期刊名称：Amphora: A publication of the American Philological Association
出版年度：2007
卷号：6
期号：02
出版社：American Philological Association
摘要：Many or most of us make our first
acquaintance with Socrates in Plato’s
shorter and more dramatic dialogues, especially
those that depict or foreshadow
Socrates’ imprisonment and execution.
These dialogues present Socrates as a sly
but humble devotee of truth, an inquisitor of
political and religious convention, and a
courageous and attractively cantankerous
man of principle. Plato’s Socrates cheerfully
mulls the Big Questions of life with interlocutors
both friendly and hostile, and readers
delight when Athens’ gadfly sinks his teeth
into the latter variety, like Gorgias’ Callicles
or Republic’s Thrasymachus. As Socrates
himself observes in Apology, young folks
particularly enjoy seeing proud men who
are convinced of their own brilliance
methodically divested of that opinion by
Socrates’ needling; they then find themselves
eager to try their own hand at reducing
petard-hoisted adults to absurdity. Without
a doubt, young teens are especially
drawn to the more subversive side of
Socrates, and surely there are legions of us
whose abiding relationship with Plato
began when we were fifteen, following the
master of irony as he dismantled Euthyphro’s
smug piousness. If our own efforts at
refuting our parents’ hidebound insistence
on merely conventional behaviors (keeping
to curfews, say, or tucking in our shirts)
came up short, certainly we were to be
encouraged in the general inclination to test
assumptions and traditions
