As Ong puts in his "Maranatha" essay, it makes no difference to you as a reader whether I am alive or not. Of course, for Socrates to be an oral teacher in ancient Athen, he had to be alive - just as the historical Jesus of Nazareth had to be alive to be an oral preacher and teacher in the ancient Jewish homeland. Of course, I also had to be alive during the years of my oral teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth (1987-2009) - showing once again that not all live face-to-face oral teaching involves what Buber referred to as an I-thou encounter between two individual persons.
Now, on the inside front flap on the dust jacket on Agnes Callard's new 2025 book Open Socrates, we read, in part, the following text: "We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views" . . . We parrot his claim that 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' yet take no steps to live examined one [speak for yourself Professor Callard!]. We've lost sight of what made him so dangerous [that the civic authorities in ancient Athens, during the famous experiment in (male) participatory democracy in ancient Athens, sentenced him Socrates to die by drinking hemlock]. . . . To ask the most important questions, we need help." Callard, we are also told on the front inside flap of the dust jacket, "extracts from the first [Western] philosopher nothing less than a new ethics to live by."
Good for her! Good girl!
Now, In Agnes Callard's "Introduction: The Man Whose Name Is an Example," she says, among other things, "The Socratic motto is not, 'Question everything,' but 'Persuade or be persuaded" (p. 15).
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo1
Agnes Callard also explicitly says, "Thinking, as Socrates understands it, is not something that happens in your head, but rather out loud, in conversation. Socrates argues that it is only by recognizing thinking as a social interaction that we can resolve a set of paradoxes as to how thinking can be open-minded, inquisitive, and truth-oriented" (p. 15).
Oh my. I must now connect Agnes Callard's descriptive terms here to the subtitle of Ong's massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason.
When Callard here refers to "Thinking, as Socrates understand it, is not something that happens in your head." However, according to Ong's account of Ramus' thought about the verbal art of logic, Ramus did indeed understand logical thinking following his method as something that happened in your head. In Ong's subtitle, he refers to the kind of thinking in your head that following Ramus' way of logical thinking constituted "the Art of Reason" not only in Ramist logic but also subsequently in the philosophical reasoning in the Age of Reason.
Ah, but what about the other term that Ong uses in the subtitle of his massively researched 1958 book, "the Art of Discourse"? Yes, for Ong' "the Art of Discourse" in the history of the verbal arts (of grammar, rhetoric, and logic [also known as dialectic]) in our Western cultural history referred to imagining yourself as engaged in a back-forth give-and-take dialogue with someone else in the real or imagined world. In short, the psychodynamic involved in "the Art of Discourse" essentially resembled the psychodynamic that Callard here describes and attributes to Socrates, as something that happens, not in your head, "but rather out loud [in oral-aural discourse], in conversation."
Ah, but can't I as an author imagine myself expressing myself to another person in conversation? Yes, I can. Yes, Agnes Callard in writing her new 2025 book Open Socrates can imagine herself as being engaged in a conversation with her imagined fictional audiences. Indeed, I would here credit her with doing this repeatedly and regularly as she wrote her new 2025 book - which is why her book is so accessible.
In light of what Agnes Callard tells us in the above quotations from her "Introduction: The Man Whose Names Is an Example," what more can there possibly be left for her to tell us in her subsequent chapters in the book? In the subsequent chapters in her new 2025 book Open Socrates, Agnes Callard shows off what I have figuratively speaking referred to as her impressive intellectual athleticism. Indeed, her intellectual athleticism demonstrates her versatility - and her versatility is not only impressive but also awe-inspiring! Her admirable versatility is manifested each time she shifts the focus of her thought in each numbered chapter in her new 2025 book Open Socrates. Agnes Callard's performance throughout the entire book is awe-inspiring!
In my judgment, Agnes Callard's new 2025 book Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life should now win her the promotion to Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
Finally, in the present "Probe" essay, I also want to highlight Agnes Callard's "Chapter 10: Love" in her new 2025 book Open Socrates. Please remember that her primary concern is to discern Socrates' thought.
On page 309, Agnes Callard says, "Socrates says that the person in love is in a state of mania, a word that means the same thing in Greek and in English."
OK, then, please tell us what the word "mania" means in English.
I Googled for "mania + meaning." One response that my search got me was the Wikipedia entry on "Mania." I printed the entry out, The printout of the entry ran to 15 single-spaced pages.
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