Agnes Callard shitting on Socrates

Behind every great man- lesser men like to think- is a woman trying to push him out of her way so as to claim all the credit and hog the limelight. In the case of the golden age of Athens, that woman was Aspasia. 

Athens briefly attained a truly populist democracy, after Cleisthenes' reforms, under Themistocles and, more briefly yet, greatness under, Aspasia's protector, Pericles who though, like the first named, was of the cursed Alcmaeonid family, began his career funding the production of Aeschylus's 'The Persians'- thus signalling support to Themistocles and solidarity with the poorer thetes. This meant prioritizing maritime military operations (where the thetes' contribution- rowing galleys- was vital) while remaining on the defensive on land (which gave less scope for the aristocratic cavaliers).  Though maritime Imperialism has its dangers- unless, like Britain, you are an island and relatively immune to land invasion- it can be associated with burgeoning trade and cultural exchange provided there is a democratic element to the polity and the native population sees the presence of foreigners, who can provide high value adding services, as beneficial to their own social mobility. I suppose, it was in this particular that Solon's reforms- e.g granting citizenship to those who brought their families to settle in Athens- paved the way to that City's pre-eminent glory.

On the other hand, high taxes and costly liturgical duties (like financing the plays of Aeschylus & Aristophanes) imposed on the elite caused a revolt against Democracy once war ceased to be a source of profit and became a drain on resources. Socrates, because of his supposed influence on sprigs of the aristocracy, became a casualty of this civil strife. Part of the charm of Plato's dialogues is that they recall a happier time when it seemed that maritime Imperialism could somehow magically pay for itself and thus the different social classes could prosper together. 

Pericles died when Socrates was about 40. Athens' decline, geopolitically speaking, was swift. The Menexenus is a Socratic dialogue which parodies Pericles's great funeral speech which, Socrates says was actually cobbled together by Aspasia who, it seems, had favoured Socrates with her charms. The guy also says he will dance naked. Clearly the thing is a parody and there a lot of 'in-jokes' which can scarcely matter much to us. 

However there are two more general points which might usefully be made

1) Athens attained greatness and won immortal renown because it possessed men whose deeds were as impressive, if not more so, than their words. Experts of all types had flocked to Athens. Pericles himself enjoyed the company of the philosophers Protagoras from Abdera, Zeno of Elea, and, most particularly, Anaxagoras, from Persian ruled Asia Minor. Socrates himself was condemned to death for championing the role of the expert rather than trusting to the wisdom of one chosen by lot. The irony here is that the 'elenchos' cross examination by Socrates's accuser (kategoros) succeeds because what may be true of Mathematics or Aesthetics is not true of the Law- which is protocol bound and 'buck-stopped'. 

This is because where there is an accusation, there must be categories such that behaviour which is excusable under one rubric is found not to be so under another. Reality must be 'carved up along its joints' or, as St. Paul says, methexis in Ecclesia is achieved when you 'Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth'.

Socrates failed to establish that what he was accused of fell under the category of things healthful to the polis, not destructive of it- unlike the actions of Critias or Alcibiades. But, the curse of the autochthone is the opposite of that of aristocratic Alcmaeonidae whose oikos may be nourished by exile or Spartan alliances. As is a woman, of light reputation but a heavy protector, nevertheless entirely buried with her disgraced son, so too with the poor, the native, what yet lights up Athens and Jerusalem above cities- which, like Liverpool or Alexandria, Music might abandon, not God- is that which Cavafy could easily find a ship to take himself from. 

Words may be categorically different from deeds but they are not mere wind- or the 'wind-eggs' of Socratic maieutics. Denying the gods, if Justice is a god, provokes the vengeance of deeds on words- even such as represent eudoxa (sound conventional opinion) but which fail to defend themselves successfully under 'elenchos' (cross-examination of the Socratic type).

 But Plato has Socrates suggest that his death will bring Athens a great windfall- as when Orithuia was abducted by Boreas and, becoming his wife, caused that God to intervene against the Persians at Cape Sepias. This recalls to my mind the first book in the English language known to be written by a woman which invokes the Word made flesh in the figure of our tender Mother Jesus (who) can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss.  This book was published by a chaplain to a foreign Queen some three hundred years after it was written.

Aspasia, herself a foreigner,  was supposed to have had an affair with Anaxagoras (and also one with the young Socrates before he saw the light shone out of the backsides of beardless youths) was accused of corrupting the women of Athens to satisfy Pericles' perversions. However, Pericles had introduced a law barring those with a non Athenian parent from citizenship. Thus 'perversion' had been kept at bay.  It is noteworthy that Anaxagoras, a foreigner, was attacked by the ecclesia for his religious beliefs though, unlike Socrates, he was not killed. After all, laws differ in different jurisdictions. Exile is not death nor the fact that far away folk have different customs any outrage to what we consider eusebia.

