Politics v. Philosophy with Agnes Callard

Summary

Agnes Callard is a philosophy prof, Plato expert and public philosopher. We talk about the relationship between politics and philosophy (it’s complicated), why nobody should trust philosophers (they don’t know anything), and why human beings can’t even think something without someone else telling them they’re wrong.

References

Callard’s op-eds: “Should we cancel Aristotle?” and “How to politicize a classroom”

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard

Transcript:

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.

SPEAKERS

Agnes Callard, Clif Mark

Clif Mark  00:14

Today I'm speaking with Agnes Callard. She's a philosophy professor and academic book author. But as well as doing ivory tower philosophy, Agnes also writes all sorts of interesting stuff in the popular press. Today, we talked about the difference between being philosophical and being political. We talked about why you can't trust philosophers. And about her new project in which she explains how Socrates discovered human thinking. I'm Clif Mark. And this is good in theory. Agnus Callard, welcome to good in theory. In Plato's apology, Socrates said that philosophers should lead a strictly private life and stay completely out of public life. Why does Socrates think it's so important for philosophers to stay as far as they can from the public sphere?

Agnes Callard  01:19

you know, one interesting thing is that he does say something like that in the apology in the gorgous. He says, I'm the only real politician in Athens. So, so we have to square those two texts. But I think what he means in the apology is, look, I haven't come around like, I don't know, advising the council, like, you know, making suggestions. In our political deliberative bodies. And, you know, you know, one thing to keep in mind is that in Athens, those sorts of activities, people were, let us say, highly accountable, in a sense that, you know, you could experience retribution for having suggested something that didn't work out there were actually legal measures to that the like that people could potentially sue you for having giving bad advice. So that's one thing Socrates could be thinking of there quite concretely is like, in Athens, you better be careful. But I think that the other thing, I think that sort of let somewhat less concretely Socrates wanted to call into questions, sort of people's most basic assumptions about how they are, how they ought to live. And a lot of politics involves people holding fixed a lot of those assumptions and saying, look, should we go to war against the Spartans or not given that it's really important to have glory, and we need to like be better than them? And then we also need to better than the Persians and like, how do we manage the situation? And suppose you're like your, you know, your thought your Socrates and you're like, well, what is better, then that in a way, that's, that's, that's, that's a political because it is refusing to take certain kind of basic moves for granted.

Clif Mark  03:20

Okay, so Socrates didn't want to accept the fixed points that everyone in politics had to accept. He wanted to ask more open abstract questions like, what is better? But why does he have to stay away from politics to do it?

Agnes Callard  03:37

Well, that's why, yes, I in another sense, I think Socrates is very political and considers himself very political, namely, all he does every day is exhort his fellow citizens to virtue, right, and engage in public in conversations about things that are of the collective interest. So it's that we have institutions that are predicated on answers to those questions, and those institutions are going to feel threatened by that kind of activity.

Clif Mark  04:06

By too much too much questioning.

Agnes Callard  04:09

Yeah, by questioning of precisely those things that are held fixed by the institution, like, like, if Socrates would have like, maybe Sparta ought to beat us because maybe they're better than us, you know, that like, there are suggestions of Plato that in that, in some ways, he did think it was better,

Clif Mark  04:24

right. So this is I mean, this is like a, I can see how he might be doing political philosophy that right, he might be taking this philosophical attitude and asking these questions about what is the best way of life should we live like Spartans, etc. But, I mean, I feel like he means something else. When he says, The philosopher has to stay out of politics. And I also think that when people today talk about things getting political, the mean some kind of distinct activity than abstractly questioning what is the best form of life and I wonder if you get that sense And that might be something that Socrates might have gotten trouble with.

