Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life

Introduction

How should the Socratic method be used? With another person, who has taken on a role distinct from yours. One of you offers answers to some fundamental question, while the other explains why he or she cannot accept those answers.
Thinking, as Socrates understands it, is not something that happens in your head, but rather out loud, in conversation. Socrates argues that it is only by recognizing thinking as a social interaction that we can resolve a set of paradoxes as to how thinking can be open-minded, inquisitive, and truth-oriented.
The Socratic motto is not "Question everything" but "Persuade or be persuaded."

When it comes to the purpose of the Socratic method, Socrates had colossal ambitions. He believed that all of the trouble we have leading our lives, all of our dissatisfactions, all of our failures to progress, all of our moral imperfections, all of the injustices we commit, large and small, stem from one source: ignorance.

Socrates's claim that "I know that I know nothing" isn't an empty gesture of skepticism, but rather a plan for life. It tells you that the key to success […] is to have the right kinds of conversations.

Given that we cannot lead lives based on knowledge — because we lack it — we should lead the second best kind of life, namely, the one oriented toward knowledge.

Socrates discovered that between the acknowledgement of one's own ignorance and the ideally knowledgeable life lies a substantive ethics of inquiry.
The way to be good when you don't know how to be good is by learning.
You should do everything in such a way as to be learning what the right thing to do is, and this means getting other people to show you when you're wrong.

Instead of implementing a principle — such as "Achieve the greatest good for the greatest number!" or "Obey the categorical imperative!" — you should inquire.

Socrates insists that there's no greater benefit he could receive from another person than being shown why he is wrong, and that the only sure way to treat another human being with respect is to either answer their questions or question their answers.

Socrates turns a spotlight on all the places where we have dressed up our ignorance as something else — a lack of willpower, or selfishness, or laziness, or badness — in order to evade the imperative to inquire.
According to Socrates, whenever we say, "I knew what the right thing to do was; I just couldn't get myself to do it!", we are flattering ourselves, ascribing to ourselves knowledge we evidently lack.
And whenever we say, "He knew what the right thing to do was; he just decided not to do it!", we're creating excuses for the exercise of vengeance.
Socrates denies that it is possible to act against one's better judgment, and he denies that anyone ever deserves to be harmed.

There is only one problem which is ignorance and only one solution which is to learn.

[…]

Someone who refutes you serves as a mirror in which you can see your own errors reflected, and they allow you to search for answers to questions, even untimely ones.
Socrates discovered that:
by working together with another person, we make possible forms of thinking, self-knowledge, and questioning that are foreclosed to the person who works alone.
Speech can free thought from the blindness and bias and provinciality endemic to being just one mind.