Throughout a time when many are complaining about divisiveness in politics and in society, it appears counterintuitive for a e book to make the case that we have to argue extra.
However in “Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life,” Agnes Callard illustrates how philosophy is not only a spectator sport. It requires participating with each other and arguing with one another, and admitting errors.
Callard affords a roadmap for utilizing the traditional Greek thinker for approaching knotty dialogue on subjects reminiscent of love, politics and dying.
Callard’s e book is intellectually difficult and hardly a easy crash course on Socrates, however the payoff is definitely worth the effort and time put into rethinking approaches to philosophy and life.
The e book urges readers to not equate pondering with retreating from dialog and avoiding disputes. Pondering, Callard writes, requires interacting with others the identical approach Socrates did — even arguing with them. Philosophy is not meant to be snug, she stresses.
“Thinking happens during the uncomfortable times when you permit others to intrude into your private mental world, to correct you,” Callard writes.
On the identical time, Callard writes that Socrates’ method reveals that the kind of disputes philosophy requires cannot be seen as a zero-sum sport. It additionally requires these concerned to concerned to confess their errors.
That lesson is what makes the 2 chapters Callard devotes to making use of Socrates to politics probably the most priceless, particularly after final 12 months’s election. As she writes, “we live together because we think together.”
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