Within a supportive learning environment, dialogue can allow for the identification and testing of assumptions and tacit beliefs. It can also illustrate the inadequacies in superficial thinking about ethical problems. Internal dialogue allows us to examine our beliefs, and to prepare and evaluate arguments. Each of these elements is important in the study of business ethics. This paper outlines one teaching technique based on Socratic dialogue, and shows how it can be applied to develop business students' (...) thinking about ethics. After justifying the suitability of this technique, and detailing its key elements, the paper offers for consideration an illustration of how the technique may be applied in a classroom setting, using structured role play. The paper concludes with a “teaching agenda”, offering suggestions for how this technique can be applied to teaching business ethics in an undergraduate, or postgraduate module, where it can examine language, structures and practices. (shrink)

This article puts forth Modern Socratic Dialogue as a pedagogical tool for cultivating an American Bildung. Beginning with Michael Hogue’s work on “resilient democracy,” an associational ethos that is vulnerable and based on our lived uncertainty. To further establish this American Bildung, I investigate what it means to be American. Drawing from the works of Michael Walzer and Gloria Anzaldúa, I establish that “American” means unfinished, pluralistic, and embraces ambiguity. The question of how to cultivate this pluralistic, ambiguous, (...) and vulnerable Bildung is framed by the freedom and social bonds of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of Bildung. For an American Bildung to flourish, freedom and social bonds can be presented and practiced in the form of Modern Socratic Dialogue – “truths” are created by the community of interlocutors, and problems and solutions are based on the experiences of the participants. (shrink)

Giving Voice to Values is a very important tool that has helped many professionals better align what they do with what they value and believe. This book introduces the methodology of Socratic Dialogue as a complementary set of tools for creating spaces of joint reflection in which one can gain clarity about one's values and gain the confidence to voice them effectively. Socrates' main concern was to progressively reach a higher alignment between ideas and actions: that is, to (...) achieve a harmony between what we think, what we say and what we do. The first step to giving voice to our values involves introspection and dialogue with others - which is how we can become aware of what we really think and value. An examined life, Socrates reminds us, is a fulfilled one. Based on more than 10 years' experience teaching Socratic Dialogue to business and law students, executives and professionals, faculty, incarcerated people and other vulnerable groups, the book provides teachers and practitioners with a roadmap to conceive, design and conduct Socratic Dialogue courses and sessions. It provides context for the method and its adaptation to the challenges of the 21st century. The book also offers guidance on how to structure a Socratic Dialogue classroom, as well as a series of tried-and-true activities and exercises, practical recommendations, and testimonies of the transformative impact that dialogue courses have had on participants. The book is of prime interest to professors and educators of business ethics, as well as professional consultants working to help organizations become more responsible and introduce ethical reasoning in their decisions. It also serves as a valuable resource for social educators and practitioners in prisons and rehabilitation units, as well as teachers in primary and secondary education. (shrink)

The article is about the poetic-practical philosophy of dialog of Lesia Ukrainka, which is manifested in the dramatic creativity of the prominent poetess, her translation activity and the concept of “person-nature relations”. In the text it is shown that Lesia Ukrainka created a new genre of contemporary drama on the basis of application of “Socratic dialog”, which started an important direction in contemporary literature and coincides with a leading trend of world philosophy associated with the paradigmatic turning point from (...) the philosophy of subjectivity to the philosophy of inter-subjectivity. The kinship of the Socratic philosophy of dialog and “Socratic drama” is also referred to. The author also showed that the meaning of Socratic dialog of Lesia Ukrainka in the resolution of the main problems of world outlook of modernity and the role of argumentation, in particular, the method of elenctics, the realization of such notions as “truth” and “verity”, which is particularly important the modern day situation of “posttruth” and “post-morality”. Against the background of the global environmental crisis, it is important to look at the way how Lesya Ukrainka suggests treating nature as a subject and partner in dialogue. This paradigm continues and deepens the Romantic concept of nature as a partner in a conversation and co-creator of the liber mundi ("the book of the world"). It also opens the opportunity to apply hermeneutical methods of understanding nature as a common world (Mitwelt) of communication, love and creativity. The article also analyzes the topic of dialogue between cultures, as well as perception and understanding of another culture as a subject in a dialogue. We can see this focus in Lesya Ukrainka's approach to translation of poetic texts produced by cultures from distant places and epochs. (shrink)

