Socrates’ Two-Column Method Is The Best Self-Help Tool

In this lesson, I speak to Stoicism expert Donald Robertson about how to apply the Socratic method. Discover the timeless wisdom of Socrates and his groundbreaking two-column technique—a simple yet profound method for improving critical thinking, questioning assumptions, and making better decisions. This ancient approach to self-improvement has inspired philosophers like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, and remains a powerful tool for modern personal growth.

Transcript

The following is a clip from a conversation I recorded with Donald Robertson,

A cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and renowned expert on Stoicism.

Donald specializes in bridging ancient philosophical wisdom with the modern psychology to enhance resilience,

Emotional clarity and well-being.

Enjoy.

In the book,

You talk about cognitive flexibility.

And whenever I hear you talk about Socrates and I read about him,

I feel like he's a master at trying on almost like different lenses or perspectives and flipping between them.

I think so.

I mean,

Let me explain a little bit about something that was a bit of an epiphany for me.

So one of the reasons that Socrates sometimes people say,

What did Socrates say?

And it's hard to summarize what Socrates said,

Because we have these dialogues mainly and he does imply things or sometimes he says things explicitly.

But for the most part,

What he bequeathed to us is a method.

And I think that's part of his thinking.

Some people like the sophists believe that wisdom consisted in knowing a bunch of stuff and are holding correct opinions and that you could sum it up in a speech.

You could sum it up in maxims or slogans that people could buy from you,

Like buying onions from a greengrocer.

They come along and pay you money and you give them the speech.

And now they're wise.

They just memorize it.

You can write it down for them and they can memorize the slogans and they repeat it.

Now they're going to be as wise as you are.

Just repeat what you said.

And so Socrates doesn't think of wisdom in terms of content.

He thinks of it more in terms of process.

It's a cognitive skill.

He thinks there is no rule or maxim that's going to be true in every situation.

There's always going to be exceptions to it.

And wisdom for Socrates appears to consist more in being able to figure out the exceptions to a general maxim or a rule to be able to think more flexibly and more creatively.

I explain it to kids by saying Socrates is like this guy that whenever you say something it's almost like he wants to say,

Yes,

But.

So how would you define justice?

And you go,

I think justice is like helping your friends and harming your enemies.

It's a classic group definition.

Socrates' kind of response is just to go,

Yes,

But.

And then he'll come up with some kind of flaw in it or objection to it.

So he kind of acknowledges the sum truth in what you're saying,

But there's also a shortcoming to it.

There's always more.

You know,

He's always,

He's always very creatively thinking of situations where your idea,

Your definition,

Your rule kind of breaks down.

And so what we get from him more is this method of questioning.

So the epiphany I had,

I was reading Xenophon and,

You know,

I was hesitant to write about Socrates.

You know,

It's a presumptuous thing because people have been writing about Plato and Socrates for,

Since they,

You know,

They lived,

You know,

And,

You know,

Many,

You know,

Great scholars have written over the centuries about Socrates and Plato to a lesser extent about Xenophon.

And I thought,

I don't,

You know,

I'm not an expert,

I have a degree in philosophy,

But you know,

I'm not a Plato scholar.

I'm not an expert.

It's just kind of hobby for me.

And then one of the reasons I decided to write about it was because I was teaching my daughter about this stuff.

And I thought,

Look,

I just want to be able to communicate with people,

You know,

About the benefit that I derive from it and the way,

Same way that I would talk to my daughter about it.

Right.

So I'm not,

You know,

I'm not,

I'm not claiming to have the final word on Plato or to be able to compete with professional scholars,

But I think maybe I can express some of the ideas in a way that would be engaging,

Give people an on-ramp,

You know,

To go and read the dialogues and so on.

And one of the reasons for that,

I think,

Is that I have an unusual background.

My background is interdisciplinary.

So my master's degrees was in an interdisciplinary center in Sheffield where we studied sociology,

Anthropology,

Philosophy,

Psychiatry,

Like psychotherapy.

And I've always been my,

I came from a background of philosophy and then I trained in lots of different types of psychotherapy.

And then I got into kind of studying classics and history.

So I combine these different disciplines to some extent.

And reading Plato and particularly Xenophon,

Actually,

As a psychotherapist,

I think I noticed stuff.

It seemed to me I was noticing stuff that classicists and philosophers just never mentioned.

And when I,

You know,

I'm lucky enough to,

Over the years,

Having written books and speak at conferences,

I'm friends with and know lots of classicists and philosophers.

And I'd say to them,

Like,

Have you noticed this thing that Plato says or this thing that Xenophon says?

And they'd often noticed it,

But hadn't thought it was significant or they just hadn't noticed it at all.

The stuff leaps out at me is because sometimes it's just weirdly similar to stuff that we would do in cognitive therapy.

But one of them is in one of Xenophon's dialogues,

Socrates is talking to yet another adolescent boy and he's in the agora in a saddlery,

Like sell saddles for horses.

