Book Review: Socrates op Sneakers

Book Review:
Title: Socrates op Sneakers: Filosofische Gids voor het stellen van goede vragen.
Author: Elke Wiss.
Published: Ambo | Anthos 2021.
Pages: 254.

Review:

Last year, I decided I wanted to get better at conversations. Conversations, in all their forms, have always fascinated me more concretely: how conversations succeed or fail.  After only 24 years of learning, I finally realized that a dialogue, or more specifically an interaction, is made by its participants. To get better at it means getting better at crafting and maintaining interactions. 

To get better at conversations, I decided to start reading on the subject: The Dutch book; Socrates on Sneakers by Elke Wiss. In her book, Wiss dives into the intricacies and structure of the Socratic dialogue and offers some great starting points for having better conversations. The book is written in an accessible style and is based mostly on her experience as a trainer and coach. Unfortunately, she takes her own experience as authoritative rather than the existing body of literature on the subject. 

The lessons in the book are clear; the evidence for them is weak.

As the title suggests, the book is based on the way Socrates conversed almost 2400 years ago. Socrates, as far as we know, did not write anything down because books and other forms of written media are poor substitutes for dialogue. Written media cannot defend itself from questions or critics, leading to a loss of critical engagement(Scully 2003:64-65). Funnily enough, we only know this because this is written down by Plato, a pupil of Socrates. He reconstructed Socrates' way of working in dozens of dialogues.

It was therefore an unpleasant surprise that Wiss (2021), for the main body of the book, decided to infer her knowledge claims about Socrates from one work only: Protagoras. Nothing wrong with citing from one work; however, considering the vast amount of dialogues available (for example, Meno, Ion, Gorgias) , it is unfortunate. Drawing from multiple works could show that the socratic method can vary from dialogue to dialogue. One example means one Socratic method, which is hardly 'the' Socratic method, but rather one specific reconstruction. These conversations are reconstructions from Plato, meaning it is already questionable whether the phenomenon described is truly Socrates or if we should rename it to the Platonic Method. It is questionable, however, if this distinction needs to be made in practice because a guide needs to be practical, not necessarily historically correct. 

A stronger point for this book is its engagement with other local practitioners and its highlighting of good practices. The prime example is the work of Hans Bolten (2003).  The chapter on question techniques starts with Bolten discussing the idea that there are two types of questions: up or down. Questions that go up relate to normativity; they ask about the relationship between the subject matter and what ought to be the case.  Questions that go down relate to factualities; the what, who and when questions relate to the perceived facts of the selected case study. These two types of questions are the backbone for almost all other sections in the book. While this is great, I would have loved some more critical engagement from Wiss since she seems knowledgeable on the subject as well.

On the other hand, Wiss is clear on the structure of a Socratic dialogue and created a guide on how to be better at asking questions. The argument intuitively feels right; however, as mentioned before, some more empirical research would not have hurt the cause. 

I highly doubt that Wiss wrote this book for academics or scholars to learn all the 'proven' ways of conducting a Socratic dialogue. I would recommend the book for people with a broad interest in having better dialogue, but do not expect a scholarly account of the Socratic method.

After reading the book, I did not feel completely enlightened, yet it made me aware of the gap in my conversational skills. Now I have to find a volunteer who will let me practice with my unskillfulness. 

References:

Bolten, H. (2003). Het socratisch gesprek als instrument voor teamreflectie: Spreken buiten de orde. Organisatie Instrumenten.

Scully, S. (2003). Plato ́s Phaedrus (A. K. Whitaker, Ed.). Focus.

Wiss, E. (2021). Socrates op sneakers: filosofische gids voor het stellen van goede vragen. Ambo | Anthos Uitgevers