How To Be An Agnostic
Plato resisted writing anything at all for a time, since he feared
it would detract from what he really thought philosophy was –
an exploration done in life. Thankfully for us, he was persuaded
apparently because it would enable him to reach a wider audi-
ence. The dialogue was his answer to the necessary compromise
because if writing is not the real thing, at least dialogues portray
people doing the real thing. The characters present intellectual
and often abstract arguments that are rebuffed, for sure. And they
can be sifted on that level. But we see them running the gamut of
human emotion too, for lives lived is ultimately what is at stake.
Seneca wrote the following to a friend:
The living word and life in common will benefi t you more
than written discourse. It is to current reality that you must
go, fi rst because men believe their eyes more than their ears,
and then because the path of precepts is long, but that of
examples is short and infallible.Seneca’s is a Platonic sentiment: experience is infallible because
it so ably displays human fallibility.
Philosophy school
The dialogues are the most substantial evidence we have that
Plato thought Socrates presented philosophy as such a way
of life. However, it was not only in writing that Plato himself
responded to his encounter with Socrates. The seeds of philoso-
phy, as Plato puts it in the Phaedrus, fi nd soil to sink roots, time
to grow branches, air to spread leaves and the human warmth
necessary to produce fruit – fruit that will last – when nurtured
with others. Socrates pursued his philosophy with others on the
streets of Athens. A generation on, as the ‘Socratic movement’
spread, Plato decided to set up an institution. He acquired an
old gymnasium and on the site founded his Academy.
Plato knew that an enquiring approach to philosophy did
not just necessitate the ability to form intellectual arguments.