Week 7: Putting it Back together
Let's reassemble this three-part dialogue. What's the upshot, if anything? Does Callicles’ intervention and protest vitiate even having the discussion? It's clear that at least he is not satisfied with the way it has gone.
Does the whole come together for a conclusion?
For discussion:
- If one wants to take the philosophical high ground, is one ipso facto bound to buy in on every discussion of this sort?
- Are the three parts symmetrical— that is, do they approach the same questions and in something like the same way, or are they all approaching things differently? (To some extent this reminds me [BAMcM] of the character writing of Tolstoy's War and Peace, in which the different characters not only disagree in <iwhat>what/i> they think from time to time, but also differ radically in how they think.)
- Does the dialogue come to a settled conclusion about rhetoric and the moral obligations that relate to it?
- Is it an aporetic dialogue like the others earlier dialogues? That is, does it wind up with the interlocutors (including Socrates himself) getting "stuck"? (We looked at this last time too, but it’s worth reconsidering.)
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