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Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life
An iconoclastic philosopher revives Socrates for our time, showing how we can answer—and, in the first place, ask—life’s most important questions.
We all know something about Socrates, though we often reduce him to a paragon of mere “critical thinking.” We think we understand his remark that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But in Open Socrates, Agnes Callard—who has emerged as one of our most dazzling and provocative public intellectuals—shows that in fact we understand almost nothing about the Socratic project. Socrates’ radical aim was to force us to confront the assumptions that prop up our lives and our worldviews, and to ask whether those assumptions are correct—or whether they hold us back. Teasing out the profound insights of the father of modern philosophy, Callard reveals that what we usually think of as “thinking” is in fact anything but. True thinking can only happen in a dialogue with another person; only through conversation can we inquire into the fundamental questions of our lives. And only by following Socrates’ model, she demonstrates, can we truly understand politics, love, death, and everything else that matters.
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Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life
An iconoclastic philosopher revives Socrates for our time, showing how we can answer—and, in the first place, ask—life’s most important questions.
We all know something about Socrates, though we often reduce him to a paragon of mere “critical thinking.” We think we understand his remark that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But in Open Socrates, Agnes Callard—who has emerged as one of our most dazzling and provocative public intellectuals—shows that in fact we understand almost nothing about the Socratic project. Socrates’ radical aim was to force us to confront the assumptions that prop up our lives and our worldviews, and to ask whether those assumptions are correct—or whether they hold us back. Teasing out the profound insights of the father of modern philosophy, Callard reveals that what we usually think of as “thinking” is in fact anything but. True thinking can only happen in a dialogue with another person; only through conversation can we inquire into the fundamental questions of our lives. And only by following Socrates’ model, she demonstrates, can we truly understand politics, love, death, and everything else that matters.
An iconoclastic philosopher revives Socrates for our time, showing how we can answer—and, in the first place, ask—life’s most important questions.
We all know something about Socrates, though we often reduce him to a paragon of mere “critical thinking.” We think we understand his remark that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But in Open Socrates, Agnes Callard—who has emerged as one of our most dazzling and provocative public intellectuals—shows that in fact we understand almost nothing about the Socratic project. Socrates’ radical aim was to force us to confront the assumptions that prop up our lives and our worldviews, and to ask whether those assumptions are correct—or whether they hold us back. Teasing out the profound insights of the father of modern philosophy, Callard reveals that what we usually think of as “thinking” is in fact anything but. True thinking can only happen in a dialogue with another person; only through conversation can we inquire into the fundamental questions of our lives. And only by following Socrates’ model, she demonstrates, can we truly understand politics, love, death, and everything else that matters.
Agnes Callard is an American philosopher and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. She has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Point, and others. She lives in Chicago.
