A Book Report on Socrates Café by Christopher Phillips Essay

This seeks to write a book report for the book Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips. This paper discusses the author’s declared purpose in writing the book in relations to what Socrates may have left as legacy in latter’s works. The dilemma of believing what may not be the truth. We live as we believe as they say. If Socrates is alive today, he would have asked: â€Å"Do we voluntarily have convictions or could they be imposed upon us? How do we acquire the things the we ultimately believed? † Convictions lead us to action because we believe what we are doing. Without conviction it is really hard, to move into action. Seel Jr. , shared to us the same dilemma when he said, â€Å"There is a danger in both Christian families and Christian schools that indoctrination is taken for education. Nothing could be farther from the truth. One’s convictions cannot be coerced. Instead, they are ultimately based on what we love and best learned in an environment of trust. Too often family dinner tables, Sunday schools, and Christian school classrooms are only one-way conversations—telling at the expense of listening. See more:  First Poem for You Essay As such, many Christians have never learned the intellectual discipline of asking questions. † We are however not left without any option. We can ask questions. Seel, Jr. agreed, saying â€Å"Yet an educated mind begins with a questioning mind. One of the distinctive of the school where I teach is its commitment to allow students the freedom to express their uncertainty. The policy manual reads, â€Å"Students are treated as young adults and are encouraged to develop their own convictions. This will inevitably mean that at times students may challenge their parents’ beliefs and question their own. The school seeks to create an environment where students are able to respectfully raise honest questions and express doubts within a community of loving acceptance and intellectual inquiry. † The importance of book of Phillips on Socratic Cafe assumes a remarkable significance with our dilemma. The author aims to bring back questioning in the minds of many. Seel, Jr. confirmed this when he said, â€Å"His aim is to bring probing conversations about the important questions to common people. † Do we really need to seek the truth? How do we seek the truth? We should be searching the truth. In the inventions, that we make we discover the truth of many things. We adopt decisions in our courts because that is how we see the law at a certain point in time but we also change jurisprudence in the light of evolution of events. Without the desire for truth man would have remained ignorant that the earth is flat and not round or that the earth is the center of the universe. Our discoveries reveal our desire for truth. For greater purpose we seek the truth as in the way court cases are decided, thus truth is a requisite of justice. Indeed, Seel, Jr. aid, â€Å"Our community is committed to the pursuit of truth. Convictions are to be held and beliefs maintained on this basis alone. There are obviously many reasons why a person becomes a Christian. We all have our stories. But ultimately, Christianity is to be believed because it is true. It is True Truth, as Francis Schaeffer used to say. More than true for me; rather the truth of reality. But to recognize this, one must first learn to ask honest questions. † Seel, Jr. further said that â€Å"The Socratic Method is a powerful tool for sharpening our thinking and exposing what we don’t know. It is a powerful pedagogical tool but a disastrous epistemological one. † Phillips has the right to make use of the title of his book are he is believed to have hosted Socratic dialogues and has traveled the country holding various and numerous conversations in coffee houses, bookstores, senior centers, elementary schools and even prisons. † Seel, Jr. agreed saying, â€Å"The greatest danger of truth is not falsehood, but diversion and indifference. †¦.. Humility is beginning of wisdom. † Without searching for the truth we will always be mislead and continue to live in ignorance. The reason why we rarely ask why  Our not asking why seemed to have been conditioned with our environment. Thus, Seel, Jr. agreed saying, and â€Å"Our convictions are too often based on social conformity rather than personal reflection. We say we are concerned about truth. But we do not pay the dues truth demands. † Given the benefits, what are examples of questions asked by Phillip under Socratic Method? Christopher Phillips asks in the Socrates Cafes: What are the Big Questions and what makes them so? What is a question? What would life be like without questions? Why am I here? What is home? Where am I stuck? What is a friend? What is wonder? What is silence? What is old? Am I asking the right questions? What am I meant to do? What is love? What is what? Why ask why? Socrates claimed that an unexamined life was not worth living. If we live without