Agnes Callard  05:07

I think that there are ways in which, like the battle lines are drawn both in within a given society. And when things aren't going great, and between one society and another. And there are like, groups that form on the basis of shared interest, and they can then have a sense of opposition to other groups. And in that situation, like one thing that's very characteristic of that situation is whether or not you think some way of acting is good or bad is dependent on whether or not you belong to the group or to the other group. Right. So if you take like a procedural consideration, like, should a president be able to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court very shortly before re election, you'll find that people's views on that question depend on like, which party they're in and which party is in power. Right. And so, like,

Clif Mark  06:12

Are you saying that their decision on which party to belong to doesn't depend on their answers to that question? So So the point is, I think that's, that's a lot. There's a lot of people mean by something's being political, it's that like, your answers to even something like a procedural question will actually depend on whether or not your party is benefited by one answer versus another. Because you see there as being a fundamental opposition. So keeping on this theme of the difference between philosophy and politics, I'm seeing two things that are characteristic of politics. So one, there are practical consequences to how we answer questions in politics, people will benefit, and they'll be harmed. But the second characteristic of politics that I'm seeing is that it's a kind of team game. And a lot of that game is just articulating different groups in sorting people into friends and enemies. So do you think that this is what's essential? And characteristic about politics as opposed to philosophy?

Agnes Callard  07:18

Yeah, yeah. So I would say like, let me add one more thing that I think is essential to politics, strategic communication, okay. So, like, when people in politics are talking, they're not speaking fundamentally, with a view to the truth, they're speaking with a view to bringing something about in some audience, right. And it may be often it's setting up an allegiance or declaring allegiance. And, you know, we are told to be very skeptical of the speeches of politicians, right? Where this is the thing Personally, I find the most difficult about politics and most alienating, is strategic communication, which is very, very hard for me to accept that I'm being communicated that way. I just don't hear communication that way. And so like, my response is, like a very naive one. Anyway, so I think that's really important. But then I think if you want to explain why strategic communication exists, yeah, I think it's because people, the way politics works is that people have to find allegiances, the end. So the the project of generating allegiances, then somehow, for reasons I'm not totally clear on, you know, ends up creating, like, conflicting groups, that is groups that are opposed to one another.

Clif Mark  08:38

So you think the point of politics is to generate allegiances, rather than to say, like, I don't know, protect us from outsiders or feed, everyone or I don't know, live in security numbers. Okay.

Agnes Callard  08:52

Not and it's not at all the point of it. It's just how it characteristically goes. And I think that when we when there's a strong outside threat, those allegiances dissolve, because we get the all of us allied against our enemy, right. So, you know, the fewer the less we can see ourselves as having enemies out there, maybe the more pressure there is to be enemies amongst one another. But I'm not I'm not sure why this structure of opposing groups forms, you know, if I had to give like, what would Socrates say? Yeah, you might say this. He might say, as a culture as a society, we can see that there are certain fundamental questions about how to live that we have not answered. And so what we do is we polarize into groups that grasp like one of the various truths and we fight each other as a way of staging our own psychological ignorance. So if you take abortion, right, it's like we that's one thing where we really fight about that, right people get really upset about it. And it's like, you know, we just it's clearly there's a real deep question here that we have not worked out. Women have certain rights over their own bodies, on the one hand, and on the other hand, like, you know, killing a human being is wrong. And then it's like, well, is it a human being? That question is clearly unclear. We don't know the answer, right? And so we don't know the answers to these questions. And so we're fighting about them. That would be one thought.

Clif Mark  10:26

Okay. And it seems to me that, okay, we're fighting about them. But Socrates would continue to say just that. We don't know the answer to that question. Let's keep asking it.  Right, Socrates would think we should actually be inquiring into it instead of fighting? Do we have to choose?

