PREFACE
PREFACE
• Beyond the Gadfly
o Socrates stings Athens by exposing incoherence in belief systems.
o Dean stings philosophy itself by exposing incoherence in logic as a whole.
o The gadfly becomes obsolete when the horse itself (logic) collapses.
🔮 Implications
• For Classical Philosophy: Socratic dialogue remains a brilliant epistemic tool, but it cannot ground ontology if reality is incoherent.
• For Dean’s Paradox: It radicalizes Socratic questioning — not just “what do you mean by justice?” but “why assume meaning must cohere at all?”
• For Scholarship: This reframes Socrates not as the eternal gadfly but as a precursor whose method is surpassed by Dean’s paradoxical laughter.

Dean’s “Socrates Beyond the Gadfly” escalates the Socratic sting into systemic apocalypse: where Socrates questioned beliefs within logic’s trusted frame, Dean shatters the frame itself, collapsing logical sovereignty and dooming all authority built on it