Dear Friends
Re: What is Socratic Dialogue?
Thank you for all your support over the last several years to ATCA
(estd 2001), The Philanthropia (estd 2005) and HQR (estd 2007), the
philanthropic initiatives dedicated to understanding and addressing
complex global challenges through Socratic Dialogue and Executive
Action to build a Wisdom based Economy. Although several years have
gone, our senior membership is firmly pegged to the five thousand mark
for ATCA and the one thousand mark for The Philanthropia. Our mission
is to influence the influencers across the globe who in turn help to
build a more harmonious world, whilst we remain flexible and humble.
Our distinguished members are from over 150 countries and it is our
honour and privilege that they choose to be associated with our humble
organisations with no esteem, position or value.
In particular, we wish to thank all our contributors and also the
senior executives and entrepreneurs, high government officials,
director-generals, professors and philanthropists who have made
historical decisions for the better in regard to implementing policy,
process and approach, through the collective wisdom accumulated at
ATCA, The Philanthropia and HQR via intense Socratic Dialogue. We are
truly humbled by the enormous impact that these three organisations
have had through diverse discussion and joint action.
Please continue to support us by recommending luminaries to these
Wisdom Fora dedicated to building a "Wisdom based Economy" based on
Liberty, Equality and Friendship between diverse peoples from all
parts of the world.
Origin of Socratic Dialogue in Ancient Greece
What we remember most about Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC) is his quote "I
know nothing except the fact of my ignorance!" from Diogenes
Laertius's "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers."
In the tradition of The Great Spiritual Masters and Philosophers,
Socrates, is regarded as one of the finest. Some regard Socrates as
the greatest ever philosopher in history. His death reveals how
difficult it is to fight "vested interests" which no philosopher has
ever been able to fight effectively on a single handed basis. We feel
that we can achieve the Socratic mission by engaging a much wider
influential global community which is within the so called "vested
interest" side of the global economic equation. We are lucky to be
living in an age of transparency with the information revolution and
mass communication which can be a highly effective tool to reach out
to the wisdom-seeking peoples across nations.
We remind ourselves what Socratic Dialogue really means through the
thought provoking story of Socrates in His final days. The version
below is compiled from various sources including Plato's narrative.
The accusations, the trial, the three apology speeches and final
condemnation to death in 399 BC are worth noting, especially in the
21st Century as we need to appreciate the method of Socratic Dialogue
once again.
Let us hope and pray, we don't go the same way!
Socrates -- Accusations, Trial, Apology and Condemnation to Death (399
BC)
A friend, in consulting the Oracle at Delphi, asked was any man wiser
than Socrates? The Oracle replied that there were not! Upon being told
of this answer Socrates maintained that this implied that he, alone,
had this claim to wisdom -- that he fully recognised his own
ignorance!
From that time he sought out people who had a reputation for wisdom
and, in every case, was able to reveal that their reputations were not
justified. Socrates regarded this behaviour as a service to Divinity
and decided that he should continue to make efforts to improve people
by persuading and reminding them of their own ignorance.
What we now call the "Socratic method" of philosophical inquiry
involved questioning people on the positions they asserted and working
them through further questions into seemingly inevitable
contradictions, thus proving to them that their original assertion had
fatal inconsistencies. Socrates refers to this "Socratic method" as
elenchus. The Socratic method gave rise to dialectic, the idea that
truth needs to be approached by modifying one's position through
questionings and exposures to contrary ideas.
Contrary to popular understanding, Socrates did not seek to involve
himself in the political life of Athens in ancient Greece as he felt
that there would inevitably be compromises of principle that he was
not prepared to make. As a prominent citizen he was called upon to
fulfil minor political roles where his sense of principle had caused
him to place himself in some personal danger by holding out alone
against the unconstitutional condemnation of certain generals. He
later refused to participate in the arrest of an innocent man that had
been ordered by a corrupt body of "Thirty Tyrants" who ruled Athens in
the wake of her defeat by Sparta. This refusal might have cost
Socrates his life but for the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants and a
restoration of democracy.
