Students working through Socratic questioning will learn that there are two or more sides to almost any issue, and a competent lawyer is able to persuasively articulate all of them. In order to develop into such an attorney, students must become skilled at finding the strengths and weaknesses of various arguments and positions. The rapid-fire questioning of the Socratic method is perfect for sharpening this skill. As a final note: many are scared of the Socratic method, but need not be.
Today, most schools use it in a way that is neither fearsome nor intended to embarrass anyone. But students will forever be nervous about it because of this dramatic scene from The Paper Chase if you dare. WashULaw offers several programs to help you advance your career. Please help us better support you by filling out the following questions. After completion, you will gain access to our program brochure and a dedicated admissions counselor will contact you to help answer additional questions.
Where did the Socratic method come from? There are some thinkers for whom Socratic irony is not just restricted to what Socrates says. As famous as the Socratic themes are, the Socratic method is equally famous. Socrates conducted his philosophical activity by means of question an answer, and we typically associate with him a method called the elenchus.
A typical Socratic elenchus is a cross-examination of a particular position, proposition, or definition, in which Socrates tests what his interlocutor says and refutes it. There is, however, great debate amongst scholars regarding not only what is being refuted but also whether or not the elenchus can prove anything. There are questions, in other words, about the topic of the elenchus and its purpose or goal. What is piety, he asks Euthyphro. Euthyphro appears to give five separate definitions of piety: piety is proceeding against whomever does injustice 5d-6e , piety is what is loved by the gods 6e-7a , piety is what is loved by all the gods 9e , the godly and the pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods 12e , and piety is the knowledge of sacrificing and praying 13da.
For some commentators, what Socrates is searching for here is a definition. Other commentators argue that Socrates is searching for more than just the definition of piety but seeks a comprehensive account of the nature of piety.
Another reading of the Socratic elenchus is that Socrates is not just concerned with the reply of the interlocutor but is concerned with the interlocutor himself. Socrates is concerned with both epistemological and moral advances for the interlocutor and himself. It is not propositions or replies alone that are refuted, for Socrates does not conceive of them dwelling in isolation from those that hold them. Thus conceived, the elenchus refutes the person holding a particular view, not just the view.
For instance, Socrates shames Thrasymachus when he shows him that he cannot maintain his view that justice is ignorance and injustice is wisdom Republic I d. The elenchus demonstrates that Thrasymachus cannot consistently maintain all his claims about the nature of justice. In terms of goal, there are two common interpretations of the elenchus. Both have been developed by scholars in response to what Gregory Vlastos called the problem of the Socratic elenchus.
The problem is how Socrates can claim that position W is false, when the only thing he has established is its inconsistency with other premises whose truth he has not tried to establish in the elenchus.
The first response is what is called the constructivist position. A constructivist argues that the elenchus establishes the truth or falsity of individual answers.
The elenchus on this interpretation can and does have positive results. The second response is called the non-constructivist position. This position claims that Socrates does not think the elenchus can establish the truth or falsity of individual answers. The non-constructivist argues that all the elenchus can show is the inconsistency of W with the premises X, Y, and Z. The elenchus establishes the falsity of the conjunction of W, X, Y, and Z, but not the truth or falsity of any of those premises individually.
The purpose of the elenchus on this interpretation is to show the interlocutor that he is confused, and, according to some scholars, to use that confusion as a stepping stone on the way to establishing a more consistent, well-formed set of beliefs.
It also ends without a conclusive answer to its question, a characteristic it shares with a number of Socratic dialogues. Socrates tells Theaetetus that his mother Phaenarete was a midwife a and that he himself is an intellectual midwife.
Whereas the craft of midwifery bd brings on labor pains or relieves them in order to help a woman deliver a child, Socrates does not watch over the body but over the soul, and helps his interlocutor give birth to an idea. He then applies the elenchus to test whether or not the intellectual offspring is a phantom or a fertile truth. Socrates stresses that both he and actual midwives are barren, and cannot give birth to their own offspring.
