ABSTRACT
Philosophy qua philosophy is protopolitics. At its best, philosophy is at once partisan and nonpartisan. But philosophy stands opposed to the unreflective modes of understanding at a given time and place—no matter how normal, acceptable, or even exemplary—if people are prevented from seeing issues of mutual concern. Indeed half of a philosopher’s problem is that her interlocutor does not already see the problem. This core philosophical attitude has been carried into our own day—albeit in ideologically opposed ways—by both the Popperian and Marxist traditions (Adorno 1976). Neither tradition has been especially moved by the argument from repair. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Whereas the Sophists intervened on behalf of someone who had already perceived a problem (much as a lawyer would today), Socrates endeavored to make people see problems in aspects of their thinking that they would normally treat as unproblematic. He typically launched his inquiry by persuading his interlocutor that seemingly isolated problems of judgment and action, the existence of which the interlocutor would easily admit, were really symptomatic of the same deep conceptual disorder.
