Review of Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life. By Agnes Callard. W.W. Norton & Company. 405 pp. $35.

Many of us know that Socrates declared that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” And that he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth” of Athens. Far fewer of us understand the essential features of “The Socratic Method.”

In Open Socrates, Agnes Callard (a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and author of Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming) explicates and celebrates his method, as laid out in Plato’s dialogues. Callard then shows how Socrates did—and she can—use it to examine fundamental issues in our lives, including justice, equality, love, and death.

Although Socrates’ approach relied on reason, not emotion, and thinking, not feeling, Callard’s accessible and immensely insightful book should command the attention of armchair and professional psychologists as well as philosophers.

Much more than a banal invocation of cautious skepticism and open-mindedness, the........

© Psychology Today