Abstract
Socrates op de markt, Filosofie in bedrijf was first published in the Netherlands in 1997 and reprinted in 1999.1 It was translated into German and published in Germany in late 2000. The book covers the need today for Socratic dialogue, its methods, its uses and related concepts. These include elenchus (the refutation of what one thought one knew); maieutics (Socratic midwifery making latent knowledge conscious); the relationship of knowledge to feeling, virtue and the formation of personality; and the distinction between three types of knowledge: scientific (episteme), professional (techne) and practical wisdom (phronesis). Our extracts — the first in English — set out Kessels’ arguments for using Socratic dialogue today, his account of its unique role in organisational learning, and a case history: a dialogue with a top management team in which elenchus plays a signal part as they seek to define a policy for handling redundancies.
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Boom/Meppel, Amsterdam ISBN 90 5352 350 2. The German edition was published by Belz Verlag.
Senge P M The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization New York, Doubleday 1990.
Ib, p 10
Nonaka I H Takeuchi The Knowledge Creating Company. How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation pp 11, 85 ff Oxford University Press, New York 1995. See also Swieringa, J. en A. Wierdsma Op weg naar een lerende organisatie Chapter 9 Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1990.
Senge 1990, pp 188, 189. Nonaka, Takeuchi 1995, passim, especially pp 11, 85. Similarly: Swieringa and Wierdsma Op weg naar een lerende organisatie 1990, p 40.
Senge The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization 1990 pp 240–241. Discussion has the same root as percussion and concussion. The literal meaning of dialogue is, unlike Senge (Continued) and Bohm suppose, a communication (logos) between two (dia) persons or roles: a question-asker and a responder. Cf. Edwards P (ed) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy New York, Macmillan 1967. Guthrie W K C Socrates p 120 Cambridge University Press 1971, following Xenophon, says that Socrates used the Greek word for holding a dialogue (dialegesthai) in the meaning of: a procedure of joint deliberation among several people for the purpose of arriving at a definition. For Socrates ‘philosophy was summed up in this idea of the ‘common search’, a conception of the purpose of discussion directly contrary to the sophistic idea of it as a contest aiming at the overthrow of an opponent’ (p 129).
The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization p 243.
The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization pp 238–243. Senge quotes extensively from work of David Bohm.
The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization pp 243ff.
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The distinction between first and second order questions can be found in many places, for instance in the work of Kolb, van Hiele, Watzlawick and Plato. See Kolb D A Experiential Learning Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1984, Kolb D A, Fry R ‘Towards an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning’ in: Cooper C L Theories Of Group Processes London 1975, Hiele P M van Structure and Insight. A Theory of Mathematics Education Orlando, Academic Press 1986, and Watzlawick P, Beavin J H & Jackson D D Pragmatics of Human Communication New York, Norton 1967.
Cf. Fogelin R J ‘The Logic of Deep Disagreements’ Informal Logic VII.1 pp 1–8.
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Thus also Ryle G Plato’s Progress Cambridge University Press 1966.
See for other versions the historical overview in Loska R Lehren Ohne Belehrung. Leonard Nelson’s Neosokratische Methode der Gesprächsführung Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 1995.
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This assumption seems to be contradicted by the enormous number of educational institutions in our society and the huge amount of money being spent on them. But appearances are deceptive here. A radical analysis of this state of affairs was given by Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society Penguin, Harmondsworth, England 1971). In his view, educational institutes achieve the very opposite of what they aim at: they make pupils and students ignorant, insecure and dependent. This is the result of the so called hidden curriculum. Apparently, the focus of the school is the curriculum, the sum total of the learning contents. But there is a hidden curriculum in the school that is much more important and influential, because it is taken for granted by all participants. Some elements of this curriculum are: To achieve something in society, a student must get used to the fact that everything that is valuable can not come from within, but must be transmitted from outside. Consequently, we need a group of experts, a professional elite, i.e. the teachers, on the one hand, and on the other hand an attitude of passive consuming in the students. A presupposition is here that everything that is valuable can be given the form of a school-subject. Now the experts organise themselves in institutions, to secure their own status and power and to make other people dependent on them. This occurs not (continued) only in educational institutions, but also for instance in (mental) hospitals, political advisory boards etc. Institutions like these reduce people to an object of manipulation, they aim at restraining people’s own activity, guiding it in a certain direction or replacing it altogether. Thus their own initiative is disqualified as being primitive and ignorant. In Illich’s terms: convivial relations, serving personal and social activity, are being replaced by manipulative relations, which transform someone into a passive consumer. But learning is an activity that cannot be combined with manipulation from others. And most of our knowledge and skills are not the result of instruction, but the result of unfettered participation in a meaningful setting. There are many resemblances between this point of view and those of theorists of the learning organisation. In a less radical form Illich’s principles can be found in the work of many pedagogues and educationalists. Cf. for instance Bruner J S, J J Goodnow, G A Austin A Study of Thinking Science Editions, New York 1962. Bruner J S Towards a Theory of Instruction Cambridge Mass. 1966. Dewey J. Experience and Education Macmillan, New York 1938. Freire P Pedagogie van de onderdrukten Baarn, In den Toren 1972.
