“We had to think intensively for ourselves.”

In socratic dialogue, participants learn how to proceed from concrete life-experience to more abstract, general statements. It is not a simple generalisation, every step must be justified and critically proved by the whole group.

Socratic approach brings following benefits:

• To trust my own ability to think and to reason. (For many participants  it is their first experience with developing their own valid arguments.)
• To compare arguments and reasons with my own experience (No authority or scientific knowledge is involved in socratic dialogue.)
• Adherence to a subsidiary question until it is answered: in order to achieve this the group is required to bring great commitment to its work and to gain self-confidence in the power of reason. This means on the one hand, not giving up when the work become difficult, but on the other, to be calm enough to accept, for a time, a different course in the dialogue in order then to return to the subsidiary question.