Searching without Knowing (Summer in the Republic 22)

Last updated on: June 27, 2018 at 8:16 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Searching without Knowing (Summer in the Republic 22) 2018-06-27T08:16:45-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Americans have many good traits: we like practical solutions, but every virture has a corresponding vice. Practicality can veer into impatience with hard intellectual work. Thank God, we have generally been too impatient to sit in cafes letting the world burn. Americans do things. Hurrah!

Build Houston. Fix it later. Good enough. Academia could use more “do” and less study the problem.

Yet there are human things, and deeper problems, that require longer thought and contemplation. We cannot always count on Mother England to give us John Locke for free. Our first principles and our basic ideas come from somebody and even if many come from God, we need to understand how to apply what God says. “Love your enemies” is plain advice, but we still struggle to get the implications!

If you know what to do, by all means do it, but if you are unsure, then you still have to ask the questions you have and explore the possibilities. I meet religious people and atheists, mostly atheists, who are impatient with thinking and considering ideas. If a problem is hard, say consciousness, they are hasty. “God did it” is sometimes a hasty answer, but so is “God did not do it”!

We do not have to know the answer to pose a question. Tyrants have the answers, they think, and so they are angered and impatient with carefulness. I got thinking about this after teaching a cultural apologetics class at Biola University this weekend while continuing my summer reading of Republic. In Book I of this masterpiece, an angry teacher who makes a great deal of money off his students interrupts a discussion between Socrates and a young man, just as the dialog is getting good.

Why? Thrasymachus is angry with Socrates and here is what this teacher-for-hire bellows:

If you really want to know what justice is, you should be able not only to ask the question but also to answer it. You should not try to score points simply by refuting your opponent’s efforts; you ought to provide your own definition. After all, there are many who ask but cannot answer. So now say what you think justice is. Say it at last with clarity and precision, and spare us your ponderous analogies with duty or interest or profit or advantage. They produce only nonsense, and I don’t put up with nonsense.

Thrasymachus only asks questions when he “knows” the answers, because you cannot sell a credential without being Answer Man. He looks in on an honest attempt to find the truth and sees only a debate to be won or lost, because that is how he thinks of education: winners and losers.

He is right that we should not try to score points, but that is not what Socrates has been doing. Socrates is not paid to learn, refuses any favors or benefits from teaching, unlike most Athenian educators, and inspires countless students to follow his model after his martyrdom. Thrasymachus has money now and power now as a result of his selling certified wisdom. He is eager for Socrates to give his own definition so he can go on the offensive and make Socrates look as bad as Socrates has made other sophists look. Thrasymachus is confident in his rhetorical powers.

Thrasymachus is right to ask for clarity and precision, but he seems unaware that such a demand may cause the conversation to go in directions he cannot guess or control. Clarity will require patience: clarification means examines many muddles that hide in our every day use of words. Precision is difficult as a thinker strives to capture just what is meant by a term like “justice.”

Thrasymachus is sure that he will get nonsense and so like every intellectual bully he insults his foe to throw off the better man. I have known people who boasted of this tactic. The trouble for Thrasymachus is that even if Socrates is intimidated and afraid, his perfect love for wisdom will cast out all fear. Socrates wants the truth and to abide in wisdom.

May that be said of us all. Let the bully bluster, but if he will keep talking to us, progress is possible!

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*I begin an informal summer reading of Republic using Scott/Sterling (a new translation for me). Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19. Part 20. Part 21. Part 22.

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