The main aim of our paper is to identify the potential limits of Socratic dialogue in moral education. These limits will be identified using a) the original ancient writings preserving several versions of Socrates’ dialogue, and b) modern writing on the Socrates’ dialogue in moral education. We will determine whether these limits are to be found in the writing of Plato or Xenophon, or rather in the problems and paradoxes of this type of education. We assume (...) that a historical exploration of the original Socratic philosophy will help us to more easily identify the limits and problems in moral education. However, our intention is not to reject the Socratic dialogue as such, but merely to point out some of the potentially controversial aspects of its use in moral education. (shrink)

Socratic dialogue is widely recognized as an effective teaching tool inside of the classroom. In this paper I will argue that Socratic dialogue is also a highly effective teaching tool outside of the classroom. I will argue that Socratic dialogue is highly effective outside of the classroom because it is a form of learning based assessment. I will also show how instructors can use technology like email to implement Socratic dialogue as a (...) form of teaching and assessment, and thus offer a viable alternative to traditional assessments like exams and papers. (shrink)

_This article presents an experiment in using Socratic dialogue as a methodological approach to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in an interdisciplinary life sciences research project. The approach seeks to avoid imposing a set of predetermined substantive norms by engaging the researchers in knowledge-seeking group discussions. We adapted Svend Brinkmann’s method of epistemic interviewing, in order to facilitate reflection on normative issues concerning responsibility in research and innovation in two research group sessions. Two elements characterize this approach, relating (...) it to empirical ethics methodologies: (1) the aim is not to map and analyse opinions, but to develop knowledge based on the dialogue; and (2) the facilitators of the discussion are also active participants in the dialogue rather than mere “spectators”. Through a description of the approach and discussion of some key challenges, we __show the method’s potential as a supplement to the catalogue of RRI approaches and argue that it serves a dual purpose of contributing to knowledge production and reflexivity._ _Keywords_: Epistemic interviewing, bioethics, responsibility, reflexivity. (shrink)

It is the thesis of the authors that the caring ethic and moral state of being of nurses ideally suffuses their professional caring and is thus implicit in their ethical decision making. Socratic dialogue is a technique that allows such moral attitudes to be made explicit. This article describes a Socratic dialogue conducted with nurses on the topic: 'What is love in nursing?' The conclusions drawn were based on the belief that the current western-style health care (...) system restricts the practice of nursing in such a way as to limit professional caring and loving possibilities. Nurses who love in the practice of caring go beyond the role definition of the duty of care; they are people who are prepared to think differently about their practice as professionals, and are identified as competent risk takers committed to the betterment of the other. From this dialogue, 'love in nursing' was understood as the willingness and commitment of the nurse to want the good of the other before the self, without reciprocity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Modern Socratic Dialogue and Resilient Democracy: Creating the Clearing for an American Bildung1Laura J. Mueller (bio)Michael Hogue’s American Immanence draws from some of the fundamental features of American philosophy: philosophy is not alienated from life, but rather, part and parcel of the structure of our experiences, a way of living. His notion of “resilient democracy” is particularly representative of this tradition of thought. Resilient democracy is, first (...) of all, an ethos, grounded in “the collective experience of uncertainty and animated by the living desire to bring about a more beautiful world.”2 This ethos is an associational, relational one, and it is democratic because, for Hogue, it must be “empathetic, emancipatory, and equitable,” assuming that each member of the association can be enriched by other members” (AI, 172–73). Vital to this democratic ethos is its anti-foundational politics; we start not with an immutable reality, but rather with the vulnerable reality of our actual, political, experiences (AI, 176). We start with where we are, not where some abstract ideal demands we should be. Democracy, for Hogue, is not just a certain political ideal for which to aim, but rather a way of being, a way of life. Dewey writes:A democracy is more than an associated form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.... These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond... They secure a liberation of his powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.3Throughout this paper, I use “democracy” in this sense; as a way of life, as a relational ethos, not as any particular political system. [End Page 40]As a way of life, democracy is both the process—the struggle—and that which we aim for. This feature of democracy is similar to the structure of Bildung, in which self-cultivation is both the process and the product.4 For example, for Wilhelm von Humboldt, an individual is in “continuing activity,” whose powers are never stagnant; humankind is always progressing, an infinite object.5 This is an end-in-view, not a fixed end.6 Humboldt “did not formulate a catalogue which prescribed what a person should know, what a person should read, what a person should have heard, what a person should have concerned himself with, so that one can say: this person has Bildung.”7 For Humboldt, Bildung is “the development of the capacities of the individual into a harmonious whole.”8 This paper, in part, looks at Hogue’s resilient democracy as a cultivation of both the individual and the group, as Bildung of both self and culture. In particular, the individual and culture that are being cultivated are relational, grounded in an emancipatory, equitable, and empathetic ethos, with a democratic way of life.Similar to the traditional Bildungstradition, education plays a vital role in this kind of democratic cultivation. If our end-in-view is a democratic society, then the method to reach that end must also be democratically ordered. Myles [End Page 41] Horton put it best: “When you believe in a democratic society, you provide a setting for education that is democratic.”9Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) is a particular method of philosophical dialogue that engages in and cultivates the ethos of resilient democracy. It cultivates empathy (in listening), pluralism (difference is accommodated and incorporated) and equity (insofar as no special knowledge is required), and anti-foundationalism (participants approach the conversation with epistemic humility, not trying to grasp a Truth as the ground of knowledge, but rather work together to form a common truth that comes out of their situatedness). These are all traits of Hogue’s resilient democracy, and all traits of an American Bildung, our self-correcting vulnerability, a way of being that replaces an unattainable ideal without sacrificing amelioration.Much like the tradition it addresses, this paper is layered; it is polyphonically pluralistic in method and structure. The many voices of this paper are first stratified and folded in... (shrink)

