The Usual Picture Of Socrates Is Of

Every Government, Left Or Right, Always Engages In Moral Crusades. What Else Are They Supposed To Do? Especially When They Make War; Any War Has To Be A Moral Crusade.

You Read The Pragmatists And All You Know Is: Not Descartes, Not Kant, Not Plato. It's Like Aspirin. You Can't Use Aspirin To Give Yourself Power, You Take It To Get Rid Of Headaches. In That Way, Pragmatism Is A Philosophical Therapy. It Helps You Stop Asking The Unhelpful Questions.

Had There Been No Plato, The Christians Would Have Had A Harder Time Selling The Idea That All God Really Wanted From Us Was Fraternal Love.

Complaints About The Social Irresponsibility Of The Intellectual Typically Concern The Intellectual's Tendency To Marginalize Herself, To Move Out From One Community By Interior Identification Of Herself With Some Other Community - For Example, Another Country Or Historical Period... It Is Not Clear That Those Who Thus Marginalize Themselves Can Be Criticized For Social Irresponsibility. One Cannot Be Irresponsible Toward A Community Of Which One Does Not Think Of Oneself As A Member. Otherwise Runaway Slaves And Tunnelers Under The Berlin Wall Would Be Irresponsible.

What Counts As Rational Argumentation Is As Historically Determined And As Context-dependent, As What Counts As Good French.