Agnes Callard  10:48

I believe we do. So I mean, I think Socrates would think fighting is probably better than ignoring it. So fighting is actually not the worst thing we could be doing. But my own feeling is that there's a really interesting place in the psychological spectrum where one can engage with kind of like these deep, ethical questions, and it isn't being completely calm and rational and detached. I think if you were common rash, totally calm and rational and detached and dispassionate, then I would say, maybe you're talking about a different question. Or maybe you can't hear what we're saying. We're talking about like human life and people's rights over their bodies. This is like really important stuff. So if you're not like, a little bit emotional, then you're not thinking about the thing I'm thinking about, right? On the one hand, on the other hand, if we're like screaming and throwing at each other, and I'm like, I'm not listening to you. And every time you say anything, it's in bad faith. And you can't understand me, you're not even trying to, but but but we can't get anywhere. Right. Right. So I think we have to be somewhere in the middle between those two things. And that's from my own view, is that the big problem in our society, the biggest problem is that we, the rest, that range is being compressed. That ability to be sort of emotionally worked up enough to be talking about the issues that really mattered, but not so worked up that we can't talk to each other. Right? That's a difficult thing.

Clif Mark  12:12

That is so interesting. So you're saying that we can't be completely emotionally disengaged, or else, we're not really talking about the right things. But if we get too engaged, then that can begin to block philosophical conversation. I'm very interested in this encounter between philosophy and politics that we're talking about. So can you tell me about any examples where taking a philosophical approach didn't go? Well, because it crashed into politics in some way? Yeah, I'm trying to think, like, I, you know, I, I think I stay away from it in large part for this reason. I mean, maybe an example of it is this thing I just brought up with, should the president like be allowed to appoint a judge? in when he is, you know, shortly before re election? Like, it's like, I thought of that? Like, that's an interesting question. Actually. I think it's, it's, I don't, it's not obvious to me what the answer to that question is, and read and like, reading, you know, the various, like, people talking about that, when it has come up recently. Like, it's almost like, there's like, I can tell there's like two things going on, like someone is sort of thinking a little bit about that question. But then like, a lot of it is like, like, but hey, like, last time, you wouldn't let us do it. Right. And it's like, from my point of view, that's just totally irrelevant to the question, like, and so somehow, from a political point of view, it's extremely relevant. That last time around, you didn't let us do it. Right. From a philosophical point. For me, it's not relevant at all. Like the question is, what is the right thing to do? And then we should do the right thing, no matter what anyone did before.  Right. So the right thing to do might be follow precedent and have some kind of reciprocity, but that would be moving the question to another domain, right?

Agnes Callard  14:06

 Absolutely. So like, so like, one could have then one could be deliberating over a meta principle. Right. Right. Say? But, but instead, like, what I feel like it's not that some that that reading you just had would be like, my kind of reading of what's going on where that would be naive and wrong. It I think that the right thing, like and I say this only after, like talking to my husband a lot, who explains this stuff to me is like, it's like, Look what's going on, there's a certain kind of like revenge or something, or punishment or justified punishment, or like I don't to say revenge sort of makes a judgment along one line, but it's like, everybody's just trying to get the advantage of their group and like, and like I think that like, one group can see that it's rhetorically in a very good position right now. Because it's like, Hey, you guys did this. Like it's almost there's almost a Glee in it. Right? And so to me, that whole way of interacting is It's very strange that people are willing to do that in public and be open about it like I might be, I might do that like with my husband, if I'm like angry at him or like passive aggressive and like, you didn't wash the dishes, so, you know, but like, I wouldn't I be embarrassed about that. Right. But like, politics is like when we're not embarrassed about that. And we just talked in those ways and and part of what makes us not embarrassed is that we're surrounded by our group and all of our group tells us that we're right.

Clif Mark  15:26

That's interesting. What do you think is more shameless politics or philosophy?

