[HN Gopher] Open Socrates by Agnes Callard review - a design for...
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Open Socrates by Agnes Callard review - a design for life
Author : Thevet
Score : 59 points
Date : 2025-01-22 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| lordleft wrote:
| Big fan of Agnes Callard, and ofc, Socrates. I know many people
| dislike philosophy because they consider it to be a form of
| intellectual gymnastics, but at its best it's almost spiritual
| activity, a concern with the whole purpose of life, a desire to
| not live as an unthinking automaton, impelled by instinct or
| social pressure. Socrates is the ultimate and prototypical
| embodiment of this, a refusal to take anything at its word, a man
| who interrogated the deepest things and pointed us to the
| abundant fruits of a life of inquiry.
| mfro wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly. I think many readers here will be among
| the type to feel that philosophy is not 'practical' enough,
| myself included. But there is something to be said for humoring
| (some) philosophy from time to time, it really does engage the
| mind in a way you wouldn't find elsewhere.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| If we set up a ladder of abstraction, going from the most
| practical to the most abstract discipline, I think we'll
| arrive to something like: Engineering -> Physics -> Math ->
| Philosophy
|
| We progressively move from the How to the Why, Philosophy
| being the ultimate Why?
|
| Then again, I'm but a humble engineer so why would my opinion
| matter :D
| mfro wrote:
| Absolutely. It's difficult as someone on the former end of
| that scale to reorient your mind short term and enjoy
| philosophy, I think we get grounded into practicality / do
| things / get results mode, and it's a great exercise to try
| and engage wonder / analyze / enquiry mode.
| currymj wrote:
| i like to think about how the influences flow in all
| directions.
|
| for example at one time there were a bunch of weirdos
| arguing over some abstruse philosophical question about the
| fundamental nature of true logical statements, and one of
| them came up with the "Turing machine".
|
| then once it was actually built (by engineers, by way of
| physical and mathematical advances), it started to cause
| all kinds of confusion in philosophy of mind and other
| areas.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| Funnily enough, I tend to think the arrows should be in the
| other direction. Philosophy birthed Math, which was
| necessary for Physics, ... etc.
|
| That's not to say Philosophy has outlived its usefulness,
| but... it was probably more consequential 2000, 400 or 200
| years ago, in practice.
|
| (EDIT: I should add... there is also a lot of absolute
| dogwank in Philosophy too... but I think that's universal
| for any field, tbf.)
| oersted wrote:
| I do think that philosophy fundamentally is intellectual
| gymnastics, in the sense that it is a game or an art that
| shouldn't be expected to have any "productive/practical/useful"
| output.
|
| I also think that philosophy is an extremely valuable human
| activity worthy of lots of respect, likewise generally with any
| kind of gymnastics (sports), games or art.
|
| Productivity is not the only reason to live for humans, and
| many productive people are not driven by productivity. Most
| scientists and engineers are much more driven by curiosity,
| mastery, morality or aesthetics (not just visual, but
| intellectual beauty and elegance). It's generally the same with
| most ambitious people, sure they may be superficially driven by
| power or money, but I think it's much more about realizing a
| certain aesthetic vision of who you want to be as a person.
|
| All of these activities lead to productive outcomes as side-
| effects. Games are not qualitatively much different, they may
| just be quantitatively less efficient. And, even if it
| shouldn't be expected (shouldn't be the reason to do them),
| they do tend to have some great productive output now-and-then.
| oersted wrote:
| I suppose that this has a parallel cynical interpretation:
|
| - Humans tend to be selfish, in the sense that they tend to
| prioritize activities that develop their ego. Well generally
| activities that have pleasurable outcomes, and developing
| one's ego tends to be pleasurable due the heuristics
| evolution has baked into us. I guess that those that get more
| pleasure out of developing their ego are called ambitious.
|
| - Productivity is fundamentally about being selfless: doing
| things that are useful for others.
|
| - These aims align to different degrees for different
| activities, and I suppose that they align less for things
| that we call games, and I think that philosophy is closer to
| this category than otherwise.
|
| - The most obvious and consistent productive side-effect of
| games might be as entertainment for expectators. I honestly
| think that the main value of philosophy is that it is just
| engaging and entretaining to read, which is also worthy of
| respect. Games and philosophy also tend to have other more
| substantive productive outputs, but much less frequently.
|
| I'm not a big fan of this perspective, but I do think that it
| is somewhat equivalent to my thoughts above.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Philosophy is about living beyond the instincts given by
| evolution. It's about living through reason, rather than
| pleasure. Pleasure is still important and a part of it,
| too.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| I find it amusing that I'm slightly disagreeing about
| philosophy with `philosopher1234` but I do think there is
| a distinction between wisdom and reason and "philosophy",
| after all, translates to "love of, or friendship with,
| wisdom".
