ABSTRACT
This final chapter deepens the understanding of Socratic learning by analyzing the ineluctable connection to and dependency on language and its ontological grounding. Bringing philosophical hermeneutics to bear on the issue, I show that a Socratic education is understandable in terms of Bildung, where the transformation and formation of the character/disposition ( hexis ) as an event of Socratic education is an also an event of language. In the foregoing chapters, I wove the interpretation of philosophical understanding into the fabric of the reading as related to the Socratic dialectic, the search for the virtues, and the educational concern for ethical character development as care for the soul. In this chapter, I offer a detailed analysis of this unique form of “normative” and “non-propositional” knowledge because it relates directly to my claim that Socrates is not a teacher, either in terms of a didaskalos or radical non-traditional pedagogue. The form of knowledge ( philosophical understanding ) Socrates seeks of the virtues does not admit of definite proof, possession, or transfer; it is impossible for Socrates to “teach” it to anyone because he continually “seeks” ( zeteo ) it, but does not have/hold it ( echei ). After presenting the ontology of language, I move to examine the Cratylus, seeking to demonstrate the essential manner of language’s unfolding in the elenchus-dialectic of Socrates. 1 I close the chapter with a reading of Plato’s Letter VII, exploring how language, although failing to formalize and communicate the full disclosure of the “truth” of the virtues, reveals the intimation of truth, which shines forth in the midst of dialectic examination in fleeting moments that enlighten the participants, inspiring the experience of finite transcendence or moments of authentic Socratic learning, which language ultimately engenders.