Of course, a polis may abstain from striving for hegemony while still attracting high quality immigrants with valuable skills. The problem with going in the other direction is that lots of your own most talented people may be driven into exile because they object to costly wars and demagogic corruption. Medea's children, had they been of an age to reason, would have abandoned her before she could slaughter them, thus gaining immortal renown for her spiritedness.

Still, the fact remains, if greatness departs a City so does a particular aura which would otherwise envelop its thinkers and poets. They would be seen as merely providing a service, competing with the hair-dresser or the personal trainer or the accomplished courtesan. 

2) When the substance departs and only a shadow remains, Love becomes an end in it itself, not a means to some other sort of mutual burgeoning or 'sumphusis'. This may be good for literature- Dante droning on about Beatrice- but literature is merely a type of entertainment, though no doubt it may be colonized by a credentialist paideia. 

Anaxagoras settled in Athens at about the time of Salamis. His proto-scientific and humanistic attitudes appear reflected to us in the lapidary yet lucid periods of Euripides which ever flash and melodiously flow the more dazzlingly for destined to a sunless sea. 

 Socrates too, with Socratic irony, dissimulates ignorance even when it genuinely was ignorance rather than an incontinent, or superbly spirited, embracing of a fate Anaxagoras, a foreigner, avoided. There can be no doubt that Socrates loved Athens as only an autochthone could. But Love is about deeds as much as words, substance as much as shadow, and making babies as much as babbling meretricious shite about maieutics. Socrates, it is true, did not commodify his ultracrepidarian irony. But Plato, with the sure-footed cunning of the rich, did well out of it. 

Why did Socrates, a native born Athenian man, follow Aspasia- a mere woman and that too a foreigner- in eroticizing the cultivation of Intelligence or the skilllful application of Reason? It is tempting to say that wealthy, or well born, men could make choices and change the fate of polities. Women and the poor- Socrates was the son of a stone-mason who seems not to have profited in any way from his undoubted charm and intelligence- might have little choice but choose to protest greater love and devotion to... not things as they are but as they might be viewed in an idealized world. In this sense, a mistress might claim to be enchanted by- not the balding old coot who supports her financially- but the dashing gallant burnished by his own legend. 

Wisdom is valuable in so far as it enables us to choose wisely. If one has little choice in one's life, it may be wise to profess a love of wisdom- perhaps people will trust you with more choices to make- but with this proviso. The Wisdom one loves is not one which always decides in one way or another. Rather, as Socrates says, love of wisdom is about being able to give as good a reason against as for any matter at issue. Thus love of wisdom might burgeon as the profession of talking about choices without ever making any. The ageing prostitute and more useless type of pedant- though unlovely and ignorant- may yet, by the charm of their conversation and the passion they simulate without stimulating, make a shabby genteel living. By contrast, anyone can be a martyr, a witness to a truth of Thymos and, ironically, dissimulated ignorance is as an Adamic fall or Cross-tree's portion of gall. The Logos puts on flesh, while yet the flesh puts off death but only so death triumph over death. 

Meanwhile, life becomes more effortlessly itself as when a boat speeds to its destination, sails big-bellied with wind. 

The fact is, a wise man may make great choices without ever being able to give reasons for them. However, for those not so favorably constituted, it is useful to have a science of 'formulaic' optimization. True, this is a 'second best' solution- as when the wind fails the galley sails and many hands must work the oars. 

 In category theory- a more abstract and generalizing branch of mathematics- 'adjoint functors' often arise when we are looking for a 'most efficient' solution. In particular, adjointness obtains where directed or directive determinations yield the same results as indirect determinations by 'factorized' universals. 

Consider Socrates. Either he is wise and his action is decipherable through such a 'factorization' or else his wisdom is directly determinative. Alternatively, there are no 'universals' and the man was a fool. A middle way would consider in what respects Socrates was different from those whom he talked to or those who preserved his memory. What was wise for him may have been folly for them and vice versa. Reading Socrates, who himself spoke of 'palinode'- i.e. reversing oneself while in the full flow of eloquence- we may ourselves perform its hermeneutic equivalent- i.e. we reverse the meaning we are receiving. Plato, it seems, had a gift of capturing this process. We 'participate' (μέθεξις- methexis) in a mimesis (a representation rather than an exact record) of a philosophic conversation among well bred Greeks who lived in a place and a time which the memory of our Race gilds and glorifies.

 However, Plato is also known for instituting the first school to be known as an Academy and for insisting that Maths be taught there. It would thus behoove present day academics, more particularly those who write about Plato's Socrates, to apply developments in category theory to a type of moral philosophy which is 'categorical'- i.e. similar in its method to jurisprudence but to an epistemic end. After all, if Plato was right then- in some sense- mathematics is adjoint to philosophy though they are very different in form.

