Agnes Callard > Quotes

“The Socratic motto is not, “Question everything,” but “Persuade or be persuaded.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“When one makes a radical life change, one does not submit oneself to be changed by some transformative event or object; one’s agency runs all the way through to the endpoint. The nature of that agency, as I shall argue, is one of learning: coming to acquire the value means learning to see the world in a new way. But this, in turn, means that the process of valuing motherhood and the process of becoming a mother are not two separate events flanking a moment of decision, but rather one and the same process”
― Agnes Callard, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

“It is not hard to admit that you were wrong, but very hard to admit that you are wrong.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Then why were they trying to put him to death? Socrates’ answer is: fear of being asked “Why?”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Being like Socrates” just means being open-minded, and willing to admit when you are wrong, and unafraid to ask challenging questions. This is not an ethical theory. It is more like a critical-thinking “sauce” that can be poured over any ethical theory, or simply over common sense.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Confesión puede entenderse como una advertencia: ¡No te acerques a las cuestiones fundamentales! Mantente lo bastante ocupado como para que tu mirada no tenga nunca ocasión de volverse hacia dentro, porque, una vez que lo hace, has entrado en el camino de la autodestrucción. Incluso aunque escapes a la tentación del suicidio, nunca recuperarás la despreocupada placidez anterior. No tendrás manera de responder a esas preguntas y no podrás dejar de hacértelas, así que la mejor estrategia es cuidar de que la caja de Pandora siga con la tapa muy bien cerrada.”
― Agnes Callard, Sócrates al descubierto

“When it comes to untimely questions, the challenge is not simply to find answers. We can have those without inquiring. We can even have true answers (“right opinion”) without inquiring. What inquiry gets us are answers that are both true and stable. When we have not really reasoned our way to a conclusion, it is easily reversed—especially under conditions of urgency. The preference for knowledge over mere “right opinion” is the preference for answers that have been stabilized by inquiry.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“By his own lights, what Tolstoy discovered is that the examined life was not worth living.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“People whose religions commit them to the existence of the afterlife feel the terror of death just as anyone else does, nor are they spared the wrenching pain of loss. They do not respond to their loved one's death as though the loved one has moved to a place where they can't contact them for a while but expect to later rejoin them. They might say that is how they see the situation, but their profound sorrow and their mourning practices point in a different direction.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“The reason why we aren’t inclined to acknowledge the existence of Socratic ethics is that the existence of Socratic ethics is an indictment of us.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“For the most part, we make an effort to treat each other as though we were equal, and that often involves tactfully ignoring the ways in which we are not. Much of what gets called "social skill" involves inducing the feeling of equality in the face of all the facts that challenge this feeling.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“All fiction offers up the possibility of escape from everyday life, but great fiction allows us to explore what we otherwise look away from.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Materialists might claim that what they care about is not the person themselves, but their "legacy" or "memory" or "spirit." People invoke these terms in order to avoid a troubling admission of concern for someone who does not exist, who is not there, who is nothing. But if you see the dead person's legacy or spirit as enough of a thing that it makes sense for you to direct love and concern at it, if you think that in honoring their "memory" you are honoring not some part of yourself, but a being distinct from yourself, then you are wavering from materialism. You evidently think that even when the body is gone, something of a person remains, disembodied.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“When you shine the light of reason on the way we talk about ourselves, you see that we are being ridiculous.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Aspirants open themselves up to a distinctive experience of losing everything without seeming to have lost anything at all.”
― Agnes Callard, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

“If you don't care about anything, including the fact that you don't care about anything, you are invulnerable. But also: invulnerability is wasted on you.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Behavior qualifies as agency insofar as it exhibits the distinctive intelligibility of being a response to reasons. “I do what happens,” as Anscombe said (1963: 52), but only when what happens happens for some reason.”
― Agnes Callard, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

“Sometimes, when we are very determined not to ask a question, we make a claim of having very decisively answered it.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Knowledge is simply the name for an answer that is the product of a completed inquiry into a question.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Socrates believed that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being,” and that belief motivated him to make time for untimely questions. Whereas the nonphilosopher is “is always in a hurry when he is talking; he has to speak with one eye on the clock,” the philosopher resists taking life fifteen minutes at a time: “He talks in peace and quiet, and his time is his own.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Wavering is not a phenomenon consigned to the ancient world, though it has gone by many names. The philosopher Bertrand Russell called one species of it “emotive conjugation”: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool. I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing. I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.28”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“We are unable to think about the most important things on our own.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“A Sócrates, la perspectiva de pasar una eternidad investigándola le parecía «el colmo de la felicidad».”
― Agnes Callard, Sócrates al descubierto

“[Tolstoy's] "Confession" reads as a cautionary tale: Stay away from fundamental questions! Keep yourself busy enough to ensure your gaze never has time to turn inward, because, once it does, you put yourself on the road to self-destruction.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“If two philosophers meet, and they meet as philosophers, then it is likely that before long one of them will tell the other why they are wrong about something.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

“Hate is a source of injustice; it punishes its targets for existing. Confronting hate is a response to injustice; it punishes its targets for making it more difficult for marginalized people to exist.”
― Agnes Callard, On Anger

“Not all of your thoughts are equally significant to who you are.”
― Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life