So just like we described before,

And he gets talking to this young guy called Euthydemus.

There are two Euthydemuses,

One in Xenophon and one in Plato.

This is Xenophon's Euthydemus.

And Socrates says to this guy,

Listen,

I've heard all about you.

You've got a reputation for having this amazing library,

Private collection of books on self-improvement.

He's a self-help junkie,

Like really familiar in modern psychotherapy.

Half the clients that we see in therapy have got libraries of self-help books.

You know,

They're self-help junkies,

Right?

And this is exactly what this young guy is like.

And he says,

Yeah,

I collect the maxims of the wise for my own improvement,

Right?

He's a self-help junkie.

He's got all the best selling books of the time and stuff.

And Socrates gets in a conversation with him about that.

And he basically questions him.

He says,

Well,

He wants more than anything else is to be a great statesman and to demonstrate that he really understands the nature of justice.

And so Socrates questions him about the nature of justice and within a few minutes shows that he's contradicting himself and he's confused and he doesn't really understand that.

So again,

He's been passively just kind of parroting stuff from books,

But he hasn't got the cognitive skill of being able to do critical thinking.

He can't employ these concepts.

He's just repeating stuff that he's read without really understanding it.

And so Socrates is trying to show him to really understand the nature of justice.

You need to be willing to debate it and to kind of explore it from different perspectives and turn it over in your mind and so on.

It's going to take work,

Like practicing playing the guitar or something like that.

It's a skill.

It's a practical skill that we're learning.

But then this is the bit that jumps out at me.

Socrates says,

Let me show you.

And he draws a diagram.

So I was like,

No one told me Socrates drew a diagram.

I mean,

He does draw other diagrams,

But no one told me he drew this diagram.

And he draws two columns,

Probably on a wax tablet,

I'm guessing.

And we do two column diagrams all the time in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

There's probably someone doing it right now as we speak somewhere in the world,

Right?

With a flipboard with a CBT client.

We use it for different things.

But what Socrates uses it for,

So we'll do typically,

We'll get a negative belief that a client has,

Like nobody likes me,

Everybody hates me or something,

Right?

And then the cognitive therapist will say,

Where's the evidence for that?

Let's draw two columns where they have the evidence for that belief on one side and the evidence against it on the other side,

Right?

And then we'll go through it and the evidence that you think is for it,

Then maybe we'll do a second round and we'll go,

Is this evidence real?

Or could it be possibly interpreted differently or challenged?

Right?

So we can start to question the placement of things in the column.

We'll also do two columns and weigh up the pros and cons of holding a belief or using a particular strategy,

Right?

And then again,

Someone might say,

These are some of the pros of avoidance,

Like,

Oh,

Well,

At least when I avoid situations that make me feel anxious,

It makes me feel temporarily better.

And so the therapist might say,

Might then go back and question that and say,

But is that an illusion,

Right?

Is that really a pro or is it really a disadvantage there?

Because maybe it alleviates your anxiety temporarily,

But makes you more sensitive in the long term,

More vulnerable over the long term.

So maybe that's not really an advantage.

Maybe it just seems like one,

Right?

And so we start to question the evaluation of the pros and cons in that way.

There's a couple of other variations,

But those are the ways that we typically use the two column diagram.

So Socrates draws two columns and he says,

Okay,

So you want to be a statesman and understand the nature of justice.

Let's put justice at the top one column and injustice at the top of the other.

He says,

Give me some examples of injustice.

And Euthydemus says,

That's easy,

Lying and stealing and stuff like that,

Right?

And Socrates says,

Okay,

And this is where the Socratic method proper begin,

The next step.

So he says,

Lying.

So now Socrates isn't just following a formula.

He's actually thinking creatively.

He's coming up with creative examples,

Right?

Not just following some standard formula.

He has to think on the fly.

So he says,

Okay,

Lying and stealing.

What if an elected general in a war lies to the enemy?

Is that injustice or is that potentially just?

And Euthydemus is like,

Well,

That's different,

Right?

Like that's an exception to the rule,

That would be unjust.

Socrates says,

You said stealing was unjust,

But what if he captures an enemy camp and steals their weapons?

Is that unjust or would we consider that to be just in the rules of war?

And Euthydemus says,

Okay,

Like,

You know,

That's just,

That's an exception.

Socrates says,

Okay,

What about in civilian life?

If a parent is trying to give medicine to a small child and they won't take it,

But they know they need it to help them.

So the parent hides it inside the food and deceives the child.

But is that unjust or is that justified form of deception?

Euthydemus is like,

Okay,

Well,

That's different as well,

Right?

It's kind of an exception.

So then Socrates uses an example that's like a famous one throughout the centuries that philosophers love.

So what if your friend,

He says,

What if your friend is suicidal?

And they ask you,

Where did you put my dagger?

