Bitter Knowledge: Learning Socratic Lessons of Disillusion and Renewal

Preface

p r e f a c e Every teacher knows the trepidation felt prior to entering the classroom; not simply the knot in one’s stomach, but also the gnawing doubts about the lesson plan for the day, or anxieties about how one will connect—or fail to connect—with that particular group of students. Similarly, students know the fears and concerns that an approaching class can evoke. And authors offering their work to the public are not immune from such doubts and concerns. One way to quiet such anxieties is to succumb to the thought that one might offer prospective readers a kind of map to what awaits them. But, try as one might, it is not possible in a few prefatory pages to give any reader the lay of the land ahead, certainly not when what awaits is an extended reading of three Platonic dialogues (with a fourth glanced at in the closing chapter), along with an attempt to set out the details involved in drawing twin lessons of disillusion and renewal from Socrates’ activities within those several dialogues. Still, it may afford the reader some initial orientation toward the text ahead if I offer a brief account of this book—always realizing that any such account must be truncated and, in some sense, partial. Here, I explore what we might learn from participating in Socratic conversational inquiry. Two claims are commonly made about Socrates’ performances in Plato’s dialogues. The first is that Socrates’ method of inquiry teaches only negative lessons, that is, it shows what we do not know, but not what we do know. The second is that (especially in the earlier dialogues) Socrates’ inquiries fail to reach any conclusions. These two claims, if not false, are importantly incomplete in the following respects : first, while Socrates’ elenctic refutations may be negative in the sense that they are meant to disillusion us, they are not intended to end there. Rather, through a process of recollection made in response to our xiii disillusion, Socratic refutation is meant to lead us to renewal, such that a positive lesson about our resources (as philosophical investigators) becomes available to anyone who engages in Socrates’ robust conversational inquiry. And, second, while the frequent inconclusiveness of Plato’s dialogues does teach us that human knowledge is always provisional and subject to revision (and revisiting), these dialogues repeatedly reach conclusiveness in the sense that they carry their readers through a complete cycle. They take us, again and again, through the process of disillusion and renewal. The continuity and the repetition of this rhythm—from disillusion to renewal, and back again, all while we examine our thoughts and our ideas as expressed during the continually evolving (sometimes digressive) conversation—bring the argument around to conclusion. We reach conclusion in periodically and repeatedly (if unpredictably) reaching renewal by way of disillusion and its aftermath . This is all the conclusiveness that the poverty of Socrates’ method promises us. In my account of Socrates’ way of proceeding with his inquiries and investigations, I have not tried to digest and catalogue the various portrayals of Socrates that appear throughout the two dozen or so dialogues written by Plato. Even if this were possible, I am not sure that it would be productive. Instead, my approach is to consider in depth the portrayals of Socrates that we find in Plato’s Protagoras, Meno, and Theaetetus. I take these three dialogues to be representative. They are among the five or ten best dialogues written by Plato, whether graded along dimensions of literary flair and finesse, or philosophical drama and imagery , or logical rigor and argumentative fireworks. Then, too, they span the traditional division of Plato’s writing into early, middle, and later periods (as these matters are debated in the literature, although only limited consensus exists with respect to the specific dialogues assigned to each period). Or, in more contemporary terms, these three dialogues cover the three divisions known as the early Socratic or “search” dialogues , the so-called “transitional” dialogues, and the middle dialogues (from which point, in the remaining ones, Socrates substantially recedes from view). Thus, my consideration of the figure of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues attempts to sketch some Socratic continuities (and to point out some of his discontinuities) ranging across the Platonic canon. xiv – preface preface – xv What are some of these continuities and discontinuities? Consider what goes on in these three dialogues...