Ancient Philosophy WIP series: John Proios

A series with work in progress lectures on topics in Ancient Philosophy. This week's topic: John Proios (The University of Chicago), Seeing the Bigger Picture—the Flying Philosopher's Freedom in Plato's Theaetetus "In Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates argues that only philosophers are free, and orators, in particular, are slaves by comparison. His explanation is that while orators' speech is determined by the norms and constraints of their institution, only philosophers speak at true leisure and with true privacy. The result is that philosophers can engage in a 'flight of the mind' through discourse. This makes them laughable to most people, since their intellectual pursuits distract them from the basic concerns of ordinary life (like whether your neighbor is a human or a horse, or how to get to the market or to court) but Socrates' point is that it is a mistake to evaluate philosophical activity from this perspective. Still, his (fairly extreme) portrait raises questions about the sociality of philosophical life and, relatedly, the meaning of the philosopher's 'freedom'. Some scholars suggest that this philosopher is really an otherworldly, god-like and inhuman figure, while others argue that he is actually a (poorly understood) political activist. Still others maintain that his 'freedom' is merely psychological and largely rhetorical on Socrates' part. I offer an alternative to all of these ideas by defending a novel reading of philosophical practice and its relationship to social reality in this text. I argue that according to the picture Socrates defends, philosophy is itself a social practice, through which new forms of sociality are cultivated and expressed, and that the philosopher's 'flight of the mind' is the grounds for their critique of ordinary social practices (such as oratory). Thus, philosophical 'freedom' is a concrete social condition, which stands in a concrete relation to social reality beyond philosophy, but without involving political activity."