So would you consider it unjust to tell them a white lie and say,

I don't know,

I can't remember where your dagger is in order to save their life?

And Euthydemus is like,

Okay,

Well,

Yeah,

That's different.

It's a white lie.

You're doing it to save somebody's life,

To help them.

So what Socrates is basically teaching is a cognitive skill here.

It's a form of cognitive flexibility where you're able to think outside the box to use a horrible modern cliche.

You've got this kind of rigid definition of justice.

It consists in telling the truth and not stealing and stuff like that.

But is there more nuance to it?

Actually,

If you really understand justice and injustice,

Are there possibly exceptions to it?

And in different situations,

Might you interpret the meaning of the word somewhat differently?

And you can't teach that by just getting someone to memorize a formula.

You have to get them to think through lots of examples.

And at the end of it,

They might even say,

I'm not sure that I could necessarily.

They revise their definition of what justice means,

But they might never get to a perfect definition.

But it still seems like they've got a better understanding by the end of it,

Because they've gone on this journey of thinking through all the exceptions.

It takes time to do.

It's a skill.

You can't just get that from someone giving you a lecture and you're going away and memorizing what they've said.

So Socrates says,

We draw these two columns.

Are there any circumstances under which we would move something from one column into the other column?

You said that lying is unjust.

Would you ever move it across into the column marked justice in some situations?

And he says the same thing.

Then Euthydemus eventually says to him,

Listen,

I want to study philosophy and learn this skill.

Where should I begin?

And Socrates then says to him,

This is how you should begin,

Right?

And he says,

Where you should begin is by asking yourself what eudaimonia consists of,

A fulfillment.

This would seem logical from an ancient Greek point of view.

He says it's the definition of what is good and bad,

Basically,

Because that's how an ancient Greek would define eudaimonia.

It's having everything that's good and avoiding everything that's bad,

Basically.

So he says,

List all the things that think are good for us in life,

Like wealth and reputation,

Having a big house and all this kind of superficial stuff he would come up with initially.

Then Socrates says,

Can you think of any situations in which the things that you listed as good might potentially be bad?

So he says health is the most obvious example of something that's intrinsically good.

And Socrates says,

Well,

You know,

What if you live in a dictatorship and the tyrant that rules it is recruiting people to engage in an unjust war where everybody's going to get killed?

Then being healthy might be a disadvantage,

Right?

Socrates's favorite example as well was the reversal of fortune is that under the dictatorship of the 30 tyrants in Athens,

The oligarchy,

Towards the end of his life,

They went round and executed lots of people that had money and status.

Because if you had status,

You were a threat to them.

And if you had a lot of money,

They wanted to seize it for themselves.

So people before had complained that they were poor and they had no status in Athenian society.

And Socrates,

After the oligarchy,

Probably annoyingly would go up to them and say,

Don't you think you're better off now?

Because the 30 tyrants rounded up anybody that had status money and garroted them and threw them in a pit in order to steal their wealth.

You're lucky you're poor.

I didn't work out so well for the rich and famous of Athenian society.

So sometimes it can be surprising how things work out,

Right?

Losing your job might be the best thing that ever happens to you,

Right?

I mean,

Getting sick might be one of the best things that ever happens to you.

You might really learn something from it.

It might cause you to view things from a different perspective.

You know,

It's difficult to predict like how things are going.

Often when you look,

It's easier in retrospect as you get older,

You look back over your life.

It sounds crazy at first to say this,

But when you're older and you look back on your own life and you think,

What are the things that benefited you the most over the course of your life?

And you might look back and think some of the things that actually the most were like a relationship that didn't work out or failing an exam or,

You know,

Some of the things that made me who I am today were like setbacks and misfortune.

So it seems,

You know,

Like we,

Again,

We have to have a more nuanced perspective.

You know,

We have to have more cognitive flexibility and being able to look at things from multiple alternative points of view to see the possibilities that are intrinsic in them.

But also in modern psychology,

We know that this kind of cognitive flexibility that Socrates is training people to develop through using this two column technique,

You know,

Thinking of exceptions to the rules,

Always generating alternative ways of looking at things is associated with emotional resilience,

Better relationships with other people,

Better psychological wellbeing.

Whereas rigidity in our thinking tends to be associated with depression and anxiety and other mental health problems.

So it's the skill of the obtained from Socrates that maybe is one of the most valuable things.

Maybe flourishing actually consists in this ability to ask questions and think about things in a more flexible and creative way.

But one of the reasons I'm emphasising that is I don't think this is acknowledged in modern self-help literature,

Generally speaking.

I think when you read modern self-help books and you watch videos,

The self-help books give self-help advice.

They give answers,

They recommend maxims and strategies and techniques.

But like with the ancient sophists,

That risks encouraging a kind of passivity and rigidity in our thinking.

Reviews

This was so informative! Thank you. It put into perspective quite a few arguments I constantly have with myself.