Rules taken lightly. Some of the rules that Socrates offers can be described as “rules” only with unease, because Socrates himself has an uneasy relationship to rules. He makes them and breaks them. He tells his partners not to make long speeches, then he makes a long speech.1 He uses some bad arguments, giving rise to debate later about whether he did it on purpose.2 He seems earnest; he seems disingenuous. He brings irony to philosophy and then dies for philosophy. Either Socrates and Plato or both had a taste for fun, for slyness, for the side of the self that isn’t all direct and sober in
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