Socrates Mystagogos
Initiation into inquiry
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:30th Jun '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£145.00(9781472484833)
For Socrates, philosophy is not like Christian conversion from error to truth, but rather it is like the pagan process whereby a young man is initiated into cult mysteries by a more experienced man - the mystagogos - who prepares him and leads him to the sacred precinct. In Greek cult religion, the mystagogos prepared the initiate for the esoteric mysteries revealed by the hierophant. Socrates treats traditional wisdom with scepticism, and this makes him appear ridiculous or dangerous in the eyes of cultural conservatives. Nevertheless, his scepticism is not radical: custom is not something on which we must turn our backs if we are to pursue the truth. Socrates assumes an epistemology and employs a method by which he induces his companions to begin the critical and self-critical process of philosophical inquiry, not ignoring conventional wisdom, but thinking through and reinterpreting it as they make constructive progress towards the truth. He provides conclusive and convincing arguments in support of controversial answers to some of the most important moral questions he poses.
"How should we think about what Socrates is doing when he engages this or that youth in conversation? Don Adams’ book offers an answer to this question, inspired by an ancient Greek religious ritual: Socrates is on a mystagogic mission to sting his interlocutor into an epistemological state of inquiry ...Socrates Mystagogos: Initiation into Inquiry is a thought-provoking defense of Socratic practice that will be of interest to a mixed, if not quite well-defined, scholarly audience."
- Andreas Avgousti, Columbia University, USA, in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2017
ISBN: 9780367595869
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 453g
190 pages