 A ‘‘heteromorphic’’ theory about adjoints is an abstract way of looking at how autonomous behaviour can emerge within a system obeying certain laws. Natural language, intelligently used or understood, is- of course- much more useful in evaluating moral claims. However, if one wants to do 'moral philosophy' then one needs to keep up to date with developments in mathematical logic if only so as to avoid programmatic errors. The theory of adjunction deals with situations where two different 'mappings' satisfy many of the same criteria but not all. This is like distinguishing terms which may in ordinary conversation be used interchangeably so as to gain a fresh insight or resolve a particular problem in a superior manner. The reason words which originate in mathematics are particularly useful is because a lot is known, at the most abstract level, about how they can be used and for what very useful purposes.

Making good decisions involves looking at what a thing is related to as its dual or adjoint- in other words, something 'symmetric' in one sense but, in another sense, distinguishable by reason of a process. In doing so one has to be careful to see what limits both have. Examining this enables better 'hermeneutics'- i.e. interpretation- without much new contextual information- as well as  better 'heuristics'- i.e. smarter 'self-learning' rules which may enable one to make qualitatively better decisions or else oneself being qualitatively changed. Equally, it may turn out to be a waste of time. It depends on what you are looking for and where you are looking. Studying to be wise if you are as stupid as shit may make you more ignorant and  prejudiced than when you started off. 

As a case in point, Agnes Callard- despite knowing some Math and Greek- writes in Boston Review.

Philosophers aren’t the only ones who love wisdom.

Not all Philosophers acknowledge that 'wisdom' exists or that it is lovable as opposed to bitter and disillusioning nor that they love philosophy because they themselves can, as Socrates stipulates,  give as good a reason against anything they have argued for. 

To be wise, Socrates says, is to be like unto a God. One may love or otherwise aspire to that condition. But one may simultaneously loathe and studiously avoid any step towards it. 'Ye are as Gods' says another man in another City and the punitive stone falls from our hands. 

 Everyone, philosopher or not, loves her own wisdom: the wisdom she has or takes herself to have.

Only in the same sense that everyone hates her own wisdom. Indeed one may say that this hatred is in proportion to her love, or that her wisdom is the apotheosis of her ignorance, or that her cat is her beloved dog, or her beloved dog which is a cat is the lost pizza she delivers to herself in the realm of metaphysical pepperoni and mushroom. 

 What distinguishes the philosopher is loving the wisdom she doesn’t have. 

No. A philosopher is distinguished by the fact that she talks a lot about philosophy. If she gets paid for it- as Callard does- she is a professional philosopher. This does not necessarily entail loving anything- a philosopher may conclude that nothing should be loved- nor does it involve positing the existence of any type of 'wisdom'. 

Philosophy is, therefore, a form of humility: 

in the sense that dogs are cats and cats are a form of philosophy.

The truth is, Philosophy arises out of a desperate desire to acquire or gain a reward for purveying a Credential of a more or less bogus type. Far from representing humility, it can only arise out of an arrogant type of garrulity predicated on an usurpation of epistemic superiority.

being aware that you lack what is of supreme importance.

We are all aware that we lack immortal felicity and the ability to confer this on anyone we like while being able to eternally fuck over those we hate. 

It is of supreme importance to the continuation of your life at this moment that all sorts of things of which you are completely unaware continue to happen or happen in a different way. This is as true of biological processes going on within your body as it is of all sorts of political and economic and military operations occurring which are far beyond your ken. It is not the case that 'being aware of what you lack'- e.g the fact that you lack knowledge of whatever shite you happen to be blathering about- is of 'supreme importance'. 

There may be no human being who exemplified this form of humility more perfectly than Socrates.

History does not remember the truly humble. That's why humility is worth cultivating. 

 It is no coincidence that he is considered the first philosopher within the Western canon.

This is false. Thales of Miletus is considered the first philosopher in the Western canon. There has been considerable interest in pre-Socratic philosophy.

Socrates did not write philosophy; he simply went around talking to people. 

At the close of his life, he neglected not having dedicated himself to 'mousike'- i.e. poetic compositions which could be sung or chanted to a musical effect. He was writing some such shite but, despite his broad hints, his disciples refused to touch the thing with a bargepole. The reason Socrates has left no writings of his own, clearly, is because his admirers were firmly opposed to reading or transmitting his effusions. 

On the other hand, Socrates did criticize writing as tending to weaken the memory and solemnly averred that there was a time when people listened to oaks and stones. 

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. 

Plato wanted wealthy young people to attend the Academy he had set up.

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.

