Book: The Socratic Method
Because “a room without books is like a body without a soul” (Cicero)
The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook, by Ward Farnsworth.
Summary:
About 2,500 years ago, Plato wrote a set of dialogues that depict Socrates in conversation. The way Socrates asks questions, and the reasons why, amount to a whole way of thinking. This is the Socratic method--one of humanity's great achievements. More than a technique, the method is an ethic of patience, inquiry, humility, and doubt. It is an aid to better thinking, and a remedy for bad habits of mind, whether in law, politics, the classroom, or tackling life's big questions at the kitchen table.
Drawing on hundreds of quotations, this book explains what the Socratic method is and how to use it. Chapters include Question and Answer, Ignorance, The Socratic Classroom, and Socrates and the Stoics. Socratic philosophy is still startling after all these years because it is an approach to asking hard questions and chasing after them. It is a route to wisdom and a way of thinking about wisdom. With Farnsworth as your guide, the ideas of Socrates are easier to understand than ever and accessible to anyone.
As Farnsworth achieved with The Practicing Stoic and the Farnsworth's Classical English series, ideas of old are made new and vital again. This book is for those coming to philosophy the way Socrates did--as the everyday activity of making sense out of life and how to live it--and for anyone who wants to know what he said about doing that better.
My capsule review:
This book is a must. Not just for anyone interested in Socrates, or in the Greco-Romans, or in philosophy. For anyone interested in good thinking and constructive discourse. That is, everyone, yes? Okay, maybe not. Still, Farnsworth makes an excellent case for why we should all practice the Socratic method, first and foremost on ourselves. The goals of our arguments should be to learn and approach the truth, not to shut down an "opponent." Indeed, we shouldn't think of conversations in an adversarial fashion at all. We are in this together, in order to improve ourselves, first and foremost, and society at large, insofar as it is possible. The Socratic method is all the more needed nowadays, in an environment of increasing polarization where everyone shouts at everyone else and where outrage and hurt feelings are taken to be definitive arguments. Farnsworth isn't naive: he realizes that these days the best we can do is to engage in Socratic resistance against an onslaught of destructive social media, imperiled "legacy" media, fake news, and alternative facts. But that's why it is all the more important that we do so. Read The Socratic Method, gift it to others, and practice, practice, practice.
I am a huge Farnsworth fan and agree 100% with what you say, Massimo. I have been digesting chapters 17 & 18 and had a lot of fun and "Ah ha" moments trying the method on myself. As you say, in these times the skills are badly needed, so our next meeting of the Copenhagen Stoics we are going to run as a training session; each of us coming with a claim to be tested. We meet online, so there will be challenges, but there should be no excuses for anyone not to get to grips with the method, and use it.
FWIW he appears the epitome of erudition. He has a couple of chess books free through a website too. As I recall they’re for “people who don’t like chess books” (and I probably misquote). They’re worthwhile too in my opinion.