"The very first line of Open Socrates admonishes the reader, “There is a question you are avoiding.” For Callard, that question is: Why are you living this way? But this only points to a host of questions that Callard herself avoids..."
me for @thenation.com
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/agnes-callard-open-socrates/
me for @thenation.com
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/agnes-callard-open-socrates/
Comments
It feels like seeing a bunch of trees and assuming you're in a flat grassland.
(indebted in this section to my colleagues Kate Withy and Joey Jebari, who know their Tolstoy!)
Shields, JM. "Anarcho-Buddhist Utopia: Taishō Tolstoyans." Ch. 5 In Against Harmony, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190664008.003.0005
"In the time it takes to read this book, we are told much about interpersonal love and equal respect in conversation, but little about picket lines and equal respect in the workplace. Maybe, next time, Callard could examine that."
putting "well we didn't yell at each other" as both a priority and a sign of success
I experienced the same evasion early in the opening pages, & was disappointed to find her model of conversation fit only for classroom fun, rather than questioning how we are living, as Édouard Glissant argues, in Relation to/with the Whole-World.