Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

is when you regard my claim on the truth as sufficient to structure our interaction that I have the freedom to speak.

The answer is to stop seeking symbolic displays of how independent one is from the recognition of others, and accept dependence. The orator tries to convince himself, by means of the reverberating applause of the audience, that what he has is knowledge; the philosopher eschews this pretense in favor of actually trying to acquire the knowledge.

The ultimate form of respect is being seen in terms of one’s power to help others figure out how to live.

when you give someone a cognitive good, what you get, in return, is a signal of your own worth. Their willingness to receive the products of your mind is a mark or a sign of your fitness to lead. I

them is only respect from subordinates. When they were your superiors, you hungered for their recognition, but you forget to factor in how much less that recognition would mean to you once you came to see them as your inferiors; and

Much of what gets called “social skill” involves inducing the feeling of equality in the face of all the facts that challenge this feeling.

they are trying to get the “equality point” set high,

what you really want is elevated status and equality. I will then explain how, once equality has been Socratized, you can have both.

say that human beings are social picks out the fact that a normal human life is a life spent with other people; to say that we are political means something more specific, which is that we live together under a shared idea of how to do so.