Freedom in One Lesson

95.

How to Be like Socrates

Questions can tell us about the preconceptions of those who ask them and whether they seek wisdom or something else. Politicians asking about whom to blame for something they are at fault for or how to violate rights and liberties in a way that seems reasonable are not seeking wisdom.

Asking appropriate questions can be a useful means of achieving wisdom. Unfortunately for most of us, knowing what that wisdom is and how to transfer it to others is a high bar to clear. Leonard Read turns to Socrates for inspiration on this matter in “How to be like Socrates,” from his 1973 book Who’s Listening? (Read 1973).

Each of us is unique. But the method employed by Socrates to advance understanding is one that all of us might well try to emulate.

The Socratic method of teaching or discussion is to ask a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to a logical conclusion foreseen by the questioner. This is to teach a student the way of philosophizing, as distinguished from urging him to memorize the conclusions of philosophers.

. . . This is . . . quite the opposite of the popular “compulsory mis-education” which tends to turn students into carbon copies of so-called teachers. Instead of putting masks on students—blanketing their minds with someone else’s “wisdom”—real teaching is an unmasking process, helping [individuals] to find their own hidden aptitudes, potentialities, uniqueness. . . . Enlightenment is the mutual goal.

If the Socratic method can help us get to enlightenment, why don’t more people use it? “ Why, we must ask, is this superior method so little used? . . . Because we do not know the right questions to ask.”

How can we reach the level of wisdom needed to lead others to “own” such wisdom for themselves?

If one would be like Socrates, where does he start? . . . Training for enlightenment above and beyond where he now stands. . . . To ascend, one [first] reaches for the bottom rung. . . . To the extent that this is practiced and mastered, to that extent may one rise step by step toward the top.

. . . Consciously developed, it assures individual growth in awareness, perception, consciousness; and this leads in turn toward the good society.

. . . We seek for truth and share it with those who also seek. . . . We enrich or enlighten each other. . . .

. . . As one succeeds in probing for truth, he becomes more and more conscious of an ever-expanding unknown. . . . If one can reach the level of humility, of wanting to know, then the next higher rung of the ladder is within reach: an intelligent interpretation of self-interest. In reality, this amounts to an understanding of the Golden Rule: one’s interest is never served by doing injury to another.

Read turns to exemplars of the kind of wisdom he sought.

Immanuel Kant was at this level: no one has a moral right to do anything that cannot be rationally conceded as a right to everyone else-the principle of universality. The interest of self and of society are in harmony, not at odds.

William Graham Sumner . . . stated the principle in brilliant terms:

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is to take care of his or her own self . . . the duty of making the best of one’s self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.

Read also acts as an exemplar of someone seeking wisdom by asking serious questions of himself. “I . . . am aware of knowing nothing, and understand the Golden Rule. However, I do not know enough answers to ask many of the right questions. Why am I not more like Socrates? Simply because I am not wise enough. Nonetheless, each of us can strive for more wisdom.”

Finally, he gives a sample of the Socratic path toward liberty:

Q—Joe Doakes was lynched. Who did it?

A—A mob.

Q—Mob is but a label. Of what is it composed?

A—Individuals.

Q—Then did not each individual in the mob lynch Joe Doakes?

A—That would seem to be the case.

Q—Very well. Can any individual gain absolution by committing murder in the name of a label, the mob, a collective?

A—I guess not.

Q—Now that we have established that point, let me pose another question. Do you believe in thievery?

A—Of course not.

Q—Logically, then, you do not believe that you should use force to take my income to feather your own nest. True or false?

A—True.

Q—Is the principle changed if two of you gang up on me?

A—Not at all.

Q—One million? Even a majority?

A—Well, perhaps O.K. if a majority does it.

Q—Do you mean that might makes right?

A—Oh, no.

Q—That is what you have just said. Would you care to retract that?

A—To be logical, I must.

Q—You have now agreed that not even 200 million people or any agency thereof—government, labor unions, educational institutions, business firms, or whatever—have a moral right to feather their nests at the expense of others, that is, to advance their own special interests at taxpayers’ expense. You have also admitted that no one gains absolution by acting in the name of a collective. Therefore, is not every member who supports or even condones a wrong collective action just as guilty as if he personally committed the act?

A—I have never thought of it that way before but I now believe you are right.

Thus, by asking the right questions, one may thread his way through the maze of moral, economic, and political philosophy toward truth. This is the method of helping others to find right answers for themselves, the way to truth through their own minds. Your problem and mine is to become wiser that we may increase the number of the right questions to ask.

This, in my view, is the way to become more and more like Socrates.