This blog may strike many readers as an opinionated one but let me assure you that I am more of a hesitant mugwump – with my bum on both sides of the fence. I am loathe to choose sides – not least because I can see so many. Indeed it’s why the blog carries the name it does. It’s a celebration of the benefits from looking at the world from different angles. An article by Agnes Callard n the current issue of the Boston Review impressed me both for the clarity of the language and the message it contained about the importance of questioning loose thinking.
This blog may strike many readers as an opinionated one but let me assure you that I am more of a hesitant mugwump – with my bum on both sides of the fence.
I am loathe to choose sides – not least because I can see so many. Indeed it’s why the blog carries the name it does. It’s a celebration of the benefits from looking at the world from different angles. An article by Agnes Callard n the current issue of the Boston Review impressed me both for the clarity of the language and the message it contained about the importance of questioning loose thinking.
Socrates did not write philosophy; he simply went around talking to people. But these
conversations were so transformative that Plato devoted his life to writing dialogues that represent Socrates in conversation. These dialogues are not transcripts of actual conversations, but they are nonetheless clearly intended to reflect not only Socrates’s ideas but his personality. Plato wanted the world to remember Socrates. Generations after Socrates’s death, warring philosophical schools such as the Stoics and the Skeptics each appropriated Socrates as figurehead. Though they disagreed on just about every point of doctrine, they were clear that in order to count themselves as philosophers they had to somehow be working in the tradition of Socrates Over and over again, Socrates approaches people who are remarkable for their lack
of humility—which is to say, for the fact that they feel confident in their own knowledge of what is just, or pious, or brave, or moderate. You might have supposed that Socrates, whose claim to fame is his awareness of his own ignorance, would treat these self-proclaimed “wise men” (Sophists) with contempt, hostility, or indifference. But he doesn’t. The most remarkable feature of Socrates’s approach is his punctilious politeness and sincere enthusiasm. The conversation usually begins with Socrates asking his interlocutor: Since you
think you know, can you tell me, what is courage (or wisdom, or piety, or justice . . .)? Over and over again, it turns out that they think they can answer, but they can’t. Socrates’s hope springs eternal: even as he walks toward the courtroom to be tried—and eventually put to death—for his philosophical activity, he is delighted to encounter the self-important priest Euthyphro, who will, surely, be able to say what piety is. (Spoiler: he’s not.) Her article resonates with those of us who are sceptical of the mainstream media (MSM) and the polarisation brought by the social media
Most people steer conversations into areas where they have expertise; they struggle to admit error; they have a background confidence that they have a firm grip on the basics. They are happy to think of other people – people who have different political or religious views, or got a different kind of education, or live in a different part of the world - as ignorant and clueless. They are eager to claim the status of knowledge for everything they themselves think.
Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as a collaborative project involving two very different roles. There’s you or I or some other representative of Most People, who comes forward and makes a bold claim. Then there’s Socrates, or one of his contemporary descendants, who questions and interrogates and distinguishes and calls for clarification. This is something we’re often still doing—as philosophers, as scientists, as interviewers, as friends, on Twitter and Facebook and in many casual personal conversations. We’re constantly probing one another, asking, “How can you say that, given X, Y, Z?” We’re still trying to understand one another by way of objection, clarification, and the simple fact of inability to take what someone has said as knowledge. It comes so naturally to us to organize ourselves into the knower/objector pairing that we don’t even notice we are living in the world that Socrates made. The scope of his influence is remarkable. But equally remarkable is the means by which it was achieved: he did so much by knowing, writing, and accomplishing—nothing at all. And yet for all this influence, many of our ways are becoming far from Socratic.
More and more our politics are marked by unilateral persuasion instead of collaborative inquiry. If, like Socrates, you view knowledge as an essentially collaborative project, you don’t go into a conversation expecting to persuade any more than you expect to be persuaded. By contrast, if you do assume you know, you embrace the role of persuader in advance,
and stand ready to argue people into agreement. If argument fails, you might tolerate a state of disagreement—but if the matter is serious enough, you’ll resort to enforcing your view through incentives or punishments. Socrates’s method eschewed the pressure to persuade. At the same time, he did not tolerate tolerance. His politics of humility involved genuinely opening up the question under dispute, in such a way that neither party would be permitted to close it, to settle on an answer, unless the other answered the same. By contrast, our politics—of persuasion, tolerance, incentives, and punishment—is deeply uninquisitive. But the additional message it contains is the value of geniune exchanges – of real conversations and here we enter the realm made famous by Theodor Zeldin (who will be 90 in a few weeks and is perhaps best known for his encouragement of the art of conversation). He is also a maverick historian whose books have searched for answers to three main questions
Where can a person find more inspiring ways of spending each day?
What ambitions remain unexplored, beyond happiness, prosperity, faith, love, technology, or therapy?
What role could there be for individuals with independent minds, or those who feel isolated, different, or are sometimes labeled as misfits?
