like puppies

Plato, Republic, 549 b-c:

“I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed how when adolescents get their first taste of argumentation, they abuse it and treat like a game. They can’t find any other use for it except disputation; they use knock-down arguments which they borrow from others to demolish people’s positions. Like puppies, they love to tug away at anyone they come across and to tear his argument to shreds with theirs.”

“Yes, it’s incredible,” he said.

“So before long –once they’ve demolished a lot of arguments and often had their own demolished as well– they find they’ve radically changed their minds about everything. And the result of this is that people take a dim view of them, and of philosophy in general.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said.

The four most dogmatic, aggressive, triumphalistic arguers I met as an undergraduate and graduate student were all permanently out of philosophy within 3 or 4 years. And even now, when I run into them by chance many years later, the first thing they do is try to start an argument and beat me in it, even though they stopped giving a damn about philosophy maybe 20 years ago. Why?