That wasn’t my read Freshman year of college, but it pretty much was by Senior year. One dialogue that helped change my mind was the Theaetetus (mentioned in the post). It’s the one where Socrates describes himself as a midwife for ideas. Theaetetus is one of the very few people Plato shows us engaging in intellectual play with Socrates on close to an equal basis, mind to mind. The dialogue is about what it means to know something, and they go through a few hypotheses, rejecting each in turn as unworkable, and end with “we don’t know,” but no one is humiliated or digs in their heels and they learn things along the way. A lot of what can read as Socrates meaning to take people down, is the shape that their defensiveness forces conversations into.
Sometime in between, I met a Freshman who engaged me in conversation, and I asked him some clarifying questions out of curiosity, and ended up mildly disappointed that the conversation hadn’t gone anywhere interesting. Afterwards, someone complimented me on the takedown, which hadn’t been my intention at all.
That wasn’t my read Freshman year of college, but it pretty much was by Senior year. One dialogue that helped change my mind was the Theaetetus (mentioned in the post). It’s the one where Socrates describes himself as a midwife for ideas. Theaetetus is one of the very few people Plato shows us engaging in intellectual play with Socrates on close to an equal basis, mind to mind. The dialogue is about what it means to know something, and they go through a few hypotheses, rejecting each in turn as unworkable, and end with “we don’t know,” but no one is humiliated or digs in their heels and they learn things along the way. A lot of what can read as Socrates meaning to take people down, is the shape that their defensiveness forces conversations into.
Sometime in between, I met a Freshman who engaged me in conversation, and I asked him some clarifying questions out of curiosity, and ended up mildly disappointed that the conversation hadn’t gone anywhere interesting. Afterwards, someone complimented me on the takedown, which hadn’t been my intention at all.