Grant Balfour Utilizes Socratic Method with Victor Martinez

Though regarded in our time as the Father of Western Thought, it was by embracing his own ignorance and asking almost exclusively questions of his interlocutors that Socrates sought out wisdom.

Nor has the Socratic tradition lost its relevance as a rhetorical device in the modern age. One finds, for example, in the footage embedded here, Oakland right-hander Grant Balfour utilizing an urgent line of inquiry to better understand Detroit designated hitter Victor Martinez’s impressions of the world.

Asks Balfour of Martinez: “Why the fuck you looking at me, man?” And also: “What’s your fucking problem, man?” One notes immediately the deep similarities between this brief exchange and much of Plato’s Phaedrus.