Then Christianity triumphed. Socrates's gods and daimons and oracles were condemned as the lures of the devil. Some theologians did claim to follow Aristotle- but Aristotle had said that Socrates, though coming later and speaking better than Pythagoras, was wrong about virtue. It is not to be found in the rational part of the soul. Faith, for the Church, remains a mystery to this day.

What is it about Socrates that made him into a symbol for the whole institution of philosophy?

Plato could be said to create the 'institution of philosophy'- i.e. the Academy- and the Academy may claim to systematize and further extend the work of those who lived in a ruder, perhaps happier, age. However, it was Plato's emphasis on Mathematics which set his Academy apart.

 Consider the fact that, when the Oracle at Delphi proclaims Socrates wisest of men, 

Everyone immediately assumed he was a babbling fool who was bound to fuck up his own life in the silliest way possible.

he tries to prove it wrong.

Which he could do just by opening his mouth and blathering away. 

 As Plato recounts it in the Apology:


I went to one of those reputed wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I could refute the oracle and say to it: “This man is wiser than I, but you said I was.” Then, when I examined this man—there is no need for me to tell you his name, he was one of our public men—my experience was something like this: I thought that he appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a result he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. So I withdrew and thought to myself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.”

I am myself the oracle which declared me to be the richest of men. Hoping to refute the oracle, I went to examine the richest man I know. Yes, he owned mansions and luxurious limousines and yachts and had beautiful mistresses. But none of these enviable possessions could turn into emanations of the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat. Nor could mine, but at least I knew this- by 'synoida'- whereas that poor beggar didn't have any inkling of the extent of his own poverty and immiserization in that respect. Indeed, I'm not just the richest of all men, but by similar arguments, the sexiest of all women and the most feline of all cats.

If Socrates’s trademark claim is this protestation of ignorance, his trademark activity is the one also described in this passage: refuting the views of others. 

There is no such trademark. If there could be intellectual property in stupidity, philosophers would be rich. 

These are the conversations we find in Plato’s texts. How are the claim and the activity related?

By stupidity.

 Socrates denies that his motivations are altruistic: he says he is not a teacher, and insists that he is himself the primary beneficiary of the conversations he initiates. This adds to the mystery: What is Socrates getting out of showing people that they don’t know what they take themselves to know? What’s his angle?

He gets to feel he is superior- e.g. by asserting he is wiser than a guy reputed for wisdom. 

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.

Taking arrogant or self-satisfied people down a peg or two is not the act of a humble man more particularly if he ends up saying he has more of the quality for which the other guy is famous. 

 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. 

The sophist (σοφιστής, sophistes) was a master of a craft or, more generally, one reputed wise and prudent. A wise man, or sage, was called σοφός (sofós). Arguably, Socrates- though appearing polite- was treating his interlocutors with contempt- he genuinely didn't think they deserved their reputation or lived up to their own self-image. Displaying great passive aggressive hostility- he sought to twist their words and make them look foolish- while remaining indifferent to anything useful that they might impart. 

But he doesn’t. The most remarkable feature of Socrates’s approach is his punctilious politeness and sincere enthusiasm.

Plato was a gentleman- i.e. rich and leisured- and is at pains to depict Socrates as a 'diamond in the rough'. The fellow may have been poor but he could dine with his betters without disgracing himself or his host. The fact that he was of lower class robbed his words of any sting they might otherwise have had. Indeed, he was a mere step above a licensed buffoon. 

 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 . . .)? 

Parmenides showed how to shut Socrates up. It was by saying 'you have sought too soon to determine a particular 'eidos'- i.e. you are a premature ejaculator. 

Over and over again, it turns out that they think they can answer, but they can’t. 

Because, the thing is premature. Suppose I see a renowned painter who has set up his easel at a scenic spot. I go along and ask him what he is going to paint. He may, for politeness sake, say enough to give me an idea of what he is aiming at and how he is likely to proceed. What he can't give me is a perfect 'ekphrasis' or description in words of what he will produce. This doesn't mean he doesn't know what he is doing or that the painting he will ultimately produce would be the mere product of blind chance. 

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.)

Euthyphro is not a priest- a hereditary vocation among the ancient Greeks- though, no doubt, he participates in family rituals. His father had caused the death of a 'thetes'- a paid servant- on their estate in Naxos. He has come to get a judgment against him- presumably so that the family might be purged of blood guilt by paying some small fine while gaining a reputation for 'eusebia' such that, in the future, even larger Colonial estates might be leased out to them. Christians may find this dialogue difficult to understand. For Hindus, the thing is clear. The Indo-Greeks translated 'dharma' as 'eusebia'. Dharma is very difficult to know, but by scrupulously reporting one's own family's crimes (e.g. if the daughter-in-law accidentally killed a cat or a grandson harmed a monkey or peacock) and performing the correct 'prayaschitham' ritual one gains a reputational benefit and becomes eligible to become the 'shebait' of new temples or to administer larger Trust properties etc. etc. 

