Should Thinkers Tip Their Hands?
Great debaters know how to argue both sides of a case. And great Socratic teachers, likewise, know how to challenge any position. But such masterful abilities can also leave us wondering, “What do they really believe?” “What do they stand for?”
On the one hand, you might say that our inability to read or predict the views of a great teacher or thinker is a virtue. On the other hand, you might wonder what the point of all the learning is if the person espousing it can’t be pinned down?
Too much partisanship, too much obvious opining, and the thinker risks becoming a shill or a caricature. But too little partisanship, too little opining, and the thinker risks being vapid and irrelevant.
There is a tactical reason for keeping one’s cards close to the chest—other than the Straussian reason (fear of getting cancelled): once you tell people where you stand on an issue, they will try to reduce your thinking to your conclusion. Great thinkers can’t and shouldn’t be reduced to their political or legal views; and yet it’s only human for us to try to reduce people in this way. At the same time, if a thinker has no relationship whatsoever to a set of conclusions, this should also disturb us. But how do we find the right balance?
As a bonus, I’m sharing a poem I just published. See if you can guess my views on the basis of the poem alone.
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