The Socratic Method at Christmas
How to begin re-assessing your core values
[This modified excerpt from my latest book How to Think Like Socrates, discusses ]
The Socratic Method is a process of thinking. Its constant refrain is “Yes but…”, because it happily seeks out one exception after another to our definitions, assumptions, and other verbal rules. It forces us to think for ourselves by continually placing in question our most important values in life, such as our goals for self-improvement.
Wisdom cannot be taught but, perhaps, it can be learned…
Socrates did not think books were useless. In fact, he was an avid reader, who frequently enjoyed quoting other writers. However, like the cryptic oracles of Apollo, we have to question what we read and learn from others and put it to the test by trying to identify exceptions, or situations where it no longer holds true. Even the pronouncement that no man was wiser than Socrates, and the imperative to know ourselves, need to be examined in this way to be properly understood. Wisdom cannot be taught but, perhaps, it can be learned – especially if we make the effort to examine our own lives, and the assumptions on which our actions are based.
You can start right now. Where should you begin? At the very end, of course. Imagine you are facing execution like Socrates, perhaps even having your life judged, and possibly condemned, by your peers in court. For the sake of argument, let’s assume your fate is sealed, and there’s no point trying to convince the jury to acquit you. Looking back on your life, what would matter to you the most? What, in other words, would you want your life to stand for? This is how we frame the question today during a process known as “values clarification”, used in cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Let’s go further. Suppose you’re raising the hemlock cup to your lips, as Socrates did, about to take the fatal sip that will close your eyes for eternity. Imagine that these are your last few moments. Pause and think of what appeared most important to you throughout life. If you’re not sure how to answer, use this as a clue – what did you spend most of your time doing? That’s a very simple and instructive question to ask. Time is our greatest asset, in a sense. In what did you actually invest your time, yesterday and the day before? How important do those activities really seem, as you imagine looking back on them from the end of your life?
The pursuit of wealth is easy to examine from this perspective. As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. How valuable is a million dollars? How much good would it be doing in your bank account as you are on the verge of passing away? It’s too late to spend it, either wisely or foolishly. From this point of view, when time is up, it’s more obvious that money itself is of no intrinsic value. What matters, if anything, is the use we choose to make of it. Many of the things that appear valuable throughout life are of this nature. We store them up, hoping to use them one day, when we get around to it, but perhaps they’re of no real value unless they’re used wisely.
Fame likewise seems worth pursuing to many people. Today we quantify fame even more simply than we do wealth. Perhaps you have a million followers on social media. Imagine, on your deathbed, asking yourself: Did that alone make life worth living? Once again, perhaps fame, like wealth, is merely a means to an end. At most, it creates the opportunity to influence certain people. If you never actually used your reputation for anything good, though, what was the point of spending time acquiring it? What if this is true of most of the things that appear valuable to the majority of people? What if we are born into a society that perpetually confuses the appearance of value with real value?
How about the opposite of wealth and fame? Suppose your business has failed, and you’ve lost everything in a bankruptcy. Suppose your reputation has been ruined by slanderous gossip, and, like Socrates, you’re surrounded by people who hate you, without even knowing you. Sometimes life can be unfair. Imagine, once again, your last moments. How much do such things as poverty and ridicule really matter, as long as you are certain that you did what was right? How much did they matter to Socrates? How much did they matter to other individuals like him throughout history?
What about the pursuit of knowledge? That seems like a more noble goal to many people, than acquiring wealth and fame. Is all knowledge equally valuable, though? Could you die content, not knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Have anyone’s final words ever been: “I only wish I’d finished watching all the Friends DVDs, so that I know how the series ends!” What about knowing how to help people, through the study of science or medicine? Of what value is that, or any other knowledge, unless you put it into practice wisely?
During his trial, Socrates distanced himself from the earlier philosophers who had made claims about the nature of celestial bodies. He considered this futile speculation, and of little practical value. You see, toward the end it becomes more obvious that many things we imagined to be important were only of potential value. What matters is how we use them, before our time is up. Facing up to the prospect of our own death can shatter this illusion, and free us from the bonds of our misplaced values.
Fortunately, you do not need to be executed to find this out. Why? Because Socrates has already done it for you. By contemplating his life, and the lives of other men and women who are long dead, we get to see what sense their values make once their lives are over. Socrates, during his trial, is presented as a man who was willing to live in relative poverty, and risk making powerful enemies, in order to pursue his philosophical mission. He considered a certain type of wisdom to be immeasurably more important than things like wealth and reputation. We should ask ourselves, as he asked others, whether we have somehow been duped into “undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the lesser” throughout our lives. If our goal is to improve ourselves, he says, we should ask whether wisdom and excellence of character come from possessing such things as wealth and reputation, or vice versa.
Many people, perhaps most people, never consider this perspective until it’s too late but sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get a second chance. In the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol (1843), the miser, Ebeneezer Scrooge, has a moral epiphany, and decides to share his wealth with the poor, after a dream in which the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him his own gravestone.
In 1888, Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, had a similar awakening, after reading, in a French newspaper, his own obituary, titled “The Merchant of Death Is Dead” – it had been published by mistake. Nobel was so shocked by this negative account of his legacy that he rewrote his will, dedicating 94% of his vast personal fortune to set up the famous Nobel Prizes for those conferring the greatest benefit on mankind in different branches of the sciences and arts.
By reading about the death of Socrates, and using your imagination, you gain an opportunity to skip ahead to the end of your own life. If you can do this, you may realize that many things which appear important, or which other people tell you are important, are not important in reality. Ask yourself the question (to borrow a Biblical phrase): quo vadis? – Where are you going? Socrates knew that we have to begin by eliminating our false convictions, to clear the way, before we can begin, with open minds, to learn the true goal of life. You can’t fill a jar with clean water if it’s already full of dirty water. We should examine our values by asking ourselves regularly whether the things we desire really make our lives worth living.
Where does it leave us, though? With an uncomfortable sense of uncertainty, perhaps, about the most important things in life. There is one glimmer of light. What if knowing how to examine our lives by asking these sorts of questions, turns out to be our goal? Socrates would later say that the greatest good for man, the purpose of life itself, is to converse daily about virtue, or the improvement of our own character, because “the unexamined life is not worth living.” After his trial, he reminded his friends to keep questioning themselves and others, including his own sons, in order to purge intellectual conceits, especially if they seemed to care more about wealth, or suchlike, than about wisdom and virtue. Philosophy, for him, was, first and foremost, a process for improving our character, by critically examining our deepest values.
Contemplation of death with the Socratic method in mind. Beautiful
Wow! So much Food for Thought! And for better New Year’s resolutions & actions!🎉🌟