Enlightened Ignorance

According to W. K. C. Guthrie's The Greek Philosophers, while sometimes erroneously believed to be a method by which one seeks the answer to a problem, or knowledge, the Socratic method was actually intended to demonstrate one's ignorance.

Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one's ignorance.

Guthrie writes, "[Socrates] was accustomed to say that he did not himself know anything, and that the only way in which he was wiser than other men was that he was conscious of his own ignorance, while they were not. The essence of the Socratic method is to convince the interlocutor that whereas he thought he knew something, in fact he does not."

Socrates generally applied his method of examination to concepts that seem to lack any concrete definition; e.g., the key moral concepts at the time, the virtues of piety, wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice.

Such an examination challenged the implicit moral beliefs of the interlocutors, bringing out inadequacies and inconsistencies in their beliefs, and usually resulting in puzzlement known as aporia.

In view of such inadequacies, Socrates himself professed his ignorance, but others still claimed to have knowledge. Socrates believed that his awareness of his ignorance made him wiser than those who, though ignorant, still claimed knowledge.

Although this belief seems paradoxical at first glance, it in fact allowed Socrates to discover his own errors where others might assume they were correct.

[Socrates believed that] "life without examination [dialogue] is not worth living". It is with this in mind that the Socratic Method is employed.

Wikipedia
'Socratic method'

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Always Missing Something

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

[Alfred North Whitehead]
Dialogues, prologue

Reading, viewing and listening involve constant focus-changing, as we sometimes swoop in on a stray particular and sometimes pull back to pan the whole.

Some readings or viewings approach a work head-on, while others sidle shyly up to it. Some cling to its gradual unfolding as a process in time, while others aim for a snapshot or spatial fix. Some slice it sideways, while others peer up at it from ground level.

None of these approaches is correct. There is no correctness or incorrectness about it.

At their most useful, critical concepts are what allow us access to works of art, not what block them off from us. They are ways of getting a handle on them.

A critical concept [...] is a way of trying to do things with [the work of art], some of which work and some of which do not. At its best, it picks out certain features of the work so that we can situate it within a significant context [...] different concepts will disclose different features.

Theorists are pluralists in this respect: there could be no set of concepts which opened up the work for us in its entirety.

[Terry Eagleton]
After Theory, p.93-5

Image: Momus' 'Unreliable Tour Guide'. See here.

Derrida argues [...] that something must always escape in the reading of a text, no matter how subtle or resourceful that reading.

Any commentary that aims to speak the truth of a text will find itself outflanked or outwitted by a supplementary logic which defeats the best efforts of criticism.

[Christopher Norris]
Derrida, p. 116

The Epimenides paradox. Named after Epimenides of Knossos (c. 600 BC), a possibly mythological Cretan seer, who wrote in a light-hearted poem or song that ‘Cretans are always liars’ – false if true, true if false. It seems that this only started to look like a real problem when examined retrospectively by later Greek writers.

What this paradox [...] illuminates is that any enclosed, self-referring system the left hemisphere comes up with, if taken strictly on its own terms, self-explodes: there is a member of the system that cannot be accommodated by the system.

However much rationalistic systems give the illusion of completeness – and they can be very hard to escape for those who cannot see their weaknesses – they do in fact conceal within themselves the clue of thread that leads out of the maze.

There is always an escape route from the hall of mirrors, if one looks hard enough.

[Iain McGilchrist]
The Master and his Emissary, p. 138-40, 207

'Hermeneutical injustice'

Hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone's experiences are not well understood—by themselves or by others—because these experiences do not fit any concepts known to them (or known to others), due to the historic exclusion of some groups of people from activities, such as scholarship and journalism, that shape which concepts become well known.

To understand this kind of injustice, it is useful to consider a concrete example. In the 1970s, the label "sexual harassment" was introduced to describe something that many people, especially women, had experienced since time immemorial. 

Imagine the year is 1960, before the label was introduced. Consider a woman who experiences sexual harassment in this year. She may have difficulty putting her experience into words. The difficulty that she faces is no accident. It is due (in part) to women's exclusion from full participation in the shaping of the English language. 

Now imagine it is 1980. The woman may now better understand what has happened to her. However, she may struggle to explain this experience to someone else, because the concept of sexual harassment is not yet well known. 

The difficulty she faces is, again, no accident. It is due (in part) to women's exclusion from equal participation in the institutions and industries devoted to making sense of, describing, and explaining human experiences — such as journalism, publishing, and academia. Miranda Fricker argues that women's unequal participation in the shaping of the categories through which we all understand the world makes some women's lives less intelligible, whether to themselves or to others. What is true of women here is also true of other marginalized groups.