Agnes Callard  15:31

their shameless different ways. So coffees also shameless. Um, so I think that politics is shameless, because people are getting angry in public and getting kind of like, vengeful in public. And in general, we actually really frown upon vengeance, but we permit it in the context of politics. And so you'll just see, like, if you look at like, you know, I'm really cruel and mean tweets, they're almost all political. Yeah. Because it's like, if you were to just start being cruel and mean to someone about their weight, or their appearance, or whatever, like people would be like, That's terrible. Don't be like that. But as long as it's about politics, you're allowed to be a jerk. So I think that I think that for some reason, in the political sphere, it becomes a certain kinds of bad behavior become permissible. In philosophy, what's permissible is ignorance, and a kind of really shameful kind of ignorance. Like, don't you have a basic clue about how your life should go? Like you're an adult, right? And you don't know. Like, what it is to be a good person, like you actually really don't know. So you're literally walking through your life every minute, having no clue what you're doing like that. You should be embarrassed. And that kind of shamelessness I do think is characteristic of philosophy.

Clif Mark  16:47

Okay? Just to make sure I got that. The shamelessness of philosophy is that what philosophers are shameless? Because normal human adults are supposed to know what they're doing in life and have some clue about right and wrong. But philosophers just shamelessly walk around saying, hmm, what's right and wrong? What does being good even mean? So, when we're talking about the shameless philosopher, we're talking about someone like Socrates.

Agnes Callard  17:14

Yeah. Or me. You know, in both of these cases, right, these are really the way we are like, the thing that comes out in politics is a way human beings genuinely are and genuinely, it's a way that they interact with their loved ones when they're in a fight. So it's not a lie. It's a truth. But it's just that it's being exposed. And I think in philosophy, yeah, it's like a certain kinds of cluelessness about how to live your life and like how to organize organize your life, and we normally cover it up. And so it's a very strange person who is willing to expose that.

Clif Mark  18:04

Yeah, philosophers are really strange sometimes. And sometimes, as Socrates shows, I think they can be really infuriating to people. In your New York Times column, the should we cancel aerosol peas. You talk about how charged political situations I take it as polarized political situations can kind of suck people into their field of influence, even against their best intentions. Can you tell me about any examples that you know of where philosophers get unwittingly or unwillingly drawn into politics? Aside from Socrates?

Agnes Callard  18:40

Yeah, I mean, it it happens to me sometimes, like I'm pretty good at avoiding it. And yet, I do think that there are certain things where people rally around them with particular efficiency. And I also think that at a given time, certain issues are like in one of my tweets, I just use the word racism as a pop that like that, in effect, something where you might legitimately accuse your opponents have it as a way of saying that they're bad, right? But like, we live in such, you know, fraught times with respect to that word that The very thought that any accusation of it could be like, Ill founded, I think, was offensive. So, like, that's, um, but they're like, as I'm doing, right, so, so long.

Clif Mark  19:34

How long have you had your Twitter account? Agnes? You should know better. Two years, so not that long. I'm wondering if this naivete isn't some irony.

Agnes Callard  19:44

But um, no, I mean, I generally do quite well, like I that is that is I don't people don't tend to get very angry with me. I don't tend to make this mistake a lot. But I do every once in a while. I do. So I must have some sense of how people are gonna interpret me otherwise I'd be making it all the time.

Clif Mark  20:06

Right? Yeah. I mean, okay, so this is this is one thing you've, you've managed to avoid a lot of this kind of trouble. And that's, that reminds me of this, I think I think it was your piece called How to politicize the classroom or something, I'm not sure. And in this piece, you talk about how you don't want to, there's a lot of requests that you get from students to maybe declare allegiance join some kind of political cause, show up at a demo. I don't know, lots of things that lots of instructors do. And you say that you try to avoid doing it. But not only that, you feel it's your duty, as a philosopher, to avoid doing it. Can you explain why, why that is why you have to, it's not just that you don't want to get involved in the fight, but it's the right thing to do to avoid politics in your role.

