Philosophy gurus try to sell us ready-made solutions that, so they say, can solve our lives’ problems. Socrates did something better. Instead of offering ready-made solutions, he provided us a method to find the answers ourselves. His approach has vast advantages and, through the centuries, has proven remarkably effective.
The Socratic method is designed for everyday practice, not for abstract speculation. It can help us make better decisions in all private and business matters.
The prescriptions from Socrates and Plato can be employed by anyone who studies their method for a few hours and who has the commitment to keep improving day by day until those prescriptions become second nature to him.
How do we practise the Socratic method in everyday life? I consider intellectual humility as the first step. In Plato’s work “Apology,” Socrates argued that he was wiser than most people because he was willing to acknowledge his ignorance when he really did not know the answer to a question.
Nonetheless, I must clarify that Socrates was not saying that ignorance and lack of expertise constitute assets. He never said that we are better off by knowing less, reading less, or closing our eyes to the world. No, he never implied that an intellectual void is better than solid ideas.
The pretence of ignorance
The key aspect in Socrates’ statement is the willingness to acknowledge one’s ignorance. Relatively few individuals are willing to acknowledge their ignorance even in areas of which they know nothing about.
Protecting one’s ego is the default position in psychology. In children and adults, the automatic reaction is to play along and pretend that one knows the subject, or that one has a working knowledge. Nobody wants to be portrayed as utterly clueless.
Socrates was the first philosopher in history to notice that arrogance slows down knowledge, and that extreme arrogance will prevent learning altogether. An arrogant mind is a closed mind. The ego will stand by its pretence of knowledge until it goes down like the Titanic after having hit an iceberg.
If we want to employ the Socratic method to solve problems and improve our lives, we’d better say out loud “I do not know the answer” more often. We’d better declare our knowledge in the concerned field as insufficient, disorganised or outdated.
If we pretend to know more than we actually do, we will consume our psychological energies to maintain the fiction. If we devote our attention to protecting our fragile ego, our alertness will wane, and we will miss the opportunity to learn what we need to learn.
The real issue
Focus is the second step for practising the Socratic method in everyday life. We need to focus on the real problem, the real question that we need to answer. Plato’s dialogues in which the central role is played by Socrates illustrate this step beautifully.
For instance, in “Euthyphro,” Socrates will immediately ask the key question “What is piety?” He concentrated his attention on the core matter and asked questions to narrow down the field, expecting to arrive at the truth at the end of the process.
In everyday life, the problem of identifying the real issue is far more difficult than it appears at first sight. When someone says “I am feeling exhausted lately” or “I cannot get ahead in my career,” he is describing a symptom.
Socrates would have asked question after question until he had pinpointed the real issue. What is preventing the concerned person to rest sufficiently at night? What are the obstacles that are preventing him from getting ahead in his career?
I regard the second step of the Socratic method as the most crucial for solving problems. If we manage to define the issue accurately, chances are that we’ll find a solution fairly quickly.
In my personal experience of the Socratic method, I devote half of my efforts to identifying the real issue. If I need to ask twenty questions to get this done, so be it. I need to spend one full week to pinpoint the real problem, I consider it worth it.
Why is the concerned individual feeling exhausted? I would look into reasons for chronic stress, and if those have evolved through the years. Why has the problem become acute in the latest weeks or months? What has specifically changed in the lifestyle of the concerned person?
The underlying belief
Socrates’ most famous quote is that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The quote comes from Plato’s “Apology” as part of Socrates’ defence speech in the criminal trial he faced in Athens in the year 400 BC.
We should keep that quote in mind when applying Socrates’ method in our own life. An unexamined life is one that goes on automatically without any reflection. It’s a life where questions are not asked, improvements not made, and opportunities not seized.
Step two of the Socratic method consists of examining our life to identify the real issues. More often than not, we will find an array of problems that need our attention, but Socrates’ own practice, as chronicled by Plato, showed that we need to focus on the main issue, instead of getting sidetracked.
Whenever possible, problems should be described together with the underlying ethical belief; the latter aspect is frequently overlooked, but the omission of the underlying ethical beliefs renders problems more difficult to solve.
Socrates said in “Apology” that the greatest good for human beings is to discuss virtue daily.” He was not calling for holding endless debates about good and bad, but for assessing our actions in terms of good and bad beliefs.
Beyond local wisdom
In my example about exhaustion, if we identify overwork as the real issue, we could define the problem as “I feel too tired because I work too much.” However, if we add the underlying belief, the description will become much more precise. “I feel too tired because I work too much because I view my work as a top priority.”
Socrates would have endorsed this approach because it will help us enormously to solve the problem; we can then go to the third step of the process, namely, the search for solutions. Plato and Socrates were heavily disadvantaged in step three because, compared with us today, they only had access to local wisdom.
Thankfully, we have access to the internet and to records of the experience of the whole world in solving similar problems. Socrates could conduct a two-hour debate with Euthyphro on ethical matters, but could not research complex issues on the internet in a matter of seconds.
However, the Socratic method helps us prepare the terrain. I can obtain more accurate results if, before conducting a search, I have pinpointed the problem exactly, especially by adding the aspects that correspond to Socrates’ call for “an examined life.”
I regret that the Socratic method is not taught in schools in sufficient depth, so that students can get sufficient practice in a complex sequence of problem-solving steps.
Plato described a large number of examples in his works. Those examples of Socrates’ method of inquiry are relevant to anyone interested in sharpening his mind. I encourage readers to familiarise themselves with those examples and enjoy all the benefits that philosophy can bring to our everyday lives.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Consistency: The key to permanent stress relief.”