The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

The success of the Socratic method was staggering: a whole generation of young Athenians fell under his spell and were permanently altered by his teachings. The most famous of these was Plato, who spread Socrates’ ideas as if they were gospel. And Plato’s influence over Western thought is perhaps greater than that of anyone else. Socrates’ method was highly strategic. He began by tearing himself down and building others up, a way of defusing his listeners’ natural defensiveness, imperceptibly lowering their walls. Then he would lure them into a labyrinth of discussion from which they could find no exit and in which everything they believed was questioned. According to Alcibiades, one of the young men whom Socrates had bewitched, you never knew what he really believed or what he really meant; everything he said was a rhetorical stance, was ironic. And since you were unsure what he was doing, what came to the surface in these conversations were your own confusion and doubt. He altered your experience of the world from within.