Agnes Callard  20:59

Yeah, and as I say, in the Socratic sense of politics, and the most political person there is, um, but i think that i think that what they're looking for in those cases is something like, prove that you're a morally good person, by declaring your allegiance to a certain cause. And why why would they want that from me? Why would they ask that of me, because they're worried about the cost. They don't know whether it's good. They don't know whether they believe in it. But maybe if I believed in it, then that would they would have like my imprimatur. It would be like philosophy approved. And I think it's pretty important that they not be philosophy approved in the sense that, like that, that desire is kind of a desire to have someone else do your thinking for you. And like, I think, with these kind of, you know, causes, part of the reason why we get so worked up and angry is that we don't know whether we're right or not. And that feeling of anger and frustration is the feeling that I ought to be able to be producing a better argument than I am. And my job is to help people produce the better argument, not to make them feel comfortable that they were just fine with what they could do.

Clif Mark  22:26

So does that have to do with your particular role as a philosophy teacher visa vie your students? Or is this a more general stance? Like what is the scope of the need to not let people not to agree with people in case they in case they trust you instead of thinking for themselves? Yeah, I don't know that I've thought thought it out up to every possible, you know, point. Um, I mean, I tend to think that my relationship with my students really ought to be philosophical in the sense that we ought to be able to inquire into the question, right. And so the best way to inquire into any question is, for one of us to not presuppose that a certain answer is correct. And to be questioning the other one who might hold that answer. There's a sense in which philosophy just doesn't really leave room for allegiances. That's with respect to any questions that we might be inquiring into now. You know, I think like, Am I gonna say, Oh, no philosopher should ever take part in political demonstrations? Like No, I don't think it's my place to tell. I don't think that, like for the by the same by the same argument that I just gave you. I don't think that I can solve other people's moral deliberations for them. So I can't tell those other philosophers what to do any more than I can tell my students what to do. Right? I can just sort of explain what makes sense to me, and why reasons for why I do what I do. And I also can't, I can't rule out the possibility that there would be some moral question that I would feel very strongly about, in a sense that feeling like I needed to do something. And then I would participate in some action that I thought would be efficacious towards that end, that might happen. So so but I guess I guess the thing I think is important is to resist doing those things, on the basis of sort of a request or pressure, or I think that that pressure is like, almost like a desire on the part of those pressuring me to themselves be reassured that they're doing the right thing. Okay, so does that have to do with your particular role as a philosophy teacher vis-à-vis your students, or is this a more general stance? Right? Is it is it an objection to allegiance in politics in general, or is it just because you feel that in this case, your students are asking you guidance, and they're unsure of the question you want them to keep questioning. So I don't think it's important. I don't think it's appropriate for my students to ask me for that kind of help. That is for the kind of help. I think I might want to give it anyway. Like, there might be a situation where I'm like, hey, our country's in this kind of crisis. And here's a thing that we could start, like, I don't have moral views, right. And so I might think I need to do something, and then I'll do it. But I think there's at least sometimes a bit of a conceit that like, as an educator, it's my obligation to, like, stand up for what's right or something, we're, what that really means is like, is like use my authority to deceive people into thinking that I have knowledge that I don't have, that would be immoral, right. So if there's a way in, which is the kind of using me or myself using myself as a tool, so that that's really what I resist, but not like engaging in political action that you think is important to do, like, as long as you're not doing it for symbolic value, because you think you doing it is gonna like, set some kind of, you know, example, then I think it's fine. Okay, so the philosopher can engage in politics, but not qua philosopher. Is that it? Am I getting that? Right. So you're not saying that it's wrong to have allegiances, and commitments and care about stuff, which I like, I can't hardly imagine a human wouldn't. It's just that when somehow, if you were using your status as a philosopher, and trying to deploy that politically, that would be, that would be the problem.

Agnes Callard  26:45

Yeah, I think there's something problematic about having status as a philosopher, like, philosophy shouldn't have status. You know, like, economists can have status, they know some stuff. And then the it's kind of complicated, and we can't follow it. Physicists, right. They know stuff. Philosophers are really good to talk to. But you shouldn't trust us. Some of us don't believe the external world exists. Right? Some of us believe there are true contradictions. These are not people you want to trust. They're not people who if they do that thing, you should do that thing. That's just the wrong way of thinking about a philosopher, I think we're very useful. But we're not useful in that way. You can't outsource your thinking to us.

