Catherine Pickstock argues that Socrates does not articulate a “metaphysical” view of self-presence or interiority. She focuses on the erotic character of knowledge in the Phaedrus, which she points out, radically undermines the interior/exterior boundary. Knowledge on this view always involves ecstasy, an attraction to an object outside, and the subject is constituted by this ecstasy. The subject is thus not a sealed-off interiority but is always opening out to what is exterior to it. The gaze that Socrates defends is not the totalizing gaze of modernity; Socrates believes that the particulars cannot be encompassed, since they are by participation in the Good. The Socratic gaze is not mastering, but reverential.
Whether this is true to Socrates I do not presume to decide. But it certainly appears to be true .
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…
The Possibility of Possibility
"Might could” is a Southern expression meaning “maybe I could” or “I might be able to,” conveying…
The False Promise of No Contact
Around the time nineteen-year-old Alice began cutting ties with her family, she announced on social media that…