This research project analyzes a strategy for teaching philosophy in secondary school inspired by Socratic dialogue, which aims at the creation and effective management of cognitive dissonance as a tool for promoting critical thinking, called Socratic Challenge (SC). The research originates from workshops held in the years 2016/2019 in a technical and vocational institute in the province of Varese, in which I participated as the creator and conductor, involving the voluntary participation of about 150 students. The research (...) questions are: What are the characteristics of the Socratic Challenge? Can it constitute a teaching methodology to be proposed? Under what conditions? Within what project framework? The empirical research is qualitative, naturalistic, and exploratory (Lumbelli, 1984), specifically a self-study (Hamilton & Pinnegar 2009), divided into two phases. In the first phase, data regarding motivation and perceptions of training impact were collected through in-depth interviews of students (16) and analyzed using the criteria of reflective thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2019). In the second phase, the workshops were repeated remotely in technical and vocational institutes in Milan and the province, involving 113 students who were surveyed with a qualitative questionnaire. The workshops were recorded and the discussion interactions were analyzed according to a qualitative inductive approach that refers to Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006). Results show how this dialogical instructional strategy in philosophy teaching can be considered an effective alternative to the historical-philosophical approach predominant in the Italian tradition (Illetterati 2007). (shrink)

Socratic dialogue is widely recognized as an effective teaching tool inside of the classroom. In this paper I will argue that Socratic dialogue is also a highly effective teaching tool outside of the classroom. I will argue that Socratic dialogue is highly effective outside of the classroom because it is a form of learning based assessment. I will also show how instructors can use technology like email to implement Socratic dialogue as a (...) form of teaching and assessment, and thus offer a viable alternative to traditional assessments like exams and papers. (shrink)

This article represents conversations with the American composer Libby Larsen in which she described her beliefs about music, music education, and the dilemmas that our current system faces as we seek to provide relevant and meaningful music education to our students. Our conversation explores such topics as cognitive psychology, music theory, cultural practices and developments in American culture, and current music education practices. Larsen brought up many questions about music education in America, providing some suggestions for the future and posing (...) problems for which the solution may require a great deal of imagination by music education teachers. The article is structured as a Socratic dialogue, in which Larsen constructs an inductively strong argu- ment for making radical changes to current music education practice. (shrink)

