The second sailing is not a method in any technical sense of the term. It is not a protocol, a series of rules to follow. It is not a collection of laws of thinking. It is not reproducible independently of that onto which it is “applied.” The second sailing is a method, however, in the ordinary sense of the Greek word methodos, that is, if we hear and emphasize the hodos, the way, the path. For a second sailing is after all a journey. It is the journey of Socrates, the story of which he himself tells his friends on his deathbed in the Phaedo. It is the story of a reorientation that involved more than simply thinking differently. It involved a much more radical, existential change, a dedication – one is tempted to say a conversion, a periagôgê of one’s own whole life, of one’s psuchê. The fact that Socrates conceived this change as involving his whole way of life finds its expression in the Apology of Socrates, where Socrates, right before being condemned to death by Athens, recounts to his fellow Athenian citizens the story of his philosophical awaking as a Delphic mission. While we are entitled to doubt that this mission was truly Delphic, it is quite clear that it was a mission. The arc of this twofold autobiography is the image of the philosophic life as an existential journey.