• Believed by the Wise: Socrates, Pragmatic Arguments, and Pascal’s Wager

  

  I’ve been wrestling with an aphorism that I can’t pin down. I want to say this: ‘The wise believe what is good and true, the clever only what is proven.’ But I can’t. The tone may be right, but the content is wrong: or rather, not wrong but factually inaccurate.

  drtobybetenson

  23rd Nov 2024

  Philosophy

  Academia, Anti-Theodicy, Atheism, Ethics, Faith, Goodness, Happiness, Knowledge, Meno, Metaethics, Pascal’s Wager, Pensées, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Philosophy of Religion, Plato, Religion, Socrates, The Problem of Evil, Theism, Truth, University, Wisdom

• Relationship Advice from Socrates: The Phaedrus

  The Phaedrus is an outstanding example of a Platonic dialogue. It is really a dialogue about the dangers of trying to achieve philosophical understanding through listening to (or giving) grand rhetorical speeches or writing extended philosophical theses in essays or books. Socrates is predictably sceptical about these methods. They are far removed from the ideals of Socratic conversation. In speeches and writing, the truth is liable to distortion. The speechmaker or author gets carried away with rhetoric and style, prone to telling the audience only what will impress or flatter them, with the audience only hearing what they want to…

  drtobybetenson

  4th Jul 2023

  Philosophy

  Love, Phaedrus, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Plato, Platonic Dialogue, Relationships, Socrates

A Student of Socrates

Tag: Phaedrus