Samenvatting

While Socratic Dialogue has been, and still is, used in education and training, it has rarely been applied as a method for empirical research. The central question of this article is whether Socratic Dialogue can be used as a research method. First the relevance of Socratic Dialogue and the hourglass model will be explained. We will make a distinction between the Platonic idea of a truth seeking dialogue and the notion of an inter-subjective truth, and we will discuss Martin Buber’s’ idea of a genuine I-You encounter as the basis of Socratic Dialogue. Then, by examining a concrete case, the utility of Socratic Dialogue as a research method will be evaluated.The examined dialogue in this article is part of the authors’ current research on civil-military relations from an ethical perspective. The aim of this research is to facilitate a higher quality dialogue between the (inter)national military, (inter)national humanitarian organizations, and the local populations by identifying, clarifying and discussing the moral values underlying tensions in civil-military relations, in this case in Afghanistan. While the researcher introduced the central theme - civil-military relations in the Baghlan Province in Afghanistan - the fundamental question did not reflect the values, ideas and assumptions of the researcher but those of the participants, and it was exactly these values, ideas and assumptions that were investigated.The case shows how Socratic Dialogue can reveal the (moral) values of the participants through inquiry, criticism and reasonableness. What is considered to be reasonable may be regarded as objective, but it has to be borne in mind that decisions of this kind carry value judgments at every turn and few situations would be immune from their influence.