Yes, the main title of her new 2025 book reminds me of the expression "Open Sesame!" According to the Wikipedia entry on "Open sesame," it "is a magical phrase in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" in Antoine Galland's version of One Thousand and One Nights."
In any event, in Callard's "Notes" (pp. 375-389), she does not mention the now-deceased Maranhao's 1986 book Therapeutic Discourse and Socratic Dialogue: A Cultural Critique. (According to information on the internet, Professor Maranhao of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, died at home in St. Paul on September 22, 2002.)
Now, if Callard's new 2025 book Open Socrates purports to "Open" something about Socrates, we should wonder exactly what about Socrates she purports to open. Yes, as she indicates in her subtitle, she purports to open for us "The Case for a Philosophical Life." But if she needs to open for us "The Case for a Philosophical Life," then we should wonder exactly what about the case she makes for a philosophical life has not been open for us previously and thus provides her with the occasion for writing her accessible new 2025 book. Simply put, we have not previously had anyone provide us with a coherent and cogent account of Socrates' thought. Why not? In large measure, I suppose, we could blame Socrates himself for not writing any treatises or even letters for us to read.
Now, as you know, Socrates was an oral teacher in ancient Athens. He famously characterized his teaching method of direct personal questioning in public as his serving the citizens of ancient Athens as a "gadfly" and as a "mid-wife" who helps them give birth to new thought.
Even so, regardless of how benign Socrates' two famous characterizations of his oral teaching were, I cannot imagine that his confrontational question could have ever resulted in I-thou communication between Socrates and his interlocutor.
As you know, Socrates was rewarded for his supposed civic service in ancient Athens by being putting to death by drinking hemlock in 399 BCE.
(BCE = Before the Common Era; CE = the Common Era. The starting point for counting both Before the Common Era [BCE] and the Common Era [CE] is the dated fixed by early Christians who thought that they had figured out the historical Jesus of Nazareth's date of birth. But they were wrong about that. The historical Jesus of Nazareth was most likely born four to seven years before the starting date that his Christian followers set. Just as the exact date of the birth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth is not settled among scholars, so too the exact year of the death of the historical Jesus of Nazareth under local Roman authorities by crucifixion in Jerusalem is not settled by scholars either.)
As you also know, a few centuries later, in the Jewish homeland, the historical Jesus of Nazareth was an oral preacher and teacher among his fellow Jews in the Jewish. By all accounts that have come down to us, the historical Jesus' oral preaching and teaching was not confrontational in the way that Socrates' oral teaching in ancient Athens was. Nevertheless, the historical Jesus' oral preaching and teaching in the Jewish homeland was not designed to produce I-thou communication between the historical Jesus and someone in his live listening audience.
The historical Jesus specialist John Dominic Crossan speculates about what he considers to be 93 original oral sayings of the historical Jesus in his book The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1994b).
I have discussed Crossan's 1994 book in my 3,600-word OEN article "John Dominic Crossan on Jesus's 93 Original Sayings" (dated March 9, 2022).
I have also learned a lot about the historical Jesus of Nazareth from the following four books by Crossan:
(1) The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991);
(2) Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994a);
(3) Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (1996);
(4) The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (1998).
Now, as memorable as the public preaching and teaching of the historical Jesus of Nazareth may have been for those Jews who heard him, he was ultimately crucified from the local Roman authorities in Jerusalem on the charge of sedition and crucified as "King of the Jews." The local Roman authorities had a zero-tolerance policy for local kings.
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