In spite of his own emptiness of ideas, Socrates claims to be skilled at bringing forth the ideas of others and examining them. The method of dialectic is thought to be more Platonic than Socratic, though one can understand why many have associated it with Socrates himself. There are two other definitions of dialectic in the Platonic corpus. First, in the Republic , Socrates distinguishes between dianoetic thinking, which makes use of the senses and assumes hypotheses, and dialectical thinking, which does not use the senses and goes beyond hypotheses to first principles Republic VII cc, da.
Second, in the Phaedrus , Sophist, Statesman , and Philebus , dialectic is defined as a method of collection and division. One collects things that are scattered into one kind and also divides each kind according to its species Phaedrus dc. Some scholars view the elenchus and dialectic as fundamentally different methods with different goals, while others view them as consistent and reconcilable. Some even view them as two parts of one argument procedure, in which the elenchus refutes and dialectic constructs.
Nearly every school of philosophy in antiquity had something positive to say about Socrates, and most of them drew their inspiration from him. Socrates also appears in the works of many famous modern philosophers. One of the more famous quotes about Socrates is from John Stuart Mill, the 19 th century utilitarian philosopher who claimed that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
The following is but a brief survey of Socrates as he is treated in philosophical thinking that emerges after the death of Aristotle in B.
The Cynics greatly admired Socrates, and traced their philosophical lineage back to him. One of the first representatives of the Socratic legacy was the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope. No genuine writings of Diogenes have survived and most of our evidence about him is anecdotal. Nevertheless, scholars attribute a number of doctrines to him. He sought to undermine convention as a foundation for ethical values and replace it with nature.
He understood the essence of human being to be rational, and defined happiness as freedom and self-mastery, an objective readily accessible to those who trained the body and mind.
The Stoics took themselves to be authentically Socratic, especially in defending the unqualified restriction of ethical goodness to ethical excellence, the conception of ethical excellence as a kind of knowledge, a life not requiring any bodily or external advantage nor ruined by any bodily disadvantage, and the necessity and sufficiency of ethical excellence for complete happiness. Zeno is known for his characterization of the human good as a smooth flow of life.
In the absence of justification for a specific action or belief, one would not be in harmony with oneself, and therefore would not live well. On the other hand, if one held a position that survived cross-examination, such a position would be consistent and coherent. The Socratic elenchus was thus not just an important social and psychological test, but also an epistemological one.
The Stoics held that knowledge was a coherent set of psychological attitudes, and therefore a person holding attitudes that could withstand the elenchus could be said to have knowledge. Those with inconsistent or incoherent psychological commitments were thought to be ignorant.
Socrates also figures in Roman Stoicism, particularly in the works of Seneca and Epictetus. Seneca praises Socrates for his ability to remain consistent unto himself in the face of the threat posed by the Thirty Tyrants, and also highlights the Socratic focus on caring for oneself instead of fleeing oneself and seeking fulfillment by external means.
One aspect of Socrates to which Epictetus was particularly attracted was the elenchus. He characterizes Socrates as divinely appointed to hold the elenctic position 3. Epictetus encouraged his followers to practice the elenchus on themselves, and claims that Socrates did precisely this on account of his concern with self-examination 2.
Broadly speaking, skepticism is the view that we ought to be either suspicious of claims to epistemological truth or at least withhold judgment from affirming absolute claims to knowledge. Amongst Pyrrhonian skeptics, Socrates appears at times like a dogmatist and at other times like a skeptic or inquirer. On the one hand, Sextus Empiricus lists Socrates as a thinker who accepts the existence of god Against the Physicists , I. On the other hand, in arguing that human being is impossible to conceive, Sextus Empiricus cites Socrates as unsure whether or not he is a human being or something else Outlines of Pyrrhonism 2.
Socrates is also said to have remained in doubt about this question Against the Professors 7. Arcesilaus, the first head of the Academy to take it toward a skeptical turn, picked up from Socrates the procedure of arguing, first asking others to give their positions and then refuting them Cicero, On Ends 2. The Epicureans were one of the few schools that criticized Socrates, though many scholars think that this was in part because of their animus toward their Stoic counterparts, who admired him.
