OMNIA IN CHRISTO Socrates on the Blessing of Being Refuted

BY DR. ANDREW BEER

Writing recently in T he A T l A n T ic , Victoria Parker describes a defect of argumentative generosity in our political discourse.1 Partisans of either side of the culture war attribute to their opponents the extreme views held by only a small minority of either side. Plaguing our politics is “a false polarization in which one side excoriates the other for views that it largely does not hold.” This false polarization by turns feeds upon and fuels an intense dislike of one’s political opponents. But even worse, “partisans who disliked their opponents most were least willing to engage with them, which likely forecloses the chance to have their misconceptions corrected through real-life personal contact. Instead, an oversimplified, exaggerated version of the other side’s views is allowed to live on inside of everyone’s head.”

Parker paints a dismal picture of fellow citizens divided by unbridgeable, or at least too often unbridged, differences—such that conversation across the divide seems all but impossible.

For guidance in bridging this divide we can look to one of the greatest conversationalists of all time, Socrates of Athens. In particular, we might learn from Socrates’s peculiar attitude toward the great blessing of being refuted.

A good example of this can be found in Plato’s Gorgias, just before Socrates refutes the famous orator who gives the dialogue its name. Gorgias, says Socrates, has surely noticed a distressing feature of many conversations: that the rival interlocutors have trouble defining their terms so as to teach and learn from each other. Instead, whenever they disagree, and one accuses the other of speaking incorrectly, they become bitterly angry, believing that the other argues from rivalry, caring only for winning the argument and not discovering the truth. The taunts and slurs going back and forth then become so ugly that those who observe the argument are overwhelmed with disgust—why, they wonder, did they think it worthy to be an audience for such persons? (457d–e).

Socrates’s description of an argument’s descending into verbal combat is apt for what we ourselves witness daily on social media. But why does Socrates mention this distressing fact?

Socrates hesitates to refute Gorgias for fear that Gorgias will think he cares only about winning the debate. Socrates must therefore make certain that Gorgias shares his own belief about the value of refutation for the one refuted

Indeed, Socrates says of himself: “[I am one of those people] who would be delighted to be refuted, if I say anything untrue, and who would be delighted to do the refuting, if someone else were to say something untrue.” Socrates continues: “But their delight would be no less in being refuted than in refuting: for I consider [being refuted] a greater good [than refuting], precisely inasmuch as it is a greater good to be released oneself from the greatest evil than to release another.” The greatest evil, Socrates next explains, is false opinion (δόξα ψευδής) concerning the subjects of the present conversation: “I believe there is no evil so great for a human being as false opinion about the things we are discussing right now.” (458a–b)

What things are Socrates and Gorgias discussing? Well, the conversation began as an inquiry into the nature of Gorgias’s professional occupation, the art of rhetoric. Through several turns of the dialectic, however, a broader subject opens up: What is just and what is unjust? Does the skilled speaker need actual knowledge of justice or merely the ability to persuade his audience that he knows? Does it matter whether the rhetorician himself is a just or unjust person?

Those questions can help us see why willingness to be refuted is of such foundational importance for Socrates. For the opposite of a style of conversation that upholds the value of being refuted is one that avoids being refuted at all costs. And therefore one that transforms honest and open inquiry for the sake of mutually beneficial moral truth into a contest for power and domination—a contest between rival interlocutors whom the very terms of debate have rendered irreconcilable enemies.

And so, Socrates must assure Gorgias that mere victory, or victory over Gorgias, is not at all what he is after.

Most essential to the whole enterprise of Socratic conversation—the fundamental necessary condition for its operation and success—is a willingness to be refuted. Willingness may be too weak. For Socrates describes rather a positive delight or eagerness to be refuted—an eagerness grounded in the conviction that being refuted, in matters of moral truth, is a liberation from a great evil, even the greatest evil for a human being.2

1. Victoria Parker, “Conservatives and Liberals Are Wrong About Each Other,” The Atlantic https://tinyurl.com/2eh8s3vw

2. This essay can be read in its entirety at https://tinyurl.com/yc64y6b5

A graduate of the University of Virginia, Andrew Beer, Ph.D., is associate professor of classical and early Christian studies.