Callard begins by describing what she calls “untimely questions.” These are questions whose presumed answers we take as a given and base how we run our lives upon these suppositions. These are questions we do not want asked and ruminated over. “When we settle on answers to the central questions of our lives without ever having opened up those questions for inquiry, that is a recipe for wavering. A mind tasked only with thinking its way through the next fifteen minutes is likely to find itself acting inconsistently.” Callard begins by quoting Socrates, himself, ““I go back and forth about all this—plainly because I don’t know.” What causes Socrates to waiver is his failure to have inquired sufficiently…. Socrates thinks that his circumstances call for inquiry, whereas his interlocutors are inclined to cut off the inquiry and move on with their lives. As Socrates sees it, by preemptively closing the questions, they consign themselves to a lifetime of wavering.”
Socrates attempts to answer these foundational questions by pausing for a minute and not assuming anything. This is something the typical person cannot do. We cannot do this because the answers to these questions are intertwined with how we already live our lives. “We cannot “step back” to a detached position from which having no answer at all is permissible: questions and answer are magnetically attracted to one another, and the space for thought is eliminated.” Socrates attempts to answer these questions through dialogue. “Each of his conversations is a high-wire act in which Socrates manages to sustain an inquiry into the very question his interlocutor is least likely to tolerate. These are untimely questions.”
What is Socrates’ method? Socrates needs dialogue to unearth the answers to these untimely questions. “At first, Socrates’ interlocutors often conflate the activity of defining the concept in question with that of showing how it applies to and affirms their own behavior…. They first feel that the questions are so straightforward as to hardly deserve consideration, and then give “answers” that amount to performative self-affirmations…. People need to approve of the choices that they are, at that very moment, making. Socrates’ questions pinpoint beliefs the person needs to have…. A belief that one needs to have is a belief that one is acting on…. I don't pause to consider how an action should be performed when I am already performing that action…. The relevant belief is already operational…. The most interesting and most elusive questions will be the ones whose answers we must give at every moment of our lives, for their whole duration…. Our load-bearing answers to untimely questions tend to give rise to predictions that specify what needs to be true in the future in order for my answer to guide my action in the present…. When something matters to our ability to navigate our lives, we need to have a belief about what will happen, because we make use of that belief, in the activity of living.”
Furthermore, Callard stresses, Socrates is concerned, firstly and lastly, with defining the terms of the debate. Correct and complete definition is paramount, “Socrates is always telling his interlocutors to treat what he is saying as a question about what X is, not as a problem about how to find an X. He’ll instruct them not to break X into pieces, or not to simply give an example of X…. Socrates sometimes speaks of the Form of Justice, or the Form of Piety, or the Form of whatever X he and his interlocutor are examining. “The Form of X” simply refers to the version of X that you must have in mind so as to answer the question “What is X?” This is why “The Form of X” is synonymous with “X itself” or “the essence of X.”… The Form of X is X, considered as a question to be answered, rather than as a problem to be solved.… A Socratic definition… is the endpoint, the quarry.”
Finally, Callard stresses what makes Socrates unique. “Socrates’ identification of the quest to be a good person with a quest for knowledge underlies the distinctively Socratic denial that anyone ever acts against their better judgment…. If you actually knew what you should do, you would do it. So long as you don’t know, holds Socrates, the proper ethical attitude is an inquisitive one.”
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