Socrates and the Relational Ontology of the Act

Socratic ignorance is the pause before distinction.

I affirm the candid truth spoken by Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.” Yet today I understand this proposition somewhat differently than it is usually understood. Most often it is read as an expression of intellectual modesty. It seems to me that something far more fundamental lies behind it.

Socrates was the first to expose the rift between opinion and knowledge. Generals thought they knew courage. Judges thought they knew justice. Sophists were certain they knew the truth. Yet every time, the same thing was revealed: a person possesses a ready answer without having distinguished the foundation within which that answer arose.

From this, Socratic aporia is born. A halt. Perplexity. An honest acknowledgment of ignorance. From the perspective of relational ontology, this is expressed very simply:

What is undistinguished calls for a pause.

Therefore, Socratic ignorance can be understood as the pause before distinction.

Yet it is precisely here that the boundary lies. After this pause, Socrates asked the question: What is it? What is justice? What is courage? What is the good? My work begins at a different point. After the pause, the question asked is not about essence, but about relation:

In what relation did this arise?

Not: What is it in itself? But: What holds this “in-between”? Who generates whom? What vector is already set within the relation? What makes this relation possible?

If Socratic aporia clears the space of false knowledge, the distinction of relation makes visible the structure that opens up after this clearing.

The genealogy of the right act looks like this:

Doxa (opinion) → Aporia (acknowledgment of ignorance) → Pause → Distinction of relation → Co-directionality → Act

Possible Objections

Objection 1 — “Socrates never spoke of relations. Why attribute relational ontology to him?” Answer: I do not consider Socrates a relational ontologist. I merely maintain that his aporia creates the space in which the next step becomes possible. Socrates clears. Relational ontology distinguishes. They are not the same thing.

Objection 2 — “If everything is determined by relation, does the human being not disappear as a subject?” Answer: No. The human being does not disappear. What changes is their place in explaining what is happening. The subject remains a participant in the act, but ceases to be its sole source. An act is explained not by the person alone, but also by the relation within which the person acts.

Objection 3 — “Does this not lead to passivity? One could distinguish endlessly and never act.” Answer: On the contrary. The pause does not exist for the sake of inaction. The pause exists for the sake of distinction. The goal is not the halt. The goal is the act. Yet an act born of understanding the relation, rather than a blind reaction.

Objection 4 — “Why can we not simply trust our feelings?” Answer: Because a feeling reveals the state of a participant in the relation, but does not always reveal the relation itself. Fear, hurt, enthusiasm, or elation can be real and simultaneously misleading as to what is taking place between people. Therefore, feeling is a signal. But not the ultimate ground of an act.

Objection 5 — “What if the relation still cannot be distinguished?” Answer: Then the very impossibility of distinction becomes a fact. Not every obscurity demands action. Sometimes the most truthful act is to maintain the pause until the structure of the relation becomes distinguishable.

Conclusion

Socrates was not a relational ontologist. He did not speak the language of relations, topology, and co-directionality. Yet he made the fundamental gesture without which relational ontology would have been impossible: he taught us to stop where a person too hastily mistakes their opinion for knowledge. He showed: opinion must not be mistaken for knowledge. My thesis takes the next step: knowledge about things must not be mistaken for an understanding of the relation within which those things arise. Today, therefore, I read the Socratic formula thus:

Socratic ignorance is the pause before distinction.

It is precisely within this pause that the possibility of the right act first appears.

Huseyn Gurbanov — Alın Ak / KaJe MeG