Euthyphro is helping his family. He is using the law as a way to enhance its reputation in a prudent manner. Athenian gentlemen might make fun of these Colonials who pretend great piety so as to get richer and richer, but the fact is Socrates should have gone to the Court and found out how that slimy fellow ingratiated himself with the judges while loudly demanding condign punishment (spare my aged father! Torture and kill me in his stead!) actually secured a goodly reward for himself. 

What is Socrates getting out of showing people that they don’t know what they take themselves to know?

He gets to feel better about himself and to impress which ever beardless youth he happens to have in tow.

Socrates seemed to think that the people around him could help him acquire the knowledge he so desperately wanted

he was only pretending.

—even though they were handicapped by the illusion that they already knew it.

Bill Gates thinks he is rich which is why he is pending so much money on Africa. What a fool! I am actually much richer than him and if even I don't have a pot to piss in just imagine how utterly impoverished Gates is! No wonder his wife is getting shot of that beggar!.

 Indeed, I believe that their ill-grounded confidence was precisely what drew Socrates to them. If you think you know something, you will be ready to speak on the topic in question.

Only if you have nothing better to do. Why did Gates refuse to speak to me when I tried to call him on Skype? It was because the guy was on his knees in a truck-stop giving beejays so as to to put together enough money to buy a burger. 

 You will hold forth, spout theories, make claims—and all this, under Socrates’s relentless questioning, is the way to actually acquire the knowledge you had deluded yourself into thinking you already had.

But no one actually gained any knowledge from Socrates. That's why mathematicians and generals and businessmen were not queuing up to chat with him.

Let me sketch a little dialogue you might have with Socrates.

Callard is stupider than even dudes wot died long ago. That is why her worthless shite is being promoted.


Socrates: What is courage?

Me= bravery. Not that shitting yourself if some dude gives you the stink eye isn't a demonstration of exemplary courage. Anyway, I have IBS.

Courage is to act in the opposite manner of a person overmastered by fear.

You: Courage is being willing to take big risks without knowing how it’s going to work out.

That's not courage. It is risk proclivity or gambling addiction. Some people may gain pleasure from taking risks. They may be very cowardly in every other respect. Max Beerbohm has a story called 'James Pethel'- about a Edwardian gentleman who, at first blush, seems a nice enough guy though a high stakes gambler. Then Max realizes that Pethel, having grown jaded with success at the Casino, is now gambling the lives of his loved ones so as to get the same kick. Like, 'Zuleikha Dobson', 'James Pethel' seems to foretell the slaughter in the trenches which put an end to that gilded age. 

Courage may involve risking your life in a good cause but it precludes endangering it simply for the thrill of the thing. 

Socrates: Such as risking your life?

You: Yes.

Socrates: Is courage good?

You: Yes.

Socrates: Do you want it for yourself and your children?

You: Yes.

Socrates: Do you want your children to go around risking their lives?

You: No. Maybe I should’ve said that courage is taking prudent risks, where you know what you are doing.

Socrates: Like an expert investor who knows how to risk money to make lots more?

You: No, that isn’t courageous. . . .

At this point, your pathways are blocked. You cannot say courage is ignorant risk-taking, and you cannot say courage is prudent risk-taking. You do not have a way forward. You are in what Socrates’s interlocutors called aporia, a state of confusion in which there is nowhere for you to go.

This is nonsense. You can say 'prudent risk-tasking involves courage of some sort.' You can also say that if Knightian Uncertainty obtains then all risk-taking is ignorant of some possible state of the world. A 'type theory'- i.e. dividing things up into categories- resolves all 'aporias' and 'paradoxes' and so forth.

Suppose that the conversation goes no further than this—that, as is typical for Socrates’s interlocutors, you storm off in a huff at this point. Where does that leave you, and where does that leave Socrates?

It leaves both unchanged.

Let’s start with you first. You might be in a worse mood than you were when you encountered Socrates, 

or you may be in a better mood because you told that loser to go fuck himself. 

but he hasn’t harmed you. 

He may have triggered memories of sexual or financial abuse by some other similar fast talking swindler wot got you to take down your panties or trade your cow for a bunch of 'magic' beans. 

In fact, you are better off than you were: you’ve learned that courage isn’t as easy to define as you initially thought it was. Being improved isn’t always pleasant.

Courage is easy enough to define- at least for the purpose of a lexicographer. Any protocol bound, buck stopped, juristic process has little difficulty deciding what is courage and what is shitting yourself and running away. 