Clif Mark  27:23

Well, then we could argue, I mean, we can't get you to think for us, we can't trust you. Why do we need philosophers? for talking to? We're good, because we're good, because you don't know what you think. And we can help you figure that out. You seem to like keeping questions open, discussing them without asserting your own position, seeing where it goes. And this is a very Socratic characteristic. But a lot of people don't like to be questioned all the time. Right? A lot of people just prefer to agree. And a lot of people really hated Socrates. So I guess I'm asking if people find your philosophical openness and refusal to pin yourself down to a position annoying.

Agnes Callard  28:10

People are often extremely annoyed by me, I don't think it's mostly like because I'm, you know, asking where it is asking questions, but it's something more specific, which is that I'm quite tyrannical in conversation. So I have a tendency to monopolize the conversation and to decide like, this is what we're going to be talking about. Like, I'm kind of the teacher all the time. So that's annoying. worse. Yeah. Yeah. It's like an annoying personality trait. And I don't think Socrates really in a way was like that. So it's not I don't know that I think there are plenty of philosophers who are like, really good listeners and stuff, and I'm not one of them. So I would say that there's that with respect to politically like, I do think that people, my agent told me that, like, you know, when we were like, working on the proposals for my book and selling the book, and she was talking to editors, she's like, they want to know, where are you politically? And they'll get fine with edit, you know, they want to know, and I'm like, what, what a weird thing to want to know about me, right? Everyone wants to know, and they and they're like, you, you're, you've clearly made it very, like, this is what they feel like you've you've thrown a lot of Mystique around this made it like, as though like there's some deep secret that I'm hiding, right? I'm like, the least secret of least hiding person, basically everything I think you've already know, right? I'd say everything I think but yet there's they're convinced that there's a sixth secret that I've done. And I've cleverly hidden it, and they want to know what it is. So there isn't this thing. And I think it's related to like, why people want to know the gender of your baby if you're pregnant, because they're because they've divided the world into kinds and they're like, what kind is your kid gonna be, you know, like, what kind of you and then and then they feel like you're just hiding that you're, you know, it's like, what if you just didn't have a gender or something like that could happen, right? And you wouldn't be hiding it. So yeah, so I think that there is this thing of people who are trying to like sort of classify you in some way and then having trouble classifying you, but mostly an interpersonal interaction That's not the problem that I have. It's the being like, monopolize the conversation.

Clif Mark  30:11

The column about should we cancel Aristotle. And you say we shouldn't cancel Aristotle, right? Even though he has really repellent politically repelling views that might even be that probably aren't dangerous. And I think you say we shouldn't cancel him because like,   he's not our enemy. He's not dangerous. Right? So, Who should we cancel?

Agnes Callard  30:34

Yeah, great question. Who should it be canceled? I never asked that. Um, you know, apparently, somebody who teaches ancient philosophy emailed me that his like, school or group like, was inspired by my thing. And they did a whole, like, debate thing on should be canceling into philosophy. And they voted. It was like, I think like, like, only 30% voted to cancel me. So I wrote it back. But I was very relieved. Um, um, um, so one thing that's interesting about like, like, Did Athens cancel, Socrates will be like, right? And I think the answer is no, what have they killed Socrates, he turned out to beuncancellable, right? Because he was like, so he was like, You asked me, can't you just go away from here and stop talking to people? And I'm like, No, no, I will never stop, I will go down to Hades, and I will refute people there, right. Um, so there's some people who are, like, are just kind of gonna keep doing what they're doing no matter what context they're in. And, you know, I would say like, I'm pretty close to uncancellable, in that, like, people could stop listening to me, I could stop having a public outlet or whatever. But I've still got students and like, I'm still doing philosophy. So one question about should we cancel is like, first Who's cancelable? Right. And I guess you're cancelable? If you have some kind of public platform, that is the condition on your being able to engage in whatever the activity is that you're engaging? Right.