In general, Socrates is depicted in Epicurean writings as a sophist, rhetorician, and skeptic who ignored natural science for the sake of ethical inquiries that concluded without answers. In the Gorgias we find Socrates suspicious of the view that pleasure is intrinsically worthy and his insistence that pleasure is not the equivalent of the good Gorgias bb. In defining pleasure as freedom from disturbance ataraxia and defining this sort of pleasure as the sole good for human beings, the Epicureans shared little with the unbridled hedonism Socrates criticizes Callicles for embracing.
Indeed, in the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus explicitly argues against pursuing this sort of pleasure Nonetheless, the Epicureans did equate pleasure with the good, and the view that pleasure is not the equivalent of the good could not have endeared Socrates to their sentiment.
Another reason for the Epicurean refusal to praise Socrates or make him a cornerstone of their tradition was his perceived irony. II, Brutus This irony for the Epicureans was pedagogically pointless: if Socrates had something to say, he should have said it instead of hiding it. Amongst other things, the Peripatetics accused Socrates of being a bigamist, a charge that appears to have gained so much traction that the Stoic Panaetius wrote a refutation of it Plutarch, Aristides c-d.
The general peripatetic criticism of Socrates, similar in one way to the Epicureans, was that he concentrated solely on ethics, and that this was an unacceptable ideal for the philosophical life. In Socrates, Hegel found what he called the great historic turning point Philosophy of History , With Socrates, Hegel claims, two opposed rights came into collision: the individual consciousness and the universal law of the state.
Prior to Socrates, morality for the ancients was present but it was not present Socratically. That is, the good was present as a universal, without its having had the form of the conviction of the individual in his consciousness Morality was present as an immediate absolute, directing the lives of citizens without their having reflected upon it and deliberated about it for themselves.
The law of the state, Hegel claims, had authority as the law of the gods, and thus had a universal validity that was recognized by all The immediate now had to justify itself to the individual consciousness.
Hegel thus not only ascribes to Socrates the habit of asking questions about what one should do but also about the actions that the state has prescribed. With Socrates, consciousness is turned back within itself and demands that the law should establish itself before consciousness, internal to it, not merely outside it Generally, Hegel finds in Socrates a skepticism that renders ordinary or immediate knowledge confused and insecure, in need of reflective certainty which only consciousness can bring Though he attributes to the sophists the same general skeptical comportment, in Socrates Hegel locates human subjectivity at a higher level.
With Socrates and onward we have the world raising itself to the level of conscious thought and becoming object for thought. The question as to what Nature is gives way to the question about what Truth is, and the question about the relationship of self-conscious thought to real essence becomes the predominant philosophical issue There, he argues that Socrates is not the ethical figure that the history of philosophy has thought him to be, but rather an ironist in all that he does.
Socrates does not just speak ironically but is ironic. Kierkegaard therefore sees himself as a sort of Christian gadfly. The delicate balance in Greek culture between the Apollonian—order, calmness, self-control, restraint—and the Dionysian—chaos, revelry, self-forgetfulness, indulgence— initially represented on stage in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, gave way to the rationalism of Euripides.
Euripides, Nietzsche argues, was only a mask for the newborn demon called Socrates section Nietzsche continues his attack on Socrates later in his career in Twilight of the Idols.
Socrates here represents the lowest class of people section 3 , and his irony consists in his being an exaggeration at the same time as he conceals himself 4. He is the inventor of dialectic 5 which he wields mercilessly because, being an ugly plebeian, he had no other means of expressing himself 6 and therefore employed question and answer to render his opponent powerless 7. Socrates turned dialectic into a new kind of contest 8 , and because his instincts had turned against each other and were in anarchy 9 , he established the rule of reason as a counter-tyrant in order not to perish He was thus profoundly anti-life, so much so that he wanted to die Nonetheless, while Nietzsche accuses Socrates of decadence, he nevertheless recognizes him as a powerful individual, which perhaps accounts for why we at times find in Nietzsche a hesitant admiration of Socrates.
