Zen master Socrates

Socrates' main beef with the Sophists is that rhetoric is merely a form of flattery, that it strives to give the appearance of plausibility rather than proceeding on the basis of an investigation into what is actually the case; thus it is not a true art. And yet, Socrates only offers a positive account of what is actually the case (for example, what is rhetoric) when pressed by others to do so. The rest of the time, as we have mentioned often in class, most of what he says is riddled with vagueness, verbal trickery, and even downright contradictions. How could the Sophists have been any worse--in the sense of presenting only what is plausible rather than what is true--than Socrates; indeed, from what we have read so far, Socrates isn't really even very good at presenting what is plausible! Here's a possible explanation: Socrates didn't believe that attaining the truth--the ideal realm of goodness, beauty, and truth--was possible through language or indeed at any time that we are embodied souls with a limited perspective, not even for philosophers. So, maybe what's going in with Socrates' simultaneous bad reasoning combined with his denigration of the Sophists is similar to what is going on with the Zen master who presents his students with verbal paradoxes: the point is not only to humble the arrogant student who believed any kind of absolute knowledge was possible, but even more to parody the entire attempt to attain truth by such a limited method as linguistic investigation. Thus, Socrates is not so bad with argumentation that no one pays him any attention. He is just good enough to get people to listen and just bad enough to (intentionally) steer the whole project towards shipwreck every time. The dialectic as parody. Socrates as Eastern guru. "The way that can be spoken of is not the true way." (Lao Tzu)