This paper is concerned with how research candidate becoming is situated within the contemporary higher education policy context and in investigating alternatives. The idea for the paper arises out of a simple observation: that the Doctorate is a degree in philosophy. What does this observation have to offer for understanding research candidate becoming? Prevailing discourses tend to locate research education as a ready source of labour and commodities for the new economy, which is said to trade principally in knowledge. This stands in stark opposition to a time when knowledge was considered so scarce that even Socrates, perhaps the most significant philosopher of all time, considered that if he possessed any, it was knowledge of nothing--a paradox no doubt, but strikingly arcane in the current context. This paper explores the tensions between the notion of knowledge as a commodity and knowledge as ephemeral through Socrates' account of philosophical desire that appears in the Symposium. This provides fertile ground for exploring what becoming a researcher could mean today.