The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook

by Ward Farnsworth

In the natural process of growth in the human mind, belief does not follow proof, but springs up apart from and independent of it; an immature intelligence believes first, and proves (if indeed it ever seeks proof) afterwards.10

The Socratic ethic can also help explain a certain kind of life story. Some people spend years struggling with hard questions and never quite find peace about them. They sometimes look with envy at others who seem to have found satisfactory answers early. Not having found answers of their own feels like unfinished work, a road half traveled, a test not completed. But the Socratic view is the other way around. Dissatisfaction with the answers you give yourself is a symptom of good health. Coming to rest means surrender to a kind of comfort that is always deceptive, no matter how tempting it looks or how deserved it feels. The Socratic way seeks a different kind of comfort—with uncertainty, with fallibility, and with beliefs that are never more than provisional. On this view the good life isn’t a result reached by winning the struggle. The struggle is the good life. 1.

In the end, real life didn’t cooperate with Socrates, either,

inasmuch as he got himself killed.

This matters in part just because the truth tends to be complicated.

know thyself.

socrates. Do you not see, then, that mistakes in life and practice are likewise to be attributed to the ignorance which has conceit of knowledge?

Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want. Symposium 204a

Kierkegaard: It never occurs to anybody that what the world now needs, confused as it is by much knowing, is a Socrates. But that is perfectly natural, for if anybody had this notion, not to say if many were to have it, there would be less need of a Socrates. What a delusion most needs is the very thing it least thinks of—naturally, for otherwise it would not be a delusion.

ignoti nulla cupido (there is no desire of the unknown).

Milder forms of this pattern are sometimes described in modern times as the Dunning-Kruger effect (after two psychologists who have studied it): idiocy tends not to fully recognize its own existence; incompetence prevents you from being aware of your own incompetence.6 Socrates regards the spirit of that idea as having broad and deep application. Our ignorance makes us unconscious of our ignorance. We are philosophically feeble, and too philosophically feeble to know it.

Fear is a good example. Socrates sometimes teaches that courage is a kind of knowledge and that cowardice is a form of ignorance. This sounds strange at first because courage and cowardice involve fear, and fear seems to be a feeling or emotion rather than a matter of knowledge. But when people fear what they should fear, we don’t call them cowards. Cowardice is when people fear what isn’t worth fearing. The onlooker who sees the cowardice understands that there’s nothing to be afraid of. The person in the grip of the cowardice doesn’t see this. True, the onlooker and the coward feel different things. But their different feelings result from a difference in what they understand, or how deeply the understanding has sunk in. Here is how Socrates put it (the party responding to him is Protagoras):

Then we say, “Lord God, let me not be distressed.” Moron, don’t you have hands? Didn’t God make them for you? So are you going to sit down and pray that your nose will stop running? Better to wipe your nose and stop praying. What, then—has he given you nothing to help with your situation? Hasn’t he given you endurance, hasn’t he given you greatness of spirit, hasn’t he given you courage? Epictetus, Discourses 2.16.11–14

Begin the morning by saying to yourself: today I will meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, and the arrogant; with the deceitful, the envious, and the unsocial. All these things result from their not knowing what is good and what is evil. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1

Socratic questioning typically avoids arguments about external facts. It tries to contradict a claim by using the beliefs of whoever holds it. That’s often wise; confronting people with facts is a surprisingly ineffective way to change their minds about anything.