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As I left class this morning, I began to consider Socrates the man instead of Socrates the philosopher. I wonder what it was truly like for Socrates, hours before his death, to be immersed in philosophical dialogue with friends. Postulating on ideas such as the immortality of the soul, the correspondence between pleasure and pain, and the undeniable existence of forms. Socrates' friends seem sincere in their love of Socrates, but the man of Socrates is never allowed to shine through this dialogue...we are simply met with the philosopher. Maybe we know the man through the philosophy, but if identity is defined by multiplicity, perhaps we are left with a "symbolic" Socrates instead of a "real" Socrates. The subject, Socrates, is endowed with unshakable authority concerning philosophical and ethical inferences. He is substantiated through philosophizing, which may be the greatest fear of all philosophers. This fear could represented through irrational logical assumptions like, "As long as I continue talking about all of these ideas people will listen to me, and as long as people are listening to me I exist." Soon the man behind the philosopher is lost and the general notion of Philosophy becomes an agent the philosopher attaches him/herself to, similar to becoming an appendage on the ass of Philosophy. An example of how a subject attaches to an abstract ideal: a judge who acts as the tangible manifestation of Justice with a capital J sheds light on how the other (defined as radical alterity and incongruous uniqueness mediating our relationship with other subjects-that which mediates semblance within our world and relationships-symbolic order) acts through him/her (feminists have no sense of humor, so I should just be gender inclusive right?). On the one hand, the judge may be a miserable, lonely, bitter corrupt individual, but once the robes come on the person is transubstantiated into something other than him/herself. The individual's words become Justice, just as Socrates' words become True.

The way we are posited into abstract roles raises questions on how considerations on the good and true, what is ethical and just, and any ideas concerning universals are engendered. The way we form identity is a life long process starting in childhood. Children are paced into singular affiliations well efore they have the ability to reason about different systems of identification that may compete for their attention. What ethical duty do we have towards reason? Is what we consider ethical contingent to the singular attitudes and environment we assumed, or were assumed for us, in childhood?Childhood acts as a basis for ethics--but how do alienation, culture, and ideology influence our future ethics without representing ethics at all. Ethical consideration born from ideology--void of ethical substance. The ethical experience seems relativistic while ideologies seems to be culture and location specific.

The illusion of unique identity is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that characterize the world in which we actually live. It makes me wonder how well we can know Socrates the man instead of Socrates the philosopher. Roberto Bolano sums up this feeling rather nicely:


"They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him...."