Second, Socrates has learned something. Courage seems to involve something like endurance or holding fast, 

But Callard did not mention endurance or holding fast. She babbled nonsense about taking risks. 

but it cannot straightforwardly be identified with such a state—not even when we add some other ingredients, such as wisdom. 

This is nonsense. In any given social context, the predicate 'courageous' solves a coordination problem of a particular type. This may involve risk, or disutility, or the breaking of a habit or norm or something else of that sort. But, equally, we may speak of a person as showing courage simply because they remain cheerful under adverse circumstances. 

Before this conversation, Socrates didn’t know what courage was.

It is ironic that Callard does not know that Socratic irony is defined as pretending to be ignorant.

 Now his ignorance can take a more specific shape: he doesn’t know what the connection between courage and endurance is. 

The connection is merely linguistic. We may metaphorically speak of courage as endurance or vice versa. Endurance obtains even absent anything to fear. Courage obtains even if it is momentary and expires in the moment it is exercised. 

He still knows that he doesn’t know what courage is, but his knowledge of his own ignorance has been improved, made more precise.

Callard's ignorance seems to increase the more she writes. Why couldn't she look up 'courage' in the dictionary and see that it means 'bravery' and is linked to mastering fear. 

Being improved isn’t always pleasant.

It’s one thing to say, “I don’t know anything.” That thought comes cheap. One can wonder, “Who really and truly knows anything?” in a way that is dismissive, uninquisitive, detached. It can be a way of saying, “Knowledge is unattainable, so why even try?” Socratic humility is more expensive and more committal than that. He sought to map the terrain of his ignorance, to plot its mountains and its rivers, to learn to navigate it. 

I have long sought to map the terrain of my super-sexiness and... well, lets just say that I now have very hairy palms. 

Category theorists and other really smart mathsy dudes are certainly mapping terrains of relevance to philosophy and hermeneutics. But Callard is simply shitting higher than her arsehole. Socrates never gave us a 'joined-up' theory of Justice and Beauty and Truth and so forth. Plato has 'Forms' but how do Forms connect to each other?

That, I think, is why he speaks of knowledge of his own ignorance.

Which he gains by 'synoida'- direct consciousness, not a chain of reasoning or with reference to some 'navigated' terrain. Unlike Pericles or Plato, who were descended from people whose 'knowledge' gave them power to change the destiny of Athens, Socrates- even more than Aspasia (while Pericles was alive) had no power at all. No doubt, he could have believed the things he was told to believe- but that would have been 'false consciousness'. Unlike Anaxagoras, Socrates was condemned to death and, it may be, woke from a dream.

 He’s not just someone who acknowledges or admits to his ignorance, but someone who has learned to dwell within it.

As opposed to all those other guys wo are dwelling outside their ignorance and, to add insult to injury, are getting free Cable. 

Admittedly, this may seem like a paradoxical project. It’s one thing to be missing your wallet—you will know it once you’ve found it. 

How stupid is Callard? You know you are missing your wallet when you reach for it and can't find it.

But suppose you’re missing not only your wallet, but also the knowledge that you ever had a wallet, and the understanding of what a wallet is. 

Then we may say that your wallet is missing- not that you are missing your wallet. The fact is you may have had your skull bashed in and thus aint missing shite.

One of Socrates’s interlocutors, Meno, doubts whether it’s possible to come to know anything if you know so little to begin with. 

The context is whether virtue can be taught.

If someone doesn’t know where she’s going, it doesn’t seem as though she can even take a first step in the right direction.

She can. She just can't be sure it is the right direction.

 Can you map in total darkness?

Yes. Shut your eyes and map the route from your bed to the toilet. You may have to do some such thing if there is a power cut. 

Socrates’s answer was no.

He was wrong. He babbled some shit about remembering everything from previous births. 

 Or at least: you can’t do it alone. The right response to noticing one’s own ignorance is to try to escape it by acquiring someone else’s knowledge.

Callard is making this shit up. The right response to noticing one's own ignorance of what your neighbor's poop smells like is to than your lucky stars. 

 But the only way to do that is to explain to them why you aren’t yet able to accept this or that claim of theirs as knowledge—and that is what mapping one’s ignorance amounts to.

No. You may know more than the guys you are interviewing. You keep asking them questions to see if their knowledge claims are well supported. 

 Socrates stages an exhibition of this method for Meno by demonstrating how much geometrical progress he can make with a young slave boy by doing nothing but asking questions that expose the boy’s false assumptions.

We know Socrates knew shit about geometry.

 It is when he refutes others’ claims to knowledge that Socrates’s own ignorance takes shape, for him, as something he can know. What appears as a sea of darkness when approached introspectively turns out to be navigable when brought into contact with the knowledge claims of another.

