In the chapter “Reason” in her book The Case for God, Karen Armstrong describes the approach to wisdom offered by Socrates:

In our society, rational discourse is often aggressive, since participants are not usually battling with themselves but are doing their best to demonstrate the invalidity of their opponent’s viewpoint. This was the kind of debate that was going on in the Athenian assemblies, and Socrates did not like it. He told the ambitious young aristocrat Meno that if he was one of the “clever and disputatious debaters” currently in vogue, he would simply state his case and challenge Meno to refute it. But this was not appropriate in a discussion between people who “are friends, as you and I are, and want to to discuss with each other.” In true dialogue the interlocutors “must answer in a manner more gentle and more proper to discussion.” In a Socratic dialogue, therefore, the “winner” did not try to force an unwilling opponent to accept his point of view. It was a joint effort. You expressed yourself clearly as a gift to your partner, whose beautifully expressed argument would, in turn, touch you at a profound level. In the dialogues recorded by Plato, the conversation halts, digresses to another subject, and returns to the original idea in a way that prevents it from becoming dogmatic. It was essential that at each stage of the debate, Socrates and his interlocutors maintained a disciplined, openhearted accord.

I really loved this, as I do see this all too often. Discussions where each party is simply waiting their turn to speak in order to convince them of the rightness of their argument are not fun nor productive. In contrast, the discussions I’ve had where two or more people are genuinely and jointly trying to understand something have been breathtaking and memorable.