The Socrates Express

“No,” came the reply. “There is none.”

When Chaerephon relayed the oracle’s words to Socrates, he was flummoxed. No one wiser than he? How could this be? He was a mere stonecutter’s son who knew nothing. Oracles, though, are never wrong, so Socrates decided to investigate. He buttonholed revered Athenians, everyone from poets to generals. Socrates soon discovered these men were not as wise as they thought they were. The general couldn’t tell him what courage is, the poet couldn’t define poetry. Everywhere he turned he encountered people who “do not know the things that they do not know.”

Perhaps the oracle was right, Socrates concluded. Maybe he did possess a kind of wisdom, the wisdom of knowing what he didn’t know. For Socrates, the worst kind of ignorance was the kind that masquerades as knowledge. Better a wide and honest ignorance than a narrow and suspect knowledge.

It is the introduction of this innocent ignorance, this “marvelous new naiveté,” as the philosopher Karl Jaspers puts it, that is Socrates’s greatest contribution to human inquiry, one that still drives the philosophical impulse today.

Socrates was not the first philosopher. Many came before him: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Democritus, and Thales, to name a few. These men turned their gaze heavenward. They strived to explain the cosmos, to penetrate the mysteries of the natural world. Results were mixed. Thales, brilliant in many ways, was convinced all matter in the universe consisted of water. Like Socrates, these philosophers asked questions, but theirs were mainly “what” and “why” questions. What is everything made of? Why do the stars disappear during the day?

These sort of questions didn’t interest Socrates. They were unanswerable, he thought, and, in the end, unimportant. The universe may be fascinating, but it’s not much of a conversationalist, and conversation was what Socrates craved the most.

“Every question is a cry to understand the world,” said the cosmologist Carl Sagan. Socrates would agree, up to a point. Every question is a cry to understand ourselves. Socrates was interested in “how” questions. How can I lead a happier, more meaningful life? How can I practice justice? How can I know myself?

Socrates couldn’t fathom why his fellow Athenians weren’t more interested in these kinds of questions, given their zest for improvement, be it a better way of making statues or practicing democracy. Athenians, it seemed to Socrates, worked tirelessly to improve everything—except themselves. That needed to change, he thought, and he made it his life’s mission to do so.

This marked a major shift in philosophy. No longer is it fuzzy-headed speculation about the cosmos. It is about life, your life, and how to make the most of it. It is practical. Indispensable. As the Roman politician and philosopher Cicero said, “Socrates was the first to call Philosophy down from the heavens, and establish it in the towns, and introduce her into people’s homes.”

Socrates didn’t behave the way we think philosophers must. He displayed no interest in amassing followers. (When students inquired about other philosophers, Socrates happily directed them.) He bequeathed no body of knowledge, no theories or doctrines. He published no dense tomes. In fact, he never wrote a single word. We know Socrates today thanks to a handful of ancient sources, most notably his student Plato.

There is no such thing as “Socratic thought,” only Socratic thinking. Socrates was all means, no ends. We remember the gadfly of Athens today not for what he knew but how he went about knowing it. He cared more about method than knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t age well. Methods do.

Scholars deploy many fancy terms to describe Socrates’s method: the dialectic, the elenchus, inductive reasoning. I prefer a simpler term: talking. I realize that doesn’t sound sophisticated, and probably won’t snag me the Nobel Prize, but it’s true. Socrates talked to people. “Enlightened kibitzing,” the contemporary philosopher Robert Solomon calls it. I love that. It brings philosophy down to earth and elevates it at the same time.

The examined life demands distance. We must step back from ourselves to see ourselves more clearly. The best way to achieve this perspective is through conversation. For Socrates, philosophy and conversation were virtually synonymous.

Socrates talked to all sorts of people: politicians, generals, craftsmen, as well as women, slaves, and children. He talked about all sorts of subjects, too, but only important ones. Socrates wasn’t much for chitchat. He knew life was short and he wasn’t about to waste one second of his allotted time on trivialities. “We are considering how to live the best possible life,” he said, exasperated, to a sophist named Gorgias. “What question can be more serious than this to a person who has any sense at all?”

As much as he loved conversation, Socrates, I think, saw it as simply another tool in his kit. All this enlightened kibitzing had a goaclass="underline" to know himself. By talking to others he learned how to converse with himself.