Plato's late dialogues have often been neglected because they lack the literary charm of his earlier masterpieces. Charles Kahn proposes a unified view of these diverse and difficult works, from the Parmenides and Theaetetus to the Sophist and Timaeus, showing how they gradually develop the framework for Plato's late metaphysics and cosmology. The Parmenides, with its attack on the theory of Forms and its baffling series of antinomies, has generally been treated apart from the rest of Plato's late work. Kahn (...) shows that this perplexing dialogue is the curtain-raiser on Plato's last metaphysical enterprise: the step-by-step construction of a wider theory of Being that provides the background for the creation story of the Timaeus. This rich study, the natural successor to Kahn's earlier Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, will interest a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and science. (shrink)

The term ’risk’ is used in a wide range of situations, but there is no real consensus of what it means. ‘Risk ‘is often stipulatively defined as “a probability for the occurrence of a negative event” or something similar. This formulation is however not very informative, and it fails to capture many of our intuitions about the concept or risk. One way of trying to find a common definition of a term within a group is to use a Socratic (...) Dialogue (SD). This method is fairly new, and it is rather different from the original Socratic dialogues (at least if we are to judge from how they are described by Plato). The best explanation for the name ought to be that it is inspired by the original Socratic dialogues. The SD in its modern form was originally developed as a tool for enabling laymen to perform rather advanced concept analyses under the supervision of a professional philosopher. The formal goal of the method is to find a common way of perceiving of a particular term, or at least to find out exactly how the members of the group differ in their understandings of the term, and why. The largest gain from the process has in practice turned out to be a higher awareness among the participants of different ways of understanding the term, and the ideas and intuitions behind it. This has turned out to be very useful in educational settings, but the method has also been used with great success both in research, and in e.g. business, public administration and nongovernmental organisations. In the present case, a Socratic dialogue on the concept of risk was performed within the framework of a Ph D-course about risk and uncertainty at the Swedish University of Agriculture in Alnarp, Sweden. The participants on the course where all quite familiar with practical issues relating to risks. Both from the course work, and from their own research. (shrink)

This article explores the creative work of Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda from the standpoint of the leading trends in contemporary philosophic thought: a communicative turn in philosophy, neo-Socratic dialogue, and ethics of discourse. Skovoroda’s philosophy is interpreted not only in line with the ‘know yourself’ principle as a method of cognition, but, first of all, within the Socratic dialogue dimension when the methods of maieutics and elentics are used for joint searching for truth and solving moral problems. (...) Skovoroda did not reduce philosophy to life, but he raised life to philosophy; philosophy itself was his life and in the first place, it was the practical philosophy of dialogue. Socratic dialogue appears in the practices of communication with people, in particular in the wandering habitus of the thinker. Wandering is an important element of his philosophy, his life, and his habitus. The wandering nature of Skovoroda’s habitus takes his dialogues beyond epistemology bringing the dialogue into a practical, or rather moral and practical plane. As an educator, Skovoroda draws on the Ukrainian culture habitus and practices and transcends this habitus and thus elevating it to the habitus of reason. This paper asserts the idea of the need and necessity to develop and to practice the neo-Skovoroda’s dialogue as a component of the global trend of dialogic civilization development. (shrink)

Written by Plato as an act of homage to Socrates, these dialogues attempt to define bravery, discuss the relationship between philosophy and politics, and include a debate on poetic inspiration.

_Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue_ provides the most complete study of the immediate literary reaction to Socrates, by his contemporaries and the first-generation Socratics, and of the writings from Aristotle to Proclus addressing Socrates and the literary work he inspired.

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character (...) of the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

By means of a brief Socratic dialogue, I consider the question of whether organizing involves destruction, prefaced by a poem of course.

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character (...) of the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

Much of what we know about his life and work comes from the accounts of his disciple Plato. Plato described Socrates as the ultimate teacher as well as the creator of modern argument and rhetoric.

I argue that it was not Plato's intention in his Socratic dialogues to provide a biography of Socrates. Rather, his intention was to describe and defend the philosophical life against its critics. The Socratic dialogues are "unhappy encounters" between Socrates, defender of the life of philosophy, and those who do not comprehend or who reject that life.

