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‘The Socratic Method’ Review: Let Us Reason Together - WSJ

‘The Socratic Method’ Review: Let Us Reason Together - WSJ

Section titled “‘The Socratic Method’ Review: Let Us Reason Together - WSJ”

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  • This gadfly (also described by Plato) doesn’t delude himself that his tête-à-têtes with playwrights, soldiers, rhetoricians and youthful acolytes will result in a perfect city perfectly ruled. But he is sure of one thing: The best activity for a human being is to seek the truth without expecting to grasp it definitively.
  • There is, of course, a connection between one’s inner gadfly and one’s ability to deliberate with others. Reasoned self-scrutiny is not an isolated activity but a step toward becoming a better citizen—or so Plato argues in what Mr. Farnsworth calls the “long and famous comparison of the city and the soul” in “The Republic.” The connection between the dispelling of private delusions and the dispelling of public ones is of urgent importance in any age but especially in our own, as digital media confound private and public in new ways that bizarrely favor isolation over sociability, strangers over neighbors and families.