Dear Socrates

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Having traveled from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First Century A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.

Dear Socrates,

I see a curious contradiction in your ‘Socratic mission’. On the one hand you champion rationality. On the other hand you speak continually of human folly, including your own. So my question for you is: Do you, like your student Plato ’s student Aristotle, believe that humans are rational animals? If so, what does that mean?

Yours truly,
Janice

Dear Janice,

I must admit to puzzlement on this score myself. The most obvious meaning of ‘rational animal’ would be a type of animal that tends to behave rationally.

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