I love the webcomic "xkcd". This one is especially pertinent to the pedagogical aims of our class. Look below or check out the original at the following url: http://www.xkcd.com/803/
I wish that Socrates would respond to his students' questions more often with the "right" response, but usually he settles for the "wrong" one. But on the other side of the desk, I wish that Adimantus and Glaucon would challenge Socrates more often. They often force him to elaborate on certain issues, which hopefully helps them learn better. But I don't think they exhibit much of the critical thinking skills that Socrates (may have) wanted them to develop. Do Socrates' goals of keeping his students out of politics and teaching them to think critically conflict with one another? And what, if anything, is Socrates learning from his students if they accept everything he says at face value? If he tailors everything in the conversation to fit his goal of keeping his students out of politics, then Socrates is interrupting the natural flow of conversation and philosophical thought process. And how does Socrates know that keeping his students out of politics is what's best for Athens anyway?
Consider the possibility that when they don't challenge, they actually agree, or think they do, of their own free will (they know they can always decide later to change their agreement if they think it was wrong). They can and do challenge and ask for clarification whenever they are moved to do so. I suspect, in other words, that they are already better critical thinkers than you're inclined to credit them with. In this light, Socrates' declining to baby them is a measure of his respect for them as persons and intellects.
ReplyDeleteShift to the level of Plato speaking to us, his readers. He might have chosen to write a primer on critical thinking (like an intro logic book) at the cost of not going very deeply, or at all, into important subjects. Instead he portrays critical thinking at, so to speak, an adult level of proficiency, perhaps because he is writing for a sophisticated audience, and perhaps because those important subjects are really important to him.
Your last question is most interesting: of course the historical Socrates didn't know, but strongly suspected, that barreling into politics (especially with Thrasymachan/Machiavellian abandon) was a bad idea. Plato, writing a half century after the dramatic date of this dialogue, has the benefit of historical hindsight -- talking young aristocrats out of joining the tyranny turned out to be the best thing one could do for all concerned.
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ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying makes sense, I just prefer to see it happening in front of me rather than have to assume that they are really thinking critically. (If this were a novel proper, Plato would have developed their characters enough for us to know this is happening without them having to ask lots of questions)
ReplyDeleteAs for my last question, those who know that power corrupts should be the very people Socrates encourages to go into politics. Perhaps before speaking with Socrates G and A are hungry for power and definitely shouldn't be politicians, but if Socrates works his magic on them and gets them to believe that they sincerely don't want power any longer, then they would make good politicians. However, we never really see this happen in the Republic. I doubt that he has enough faith in his students to believe that they won't contribute to the tyranny if they became politicians. But if every brilliant mind left politics, only stupid politicians would be left, and that wouldn't make things any better.
Even a couple of millenniums later, when the novel as we know it had been invented (along with other forms, like Elizabethan theater), one still generally has to pay close attention to tease out the subtle clues to character development. You may well find on another reading that Plato tells us considerably more about these characters than it seemed at first.
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