Could I be Wrong?
The following is a fun (well, at least I had fun writing it) dialogue I wrote earlier today on one of the forums I’ve recently stopped regularly frequenting. It concerns the question ‘are you willing to admit you might be wrong?’ The dialogue was written in reply to someone who disagreed with me (did not think such an admission should be made).
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Characters: Socrates, Glaucon
Setting: After speaking with Euthyphro, Socrates is stopped by the Sophist Glaucon, a first year philosophy student who thinks he’s learned it all. Glaucon has heard the accusation that Socrates is corrupting the youth, teaching the young about ‘the God’ and denying the gods of the poets. Glaucon proceeds to examine to Socrates.
Glaucon: Socrates, much has been said of your new god — tell me, how did you come by him? Fancy or intoxication?
Socrates: Examination, of course — “following the argument … (Read more)
Searching for wisdom…
Outside of books — very old books — I’m having a difficult time finding wise people. All I can seem to find are people filled with knowledge, and they think this makes them wise. Socrates lesson has been forgotten.… (Read more)
People who hate questions
I’ve always known that there was a certain — and most assuredly, unreasonable — offense in asking questions. Not so much that the question itself was bad. I certainly don’t want to say that at all, there is much good in questions–much to learn. Socrates, I think, was right for the most part, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. And it is here that we find our problem, and also the answer to why so many people find questions offensive: they don’t examine anything, least of all “their life”. I’ve come across a great majority of people who don’t know why they believe what they say they believe. They’ve never considered the “great questions” (I don’t think many moderns do) and if they do, they don’t get very far. They spend far too much time reading recent books filled with pop-psychology and second-rate philosophical discourses (if you can even … (Read more)
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