Socrates feared falling into the trap of 'thinking you know when you do not know'. Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto
The ancient world gave us lots of things: Democracy, science, literature. It also gave us the columnist. Before Fintan O’Toole there was Simeon Stylites, who preached for more than 30 years from a small platform on top of a pillar outside of Aleppo in what’s now Syria.
But the ancient world also produced an antidote to top-down forms of communication. The life of the original columnist overlapped with that of Socrates who, in nearby Athens, modelled a form of debate that was radical in its day and is arguably more so now.
What became known as Socratic dialogue demands that we not only listen to each other’s views but, also, that we allow people to freely express obnoxious and obje
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