The concept of knowledge is used here in a loose sense. It includes the belief condition (A must belief that P is true) and the justification condition (A’s belief that P is true must be justified), but not necessarily the truth condition itself (P is true). In modern philosophy several philosophers have taken up the analysis of the relationship between theory and practice, for instance Polanyi, Toulmin and Nussbaum. See Kessels J P, F A J Korthagen ‘The Relationship Between Theory and Practice: Back to the Classics’ Educational Researcher 25/3 (April 1996) pp 17–22.
This problem, the problem of ‘akrasia’, is analysed extensively in Plato’s works. Socrates always maintained that knowing something implies acting accordingly. One of his central strategies in dialogue is therefore to bring someone to see that he does not really know what he claims to know. That is a necessary phase in the investigation, because the false conviction that one knows something is the main obstacle to being able to learn something new. Only after realising that one does not really possess the knowledge one thought one possessed is the motivation kindled to really go searching for it.
Cf. for this point Walsh J J ‘The Socratic Denial of Akrasia’ in: Vlastos G The Philosophy of Socrates. A Collection of Critical Essays pp 235–263 Anchor Books, Garden City, New York 1980 and Gould J The Development of Plato’s Ethics Cambridge University Press 1955. Instructive here is also Ryle’s distinction between knowing how and knowing that, cf. The Concept of Mind. Penguin, Harmondsworth 1949 and ‘Teaching and Training’ in: Cahn S M (ed) The Philosophical Foundations of Education Harper & Row, New York 1970. Plato, for that matter, considered behaviour, contrary to Socrates, as dependent not only on knowledge, but also on the development of habit. Knowledge is then only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for change. To change conduct there has to be knowledge, but also an external impulse followed by the development of habit.
Cf. Cranston M ‘Francis Bacon’ in: Edwards P Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 1967.
This point is stressed by Senge too. See The Fifth Discipline. The Art And Practice of the Learning Organization 1990 Chapters 11–12.
Cf. Senge The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization 1990 p 202.
C Argyris and D Schön distinguish two levels, which they call single loop learning and double loop learning (in Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective Reading MA, Addison Wesley 1978). Swieringa and Wierdsma distinguish three levels, which they call the level of rules, of insight and of principles (in Op weg naar een lerende organisatie Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1990). In the educational literature many authors have their own system of levels, for instance Piaget, Bloom, Gagné, Guildford, Van Hiele. Plato’s analogy of the line in his Republic is a classical example of thinking in terms of levels. I restrict myself to two levels, rules and principles, for the sake of clarity and functionality.
Swieringa, J.en A. Wierdsma Op weg naar een lerende organisatie Chapter 5 Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1990.
The scheme is based on the philosophy of Leonard Nelson. It contains the basic structure of the Aristotelian syllogism, rules and principles being the major premiss, the example (or some core sentences from it) functioning as the minor premiss, and the judgment as conclusion. See Nelson L De socratische methode. Inleiding en redactie Jos Kessels Boom/Meppel, Amsterdam 1994 and Toulmin S E The Uses of Argument Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1958.
Cf. their Op weg naar een lerende organisatie Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1990 Chapter 9.
Cf. his The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization 1990, 1994.
Cf. Meno 80a, Theaetetus 150d ff, Thrasymachus in the first book of The Republic, and Guthrie W K C Socrates 1971 pp 78 ff. Besides, many of Plato’s dialogues end with Socrates’ remark that the investigation did not lead to a final conclusion, and that it would be better to continue the conversation ‘another time’. Cf. for instance, Theaetetus, Protagoras, Laches, Euthydemus.
Nelson L De socratische methode 1994.
Similarly Swieringa, J. en A. Wierdsma Op weg naar een lerende organisatie 1990 Chapter 8.
Cf. Brinke, J.S. ten Bij Nederlands leer je iets Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1983.
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Kessels, J. Socrates Comes to Market. Philos. of Manag. 1, 49–71 (2001). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20011128
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20011128