Taking Socrates as a model of public discourse would not be complete without noting that it got him condemned to death. The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit.
Socrates was not executed because he "asked questions". He was executed because he opposed the Athenian democracy and was considered partly responsible for the brutal oligarchy ("The 30 tyrants") which was installed after Athens defeat in the Peloponnesian war. While Socrates did not directly support the tyranny, one of his students was a leading member. This is why Socrates was executed for "corrupting the youth" after the tyranny was overthrown.
Point taken - I was thinking of the charges out of context:
A general amnesty issued in 403 meant that Socrates could not be prosecuted for any of his actions during or before the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. He could only be charged for his actions during the four years preceding his trial in 399 B.C.E. It appears that Socrates, undeterred by the antidemocratic revolts and their aftermaths, resumed his teachings and once again began attracting a similar band of youthful followers. The final straw may well have been another antidemocratic uprising--this one unsuccessful--in 401. Athens finally had enough of "Socratified" youth.
Cambridge University classicist Professor Paul Cartledge claims that, rather than being a farce, Socrates’ trial was legally just and that he was guilty as charged. Instead of being a warning from history, he argues, it is an example of just how different Ancient Greek politics often were.
“Everyone knows that the Greeks invented democracy, but it was not democracy as we know it, and we have misread history as a result,” Professor Cartledge said. “The charges Socrates faced seem ridiculous to us, but in Ancient Athens they were genuinely felt to serve the communal good.”
> The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit
Actually, it's a broader set of people. Most ordinary people don't like too many questions under ordinary circumstances. Every book on effective communications that I've read said that asking leading questions will trigger hostility and even if you're asking out of pure curiosity people will misinterpret them as leading questions. You have to develop the skill of signaling curiosity and asking in a manner that doesn't induce hostility.
In my lifetime I've been shouted at multiple times due to using the Socratic method. It would always take me by surprise - I was always asking in good faith. Only when I read these books did I realize that it wasn't the people who were flawed but the method.
There Are limited domains where it is effective - like between a teacher and a student or between two people engaging in rhetorical debate. But in most situations it's a bad idea.
I've heard that therapists are now taught to limit their use of "why [did|do] you..." questions to patients, because people are likely to instinctively take those as hostile or suspicious. Maybe these questions seem especially personal, and especially likely to bear a subtext of "it doesn't seem like you had a good reason".
Scientists regularly run into complications getting things to work but with determination and cleverness can often find a way to make it happen - maybe the same is true here.
It's fundamentally embarrassing to be caught with your pants down not knowing the sort of basic things the line of questioning inevitably leads to. Most of us are intellectually sloppy. Few of us will admit to that.
You'll find an army of people willing to defend say human rights, but very few of them could convince Socrates why. It's not that it's an indefensible position, of course it is, it's just that nobody really seems willing to shine light at central ideals like that. It's something that's so often taken for granted that very few actually bother to learn to motivate it, so when questioned, they flounder and fear maybe it can't be motivated, and react with aggression and threats instead of curiosity.
In the end, the Socratic method is a harsh and bitter medicine that not everyone wants to swallow. Everyone likes to call themselves a skeptic when it comes to the thinking of others, but few wants their own assumptions scrutinized. I think walking around like Socrates accosting people with it probably will get you in trouble now as it did then.
It's not even about being right or wrong. The person on the receiving end of the Socratic method can experience irritation and frustration. If you expect them to be collaborative after you engaged them in a time consuming, frustrating experience, you are in for a surprise.
And if you (the questioner) are actually proven wrong after weeks of debate, rest assured you will never get the other person to listen to you. Next time, they'll ask you to "write up a doc" and prove that you know what the hell you are talking about.
Are you ever proven wrong as the questioner. The original method consist of extending the argument so far that at some point some contradiction will show up. Instead of blaming it on the extension then one claims victory and that the original statement was wrong.
