“Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all—they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.”

— Robert M. Pirsig, book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

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Robert M. Pirsig164

American writer and philosopher 1928–2017

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“As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?…And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.”

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“Socrates: The shoemaker, for example, uses a square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?
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Socrates: But the tool is not the same as the cutter and user of the tool?
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Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?
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Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?
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Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?
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““What’s that all about?” Golden said to his wife, a rhetorical question. She looked at him and said nothing, a non-rhetorical answer.”

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“He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.”

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“There was a Socratic style of life (which the Cynics were to imitate), and the Socratic dialogue was an exercise which brought Socrates’ interlocutor to put himself in question, to take care of himself, and to make his soul as beautiful and wise as possible.”

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“Socrates splits himself into two, so that there are two Socrates: the Socrates who knows in advance how the discussion is going to end, and the Socrates who travels the entire dialectical path along with his interlocutor.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

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“Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body.. . . Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies.”

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“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”

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“There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted, beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else.”

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Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 188.

“Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all—they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.”

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