Another fine Monday morning read from Stephen L. Hall!
Oddly enough, one of the greatest influences in my life is a man who has been dead for over two thousand years. That man was considered dangerous and corrupting merely because of the power of his words. What was so dangerous and corrupting? His love of truth.
That man’s name was Socrates, deemed by the oracle at Delphi as the wisest man who ever lived. He merely referred to himself as society’s gadfly, there to make them take notice of things they generally took for granted by being an annoyance. For his efforts to improve society, the minds of his students, and basic human understanding, he was given the option of exile or state ordered suicide by drinking hemlock.
As many people know, our knowledge of Socrates comes to us because one of his students, Plato, recorded some of his more famous public discourses. Plato also used Socrates as a character in his own writings to advance his own, rather than Socrates’s, philosophy. However, Socrates also appears, quite mockingly, in the plays of Aristophanes, demonstrating his contemporary unpopularity.
Some people are also unfamiliar with the fact that he also appears in one of the first contemporaneous recordings of history, The Peloponnesian Wars, by Thucydides. Socrates was a warrior and a leader of men, though a secondary figure in the history of the war, before he turned his attention to philosophy.
The words of Socrates can be distinguished from the works of Plato if one recognizes the tenor and nature of the conversation. The topic of conversation for Socrates always tended to center around defining the metaphysical abstract, usually pertaining to that which society held forth as a virtue for which prominent members of the city were held in high esteem.
If a general was known for courage, he would seek out that general to discuss the actual nature of courage; or if a politician were known for his honesty, he would engage him in a conversation about the very nature of honesty. He was not seeking to test the man’s virtue, but to test their understanding of that virtue. To his hapless victims, it did not always appear that way because they invariable would get caught in such conversation contradicting their initial definition, thus proving that they really did not understand that virtue which they professed the understanding of.
To many observers it appeared that Socrates was merely playing a public game of “gotcha” to embarrass and humiliate the elite of the city, to display their pomposity and arrogance in front of the crowds. Many educated people even today read these dialogs and come away with essentially the same conclusion. They were, and are, of course, entirely incorrect in their assessment.
Socrates was sincerely seeking to understand that which he himself would freely admit that he was not wise enough to understand. One of his most defining statements was to say that he knew enough to know that he knew nothing. It is for that that he is the wisest of men. His discussions always began in the form of a question, and that question was always of the nature of “What is __________?” Further that blank, was invariably a virtue which society holds in high regard.
Because while words often define us, true understanding first begins with defining those very words. How can you say that a man is brave, if you cannot even define precisely what you mean when you say the word ‘brave’? John Locke, was, in this regard, more of a student of Socrates two thousand years later than the students which knew Socrates personally. John Locke repeatedly pointed out that any discussion must first begin with an agreement by the participants in the definitions of what they were discussing.
When I have tutored people, regardless of the subject, it always begins first with understanding the definitions. Only from the definitions can we hope to actually understand anything. I have often had discussions on the internet with people who want to say that fascists are not socialists, but they want to have their own ‘special’ definitions of ‘socialism’ and ‘fascism’. Discussions do not work that way.
Socrates also had his own unique method of getting people to understand these definitions. While Locke might accept that conversants agree upon their terms so that they could move the discussion forwards and not talk past each other with their meanings obfuscated; to Socrates the whole point was to understand the true definition of the word itself.
The means to this end which Socrates developed was essential to his genius: he didn’t make a statement. He only asked questions, leading questions to be sure, but only questions. The other person was free to answer any way that they wanted, and Socrates would take that answer as a starting point to investigate the matter further by asking for clarification of that very answer.
Socrates never taught anyone; instead he asked the other person to teach him. So when I said that he had students, including Plato, that was a lie. Socrates was always the student, always the one asking the questions in an effort to gain understanding, to become more enlightened. It is the accidental effect of this method that the teacher tends to always learn more than the student, the student being Socrates.
That is also the key to his brilliance in breaking down the barriers to the way that other people think. People are more than willing to tell you what they think, particularly if they have a willing student asking them questions, especially when those question demonstrate that they are heeding your words closely, asking for clarification.
However, when a person’s own words end up conflicting with their own words from a previous statement, they can’t really dismiss themselves as foolish and uneducated, as people often do with others. (This happens particularly often in internet conversations.) A contradiction forces the person to admit that they do not fully understand the subject like they thought that they did. It strikes at the person’s fundamental perceptions of themselves, but the person behind the strike is themselves.
French sociologists developed a term for the mental state where one’s core values and beliefs are brought into conflict and confused, they called it ‘anomie’. Only in a state of anomie are people ready and able to change their beliefs and conceptions. Sociologists are convinced that it is because of internal conflict and people have an innate desire to avoid such conflicts.
Of course, Socrates would question those sociologists understanding of what is anomie. It was his position that every persons should strive to question their own beliefs and values on a continuing basis to gain a greater understanding. I suppose those sociologists would call this a continuous state of anomie but be unable to explain the desire to settle the conflict. Socrates thought it so important that it was his basis for the statement that, “An unexamined life, is not worth living.”
So how does this affect our normal discourse? It is an approach that works with those who are, in fact, men of reason, rather than unthinking SJWs who just revert to name calling when asked a real question.
I will leave you with an example of the employment of the Socratic method which helped me out when I was in one of my graduate schools in discussion with a professor. He had a misunderstanding about the nature of a seldom used statistical concept of a mean average deviation in comparison with the standard deviation typically used in statistics. In particular, he had in his mind reversed the ratios that three standard deviations typically equaled about four mean average deviations.
He would no listen to the students who were telling him that he had gotten it wrong and that he wasn’t understanding. His defenses were up, and he was not going to be wrong.
So, later, I went to his office to talk to him about it one on one. I just simply asked him to explain it to me. I asked him follow-up clarifying questions. When he got to where his own explanations contradicted himself, he came to the revelation of his own misconception.
It took about fifteen minutes, but he was thanking me for setting him straight. I hadn’t, I had just asked questions. It was extremely difficult for me to do, as I tend to be argumentative and lack patience. However, it was in that moment, I realized just how truly powerful and persuasive the Socratic method can be if one is willing to be humble and actually use it.
I think, in that short conversation, I learned a lot more than him; just not about the topic we were discussing. This is how all wisdom begins, with the recognition that I, not you but I, know nothing. Please, do explain it to me.
