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Article: Socrates' mistake: the philosopher's view of knowledge--forever demanding explanations, justifications, definitions, and criteria--is a fantasy, and a dangerous fantasy.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- American Scholar
- Article date:
- March 22, 2005
- Author:
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In the fifth century before Christ, as Plato tells in his early dialogues, Socrates asked the Athenians--friends, enemies, and strangers--what their concepts meant, as if the unexamined life were not worth living. The mistake is still being made--the most potent and long-lasting mistake, it seems likely, in all Western philosophy. It is potent above all in education, and it would be a rare student or professor who dared to question it. The candidate who writes "I know the answer to this question, but I cannot say what it is" gets no marks, understandably. Hard to see how he could. In debates about moral and critical theory, too, logocentricity has long been the rage, and ...