The genius of the Socratic method
Or: how to get people to change their minds, without hating you
There’s a lot of talk in educational circles about ‘the Socratic method’. But the Socratic method or ‘refutation’, elenchus, is a strange beast. Socrates claimed to never teach anyone anything. He also famously claimed that whatever small wisdom he had involved knowing the limits of what he knew.
In Plato’s Theaetetus, he calls himself a midwife, but of the mind, who is barren of his own intellectual children: independent ideas of his own about the world. Instead, he assists others to bring forth their ideas, and assess whether they are viable, or else ‘wind eggs’.
In Plato’s Meno, his exasperated interlocutor compares Socrates’ questioning to a sting delivered by a stingray which numbs a person. Socrates himself rejoins in the Apology that he is like a gadfly, sent to nip at the sides of Athens, depicted as a lazy horse who wants to swat him with its tail.
This is all very diverting, and fascinating. It appeals to the young’s desire for the rebellious, and the rebel, at least in the safety of our imaginations. And Socrates was a genuinely courageous man, not simply someone who wrote about courage, ready to abandon his post at the first sign that someone might oppose his career ambitions, etc.
