The Socratic dialogue: a discussion aiming at the clarification of truth and the exposure of falsehood, inconsistency, fallacy

Socrates Today

by Mordecai Roshwald  

Socrates, who lived from 470 to 399 B.C., is separated from us by nearly two and one half millennia. This means that he had not in common with our progressive age the automobile, the aeroplane, the television, the computer, the telephone (whether cellular or regular), video games, virtual reality, etc. Can we, then, “relate” to him? Is he in any way relevant to our lives and our problems? Can we possibly learn from him and benefit from his teaching? 

On the face of it, the answer is in the negative. The gap is too wide. Moreover, had his teaching been relevant, it would well have been absorbed during the many centuries which have elapsed since his times and incorporated in the civilization into which we were born and which we continue. 

Yet, on second thought, such a categorical statement may be all too hasty, and requires re-examination. 
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The dialogue, as Socrates developed it, and as Plato was further to refine it, was not our interacting, for it focused not on information but on reflection, not on “useful” knowledge but on theoretical insight, not on a search of facts, important though they may often be, but on quest of wisdom. Nor was the Socratic dialogue a mere exchange of gossip - technically a dialogue too - but a discussion aiming, at least as far as Socrates was concerned, at the clarification of truth and the exposure of falsehood, inconsistency, fallacy. 

Living in a civilization in which people drive to work, concentrate on the job, relax before the television screen, we have little of the opportunity which Socrates had to take a walk through the streets of the city, encounter an occasional acquaintance and enter into a discussion which may lead to profound conclusions. This, seemingly incidental, pursuit of wisdom is not open to us; at least, it is considerably restricted. Yet the fruits of the Socratic dialogues are available to date in extant Platonic works, in the form of dialogues as well (some of which may be genuinely Socratic, all of which are instructive). Due to the art of writing - in Aeschylus’s words, “the all-remembering skill”[1] - the reflections and the mode of argument of Socrates can be communicated over the ages. We can, if we so choose, learn and benefit from them. 

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