Now you’re talking — just like Socrates!

If you’re trained in thinking, speaking and listening, you become not only a master in conversation but also a ‘fool’, like Socrates, says Belgian philosopher Kristof Van Rossem: ‘You become liberated from limited perspectives.’

For more than two decades, Kristof has worked as an independent trainer specialising in Socratic dialogue and the art of questioning, working with individuals and business, social and governmental organisations, and now his new book, The Philosophical Conversation: the basics (Changemakers Books, January, 2024), advises on how to get yourself under way with philosophical skills.

The Socratic method, or dialogue, is a question and answer way of philosophising which Plato, in his early works, said was used by his teacher Socrates (470–399 BCE). In general terms, the method can be any philosophical or pedagogical method that pursues truth disinterestedly through analytical discussion.

More specifically, and this is where the ‘fool’ comes in, the method is often deployed in tandem with feigned ignorance (Socratic irony), where a self-ordained expert’s over-indulgent claim to knowledge is subverted.

Concise at just 135 pages and breezily written, The Philosophical Conversation is a unique guide for anyone who might be interested in the pursuit. Kristof wants conversation to have…