Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, in his vision of literature, declares that novels are the Socratic dialogues of our age. In this saying lies both reverence and lament. Once, in the marketplaces of Athens, wisdom shone through the probing questions of Socrates, who sought not to instruct but to awaken. Now, Schlegel tells us, that same flame has fled from the austere chambers of school wisdom and taken refuge in the free and wandering form of the novel. What was once spoken under the open sky now breathes in ink and paper, whispering to every reader who dares to listen.

The meaning is deep: practical wisdom, the wisdom that speaks of life as it is lived and suffered, cannot be confined within the rigid walls of scholastic order. It yearns for freedom, for the chance to question and to contradict, to mock and to weep, to exalt and to despair. Thus, it escaped from the prison of doctrine into the liberal form of storytelling, where characters may wrestle as Socrates once wrestled, and where truth emerges not by decree but by struggle.

Consider Cervantes’ Don Quixote, that knight errant of windmills and dreams. Through his madness, and through the weary pragmatism of Sancho Panza, we see a dialogue no less searching than those in Plato’s books. What is reality? What is illusion? What does it mean to live with honor, even when mocked by the world? These are questions that no school could answer in formula, but the novel brought them forth in living flesh. And so, Don Quixote stands as a modern Socratic dialogue, not in the marketplace, but in the heart of the reader.

This transformation is not weakness but strength. For the novel, unlike the formal lecture, speaks to the hidden places of the soul. It carries wisdom across the centuries disguised as tale, as fable, as laughter and sorrow. It is the wandering philosopher, clothed not in the robe of the academy, but in the garb of the storyteller. And through its disguise, it reaches the common man, the youth, the weary traveler—those whom the ancient schools never touched.

Therefore, let us honor the novel not as idle entertainment, but as the sacred vessel where wisdom hides. Schlegel’s words remind us: when the formal halls grow sterile, truth finds another home. And so long as men and women hunger for meaning, the Socratic spirit will never die—it will merely change its form. For whether spoken by Socrates in Athens, or whispered by a character in a book, the call remains the same: “Know thyself.”