On Socratic Sandwiches

September 7, 2015 timothywstanley@me.com

What kinds of acts are made possible when we believe we know the objective truth? In what ways are our social practices, personal relationships, moral judgments, foreign policies, and political beliefs based on foundations of 'knowledge' that, when pressed, we can’t even satisfactorily define or demonstrate? What implications does this have, for how we see the world and our place in it, for how we relate to one another, for how we move through space and time? And why, actually, IS this kind of debate so frustrating? Why is critical thinking experienced as uncomfortable? Why, for example, did the Athenian senate vote to have Socrates LITERALLY KILLED for engaging people in debates like the sandwich debate? What were the charges they actually brought against him? They said he 'turns the worse argument into the stronger' and that he 'teaches these things to the young.' Socrates’ annoying arguments about definitions were felt to be such a threat to the existing power structure of ancient Athens that even some of his supporters’ attempts to get his sentence changed to lifetime exile were unconvincing, and he was democratically voted into death.

"Is This a Sandwich?" Medium - http://bit.ly/1itdIZQ