Socratic dialogue is nowadays often invoked as a model in education, and several educational approaches explicitly claim to be inspired by it (Naccari, 2003; Shah, 2008; Delić & Bećirović, 2016). However, contemporary versions depart profoundly from its original form as expressed in the Platonic dialogues, reinterpreting the role of the teacher in the dialogical exchange and referring to different epistemological criteria (cf. Shields, 1953; Reich, 1998; Dinkins, & Cangelosi, 2019; Marshall, 2019). The aim of this paper is to (...) highlight, on the one hand, how such a distortion of the classical model results in the renunciation of the heuristic and transformative functions of Socratic dialogue, and on the other hand, to propose an alternative model of dialogic teaching that restores these functions while maintaining its practicability in contemporary school contexts. Specifically, the role of epistemological relativism and the facilitator in constructivist education are identified as the critical issues in the construction of effective dialogical confrontation in the post-truth era. (shrink)

Socratic irony is potentially fertile ground for exegetical abuse. It can seem to offer an interpreter the chance to dismiss any claim which conflicts with his account of Socratic Philosophy merely by crying ‘irony’. If abused in this way, Socratic irony can quickly become a convenient receptacle for everything inimical to an interpretation. Much recent scholarship rightly reacts against this and devotes itself to explaining how Socrates actually means everything he says, at least everything of philosophical importance. (...) But the fact that a commentator needs to argue that Socrates is really serious when he disavows knowledge or claims to be the saviour of Athens is by itself sufficient to establish that there is an abundance of what I will call ‘play’ in the Socratic dialogues. The term ‘play’ refers to occasions when Socrates at least appears not to be speaking straightforwardly. ‘Play’ covers cases of real or apparent humour, mockery, teasing, irony, and sarcasm, without differentiation or further elaboration. When left undefined, as often, the phrase ‘Socratic irony’ seems to be used to refer to what I am calling ‘play’. (shrink)

Socratic irony is potentially fertile ground for exegetical abuse. It can seem to offer an interpreter the chance to dismiss any claim which conflicts with his account of Socratic Philosophy merely by crying ‘irony’. If abused in this way, Socratic irony can quickly become a convenient receptacle for everything inimical to an interpretation. Much recent scholarship rightly reacts against this and devotes itself to explaining how Socrates actually means everything he says, at least everything of philosophical importance. (...) But the fact that a commentator needs toarguethat Socrates is really serious when he disavows knowledge or claims to be the saviour of Athens is by itself sufficient to establish that there is an abundance of what I will call ‘play’ in the Socratic dialogues. The term ‘play’ refers to occasions when Socrates at leastappearsnot to be speaking straightforwardly. ‘Play’ covers cases of real or apparent humour, mockery, teasing, irony, and sarcasm, without differentiation or further elaboration. When left undefined, as often, the phrase ‘Socratic irony’ seems to be used to refer to what I am calling ‘play’. (shrink)

Proponents of philosophy for children generally see themselves as heirs to the ‘Socratic’ tradition. They often claim too that children’s aptitude for play leads them naturally to play with abstract, philosophical ideas. However in Plato’s dialogues we find in the mouth of ‘Socrates’ many warnings against philosophising with the young. Those dialogues also question whether philosophy should be playful in any straightforward way, casting the distinction between play and seriousness as unstable. It seems we cannot think of Plato as (...) representing how to engage in dialectic, nor as prescribing a method for doing so. The irreducible textuality of the dialogues defeats any attempt to read them in this way. This is not to criticise the practice of philosophy for children: only to note the ambivalence and instability of the philosophical heritage that it wants to claim. (shrink)

Central to the concept of a learning organization is the ability to set up dialogues or conversational inquiries. But the techniques to accomplish this have nowhere in the literature been adequately described. This reduces the concept of a leaming organization to an unattainable ideal. These techniques were for ages, in the form of dialectic, an important instrument for investigation, until they were replaced by the formation of scientific theories. But several fundamental organizational problems cannot be solved by scientific knowledge. Therefore (...) dialectic remains a necessary instrument to start and structure processes of collective leaming. (shrink)

