Re: analytical philosophy

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ken Hanly wrote:

> Seems to me you are to a considerable extent confusing Socrates with Plato.

I'll think over the rest of your post before responding to it,
but this calls for some brief separate comment. For all practical
purposes, Socrates is a fictional creation of Plato's. So I am not
"confusing" them, I am deliberately and with malice aforethought
conflating them. I don't think you can say anything about either
of them independentlly of the other. (The other source besides
Plato is Xenophon: B. Russell commented that the problem with
Xenophon's account was that if we believed it, then there was
no way to even imagine why anyone had ever been bothered
at all by Socrates, let alone been angry enough to try to get
him killed.) We do know who Socrates' friends were, and they
were an unsavory lot.

On the basis of two of the Platonic dialogues (which may or may
not have had any relationship to Socrates), Lysis and Euthyphro
(sp? too lazy to look it up), I find Socrates pretty obnoxious. As
a professor of mine at Michigan commented (not in praise), the
Socratic Method is a game only one can play. Used as a classroom
tactic it is simple sadism.

Carrol