I don’t even think it’s the ego of the person being questioned, Socrates was a major annoyance in the incessant way he asked questions. It is quite rude by any measure, as shown by how often people get angry at him in those dialogues. However it is effective, at least for us to read
>It is quite rude by any measure, as shown by how often people get angry at him in those dialogues.
The way I read the dialogues people get angry with Socrates not because he is rude, but because his questions force them to confront their own hypocrisy and thoughtlessness.
"The asking of questions is often regarded as hostile by those whose worldview or self-interest is threatened by the reasonable responses those questions may elicit."
I wish I was warned about this in school. My career has been condemned.
On a related note, I've been a big fan of Socratic questioning[0] and have often used it to guide picking between 2 different things, such as technologies. It's also a really nice way to understand something in a consistent way, even if you're not comparing it to something else.
The only place the Socratic Method works is in the fictional dialogues of Plato, where Crito or Meno or Phaedrus or whomever are set up as obvious straw men, answering "yes" or "no" as Plato chooses, to questions most modern readers (and probably more than a few of his contemporaries) would answer differently.
Didn't see the movie: as represented in a book that came out at about the same time (Harvard 1L?), the law school version of the Socratic method didn't sound all that Socratic.
Readit News
A general amnesty issued in 403 meant that Socrates could not be prosecuted for any of his actions during or before the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. He could only be charged for his actions during the four years preceding his trial in 399 B.C.E. It appears that Socrates, undeterred by the antidemocratic revolts and their aftermaths, resumed his teachings and once again began attracting a similar band of youthful followers. The final straw may well have been another antidemocratic uprising--this one unsuccessful--in 401. Athens finally had enough of "Socratified" youth.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/socrates/socra...
also this:
Cambridge University classicist Professor Paul Cartledge claims that, rather than being a farce, Socrates’ trial was legally just and that he was guilty as charged. Instead of being a warning from history, he argues, it is an example of just how different Ancient Greek politics often were.
“Everyone knows that the Greeks invented democracy, but it was not democracy as we know it, and we have misread history as a result,” Professor Cartledge said. “The charges Socrates faced seem ridiculous to us, but in Ancient Athens they were genuinely felt to serve the communal good.”
https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/socrates-was-guilty-as-charged
Actually, it's a broader set of people. Most ordinary people don't like too many questions under ordinary circumstances. Every book on effective communications that I've read said that asking leading questions will trigger hostility and even if you're asking out of pure curiosity people will misinterpret them as leading questions. You have to develop the skill of signaling curiosity and asking in a manner that doesn't induce hostility.
In my lifetime I've been shouted at multiple times due to using the Socratic method. It would always take me by surprise - I was always asking in good faith. Only when I read these books did I realize that it wasn't the people who were flawed but the method.
There Are limited domains where it is effective - like between a teacher and a student or between two people engaging in rhetorical debate. But in most situations it's a bad idea.
You'll find an army of people willing to defend say human rights, but very few of them could convince Socrates why. It's not that it's an indefensible position, of course it is, it's just that nobody really seems willing to shine light at central ideals like that. It's something that's so often taken for granted that very few actually bother to learn to motivate it, so when questioned, they flounder and fear maybe it can't be motivated, and react with aggression and threats instead of curiosity.
In the end, the Socratic method is a harsh and bitter medicine that not everyone wants to swallow. Everyone likes to call themselves a skeptic when it comes to the thinking of others, but few wants their own assumptions scrutinized. I think walking around like Socrates accosting people with it probably will get you in trouble now as it did then.
And if you (the questioner) are actually proven wrong after weeks of debate, rest assured you will never get the other person to listen to you. Next time, they'll ask you to "write up a doc" and prove that you know what the hell you are talking about.
The way I read the dialogues people get angry with Socrates not because he is rude, but because his questions force them to confront their own hypocrisy and thoughtlessness.
I wish I was warned about this in school. My career has been condemned.
I once wrote a blog post on how to use Socratic questioning to learn more about Docker at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-tod....
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning
Dead Comment