I was waking one night on a beach near a pensione in Santa Maria de Leuca. My companion asked me if we were looking at the Ionian Sea or the Adriatic, which during daylight are distinguishable by their color. I replied that it was the Indian Ocean we were looking at. Only a fucking racist would suggest otherwise. Our subsequent conversation did not make that body of water- whatever it might be called- more navigable to either of us. 

Socrates was an unusual person. Consider his response to the oracle. Most people who are proclaimed wise by a trusted authority don’t have the impulse to disprove that authority.

They do if that Oracle had the habit of being really sarky. 

Instead, they bask in the glory of the assessment of themselves that they have spent their whole lives longing to hear.

They are more likely to do so if they can make a living thanks to that 'assessment'. 

 Most people steer conversations into areas where they have expertise; 

unless they can bill you for access to that expertise.

they struggle to admit error; 

and positively refuse to admit that they eat dog turds

they have a background confidence that they have a firm grip on the basics.

as opposed to a nagging suspicion that they absent mindedly devour dog turds.

 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. 

In which case they are very very happy people coz there are lots of little babies on the other side of the world who are plenty ignorant- though, not sadly, for very long. 

They are eager to claim the status of knowledge for everything they themselves think.

This is not the case. Having knowledge- even if it is only what you believe to be knowledge- has costly consequences. True, we may say 'I know x' in casual conversation but, if pressed, readily admit that the matter in question was not something we had any good reason to acquire knowledge about. We were merely speaking figuratively or for some non-epistemic purpose.

But Socrates did not take this difference as grounds to despise or dismiss this group, aka Most People (hoi polloi). 

The class of the poor and powerless, to which he himself belonged. Themistocles and Pericles might make great play of their fondness for the great unwashed but Socrates was not fooled. He made it his business to talk with guys from good families rather than the likes of Simon the Shoemaker. 

He saw, instead, that he and Most People were a match made in heaven.

Till hemlock did them part. 

 Most People put forward claims,

Rubbish! Every single guy Socratic dialogue featured a rich, well-born, or otherwise distinguished interlocutor. True, a slave might sometimes be called in to illustrate that 'knowledge is innate' or something of that sort. Consider the Theaetetus. Two rich guys call in a servant to read out the dialogue. They don't ask him his opinion of what he is reading. 

 and Socrates refutes them. 

Hoi polloi means 'the masses'. Callard thinks it means socially prominent people.

Most People see the need to possess truths. 

About useful things- sure. 

Socrates saw the danger of acquiring falsehoods.

& continued to see that danger till his cup of hemlock arrived.

 Most People feel full of rich insights and brilliant thoughts.

The ancient Greeks weren't precious little snowflakes on a University Campus studying or teaching shit.

 Socrates saw himself as bereft of all of that. Without the help of Most People, Socrates wouldn’t have anything to think about. 

This is not the case. Maieutics is merely a method of exposition. 

Socrates’s neediness did not escape his own notice. In the Theaetetus, he describes himself as a kind of midwife—barren of knowledge himself, but engaged in “delivering” the wisdom-babies of Most People.

In other words, he was claiming to be able to lead a person to arrive at good conclusions that were their own just as a mid-wife enables a woman to deliver her own, not the mid-wife's, baby. Sadly, such maieutics is useless. Aristotle etc, gave lectures and compiled books. 

Socrates was unaware that a mid-wife need not be old. Indeed, a virgin could be trained to be a midwife. Agnodice went to Egypt for medical training. She was acquitted of perverting the women of Athens because she lifted her skirt to show she didn't have no dick. She was a medical professional useful to the Polis.

How could Socrates be, according to his own theory, be a 'midwife' unless he had healthy offspring? In this case, he must know something other than that he knows nothing- viz. what his 'thought-baby' has been getting up to after he left School. 

More and more our politics are marked by unilateral persuasion instead of collaborative inquiry.

Very true. Trump and Biden aren't collaboratively inquiring into anything. Who did? Obama and McCain? Kennedy & Nixon? Lincoln & Jefferson Davis? Washington & George III?

There may be polities where decision making is collegial and there is no adversarial element in leadership contests. But this wasn't true of ancient Athens or modern America. 

Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as a collaborative project involving two very different roles. 

No he did not. He never said 'Let's split up our investigation so that each of us inquires into the are where we have expertise. Then let's all report back and see if we get a picture of what's going on.'

There’s you or I or some other representative of Most People, who comes forward and makes a bold claim. 

Callard is making a bold claim. I am showing she is ignorant and stupid. Does she care? Fuck, no! She get's paid- that's what's important. 

Then there’s Socrates, or one of his contemporary descendants, who questions and interrogates and distinguishes and calls for clarification. 

So Socioproctology is the Socratic maieutics of our age.

