Open Socrates
The Case for a Philosophical Life
I had trouble attempting to read this, too tangled and monotonous, mangled metaphors as nouns, gave up on page 65
2025 . Agnes Callard . 182.2 CAL . Beaverton Lib.
p001 Introduction: The Man Whose Name is an Example
- p11 Keynes "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist"
- Gee, Dr. Keynes, how do you detect belief, and how do you define slavery such that it does not include yourself?
p12 Henry Sidgwick
- p12 Bentham/Mill/Sidgwick draw from ancient Epicureanism, Kant indebted to ancient Stoicism.
what did they spend the other 99% of their thinking time drawing from? sarcasm: Surely not experience, observation, theorizing, testing, arguing, and revision
p13 Kantianism
p13 Epicureanism
- p15 The Socratic motto is not "Question everything" but "Persuade or be persuaded"
- p16 Socrates denies that it is possible to act against one's better judgement
- BS, people act without thinking, then ignore/deny the consequences or make excuses
- p16 Socrates denies that anyone ever deserves to be harmed. define "deserve" please
- p17 we experience ourselves as fully saturated by critical-thinking sauce. More absolutism
p20 Moore's paradox
- p21 Socrates would accuse us all of treating corpses in a superstitious manner. More absolutism
Part One: UNTIMELY QUESTIONS
p025 ch01 The Tolstoy Problem
- p27 untimely question comes after it has been answered
p28 Tolstoy What will become of my entire life?
- p28 "Why seek material prosperity?" Define prosperity.
- Why choose a tiny subset of all the questions possible?
- Why ignore the uncountable number of other questions, and the individuals who prefer to answer those?
- p31 Tolstoy moves from dismissal to reverential awe. Inquiry always gets ruled out in advance.
- as does author Callard, ranking and dismissing practically every other question.
- p32 Tolstoy questioned the meaning of life, but never answered the questions he chose to ask.
- p34 life is meaningless, suicide is mandated ... attributed to Tolstoy
- p39 others close questions and move on, "Socrates sees this as wavering"
p41 Bertrand Russell "emotive conjugation:"
- I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.
- I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.
- I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.
p46 novelist Elena Ferrante fiction is a refuge from the lies
- Or it is the pure essence of lies. Or it is a timewaster. Or it is sugar-coated profundity. Or ...
- It is more interesting that Elena Ferrante intentionally and successfully remains anonymous. Where do they send the galleys for proofreading?
- p47 Ferrante thinks that seriously reflecting on life is terrifying.
- Hence novellist, also shielded from dyadic conversation
- p50 But the only explanation for why a person would put on this show (of conceptual infrastructure) is that she wants it to be reality.
- KL there's more to life than show. Ask a hermit. Life is vastly too large to "make sense of it", most of the time. Enjoy the ride, sharing it with others when possible.
p051 ch02 Load Bearing Answers
p62 Socrates says we fight when we disagree about justice, but not when we disagree about health. bullshit, citation needed.
- p65 "parties fight because they see the question as in some way objective, in spite of the impossibility of measurement"
STOPPED READING HERE
- How do philosophers measure impossibility? That's your own tail you are chasing.
p077 ch03 Savage Commands
p110 ch04 Socratic Intellectualism
Part Two THE SOCRATIC METHOD
p143 Introduction to Part Two: Three Paradoxes
p147 ch05 The Gadfly-Midwife Paradox
p176 ch06 Moore's Paradox of Self-Knowledge
p208 ch07 Meno's Paradox
Part Three SOCRATIC ANSWERS
p245 Introduction to Part Three: The Socratizing Move
p250 ch08 Politics: Justice and Liberty
p274 ch09 Politics: Equality
p298 ch10 Love
p334 ch11 Death