| kerkeslager wrote:
| My problem with Socrates isn't that it's mental gymnastics. My
| problem with Socrates is that he was an anti-democratic
| totalitarian and that he was disingenuous and manipulative
| (that's literally, explicitly what sophistry is).
|
| Defenders of Socrates are generally enamored with his
| reputation, retreating into appeals to authority rather than
| any logical or empirical defense of his ideas.
|
| In a larger sense, my problem with philosophers is generally
| that they are still talking about outdated figures like
| Socrates. What little he got right has been refined over the
| last few millenia, and by continuing to obsess over him we're
| continuing to propagate his (numerous!) mistakes along with
| what little good he had to say. Philosophy is a really
| interesting and even important area of study, but the ideas are
| what matter, not the people, and the obsession with the people
| really holds the field back by keeping stupid ideas alive long
| past their expiration date.
| norir wrote:
| For me, a person who dramatically prefers democracy to
| totalitarianism, Socrates' critiques of democracy hold up
| quite well in our present context.
|
| Why limit this criticism to philosophers? Should we drop
| Einstein from the theory of relativity (especially given how
| wrong he was about aspects of quantum mechanics)? Or Newton
| from mechanics and so on.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Big fan of Philosophy, not a big fan of Agnes Callard. I love
| Socrates as much as the next person, but there have been
| millennia of philosophical inquiry since.
|
| I hate the trend among public intellectuals to pick some
| ancient figure and then project all modern questions and
| anxieties onto them. You end up not learning much about
| Socrates, but much about Agnes Callard.
|
| I'll take modern academic philosophy with all its jargon and
| impenetrability over the simplistic parables of Callard.
| voidhorse wrote:
| I don't know anything about Agnes or their work, but I agree
| that such a general trend exists. There is a whole cottage
| industry of self-professed self-help gurus that make their
| money by presenting a lazy, straight reading of e.g. the
| stoics (ignoring any actual academic research) and
| repackaging their work as mantras to get you through your
| nine to five--oh but, no don't develop a critical
| consciousness about _society_ please, just accept the current
| structure without question and repeat these dumbed down
| versions of the "ancient wisdom" and keep buying my books,
| thanks! It's a complete bastardization of the real heart of
| philosophy, and I really dislike such grifters.
| voidhorse wrote:
| I am fundamentally incapable of understanding people who don't
| like philosophy. To me it's akin to being someone who doesn't
| like music or doesn't like art or doesn't like poetry. To be
| incapable of finding _something_ that resonates with you in at
| least one of these domains is equivalent to being inhuman--I
| just cannot even comprehend how a living human being like that
| could exist.
|
| My sense is that people who claim to dislike philosophy either
| had a bad introduction to it or have been so inculcated with a
| way of existence reduced to "problem solving"--life viewed as a
| "great entry examination" or standardized test--that they are
| no longer capable of actual abstract curiosity and thought and
| are only able to proceed in spaces that are already highly
| constrained. Philosophical viewpoints are highly varied and
| highly entertaining. In some ways it is far closer in kind to
| art even though it is the matron of all of our sciences.
| kitd wrote:
| The "Tolstoy Problem" is an interesting phenomenon that occurs to
| me from time to time.
|
| Paraphrased, if I know I am close to death, maybe an hour away,
| and I know there's no time left to change things, how will I feel
| about my legacy or net outcome of my existence?
|
| I find it a useful contemplative exercise that everyone could do
| from time to time, especially a few world leaders IMHO.
|
| It's easy for one's subconscious to feed the line that, yes, I'll
| sort it all out tomorrow. But it's the "no time left" constraint
| that focuses the mind.
| smokel wrote:
| This doesn't seem to work for me. I'm slightly convinced that
| when I'm an hour away from dying, I won't have to care about
| anything anymore very soon.
|
| It just seems to make me care even less. I wouldn't be
| surprised if the new techno-oligarchs have similar or even
| worse wiring.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I already know, and I hope I'm not close to death. Happiness is
| the net outcome of my existence. Ashes to ashes is my legacy.
| weakfish wrote:
| I feel like this also only works if you care about having a net
| impact. Though I suppose that's a definition problem. My first
| read assumes it means an impact on the world, but I tend to
| believe that my life purpose is more "local" - I'd be happy to
| say I lived with kindness and made those around me happier.