This dissertation advances a solution to a problem intrinsic to understanding the dialogues of Plato. How are we to understand Plato's thought when he never speaks in his own name in any of his dialogues? Many writers assume that Plato's characters speak for him. With this assumption, they study the thought articulated by Plato's characters as if it were his own, and elaborate a so-called "doctrinal" interpretation. A variety of subjective readings follows, since what Socrates and other characters say in (...) the dialogues is often inconsistent or contradictory. To resolve these problems the dissertation constructs a method for interpreting Socratic dialogue which is true to the genre. Extending the work of Bakhtin, Clay, and Kahn, it develops a metalanguage for specifying the structure, plot, aim , and effect of a dialogue as well as the thought , character , and pathos of its participants, by applying concepts in Plato's dialogues and in Aristotle's Poetics, Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics, Physics, and other works. The dissertation shows that the Republic represents Glaucon as subject to erotic desire and desires for luxury and honor, and that the aim of Socrates' discourse is to induce a catharsis in Glaucon in order to change these states of character. ;To support this interpretation, the dissertation shows: Aristotle does not apply a doctrinal reading to Plato's dialogues; he does not attribute the remarks of the character Socrates to Plato. Irwin's claims in "Plato's Ethics" are not supported by the texts of Aristotle which he cites. Aristotle's treatment of the Republic in Politics II is consistent with a mimetic interpretation of the dialogue. His treatment of the Republic is peirastic: he refutes Socrates' proposals with premisses and arguments that Socrates himself expresses in the dialogue. The dissertation discusses Aristotle's treatment of Socrates' proposals for unity in the city of the guardians, the sharing of women and children, gender, sacrilegious acts and incest, property, and the minimum necessary elements for a city. Aristotle's concept of catharsis can be derived from Sophist 230 and Republic X. (shrink)

This paper gives a concise overview of the history and meaning of Socratic Dialogue and how it has been developed and used in modern times. The process of Socratic dialogue is seen as an environment for enhancing learning and in enabling the emergence of new meaning to be articulated in language, thereby making the understanding more accessible to the group. The authors also share their perspective as participants in Socratic dialogues. It is suggested that (...) class='Hi'>Socratic dialogue enables open communication and empathic listening, development of shared meaning, enhanced insight and increased moral accountability. (shrink)

My title is deliberately provocative, since I want to challenge both the chronology and the philosophical interpretation generally accepted for the dialogues called Socratic. I am not primarily interested in questions of chronology, or even in Plato's intellectual ‘development’. But the chronological issues are clear-cut, and it will be convenient to deal with them first. My aim in doing so will be to get at more interesting questions concerning philosophical content and literary design. Interpreters should perhaps think more often (...) about such questions as: Why did Plato write dialogues after all? Why does a little dialogue like the Laches have such a stellar cast, with so many major figures from Athenian history? Why does Plato re-create the schoolboy atmosphere of the Charmides and Lysis? Why does he compose such a large and vivid fencing-match between Socrates and the long-dead Protagoras, in a conversation supposed to have taken place before Plato himself was born? The view which I wish to challenge tends to assume that Plato's motivation in such dialogues was primarily historical: to preserve and defend the memory of Socrates by representing him as faithfully as possible. From this it would seem to follow that the philosophic content of these dialogues must be Socrates' own philosophy, which Plato has piously preserved somewhat in the way that Arrian has preserved the teachings of Epictetus. The counterpart assumption tends to be that when Plato ceases to write as an historian he writes like any other philosopher: using Socrates as a mouthpiece to express whatever philosophical doctrines Plato himself holds at the time of writing. (shrink)

This article is a first person account of a first time Socratic Dialogue experience from a Sociospacial Reciprocity perspective. During the process, the writer was nominated as The Example for the Socratic Dialogue Question, ‘What is Wellbeing?’. The account is based both on the writer’s first-hand experience of the process, and the theoretical Socratic Dialogue process as discussed previously in this publication under the title, ‘Reflections on Socratic Dialogue I: the theoretical background (...) in a modern context’ (to which the writer also contributes). All identities have been anonymised for ethical reasons. (shrink)