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. 

But this adversarial method was already a feature of Athenian legal and political life before Socrates was born. There were philosophers and philosophical disputes before him and these continued after him. What people gave up on was the ridiculous notion that we know everything already from a former life. 

The scope of his influence is remarkable. 

Academics are named such because Plato's School was called the Academy. Aristotle became Alexander's tutor and Alexander conquered a lot of territory thus ushering in the Hellenistic Age. The Romans came under the influence of Greek philosophy and belles- lettres. The Byzantine Empire restored Greek primacy. The Arabs, in their turn, came under the influence of Greek knowledge. Thus both Christianity and Islam had savants/Saints who referenced Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Judaism had already been Hellenized. Second Maccabees was written in Koine Greek. 

But equally remarkable is the means by which it was achieved: he did so much by knowing, writing, and accomplishing—nothing at all.

Actually, we know he wrote stuff which- no doubt for very good reasons- his admirers did not care to preserve.

And yet for all this influence, many of our ways are becoming far from Socratic.

Some branches of the Academy- e.g. moral philosophy- have turned to shit. This is because they recruit stupid peeps to teach stupider peeps who then write articles for the Boston Review thus blowing the gaff on the whole scam.

 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.

Callard still doesn't get that Socratic irony is merely a pretense. This is because it pays her to be stupid.

 By contrast, if you do assume you know, you embrace the role of persuader in advance, and stand ready to argue people into agreement. 

Nonsense! There are professionals who specialize in 'persuading' though they may have no relevant knowledge. 

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. 

Very true! When you go into McDonald's, you first try to get the burger flipper to agree that you are deserving of a cheeseburger. Only if there is a disagreement do you pull out your wallet and purchase it. 

By contrast, the cat may well agree with you that you deserve a cheeseburger. But securing that agreement doesn't help you get a cheeseburger. Sad. 

Socrates’s method eschewed the pressure to persuade. 

He did persuade some rich kids that he was one smart old pederast. 

At the same time, he did not tolerate tolerance. 

But only in the sense that he did not not do or practice practice or breathe breath or politic politics or humiliate humility or dispute dispute.

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.

Yet Parmenides settled his hash but good. 

 By contrast, our politics—of persuasion, tolerance, incentives, and punishment—is deeply uninquisitive.

Callard's writing is deeply uninquisitive. She won't even fact-check her own articles by Googling stuff. Maybe it's because she won't get paid more if she takes a little trouble over the shite she dashes off.

Plato depicts Socrates’s final moments in the Phaedo. Before he fulfills his death sentence by drinking the hemlock, he offers up a series of arguments about the immortality of the soul.

It must be said, this is a very rich text from the literary point of view. Together with Socrates's notion of 'palinode', the 'labyrinth' created by these four, orthogonal, arguments is suggestive of an interlocking 'spread' of choice sequences which, it may be, is what, 'at the end of time' would yield 'univalent foundations' to...everything. 

Plato, it must be admitted, was a gentleman and had genuine literary talent of a type rare in his successors. 

 Each argument attempts to improve upon the previous one’s failure to show the people around him that his death is not something to be mourned.

Which is like an argument for why you shouldn't get me a birthday present- just come to the party, already! I've spent my life-savings on it coz I luv youse guys. You mean everything to me. Anyway, how many more such birthdays can I expect to see... So please please don't get me anything just coz you are all very rich- at least compared to me- and I love you more than life itself.

 Despite the brilliance, refinement, and detail of argumentation, he does not convince his interlocutors.

Coz he isn't saying 'fuck off. I always hated the whole bunch of you. Indeed, I had planned to poison you at my birthday party. BTW, I will come back as a ghost and haunt the fuck out of you if you don't all tear your fucking hair out in grief weeping over my grave.'

The fact is, showing pleasure at your friend's birthday party and grief at his funeral...actually feels kind of right. Weeping copiously as the guy cuts the birthday cake or getting naked and running around with a radish up your bum as his coffin is lowered into the ground just doesn't give you the same feeling of satisfaction. 

 From much experience teaching and reading the dialogue, I can say that he does not convince its readers, either. Arguably, he does not even manage to convince himself. He died as he lived, ignorant and inquiring.

No. He died as he lived- an Athenian who made the best of his opportunities and did so with charm, eloquence and his own idiosyncratic brand of attic salt. 

Aspasia's son by Pericles was granted citizenship. Sadly he was executed after a naval battle where the leaders were accused of failing to rescue survivors. The ship of state, it seems, steered on other currents than those of Love. Yet, what Sappho did in poetry and Aspasia did in Politics, Socrates- it might be said- achieved in Philosophy- viz. nothing for his own people but more than everything for generations of aspirants to high culture forced to submit to a fraudulent paideia.