Heidegger finds in Socrates a kinship with his own view that the truth of philosophy lies in a certain way of seeing things, and thus is identical with a particular kind of method.
He attributes to Socrates the view that the truth of some subject matter shows itself not in some definition that is the object or end of a process of inquiry, but in the very process of inquiry itself. Socrates is not interested in articulating propositions about piety but rather concerned with persisting in a questioning relation to it that preserves its irreducible sameness. Behind multiple examples of pious action is Piety, and yet Piety is not something that can be spoken of.
It is that which discloses itself through the process of silent interrogation. It is precisely in his emphasis on silence that Heidegger diverges from Socrates. Where Socrates insisted on the give and take of question and answer, Heideggerian questioning is not necessarily an inquiry into the views of others but rather an openness to the truth that one maintains without the need to speak.
To remain in dialogue with a given phenomenon is not the same thing as conversing about it, and true dialogue is always silent. At the same time, his hermeneutics leads him to argue for the importance of dialectic as conversation. Gadamer claims that whereas philosophical dialectic presents the whole truth by superceding all its partial propositions, hermeneutics too has the task of revealing a totality of meaning in all its relations.
Conversation with the interlocutor is thus not a distraction that leads us away from seeing the truth but rather is the site of truth. It is for this reason that Gadamer claims Plato communicated his philosophy only in dialogues: it was more than just homage to Socrates, but was a reflection of his view that the word find its confirmation in another and in the agreement of another. Gadamer also sees in the Socratic method an ethical way of being.
That is, he does not just think that Socrates converses about ethics but that repeated Socratic conversation is itself indicative of an ethical comportment. On this account, Socrates knows the good not because he can give some final definition of it but rather because of his readiness to give an account of it. The problem of not living an examined life is not that we might live without knowing what is ethical, but because without asking questions as Socrates does, we will not be ethical.
James M. Ambury Email: jamesambury kings. Socrates — B. Table of Contents Biography: Who was Socrates? Biography: Who was Socrates? The Historical Socrates i. Later Life and Trial 1. The Socratic Problem: the Philosophical Socrates The Socratic problem is the problem faced by historians of philosophy when attempting to reconstruct the ideas of the original Socrates as distinct from his literary representations.
Origin of the Socratic Problem The Socratic problem first became pronounced in the early 19 th century with the influential work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Aristophanes Born in B. Xenophon Born in the same decade as Plato B. Aristotle Aristotle was born in B. Content: What does Socrates Think? Presocratic Philosophy and the Sophists Socrates opens his defense speech by defending himself against his older accusers Apology 18a , claiming they have poisoned the minds of his jurors since they were all young men.
Priority of the Care of the Soul Throughout his defense speech Apology 20a-b, 24cc, 31b, 32d, 36c, 39d Socrates repeatedly stresses that a human being must care for his soul more than anything else see also Crito 46cd, Euthyphro 13b-c, Gorgias a4ff.
The Unexamined Life After the jury has convicted Socrates and sentenced him to death, he makes one of the most famous proclamations in the history of philosophy. Other Socratic Positions and Arguments In addition to the themes one finds in the Apology , the following are a number of other positions in the Platonic corpus that are typically considered Socratic. Unity of Virtue; All Virtue is Knowledge In the Protagoras bb Socrates argues for the view that all of the virtues—justice, wisdom, courage, piety, and so forth—are one.
All Desire is for the Good One of the premises of the argument just mentioned is that human beings only desire the good. It is Better to Suffer an Injustice Than to Commit One Socrates infuriates Polus with the argument that it is better to suffer an injustice than commit one Gorgias a-d.
Eudaimonism The Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia , which signifies not merely feeling a certain way but being a certain way. Socrates the Ironist The suspicion that Socrates is an ironist can mean a number of things: on the one hand, it can indicate that Socrates is saying something with the intent to convey the opposite meaning. The Elenchus: Socrates the Refuter A typical Socratic elenchus is a cross-examination of a particular position, proposition, or definition, in which Socrates tests what his interlocutor says and refutes it.