My title is deliberately provocative, since I want to challenge both the chronology and the philosophical interpretation generally accepted for the dialogues called Socratic. I am not primarily interested in questions of chronology, or even in Plato's intellectual ‘development’. But the chronological issues are clear-cut, and it will be convenient to deal with them first. My aim in doing so will be to get at more interesting questions concerning philosophical content and literary design. Interpreters should perhaps think more often (...) about such questions as: Why did Plato write dialogues after all? Why does a little dialogue like the Laches have such a stellar cast, with so many major figures from Athenian history? Why does Plato re-create the schoolboy atmosphere of the Charmides and Lysis? Why does he compose such a large and vivid fencing-match between Socrates and the long-dead Protagoras, in a conversation supposed to have taken place before Plato himself was born? The view which I wish to challenge tends to assume that Plato's motivation in such dialogues was primarily historical: to preserve and defend the memory of Socrates by representing him as faithfully as possible. From this it would seem to follow that the philosophic content of these dialogues must be Socrates' own philosophy, which Plato has piously preserved somewhat in the way that Arrian has preserved the teachings of Epictetus. The counterpart assumption tends to be that when Plato ceases to write as an historian he writes like any other philosopher: using Socrates as a mouthpiece to express whatever philosophical doctrines Plato himself holds at the time of writing. (shrink)

본 논문의 목표는 소크라테스적 방법의 전형에 따라 넬손과 헥크만에 의해 계승 발전 된 새로운 소크라테스 대화 의 규칙을 소개하고 이를 검토하는 것이다. 이 규칙은 소크라 테스 대화 의 본질을 규정하는 구성적 규칙과 대화의 원활한 진행을 위하여 유용한 수단을 규정하는 규제적 규칙으로 구분된다. 따라서 넬손과 헥크만의 전통으로부터 나온 소크라 테스 대화 는 이러한 규칙을 전체적으로 검토함으로써 개괄될 수 있다. 이와 함께 나는 헥 크만이 제시하는 대화 지도자를 위한 교육적 방책도 살펴볼 것이다. 소크라테스 대화 의 실천에서 일반적으로 대화 지도자는 대화의 목적 달성을 (...) 위해 중요한 위치를 차지하는데, 여기서 그의 임무와 역할을 1) 사회자로서, 2) 조력자로서, 3) 촉진자로서, 4) 조종자로서 규정할 수 있다. 그리고 이를 통해 철학적 산파술이 넬손-헥크만 전통의 소크라테스 대 화 에서 어떻게 이해되어 활용되는지 알 수 있다. (shrink)

We provide an intuitive motivation for the hyperreal numbers via electoral axioms. We do so in the form of a Socratic dialogue, in which Protagoras suggests replacing big-oh complexity classes by real numbers, and Socrates asks some troubling questions about what would happen if one tried to do that. The dialogue is followed by an appendix containing additional commentary and a more formal proof.

This article considers Socrates's conception of courage in Plato's Socratic dialogues. Although the Laches, which is the only dialogue devoted in toto to a pursuit of the definition of courage, does not explicitly provide Socrates's definition of courage, I shall point out clues therein which contribute to an understanding of Socrates's conception of courage. The Protagoras is a peculiar dialogue in which Socrates himself offers a definition of courage. Attending to the dramatic structure and personalities of the (...) dialogue, I will point out that Socrates does not commit to the definition and that the hedonism and the definition of courage are used to disclose Protagoras's confusion regarding virtue. Following one of the clues within the Laches I will turn to the Apology and indicate Socrates's conception of courage which is based on his awareness of lack of knowledge of death and his religious conviction that nothing will happen for the good in life or in death. Finally I will show that such conception of Socratic courage satisfies the criteria in the Laches. (shrink)