Clif Mark  32:08

 Right. Well, I mean, they could have, they could have discredited Socrates so much that he wouldn't have been able to do philosophy, it's that he had still had his fan base. HE still had people who listened to him. Yeah, but like, for Socrates, it's like, you know, he doesn't seem to view being imprisoned is like being that bad, right? And people still come a couple people come talk to him and talk to the guard. I'm, like, you know, there's this. So there's this question of like, how much by way of external validation? Do you need to do the thing that you're doing? Mm hmm. And, like, I sort of feel like a philosopher should be on cancelable in this in this in the following sense that you shouldn't have any status in the first place. So you shouldn't have anything to lose, like, where other people it's like, we trust like Jordan Peterson, I think is eminently cancelable. Because he has these people who sort of follow Him and believe in him and see him as an authority, right. And so at at least one way to think about cancellation is like the removal of authority from somebody where the authority was the person's ability to speak. And I sort of think I don't want that authority in the first place. You're working on a project? And Socrates, can you tell me about that? I'm still thinking it through. But the basic idea is that thinking is not something that one person does by themselves. So we think we could sit here and like, you know, but I actually just think a lot of what we call thinking is like, a bunch of random ideas going through your head in some weird order. It's a lot like dreaming. Nobody would call dreaming thinking really. But that thinking is something that real thinking thing we do with other people. Because we are not, we're not very like aware of we're in control of our own thoughts. It's kind of like a mush. But when we talk to other people, they sort of hold us to standards. And so we be we start to be able to make progress and to actually think, and I  think that's what Socrates discovered. He figured that out thinking as,,, thinking takes two.

Agnes Callard  34:41

basically Yes. Okay. Yeah. And, and he created a kind of structure in which thinking could happen. And now I want to be like slightly more specific. It's thinking it's a particular kind of thinking it's thinking about the things that really matter. And so you might just say, yeah, that isn't good. Right. But that we have particular trouble thinking about the things that really matter to us. And that the Socratic exchange is an attempt to think about those things. And so it's sort of, you know, a reading of a bunch of Socratic texts that bring out this kind of on political character of thought.

Clif Mark  35:21

Okay, and so by political You mean, involves more than one person? Can you give me an example of how this works? Like? How do we how do we think together? Is there a division of labor is a, you know,

Agnes Callard  35:31

what? Um, yeah, so the way that it works, what's crucial in a way about it is that it is not a debate. Socrates is the most anti debate philosopher. So the crucial thing is that there is only one view under discussion. So that's the one thought, because you need two people to think one thought, Okay. And the view like, I'm say, articulating the view, and you're questioning it, you're asking me about it, you're like, Wait, do you think this do you think this? And that is us thinking about this question? And so Socrates, people had already been pretty good at doing the One side being like, I know the way things are, like, essentially giving speeches, right? So that that's what they were good at, like giving speeches. And Socrates is like, okay, we'll do that. But just give a really short one. And then I'm going to say something, and then you give another really short one. And in, you know, in doing that, what he is doing is, instead of just letting someone speak, where their words can just go wander all over the place. He is holding their speaking to standards. And he's saying, Wait a minute, here's the thing you say, Now, you said this other thing before you have to be consistent. Otherwise, you're not thinking otherwise, you're just wondering. So the introduction of consistency, is really, to say, I'd like you to do this new thing called thinking instead of just talking. And it's going to be about things like do you use it for really know that you're right to prosecute your own father for murder? We're going to talk about that one. Right. So like the thing you least want to talk about in the   world.Laches and Nicias, we're going to talk about

