What Would Socrates Do? - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias
Christians often ask themselves, as a guide to living, “What would Jesus do?” In her new book Open Socrates, my podcast-cohost Agnes Callard suggests we instead ask “What would Socrates do?”
Over 2400 years ago, Socrates gained fame by asking people questions on important topics, and then finding contradictions in their answers. Most didn’t like it, and eventually his city Athens killed him for it.
Callard elaborates a Socratic ethics wherein doing what he tried to do is the highest ideal; other things are good mainly via embodying or promoting Socratic inquiry. And as Socrates, like Jesus, is just the sort of person it makes sense to model after, this a worthy project.
[He] inspired [people] to want to become the kind … who think ignorance is the worst thing there is. … Given that we cannot lead lives based on knowledge— because we lack it— we should lead the second-best kind of life, namely, the one oriented toward knowledge. … Socratic ethics … inserts itself everywhere, into every interaction, infusing every corner of life with the demand to become more intellectual. … Inquiry is the best thing one can do with one’s life, given that one does not know how to lead it.
Academic philosophers are… eager to allow that one can live a perfectly happy and fulfilled life without ever engaging in philosophy. They are also careful to shield the rest of their lives from their philosophical activities: … taking off their philosopher hat when walking into their homes, … and …whenever things get serious. … when it comes to the question of how to live our lives, we are already being intellectual and critical and thoughtful enough. … This book is an argument to the contrary. …
