding of Pyrrhonism is heavily colored by Sextus' testimony and supplemented by that of Diogenes Laertius, who in turn was heavily influenced by Sextus. However, what little we know of the way Aenesidemus taught Pyrrhonism suggests a somewhat different approach. Sextus emphasized epoche whereas Aenesidemus emphasized aporia and perhaps didn't even say much of anything about epoche. Epoche and aporia are two of the three methods of practicing Pyrrhonism. The third method is zetesis.
Aenesidemus was originally an Academic Skeptic who became disgusted with trends in the Academy such that it had become like Stoics arguing with Stoics. He left the Academy to return to the roots of skepticism and revive Pyrrhonism (which probably wasn't quite dead, but close to it). So, the emphasis on Socratic aporia he seems to have carried over from the Academics, and presumably, he carried over elenchus, too, for inducing aporia.
The interesting thing here to me is that Aristotle specifically credits Socrates for introducing the importance of definitions into philosophy, whereas Sextus attacks the utility of definitions (e.g., chapter 16 of the Outlines).
SOCRATES: "Bear in mind then that I did not bid you tell me one or two of the many pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious, for you agreed that all impious actions are impious and all pious actions pious through one form, ***or don’t you remember?***"
two things:
1. "or don't you remember?" at the end - is socrates just the OG troll?
2. https://x.com/leyawn/status/585859882869469184?lang=en
I enjoyed this post. You really bring the personality of Socrates alive.
"In these Middle Dialogues, Socrates becomes a mouthpiece for Plato’s own views, abandoning his previous claim of having no views" - this made me wonder wonder: Do we trust Plato as a source of truth on Socrates? Because this seems to be quite a fundamental change of argument style and end goal for Socrates, who appears to have evolved from a humble (if provocative), almost Buddhist approach of "we know nothing", over to a much more declarative position (which is maybe more how Plato thinks?).
Thank you, I really learned a lot and enjoyed how this ended, I think you elegantly tie this up with balance and skill.