| bhouston wrote:
| I had to do a double take, I thought this was a side project of
| the head of Amnesty International, but no, just similar names:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Callamard
| fallinditch wrote:
| A good reminder that philosophy can be enjoyable. Shout out to
| Stephen West and his wonderfully dense and thought provoking
| _Philosophize This!_ podcasts. The Socrates episode is number 3
| and he was still working things out, but excellent nonetheless.
|
| https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/socrates-98cdl?rq=S...
| 5cott0 wrote:
| wonder what socrates would think about dating his students - oh
| wait
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20250111022130/https://www.newyor...
| daseiner1 wrote:
| life is complicated.
| d_burfoot wrote:
| > The thrust of the book is that, in the figure of Socrates, we
| can find a way through that Tolstoy couldn't
|
| It's ironic that she holds up Socrates, a man who was murdered by
| his own fellow citizens, as a figure who managed to "find a way
| through".
| bashmelek wrote:
| Socrates probably would have annoyed me too.
|
| I'm terrible at picking words. Can't stand the popular notion of
| "debate," internet or in person; so much uncharitable
| interpretation, obtuseness and deflection, and being held to a
| standard of angelic impeccable speech when trying to express
| something.
|
| Intellectual consistency can be vastly overrated. I don't pretend
| to have answers, I still have convictions that can't be proven. I
| get by to a fair extent on vibes and faith--and the faith that if
| I continue re-examining myself, I might hope to approach truth,
| and might be a better person.
| oersted wrote:
| I'd argue that most useful non-trivial things we have figured
| out how to do have required thinking precisely about complex
| truths, language is a big part of that.
|
| Sure of course, vibes are enough for operating decently as a
| human, which is all we need most of the time. But that's a very
| low bar, we are trying to do much harder things in science,
| engineering and business.
|
| I agree that there tends to be a lot of pointless discussion on
| semantics in debate, which is why we tend to rely more on
| structured languages like maths notation or programming
| languages to make it practical to operate on really complex
| ideas. But natural language is all we have for many fields of
| thought, so some discipline is required to use it properly if
| you are trying to figure out something serious.
|
| You made an important point though. If we want to do philosophy
| more seriously we reach for formal logic, at which point it
| becomes maths, or we do experiments, which is science. To an
| extent what call philosophy is the attempt to figure out
| complex truths using ill-defined language and no experimental
| verification, which is a loosing battle and quite annoying
| indeed.
| w10-1 wrote:
| The review complains about exhaustive enumeration, but (sorry)
| sampling is required for analysis.
|
| And the "Tolstoy" problem was expressed (better?) in Socrates'
| time via Ecclesiastes (~ even kingdoms turn to dust) and Silenus
| (~ better not to be born), the dual perils of materialism and
| spirituality.
|
| So it's pretty hard to tell if a review of a book about dialogs
| about Socrates hasn't lost all connection to relevance, but
| there's good reason to believe that understanding Socrates now is
| relevant, and the book might help.
|
| Philosophy is just taking responsibility for our unavoidable
| phenomenological fictions to avoid the delusions and violence of
| their blind spots and projections -- good science and good
| ethics. The alternative is not science or realpolitik but
| obliviousness (which is nevertheless often required in the
| practice of both).
|
| Socrates as an ugly stonemason would have been ignored in
| Athenian society - not even given an ear, regardless of any
| wisdom.
|
| But Socrates was a war hero. You can imagine how effective a
| strong, squat stonemason would be in a melee. In the midst of
| particularly horrible defeat and retreat, he managed to save some
| of the elites (and their armor/honor) by not freaking out.
|
| Imagine how conflicted he might feel about society after seeing
| friends die horribly, and brutally bashing so many enemies, and
| then being celebrated for it.
|
| On Socrates' return from that war, he meets the beautiful young
| Charmides, and they discuss the untranslatable virtue
| "sophrosyne". Think of it as the virtue appropriate to retreat
| and peace, by comparison to courage as the virtue of attack and
| war.
|
| At the time the dialog was written, Charmides had grown up to
| become one of the democratic tyrants that destroyed Athens. It
| was the youth flocking to Socrates (for his critique of received
| wisdoms?) that led to Socrates' condemnation and death after his
| students grew up to ruin Athenian society.
|
| Tech is experiencing a similar turn in the public mind, for many
| of the same reasons. Through careful analysis and opportunism, it
| effectively displaced scleric systems, but with exploitative ones
| beyond society's control.
|
| There's as much value to be saved in a calm peace as to be taken
| in deploying every new weapon as soon as it's available. But
| there seem to be far fewer such leaders.
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