Benquo

They are addressed to a specific situation and become wrong when mechanically transplanted into an inappropriate context.

The reason to recover the historical Socrates is not only accuracy about the distant past.

It is that by seeing this relevant aspect of the past more clearly, we might see more clearly what we are up against now.

Socratic cross-examination requires an interlocutor who at least would feel ashamed not to put on a show of accountability.

The people Socrates questioned were performing wisdom, but they were performing it because the culture still demanded that leaders seem accountable.

They would sit for the examination because refusing to would be disgraceful.

Their scripts collapsed because the scripts were designed to look like real accountability, and real accountability is what Socrates brought.

There is a useful framework for understanding how public discourse degrades, which distinguishes between guilt, shame, and depravity.

A guilty person has violated a norm and intends to repair the breach by owning up and making amends.

An ashamed person intends to conceal the violation, which means deflecting investigation.

A depraved person has generalized the intent to conceal into a coalitional strategy.

I will cover for you if you cover for me, and together we will derail any investigation that threatens either of us.

The leaders Socrates questioned were, at worst, ashamed.

They had taken on roles they couldn't account for, and they wanted to hide that fact, but they still felt the force of the demand for accountability.

But they engaged.

They felt they had to engage.

The culture of Athens, even in its degraded state, still held that a man who refused to give an account of his claims was disgraced.

Depravity is a further stage, and Sartre described it precisely in his book Antisemite and Jew.

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Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.