His work has brought people together to engage in conversations in a variety
of settings – communal and business – on the basis of some basic principles His latest book is The Hidden Pleasures of Life It's an epub so does need
conversion
Socrates did not write philosophy; he simply went around talking to people. But these conversations
were so transformative that Plato devoted his life to writing dialogues that represent Socrates in conversation. These dialogues are not transcripts of actual conversations, but they are nonetheless clearly intended to reflect not only Socrates’s ideas but his personality. Plato wanted the world to remember Socrates. Generations after Socrates’s death, warring philosophical schools such as the Stoics and the Skeptics each appropriated Socrates as figurehead. Though they disagreed on just about every point of doctrine, they were clear that in order to count themselves as philosophers they had to somehow be working in the tradition of Socrates. Over and over again, Socrates approaches people who are remarkable for their lack of humility—which
is to say, for the fact that they feel confident in their own knowledge of what is just, or pious, or brave, or moderate. You might have supposed that Socrates, whose claim to fame is his awareness of his own ignorance, would treat these self-proclaimed “wise men” (Sophists) with contempt, hostility, or indifference. But he doesn’t. The most remarkable feature of Socrates’s approach is his
punctilious politeness and sincere enthusiasm. The conversation usually begins with Socrates asking his interlocutor: Since you think you know, can
you tell me, what is courage (or wisdom, or piety, or justice . . .)? Over and over again, it turns out that they think they can answer, but they can’t. Socrates’s hope springs eternal: even as he walks toward the courtroom to be tried—and eventually put to death—for his philosophical activity, he is delighted to encounter the self-important priest Euthyphro, who will, surely, be able to say what piety is. (Spoiler: he’s not.)
Her article resonates with those of us who are sceptical of the mainstream media (MSM) and the polarisation brought by the social media
Most people steer conversations into areas where they have expertise; they struggle to admit error; they have a background confidence that they have a firm grip on the basics. They are happy to think of other people - people
who have different political or religious views, or got a different kind of education, or live in a different part of the world - as ignorant and clueless. They are eager to claim the status of knowledge for everything they themselves think. Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as a collaborative project involving two very different roles.
There’s you or I or some other representative of Most People, who comes forward and makes a bold claim. Then there’s Socrates, or one of his contemporary descendants, who questions and interrogates and distinguishes and calls for clarification. This is something we’re often still doing—as philosophers, as scientists, as interviewers, as friends, on Twitter and Facebook and in many casual personal conversations. We’re constantly probing one another, asking, “How can you say that, given X, Y, Z?” We’re still trying to understand one another by way of objection, clarification, and the simple fact of inability to take what someone has said as knowledge. It comes so naturally to us to organize ourselves into the knower/objector pairing that we don’t even notice we are living in the world that Socrates made. The scope of his influence is remarkable. But equally remarkable is the means by which it was achieved: he did so much by knowing, writing, and accomplishing—nothing at all. And yet for all this influence, many of our ways are becoming far from Socratic. More and more our politics
are marked by unilateral persuasion instead of collaborative inquiry. If, like Socrates, you view knowledge as an
essentially collaborative project, you don’t go into a conversation expecting to persuade any more than you expect to be persuaded. By contrast, if you do assume you know, you embrace the role of persuader in advance, and stand ready to argue
people into agreement. If argument fails, you might tolerate a state of disagreement—but if the matter is serious enough, you’ll resort to enforcing your view through incentives or punishments. Socrates’s method eschewed the pressure to persuade. At the same time, he did not tolerate tolerance. His politics of humility involved genuinely opening up the question under dispute, in such a way that neither party would be permitted to close it, to settle on an answer, unless the other answered the same. By contrast, our politics—of persuasion, tolerance, incentives, and punishment—is deeply uninquisitive. But the additional message it contains is the value of geniune exchanges – of real conversations and here we enter the realm made famous by Theodor Zeldin (who will be 90 in a few weeks and is perhaps best known for his encouragement of the art of conversation). He is also a maverick historian whose books have searched for answers to three main questions
Where can a person find more inspiring ways of spending each day?What ambitions remain unexplored, beyond happiness, prosperity, faith, love, technology, or therapy?What role could there be for individuals with independent minds, or those who feelisolated, different, or are sometimes labeled as misfits?
His work has brought people together to engage in conversations in a variety of settings
– communal and business – on the basis of some basic principles His latest book is The Hidden Pleasures of Life It's an epub so does need conversion
A Zeldin Resource
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/book-conversation
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263330798_Zeldin_Theodore_1998_Conversation
http://www.oxfordmuse.com/media/muse-brochure[final].pdf
hidden pleasures of life http://www.anilgomes.com/uploads/2/3/9/7/23976281/gomes_tls.pdf
http://delarue.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/OLC-April-2011_DeLaRue_Art-of-Conversation.pdf
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