Chapter 4/6

Everything Can Be Questioned


We don’t know much about Heraclitus himself. In the ancient world he was called “Heraclitus the Obscure.” We don’t know what drove his thinking. With Socrates, however, we can have a good idea of what he was about. He wanted people to think about and think through whatever they had to say, particularly if they were dealing with life issues. He found that most people he talked with did not understand what they were talking about. Their mental laziness amazed him.

The word got out in Athens that the Delphic Oracle had declared Socrates to be the wisest man in the entire city. Socrates knew that could not be true because there was so much he did not understand. Thus he began a search to find those who were wiser, those who were not as ignorant as Socrates knew himself to be. He went to the most respected, the most successful, the most powerful citizens and questioned them about their knowledge and understanding. Repeatedly he found that they knew and understood even less than he did. He realized that much of the time they did not know what they were talking about.

So, after seeking out all those who might be wiser, he decided that the oracle was right. He, after all, was the wisest, in the sense that he was at least aware of his ignorance; at least he did not pretend to understand things. The Socratic wisdom and the Socratic ignorance were synonymous. He came to believe that “the god” (he was a Greek monotheist) had called him to help his fellow citizens become good people by becoming good thinkers.

The Socratic DIALECTIC takes the form of intense, purposive conversation. Socrates never allows the dialogue to degenerate into a mere bull-session or a bantering of the conventional wisdom. He kept the conversation directed toward clarification of the problem at hand. His method was to ask if his fellow conversants meant what they said. Usually, just like us, they claimed that indeed, they meant what they said, they knew what they were talking about.