This restored democracy was however markedly traditionalist and
reactionary in its religious views -- this led it to see Socrates, as
a teacher of novel ideas of morality and justice, with some disfavour.
Socrates had also alienated many powerful men by acting as a
relentlessly questioning Gadfly causing them to face their personal
ignorance or own to shortfalls in office.
In 399 BC Socrates was accused of "impiety" and of "neglect of the
Gods whom the city worships and the practise of religious novelties"
and of the "corruption of the young".
The trial, last days, and death of Socrates are successively narrated
in several works by Plato. These works are The Apology (ie Defence
Speech), Euthyphro, Crito and Phaedo.
The Apology consists of three speeches made by Socrates at his trial
before a jury of five hundred or so Athenians who had gathered to hear
him answer the charges. He had not prepared any defence but, being
sure in his own mind that he was innocent, was hoping that his words
of truth would secure an acquittal. He at this time was more than
seventy years of age and he asked the jury to make allowances if he
spoke in the sort of language he might use in discussions in the
market-place as he was unfamiliar with law courts and the stylised
language used in formal trials.
Apology -- The First Speech
Socrates told the jury that he thought that he had two sets of
accusers, old and new, and that the old accusers he feared more so and
wished to present a defence against them first of all.
Socrates saw these old accusers as being influenced by prejudiced
opinions that he had indulged in natural philosophy physical
speculations or took money as a teacher.
Those who indulged in physical speculations were routinely assumed to
recognise no Divine Plan. In earlier days a play by Aristophanes had
featured a character named Socrates who seemed to be such a person but
Socrates called on those assembled at his trial to produce evidence
that he, the real Socrates, had ever taught along those lines.
In response to the idea that he took money as a teacher Socrates
insisted that the life he led had brought him utter poverty rather
than monetary reward. He lived that life in response to what the
Pythian prophetess at Delphi had told his friend Chaerephon:- that no
one was wiser than Socrates.
Socrates suggested that he had made many abiding enemies by personally
approaching people who had reputations for wisdom only to reveal
through questionings that their wisdom was specious. Others had been
alienated by young persons who had witnessed Socrates' methods of
questioning similarly revealing yet other people's pretensions to
wisdom to be baseless.
Socrates made the case that his questions had tended to vindicate the
utterance of the Oracle at Delphi by showing that he, Socrates, did
indeed have a particular claim to Wisdom in that he at least fully
recognised his own ignorance.
Socrates then addressed his new accusers in the form of Meletus the
prosecutor. These new accusers accused Socrates of Impiety, of
neglecting the Gods approved by the state, and, of introducing new
divinities.
Meletus, who was obliged to answer Socrates' questions delivered
before the jury eventually committed himself to a straight assertion
that Socrates was a complete atheist. Socrates then showed the fatal
contradiction in Meletus accusation -- how does someone whom the
prosecution holds to be a complete atheist come to be accused of
introducing new divinities or religious novelties.
Having exposed the contradictions in the "new accusations" Socrates
again mentioned that he feared his old accusers -- those who had their
pretensions exposed in the past -- more so than the new.
As the trial continued Socrates insisted that he had lived his life
the way he had in response to "Divine Intervention" calling him to
fulfil a philosophic mission. Even were he faced with death as an
alternative, (death might for all he could know or deduce be a great
release into good), Socrates insisted that he would not give any
undertaking to cease from moral teachings designed to encourage people
to pay great attention to the "improvement of the soul". Socrates went
so far as to suggest that if the Athenians sentenced him to death that
it would be a sin against God. God had made him into a sort of Gadfly
that was intended to stir the Athenian state into moral improvement.
Socrates response to this call from God was to live a life of an
unpaid teacher and he was in a state of utter poverty through neglect
of private affairs.
Socrates maintained that he has long lived with an inner "oracle or
sign" that occasionally forbade him from following certain actions and
reminded the jury of the real danger that he put himself at the time
of the unconstitutional trial of the
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