The Outstater

January 5, 2025

Socrates Is on Your Side

THERE IS HELP for those having difficulty with political talks at the dinner table or at the office — dreading them, actually, and whenever possible avoiding them. Instead, try calling on Socrates and 2,300 years of wisdom.

Over the holidays I came across a tool for navigating, surviving, these talks. It is “The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook” by Ward Farnsworth, dean of the University of Texas School of Law. Farnsworth believes that the Internet has made political conversation more prickly:

“Social media in particular amounts to a campus on which atrocious habits of discourse are taught by the persuasive (emotional) method. The consequences for our political and cultural life have been sad and sometimes calamitous.”

I am abridging here the dean’s “12 rules of engagement” for keeping your political discussions on a sane and civil plane. Take a minute and gird yourself for the tumultuous year ahead, — tcl

1. An Open Table — Every topic and opinion is worthy of your “discussion partnership.”
2. Purpose — The goal is not to prove yourself right but to get all partners to the truth, or as close to it as humanly possible.
3. Please Prove Me Wrong — Questioning is not to be taken as an affront but rather the natural and welcome response to your position.
4. An Argument Deserves an Argument — If someone says something you think is wrong, the appropriate response is not to get either angry or dismissive but to explain why exactly you think it isn’t so.
5. Reason Rules — Arguments are judged on their merits, that is, on the quality of evidence supporting them.
6. A Good Start — Inquiry begins whenever possible by finding some piece of common ground.
7. Self-Skepticisim — One’s own partisanship is to be distrusted.
8. Group Skepticism — Popular opinion and easy consensus also are to be distrusted.
9. Manners — Inquiry is expected to be courteous.
10. Candor — Say only what you really think.
11. Offense — Make your claims in ways that do not offend your discussion partners.
12. Humility — Conclusions are only provisional.

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