'Epistemic injustice'

The mere creation of the name Time was an unparalleled deliverance. To name anything by a name is to win power over it. This is the essence of primitive man's art of magic – the evil powers are constrained by naming them, and the enemy is weakened or killed by coupling certain magic procedures with his name. 

[Oswald Spengler]

The Decline of the West, Vol. 1, p. 123

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One Love?

Love is not primarily "caused" by a specific object, but a lingering quality in a person which is only actualized by a certain "object".

Hatred is a passionate wish for destruction; love is a passionate affirmation of an "object"; it is not an "affect" but an active striving and inner relatedness, the aim of which is the happiness, growth, and freedom of its object. It is a readiness which, in principle, can turn to any person and object including ourselves.

Exclusive love is a contradiction in itself. 

To be sure, it is not accidental that a certain person becomes the "object" of manifest love [...] The important point, however, is that love for a particular "object" is only the actualization and concentration of lingering love with regard to one person; it is not, as the idea of romantic love would have it, that there is only the one person in the world whom one can love, that it is the great chance of one's life to find that person, and that love for him results in a withdrawal from all others.

The kind of love which can only be experienced with regard to one person demonstrates by this very fact that it is not love but a sado-masochistic attachment.

The basic affirmation contained in love is directed towards the beloved person as an incarnation of essentially human qualities.

Love for one person implies love for man as such.

Love for man as such is not, as it is frequently supposed to be, an abstraction coming "after" the love for a specific person, or an enlargement of the experience with a specific "object"; it is its premise, although, genetically, it is acquired in the contact with concrete individuals.

From this it follows that my own self, in principle, is as much an object of my love as another person. The affirmation of my own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in the presence of the basic readiness of and ability for such an affirmation.

If an individual has this readiness, he has it also towards himself; if he can only "love" others, he cannot love at all.

[Erich Fromm]
The Fear of Freedom, p.98-100

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Love between men and women, and love for family and friends, is often possessive, exclusive, limited, and mixed with selfish feelings. There's an expectation of getting back at least as much as one gives.

Such love might seem quite deep, but it easily vanishes if it doesn't live up to expectations. What's more, the sort of love we feel for those close to us is often accompanied by a feeling of distance, or even hostility toward 'strangers', those who could pose a threat to ourselves and to those we love.

True love and true compassion can be extended to our adversaries, while love and compassion mixed with attachment can't include anyone we see as an enemy.

[...] true love can't be polarized, restricted to one or two specific beings, or contaminated with partiality. What's more, it should be completely disinterested and not expect anything in return.

Love, here, means total, unconditional love for all beings without any distinction or partiality.

One of the principal topics for meditation is to begin by thinking of someone you love deeply, and letting that feeling of love and generosity fill your heart and mind. Then you break out of the cage that restricts that love to a particular person and extend it to all those for whom your feelings are neutral or indifferent. Finally, you include in your love all those you consider as enemies. That's true love.

[Matthieu Ricard]
The Monk and the Philosopher, p.193-4

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Love Your Self

Selfishness is not identical with self-love but with its very opposite.

Selfishness is one kind of greediness. Like all greediness, it contains an insatiability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Close observation shows that while the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough, of missing something, of being deprived of something. He is filled with burning envy of anyone who might have more.

If we observe closer still, especially the unconscious dynamics, we find that this type of person is basically not fond of himself, but deeply dislikes himself.

Selfishness is rooted in this very lack of fondness for oneself.

The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant anxiety concerning his own self. He has not the inner security which can exist only on the basis of genuine fondness and affirmation. He must be concerned about himself, greedy to get everything for himself, since basically he lacks security and satisfaction.

The same holds true with the so-called narcissistic person, who is not so much concerned with getting things for himself as with admiring himself.

While on the surface it seems that these persons are very much in love with themselves, they are actually not fond of themselves, and their narcissism - like selfishness - is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love.

[Erich Fromm]
The Fear of Freedom, p.98-100

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To be concerned for another is to be present to them in the form of an absence, a certain self-forgetful attentiveness. If one is loved or trusted in return, it is largely this which gives one the self-confidence to forget about oneself, a perilous matter otherwise.

We need to think about ourselves partly because of fear, which the assurance which flows from being trusted allows us to overcome.

[Terry Eagleton]
After Theory

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