consideration of its destination, and whether the road traveled will get us there, then we are fools and not wise. Or as Jesus asks, â€Å"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? † It must be noted that the questions are interconnected with one another so that the answer to one question would lead to more truth in answering the following questions. Would not asking too much a sign of presumptive superiority of the person asking that could discourage relations with the person or persons asked? This is where Socrates have made the Socratic Method unique and worth memorable from the lessons he has to left his fellowmen. Seel, Jr. mentioned them as follows: First, Socrates always showed his opponents deference. By putting himself in the position of the learner rather than the teacher, he avoided raising in his opponent feelings of suspicion or defensiveness. The second lesson of Socratic argument is: Encourage your opponent to make the argument his or her own. The third lesson of Socrates is: Seek a shared higher standard. However, Seel, Jr. noted that on the third criterion, Phillips failed on this area. Arguing, Seel, Jr. said, â€Å"In the hands of Phillips, â€Å"The Socratic method is a way to seek truth by your own lights. † For Phillips the questions are the end not the means to an end. † The argument of Seel, Jr. claiming failure of Phillips could be contradicted and explained under which this paper qualifies Phillips work to have pass under the third criteria. Phillips, said, â€Å"The one thing Socrates know beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was fond of saying, was that he didn’t know anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet Socrates, contrary to what many think, did not try to pose the ultimate sceptic. He was not trying to say all the knowledge was groundless, that we were doomed to know nothing. Rather, he was emphasizing that what he had come to know, the truths he had discovered by hard-won experience, were slippery, elusive, always tentative at best ,always subject to new developments, new information, new alternatives. Every last bit of knowledge, every assumption, Socrates felt, should always be questioned, analyzed, challenged. Nothing was ever resolved once and for all. The fact that question leads to further question does necessarily not mean â€Å"ending with the question† but rather the truth that is revealed by every question leads to further truth. The Author reemphasizing the impossibility of exhausting all the questions In trying to explain his work, â€Å"socratising† is almost obvious in many part of the book. Thus, Phillips said, â€Å"It is with this that I launched Socrates Cafe. And the one and only firm and lasting truth that has emerged from all the Socrates Cafe, discussion. I’ve taken part in is that it is not possible to examine, scrutinize, plumb, and mine a question too thoroughly and exhaustively. There is always more to discover. This is the essence of magic, of what I have come to call ‘Socratising’† He further said, â€Å"Socrates Cafe does not have to be held in cafe. It can take place anywhere a group of people- or a group of one –chooses to gather an inquire philosophically. It can take place around a dining table, in a church or a community centre, on a mountaintop, in a nursing home, a hospital, senior centre, a school, a prison. † As long as man lives, he will continue to ask question whether inside or outside his religion. He must be fortunate to have freedom to Socratic Method, anytime and in any where. This is clearly expressed by author saying, â€Å"Anywhere and anytime you desire to do more than regurgitate and nauseam what you read or think you have read, about philosophers of the past who are considered by academics to the undisputed exclusive members of the philosophical pantheon. It can take place anywhere people want to do philosophy, to inquire philosophically, themselves, whether with a group of people or alone. † Conclusion: Socratic Cafe is a powerful book in making Socrates alive in the heart and mind of people of believe in Socratic Method. In indeed seldom any kind of TV talk shows is made a success without the artful way of asking questions. Any good research must have a research questions. If many good inventions started with research and if research seeks to address to a research question it could categorically be said that questions will always be there. Questioning stops if the truth is found, but who could claim to have found the truth. Hence the message of Socrates Cafe will always leave something practical if not profound knowledge and realizations for people seeking the truth to subject their works to further questions, This would be good for such is also is the reality that a man travels in this travel to seek perfection in his ways or in trying to know his God from inside and outside on himself. One could not escape the relevance of the Socratic way of teaching or learning as it could be applied by group or individually, anywhere and anytime.