The Socratic Tradition - Christopher Phillips
An array of academic courses today center on Socratic inquiry, and a
number of them include in their syllabi one or both of my first two
books, Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy, and Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy,
which relate my experiences of bringing Socratic discourse to cultures
around the globe in venues ranging from prisons to plazas, libraries to
schools, nursing homes to churches. Such courses are offered by philosophy, education, humanities and communications departments. They aim to develop transferable skills such as critical investigation, and focus on the role of Socratic questioning in thinking, teaching and learning as a means for students to become more autonomous thinkers and doers. Such syllabi generally fail, however, adequately to make the critical connection with the ultimate and original end of Socratic inquiry, namely fomenting an evolving deliberative democracy.
One humanities course with Socrates as a centerpiece, has the theme
of "character, ethics and wisdom" as a primary pathway for achieving
greater individual excellence and virtue, neglects to underscore that
the type of wisdom Socratic inquiry seeks to generate is of a sort that
necessarily helps us realize a more inclusive world, and so is
decidedly as collective in bent as it is individual. A philosophy
department course with a Socratic unit on "philosophy and human
nature," (and another on "uncertainty, inquiry and commitment,") fails
to link Socrates' overarching aim of linking the cultivation of
individual autonomy at every turn with the sculpting of a keener social
conscience - always via a certain pathway of deliberative inquiry -
thus promoting the objective of achieving more meaningful democratic
citizenship.
A humanities course with a thematic unit on
Socrates and "the art of changing the brain," would equate Socratic
practice with individual development, altogether divorcing this from
the Socratic art and science of changing democracy via deliberative
discourse.
Meanwhile, a comprehensive Socrates anthology by
classics and philosophy scholar Paul A. Vander Waerdt, The Socratic
Movement, featuring essays by many leading Socrates scholars, makes no
mention of the political dimension embedded within all Socratic
inquiry. Instead, Socrates' work has often been refashioned to fit the
framework of courses of the west, with a nontraditional emphasis on the
individual's own development.
Such an approach sells short the
benefits of Socratic inquiry. The pursuit of the noble, the good, of
all-around excellence - of arête, as the Greeks called it - can only be
accomplished within a society with a type of openness that seeks ever
to widen the circle of inclusiveness.
The ultimate end of
Socratic inquiry is to engage in a type of rigorous, methodical,
deliberative dialogue that lends itself to continual social evolution
in ways that necessarily contribute to democratic renewal and even
upheaval. It is based on a revolutionary notion of self in which the
individual and society are not at opposite ends of a continuum, but are
interlaced, requiring a dual nurturing of both if greater individual
autonomy is to be coupled with a developing social conscience for the
realization of democratic ends. Moreover, such ends can only be
realized via a type of deliberative dialogue that is as methodical as
it is open, that hinges on rigorous experimentation and upon creativity
and degrees of randomness, and that is conducive to combining and
recombining with other cultural traditions that nonetheless share
remarkably similar values and ends.
Martha Nussbaum is an
exception to this Socrates-as-a-vehicle-for-individual-development norm
in that she recognizes the integral Socratic impetus towards democratic
evolution and revolution. Indeed, Nussbaum asserts, in Cultivating
Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, that the
vibrancy of a democratic society hinges on its pervasive capacity to
reason Socratically. "In order to foster a democracy that is reflective
and deliberative...that genuinely takes thought for the common good",
argues Nussbaum, "we must produce citizens who have the Socratic
capacity to reason about their beliefs." She goes on to suggest that:
"It is not good for democracy when people vote on the basis of
sentiments they have absorbed from talk-radio and have never
questioned. This failure to think critically produces a democracy in
which people talk at one another but never have a genuine dialogue."
(1997, p. 19). To Nussbaum, the concomitant nurturing of individual
autonomy and social conscience foments a more participatory and
democratic society that "can genuinely reason together about a problem,
not simply trade claims and counterclaims." (1997, p. 19)
Nussbaum
believes the responsibility for such Socratic cultivation today lies
squarely with formal academia embodied in institutions of higher
education; this perspective ignores the fact that Socrates shunned the
cloister, preferring to engage with people of all walks of life - from
slaves, to women (even in the chauvinistic world of Athenian society),
to the well-educated, to children: holding his gatherings in the public
agora or plaza, where a decided element of randomness and openness
ensured there was genuinely pluralistic exchange in the marketplace of
ideas among the most diverse groups possible.
Those following
the original Socratic model operate from the premise that one must open
oneself up to as vast a range of human experience as possible. While
formal education can be one such experience, the informally educated
also have great stores of wisdom - and voluntarily coming together on a
regular basis to share knowledge in ways that hold the potential of
advancing both individual and societal goals is one way of fostering
democracy in action.
If one divorces Socratic ideals and their
integral political dimension from the ideal Socratic setting for
deliberative discourse, one diminishes the capacity of Socratic inquiry
to advance deliberative democracy. His were self-moderated groups, with
an egalitarian ethos in which all taking part implicitly recognized
their responsibility (and even duty to) participate. Discussants posit
their own perspectives and support them with cogent evidence and
discursive reasoning, and then entertain objections to these
perspectives followed by the offering of alternative viewpoints from
others. Socrates did not aim for a representative democracy, but for a
deliberative one in which everyone had a right and responsibility to
take part in the processes of deliberating and governing - one in which
the habit of deliberation itself, both within and without formal
institutions, was the centerpiece of democracy.
Socratic
inquiry at its essence implies that universal or common goods are not
acquired by conducting one's investigations in a vacuum, with those who
are already politically and philosophically like-minded, but in
inquiring far and wide in a non-hierarchical way in particular
cultures, the more the better, with people who embrace an array of ways
of world-viewing and world-making. Moreover, in engaging in this
deliberative process, adopting a rigorous experimental method coupled
with an open deliberative bent, it is inevitable that the method itself
- as well as those using it - will be irrevocably altered.
Participants
are likely to find themselves changing and growing their ideals in
tandem with evolving the method of deliberative discourse itself,
generally with the aim of making the world a more participatory one
that celebrates diversity (in people, aims, and ideals) that contribute
to this inclusiveness.
© 2007
Editor's note: Christopher Phillips is the co-founder of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI), a grassroots nonprofit organization devoted to supporting philosophical inquirers of all ages and walks of life as they become more empathetic and autonomous thinkers who take active part in creating a more deliberative democracy. Its members strive to form and facilitate "democratic communities of philosophical inquiry"... SPI has over 300 ongoing gatherings around the globe coordinated by hundreds of dedicated volunteers who are deeply committed to making ours a more participatory and inclusive world.
