The Socratic method is a paradoxical one. On the one hand, to practice it you must admit that you do not know the truth. On the other hand, you must act as if you were sure you knew the truth.

Children need to know there is this subject and they need to know what it is. There’s no reason why philosophy as a subject in itself can’t be taught in schools, and I think it should be.

The danger is that people will just get lost in a morass of addictive pleasures and not ask themselves the questions about the meaning of their own lives and not make the effort to make themselves interesting to others, so that human relations begin to crumble. I think we’re actually seeing that. If you look round the society in which we are, it’s not in a happy state.

The tower of language overshadows a cluster of smaller towers. These are the towers corresponding to the sensory systems. Tallest among this group is the tower of vision, “the master sense”.