Plato Grogias
I had a hard time with this particular text, but one thing that stuck out to me as an important concept was the relationship between knowledge and its practical uses. I do find Callicles’ statement about practical knowledge to be particularly impactful, especially when he is criticizing Socrates. I think Callicles actually makes a fair assessment of Socrates’ lack of ability to engage the real world with his knowledge. Rather, he continues to spew this “knowledge” to his students. Callicles also implies that the knowledge Socrates shares with his students is not actually relevant or important to the real world. The only problem I have with Plato’s argument from this point is the lack of self-awareness. From my understanding, he is claiming that philosophers are somehow better than sophists at applying their knowledge to the real world, or that somehow what philosophers say is more important than what sophists say. I would find both sophists and philosophers to be equally out of touch with the real world. Philosophers do more sitting around talking about things that aren’t necessarily important to the immediate outside world than any other discipline.
Reading this dialectic also posed a question. I may not have been reading carefully enough; but was Socrates actually present during this discussion? Is this writing a sort of transcription of a real dialogue? Or was this a hypothetical dialogue between these men and Socrates, written by Plato?