Clif Mark  37:13

Euthyphro seemed kind of fine with talking about it. Um, yeah, I mean, there are moments right, where he's like, we're Socrates is like so convinced me in the way that you would convince the jury and you froze, like, oh, I'll convince him just fine. And well, yeah, how exactly right. So there are these kind of, you know, but Socrates is really good at getting people to talk about the thing at least wanted to talk about in the world, right. So ladies and nicaea, sir, like, should we send our sons to be military training and Socrates, like, do we know what courage is? Right? So So, you know, the Guardian said, you know, what are your order? Can you make a speech about oratory? Do you know what it is? Are you capable of speaking about oratory, Mr. orator?  Uh huh. And how many people ask you what's your philosophy when you tell them you're a philosopher on an airplane or something? I've been dreaming of people asking me that like, because I have so many philosophies. And like, and like whenever I hear philosophers tell that story of like, people ask me what my philosophy I'm like, you don't know how lucky you I would love people to ask philosophy. I have lots of them. But no one ever asked me my philosophy. You hear to hear listeners, ask Agnes Callard what her philosophy is? Okay, sorry. Go Go on.

Agnes Callard  38:22

So I think that what Socrates shows people is that it actually is possible to have a conversation about this question that the answer to which they felt had to be presupposed in everything that they were doing.

Clif Mark  38:44

What Socrates discovered is how we can think and how we can think is we can take one thought, and all think it and you question it together with thinking it actually thinks I'll defend it. And you know, it's and this is different from a debate and, like, I'm so glad you said that, because the sort of the thesis of my episode, um, Book One is like how crappy debating is and how you never learned anything from them. But so what is the difference between you making a point and me saying, Are you sure? Isn't that wrong? Aren't you contradicting yourself? Because this sounds like a debate to a lot of people. So what's the difference? Yeah, I think it really isn't a debate, because the difference is that in a debate, you have your own view of your own positive view. So if we're debating capitalism versus communism, and you're capitalism, and I'm communism, that I have a positive thing that I'm putting forward, I'm not just anti capitalist, I'm a communist, right? And, essentially, if you have a debate, you need a third party that is looking at the debate, right? So and we're both trying to convince that person. So we each make a speech. It's like, you know, the speech in the gorgous, where Socrates says your method of persuasion versus mine, yours is the kind where you need to judge right, but I'm calling you as a witness. polis, right? So, I think that in a, in a Socratic conversation, the person you're trying to convince is the person that you're talking to. Not a third party. And you know what you're, you're either trying to convince them that you're right about your view, if you're on the one side, or that they're wrong about their view, but the thing that is being the thing that is being persuaded about is that one view that is being examined, Uh huh. Okay, so people have used and Socrates is helping them, think them by questioning them and showing them what they're wrong about. But basically, he proves everyone wrong. So do we ever learn anything from philosophy aside from we were wrong about everything that we ever thought?

Agnes Callard  40:49

Um, you know, what Socrates says in the gorgous is being refuted as the greatest favor that you can have done to you, right. And it's not just learning that you're wrong. Like he learned something more specific, right, namely, the thing I just said. So I think people learn all sorts of specific things. I think, you know, people do often have this response, like, well, but at the end, what do we have? And it's like, okay, the answer isn't all of human knowledge. We didn't get that at the end of the dialogue, right. And there's some sense in which if we don't have that we don't have anything. But I do think we learned, those sorts of things like that was an example of something you learned in that dialogue.

Clif Mark  41:31

Nice. So we can't trust philosophers. And philosophers don't know anything. But by confrontationally, telling us we're wrong. They can teach us specific things in dialogue. And we can look forward to a more detailed account of how that works with Socrates in a book from you in the future. Yeah, I think that's a probably a pretty good place to leave it for today. And so I just want to thank you so much for coming on. Good in theory. It was super interesting and a lot of fun. It was a really fun conversation. Thanks, Agnes Callard. Yeah, my pleasure.