Agnes Callard: belief

Transcript context

…Here’s my second Straussian reading. When I read Plato, it seems obvious to me that one of the most striking features of Socrates is that he has never raised a child. Under the second Straussian reading of your book, you’re saying parenting needs to be much more central to ethics and decision theory, and that there’s something badly wrong with philosophy that it isn’t. Again, you can’t quite come out and say that, but in various indirect ways you say it, or at least you show it. This is, in part, a theory of how so many things in our life are more like parenting than we realize, and if you don’t have the parenting experience, there’s something deficient in your understanding of the world. What says you? I think that Socrates had a very parental relationship — it comes out in Phaedo. That’s the best place for it — to the young men who were his followers. You’re right, that’s not the same thing as raising a young child. He did have children but who knows how much . . . Again, from the Phaedo it suggests . . . Exactly. [laughs]…

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