Purpose In terms of goal, there are two common interpretations of the elenchus. Dialectic: Socrates the Constructer The method of dialectic is thought to be more Platonic than Socratic, though one can understand why many have associated it with Socrates himself. Hellenistic Philosophy i. The Cynics The Cynics greatly admired Socrates, and traced their philosophical lineage back to him. The Skeptics Broadly speaking, skepticism is the view that we ought to be either suspicious of claims to epistemological truth or at least withhold judgment from affirming absolute claims to knowledge.
The Epicurean The Epicureans were one of the few schools that criticized Socrates, though many scholars think that this was in part because of their animus toward their Stoic counterparts, who admired him.
Modern Philosophy i. Hegel In Socrates, Hegel found what he called the great historic turning point Philosophy of History , Heidegger Heidegger finds in Socrates a kinship with his own view that the truth of philosophy lies in a certain way of seeing things, and thus is identical with a particular kind of method.
Barnes, Jonathan, Complete Works of Aristotle vols. Benson, Hugh H. What will be the curriculum be? Socrates does not believe that any one person or any one school of thought is authoratative or has the wisdom to teach "things.
However, this appears to be a technique for engaging others and empowering the conversator to openly dialogue. Be that as it may, Socrates is widely regarded as one of the great teachers of all time. The Socratic method is one in which a teacher, by asking leading questions, guides students to discovery.
It was a dialectical method that employs critical inquiry to undermine the plausibility of widely-held doctrine. Socrates devoted himself to a free-wheeling discussion with the aristocratic young citizens of Athens, insistently questioning their unwarranted confidence in the truth of popular opinions, even though he often offered them no clear alternative teaching. Theory of Society: What is society?
What institutions are involved in the education process? To the class of Athenians that Socrates was born into, society existed to provide the best life for the individual. The Athenians of Socrates' day assumed just as their ancestors had assumed that the best life one could have, required the acquisition of what was called virtue, or excellence.
A truly good person succeeded in doing great things for the city, strictly obeyed its law, honored parents and ancestors, scrupulously paid homage to the gods by strictly obeying the conventions governing prayer and sacrifice.
Athens' political system was a radical, participating democracy in which every Athenian male citizen could-and was expected to-vote, hold office, and serve on the very powerful Athenian juries.
Societies are invariably formed for a particular purpose. Individuals are not self-sufficient, no one working alone can acquire all the genuine necessities of life. Separations of functions and specialization of labor are key. Society is composed of distinct classes clothiers, farmers, builders, etc. In addition, there are those that manage society and settle disputes. In Plato's Republic, he uses the fictional character Socrates as spokesman for explaining the fundamental principles for the conduct of human life.
Education took place in magnificent buildings such as the Parthenon and Hephaisteion, which adorn the Acropolis and the Agora, the large open area at the front of the Acropolis that consisted of the Athenian market place and public square. Socrates was the antithesis of elitist mentality. Socrates rejected "the pursuit of knowledge" for its own sake as a delusion and a snare, inasmuch as knowledge, properly so-called is unattainable, and a snare, insofar as it draws us away from the study of conduct www.
The practical knowledge that experts had in their respective fields was trivial and unimportant to anyone but they themselves. He wanted to educate, challenge, question and debate men of ignorance mistaking themselves as knowledgeable, and by doing so, to promote their intellectual and moral improvement.
Socrates' open and non-dogmatic style, and his emphasis on what other persons thought rather than on his own ideas led to several individual disciplines going their separate ways. The result was several prominent schools, with the most influential being the Platonic philosophy.
Even though Socrates rejected the "pursuit of knowledge" per se, there are many contradictions evident to indicate that he did view himself as an educator whose goal was to see others learn. Theory of Consensus: Why do people disagree?
How is consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence? Socrates' main focus throughout his public teaching life is the acquiring by the individual of self-knowledge.
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