레오나르드 넬손이 새롭게 주창하고 그의 제자 구스타브 헥크만이 계승·발전시킨 ‘新 -소크라테스 대화’의 방법이 구체적으로 실행되는 절차의 표준적 모델을 비판적으로 검토 하는 것이 이 논문의 목표이다. 이에 필자는 넬손-헥크만 전통의 대화 방식을 연구하고 실천하는 데에 주도적 역할을 하는 단체인 GSP(Gesellschaft fuer Sokratisches Philosophieren)가 제시하는 대화 실행의 표준적 실행 모델을 중심으로 요스 케쎌스의 ‘모 래시계-모델’과 데트레프 호르스터의 대화 실행 모델을 소개하고, 각 모델을 이 대화의 방법적 원리인 ‘추상의 역행적 방법’의 수행이라는 관점에서 비교 검토할 것이다. 이를 통 해 각 모델이 가지는 방법론적 장단점을 (...) ‘소크라테스 대화’의 이상적 전형과 규칙을 기준 으로 삼아 비판적으로 밝혀보고자 한다. (shrink)

본 논문의 목표는 라우파흐-스트레이가 넬손과 헥크만의 전통에 따라 계승·발전된 ‘소크라테스 대화’의 이론적 근거로 제시한 ‘소크라테스적 전형’을 플라톤에 의해 전승된 ‘소크라테스 철학’으로부터 어떻게 이론적으로 정당화될 수 있는지를 비판적으로 고찰하 는 것이다. 이를 위해 필자는 ‘소크라테스 대화’와 관련해서 ‘소크라테스적 전형’이 제시 된 이유를 우선 살펴보고, 9가지 요소들로 구성된 ‘소크라테스적 전형’을 하나씩 소개한 후, 이를 ‘플라톤의 소크라테스’를 통해 정당화할 것이다. ‘소크라테스적 전형’의 9가지 요소들은 다음과 같다. (1) 철학함의 장소로서 아고라: 소크라테스 대화의 개방성과 공공 성, (2) 경험에 근거를 둠: 소크라테스 대화의 방법론적 원리, (3) (...) 반독단주의: 가르침에 대한 포기, (4) 이성의 자기 신뢰: 로고스-원칙, (5) 산파술: 소크라테스 대화의 절차, (6) 정당화 계획: 역행적 추상과 상기설, (7) 진리 합의의 대화 목적: 인간적 지혜와 오류가능 성주의, (8) 대화 공동체: 진리 탐구와 진리 합의의 주체, (9) 인간상: 수평적 인간관계. (shrink)

How can organisations ‘manage for integrity’?1 Two differing approaches have been called the compliance strategy and the integrity strategy. While the first seeks to instil compliance with externally imposed standards, the integrity strategy seeks to teach ethical decision-making and values as well, so that ‘ethical thinking and awareness…[are]…part of every manager’s mental equipment’. In this paper the Dutch consultant philosopher Hans Bolten reports on how Socratic dialogue has helped managers develop ethical capacities and responsibility. Drawing on research with (...) dialogue members he concludes that organisations that care about ethics cannot rely on abstract moral codes and rules. He argues that they need Socratic dialogue as an instrument if their managers are to shape moral guidelines they both agree upon and can apply in practice. And he shows how dialogue can foster in managers the readiness to give an account of their actions, a readiness implicit in the idea of moral action itself. Thus Socratic dialogue can help create a culture in which morally accountable action is the rule, not the exception, and in which the responsibility to give an account of one’s actions has its rightful place.2. (shrink)

Professor Kahn says that Plato and the Socratic Dialogue “presents a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato’s early and middle dialogues as a unified literary project, displaying an artistic plan for the expression of a unified world view”. To this end, Kahn argues that “[w]hat we can trace in these dialogues is not the development of Plato’s thought,” as Aristotle and others seem to have thought, “but the gradual unfolding of a literary plan for presenting his philosophical (...) views to the general public”. This “unfolding” begins shortly after the Gorgias. Kahn argues that Plato then “created an essentially new form, the aporetic dialogue with a pseudo-historical setting” in order to bridge the psychological distance between the ordinary conception of the world and the radically new world view he would present in the middle dialogues. Kahn calls his interpretation “the hypothesis of ingressive exposition” and says that this hypothesis is “the claim that the seven threshold dialogues [Laches, Charmides, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Meno, Lysis, and Euthydemus] are designed to prepare the reader for the views expounded in the Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic, and that they can be adequately understood only from the perspective of these middle dialogues”. (shrink)