In Plato’s Meno, we encounter the notion of aporia — literally translated, “no way forward,” “path blocked,” “standstill.” It refers to the kind of moment in your own thinking when you suddenly realize that you have no idea what you’ve been talking about, or that you have been completely wrong and don’t know how to go on. Socrates excels at frustrating people into standstill. Characteristically, he will say things that provoke strong opinions in his interlocutors and then question them until they see their own confusion. He points out that until you realize that you don’t know, you are actually not ready to learn. You might be ready to memorize and repeat, but that is not learning. We usually experience moments of aporia as painful; that is why Socrates was described as being like a stingray in conversation.

In all the projects of life that are important to us, there will be many moments or even periods of aporia — when we fall into serious self-doubt, in realizing that we don’t know what we are doing. An education should offer many occasions to experience aporia, and to practice finding a way out of it. That is how thinking and discovery actually work. Most educational institutions have very little patience with aporia because their task is to instill information as smoothly and copiously as possible. They may have moments in which their students are made to engage in “critical thinking,” but those moments do not last long because there is a syllabus to get through. One of the things that I have been most grateful for at St. John’s College is that in every class we allow stretches of aporia to occur, indeed we invite it. One of the great benefits of regularly coming face-to-face with your own ignorance is that you get to develop the ethical virtues of humility, generosity, and courage. It is easy to point out the ignorance of others, but it requires heart to be able to seek out your own ignorance.

— Krishnan Venkatesh, Faculty Member