Criticism of the Socratic philosophy professor

 

Michel Onfray describes for us in the book Antimanual of Philosophy the characteristics of the Socratic teacher: the one who observes all the problems and can give his opinion or criticize everything. Dialectics, words and irony are his weapons against the laxity of thought, with them he tries to heal the student of his philosophical disability, and thus transform him into an active and critical think

Reading of Michel Onfray in Antimanual of philosophy.

 

In praise of socratization.

Actually, your relationship with philosophy depends on who teaches you the discipline. No one gets rid of that... And so, everything is possible. The worst and the best. Because you can both suffer from the teacher who definitively confronts you with the subject, and find a person who makes you like the discipline, its greatest figures and its essential texts forever. Do what you want with the first and, in return, treat the second with indulgence... But, before you get an idea, wait until you can judge with criteria.

 

The worst, without a doubt, is the official of philosophy: the professor obsessed with the official program. This, by the way, in the technological baccalaureate is made up of nine notions: Nature, Art, Freedom, Law, Technique, Reason, Consciousness, History, Truth, and a series of philosophers: some thirty works ranging from Plato (428-347 BC), the oldest, to Heidegger (1889-1976), the most recently deceased; because, for academic authorities, a good philosopher is a dead philosopher... This school catastrophe does not stray in the least from a sinister old textbook, from a course written years ago, and it does not in any way move off the well-trodden paths of the history of philosophy. It teaches you the chosen, obligatory and traditional fragments. Whether you are hungry or not, you are stuffed with useless notes for the day of the exam, since in no case are you asked to learn by heart and regurgitate learned knowledge.

 

The best is the Socratic teaching. And what is that? Socrates (470-399 BC) was a Greek philosopher who taught on the streets of Athens, Greece, nearly twenty-five centuries ago. His word was addressed to those who approached him in the public square, on the street. He unsettled them by making them understand with genuine irony and true command of the word that his certainties did not stand up to examination and criticism for long. After visiting Socrates and arguing with him, individuals returned metamorphosed: philosophy opened up immense possibilities for them and changed the course of their existence.