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> And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial. Harsh. Socrates didn't write his ideas, a counter example that immediately
by simplegeek 5y ago
> And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.
Harsh. Socrates didn't write his ideas, a counter example that immediately popped up in my head.
- jyriand 5y agoPlato did. Just wondering, maybe the things we read about Socrates are not actually his ideas, but Plato's?
- kashyapc 5y ago(Reusing my comment[1] from a different thread the other day.) Many people think Socrates is "against writing" by all means. In the dialogue Phaedrus, he—well, Socrates as portrayed by Plato—does sort of say that writing is okay, as long as you're doing it in the right spirit (seeking truth) and are not deceiving your audience. What Socrates rails against is the "speechmakers" who don't truly know what they're talking about, but instead write based on "what is likely" to persuade the audience. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603526
- slowmovintarget 5y agoPlato, in writing words into Socrate's mouth, was cautioning against the atrophy of the skill of memorization of oratory, which was how histories had been passed up to that time. Whether this was Plato's idea, or Socrates', the idea wasn't wrong. It was, however, irrelevant. It is acceptable for that skill to atrophy if we replace it with something far more durable. The irony of putting that in writing would not have been lost on Plato.