Stephen Colbert and Philosophy by Aaron Allen Schiller

Author:Aaron Allen Schiller [Schiller, Aaron Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court Publishing
Published: 2009-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

THIRD SEGMENT

Better Know a Philosopher

10

Is Stephen Colbert America’s Socrates?

MARK RALKOWSKI

STEPHEN COLBERT: I want to change the world, change it a little bit every day. Not much, but give me the wheel. Give me the ball, God. I’ll run it down the line.

CHARLIE ROSE: But how can you change the world?

STEPHEN COLBERT: By catching it in the headlights of my justice.

—Colbert on Charlie Rose, December 8th, 2006

Socrates (470-399 B.C.) was famous for wandering the streets of Athens and asking prominent politicians, artists, and craftsmen questions they could not answer without embarrassing themselves. This made some people angry. Socrates was convinced his unpopularity was the ultimate reason Athens brought him to trial and sentenced him to death in 399 B.C. “I am very unpopular with many people,” he told his jury. “This will be my undoing, if I am undone” (Apology, line 28b). Others were entertained by the spectacle. Some say Socrates made philosophical argument into the new wrestling match, the new contest that appealed to the competitive impulse of Athenians.132 And, in this contest, he was the champion whom the young admired and nobody could defeat.

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