Getting Back to Socrates^1
Genuine philosophy is not pretty. In fact, its public countenance is as ugly as Socrates’face. It is
most certainly unattractive to those who are pragmatically minded, seeking“solutions”: checklists,
methods, and toolboxes that might apply to a teacher’s classroom. Many students enrolled in
university harbor much pretense to know what philosophy is, and it is very hard to open their eyes
about such things. Moreover, even when one does manage to help them recognize their ignorance
(agnoia) in this regard, only a small few will be delighted, thankful, or excited by the experience of
perplexity (aporia) that gives rise to wonder (thauma) and a renewed, elevated desire to know. And
having been led into an awareness of such things, a fargreater number will rather grow resentful and
angry with you as their teacher, impatient with this thing you have been attempting to help them see:
they will hear your words, perhaps; maybe they will do the assigned readings and go through the
motions of the exercises but never in the genuine spirit of philosophy.
It is the underlying contention of this chapter that genuine philosophizing–that is to say,“loving
wisdom”–ought to be at the core of what we do as teachers. To philosophize with our students, I
suggest that we return to Socrates and his example. However, the problem is that“Socrates’
example”isn’t well understood. What does it mean to be like Socrates in our philosophizing as
teachers? What does it mean to philosophize? Riffing on a single line from a popular Van Morrison
song and album title,No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, and using this phrase as an organizational
rubric, what follows is an attempt to begin clearing up some of our misconceptions by investigating
what philosophy isnot.^2
Philosophy isNota Method, Socratic or Otherwise
One misunderstanding about teaching philosophy is that it is to train students in methods of
argumentation and forms of logical reasoning–a type of transferable“critical thinking”skill. In her
book,Children as Philosophers, Haynes offers a valuable warning against conceiving of philos-
ophy as a methodology for“critical thinking.”She contends that,“If we are concerned to develop
our thinking, we need to move beyond an overly structured, narrow and rigid tradition of logical
thinking and argument.”Her desire to conceive of philosophy as a“way of life”arises from her
recognition that theratio–the power of the mind through which we know by means of discursive
reasoning and logic–when cultivated in separation from theintellectus, which knows not by
moving through chains of reasoning but rather intuitively or all at once, breeds“a disconnection
between thinker and the world.”
Indeed, the commonly accepted notion among educators that philosophy inculcates a set of
“critical thinking”skills that“can be taught and applied to content reflects a fundamental view
of our relationship with the world.”Without cultivating our awareness of the theoretic activity of
intellectus, wherein we come to know the deep unity between seer and seen, we see the world only
throughratio. In its cognitive capacity to work upon the objects of thought and to master those