It’s one of the most well-known scenes in classical literature. Socrates has been found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death. Waiting in prison, he gathers several friends together and spends his last evening discussing whether the soul survives death. Then he drinks a draught of hemlock and by the following morning his own soul has departed. These events, described in Plato’s Phaedo, are so celebrated you would think there was little left to say. But, in her new book on Socrates, the philosopher Agnes Callard draws attention to one often overlooked line.

Midway through the dialogue, after Socrates has presented three arguments for the immortality of the soul, he invites objections. At first his friends seem reluctant to disagree, but eventually Simmias and Cebes criticise the idea that the soul remains after the body’s destruction. Their argument is so convincing, the rest of the group become ‘depressed’ – except for Socrates. According to Plato, the philosopher receives these objections in a ‘pleasant, kind and admiring way’. As Callard asks in her analysis of this scene: ‘How could someone who is clinging to the immortality of the soul in the face of imminent death receive counterarguments in a pleasant, kind and admiring way?’

It’s not because Socrates has a brilliant response. His subsequent comments suggest that his friends’ refutation might be right, but, as he reminds them: ‘There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.’ Such is the philosopher’s love of truth that he would rather give up a comforting illusion than end his life deceived. Elsewhere in the dialogue, Socrates claims that philosophy is a preparation for our final days: ‘The one aim of those who practise philosophy in the proper manner is to practise for dying and death.’ In Open Socrates, Callard argues that the philosopher’s example helps us live as well, navigating not only death, but the moral quandaries of love and politics, too.

The book identifies three main strands of moral thinking in Western philosophy: Kantian (or, deontological), Utilitarian (or consequentialism), and neo-Aristotelian (or Virtue Ethics). Crudely, they argue that action should be guided by respect for humanity, or by bringing about the greatest good for the greatest number, or by doing whatever the morally wise person would do in the same situation. There is no Neo-Socratic school to compete with these three, in part because the philosopher never wrote down his ideas. For all the importance of Socrates to the history of philosophy, it was his method that made the greatest impact, rather than any teaching or treatise.

That method has long been characterised by refutation. Socrates poses general philosophical questions and then exposes the flaws in his companions’ responses. According to the sceptics, this approach was purely negative, because exposing falsehood is not the same as revealing the truth. But, while Callard agrees that ‘Refutation is the fundamental form of philosophical interaction,’ she offers a more positive interpretation.

Most people’s lives are sustained by the assumptions they prefer not to analyse, which Callard calls ‘load-bearing beliefs’. She contrasts them with ‘untimely questions’: questions where our lives are already staked on an answer, such as, ‘Am I a good person?’ or ‘Should I stay married?’ For Callard, the Socratic method is a way of stress-testing these assumptions: ‘Socrates’ questions pinpoint beliefs the person needs to have – and his questioning applies targeted pressure on that critical load-bearing spot.’ Or, as she phrases it elsewhere: ‘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.’

The second part of the book summarises the Socratic approach to moral problems as follows: ‘What should you do? Simple, keep an open mind and inquire, moving towards what’s true and away from what’s false.’ There’s no secret body of Socratic teaching hidden behind the questions; rather, the process of interrogation is wisdom enough. Though the other major strands of ethical thinking spare us from thought via some overriding principle – better to end one life if it saves five, for instance – the Socratic method forces a fresh inquiry each time. The ‘hard work of struggling to be a good, virtuous, ethical person – Socrates understands this work as, first and foremost, intellectual work’.

It is difficult to keep asking questions when the truth may contradict the tentative answers that have shaped our lives so far. In some cases, this process brings not wisdom but a feeling of futility – as Leo Tolstoy argues in A Confession. Entering middle age, the celebrated author began questioning the purpose behind the activities that filled his days – educating his children, say, or running his estate – and found himself helpless to answer. ‘By his own lights, what Tolstoy discovered is that the examined life was not worth living,’ Callard explains, which is why so many of us avoid these kinds of inquiries, fearing the Tolstoyan crisis that might follow. However, what Tolstoy discovered was not that these questions were impossible to answer, simply that he could not answer them alone.

Despite the image of the philosopher as an isolated genius, the Socratic method insists that seeking truth is a group activity. Every serious thinker will test ideas inside their mind, yet untimely questions are the hardest to answer in solitude. They require a critical companion to expose the weak-points we thought well-defended, drawing our thoughts beyond their mental limitations. ‘Socratic method is a way you can make progress without knowing in advance how you are going to do so,’ Callard claims, which helps explain why the history of philosophy features so many famous pairs. The model of Socrates and his students was echoed again in Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. But, if shared inquiry is the true purpose of love and politics – in the Socratic understanding of these activities – it’s also a reason to keep thinking about death, ‘the time when there is nothing left that stands between you and untimely questions, when they can be delayed no longer. Preparation for death is preparation for that time, and to do philosophy is to see that time as right now’.

Open Socrates resists repackaging classical ideas into the platitudes of a self-help book. All the same, Callard returns the study of philosophy to its classical roots: less an academic pursuit of abstract concepts than a shared inquiry into how we might navigate this life. I’m not convinced the book succeeds in establishing ‘Socratic ethics as a novel and distinctive ethical system, complete with its own core theses and […] recommendations’. Nor am I convinced that this demanding intellectual project would appeal to many people outside a philosophy department. After all, the Socratic method rarely tells us what to do; rather, it makes us responsible for discovering our answers. Nonetheless, for Callard the effort to think for ourselves is both a pleasure and a privilege, and an effort we need not make alone. As Socrates shows, truth can only be found in company, and confronting untimely questions is the great communal task of our lives.