Socrates

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was condemned to death for supposedly corrupting the youth of Athens. Today we know him primarily through the written "dialogues" of his student Plato. How much Plato’s portrayal resembled the actual man is open to debate. Nevertheless, the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues has had a deep and lasting influence on both philosophy and education, giving us such common terms as Socratic teaching, Socratic questioning, and the Socratic method. The following passage explains some of the basic tenets of Socrates’ approach.

Socrates expressly denied that he was a teacher in the commonly accepted sense of that term. What he meant by this—at least in part—was that he was not a sophist, a professional pedagogue who, for a fee, would endeavor to transmit some knowledge that he possessed to someone who lacked it. Not only did Socrates charge no fees, he claimed not to have command of any such knowledge.

The learning that Socrates was concerned with simply didn’t fit the information-transmission model of education implicit in the Athenian public mind and the teaching profession. Neither did his pioneering focus on virtue and wisdom square well with the popular attachment to honor, fame, and wealth. As he tries to explain at one point to Anytus in Plato’s dialogue Meno, "we are inquiring whether the good men of today and of the past knew how to pass on to another the virtue they themselves possessed, or whether a man cannot pass it on or receive it from another." Since it was clear that wisdom and virtue could not simply be passed on from one person to another, Socrates sought an alternative way of conceptualizing how such excellences of mind and character were acquired. What was the teacher’s role in that acquisition, if not simply being a supplier?

As an alternative to the receiving-knowledge-from-another model, Socrates proposed that learning was "recollection"—that is, a process akin to dredging up knowledge from one’s own resources. "Teaching" on this model he later compared to acting as a "midwife"—assisting in the birth of knowledge in another person rather than serving as a supplier of it to another person. This was to be accomplished in conversation, mostly by skillful questioning and cross-examination ("Socratic teaching," "Socratic questioning," "Socratic method").

Socrates admitted to behaving like a "gadfly" in this dialectical pursuit of truth, goading people into serious thinking about human living. And he also confessed to acting like a benumbing "sting ray" or "torpedo fish," referring to his ability to render people tongue-tied about matters that they thought they already knew perfectly well—but actually didn’t. Not until people felt the sting of not really knowing about life’s really important matters could they be prompted to inquire into them seriously.

Source: Reprinted by permission of Steven S. Tigner.

Visit the following web sites for more information on Socrates:

Socrates

http://stripe.colorado.edu/~shields/Blackwell.Socrates.html

This essay by two renowned Socrates scholars explores the "Socrates problem," that is, figuring out who was the "real" Socrates.

About.com

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/socrates/

About.com offers a profile of Socrates, information about his famous trial, and information about his students Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato.

The Last Days of Socrates

http://socrates.clarke.edu/index.htm

This site was designed to provide background information and help for first-year philosophy students reading several works about Socrates’ famous trial and condemnation.

How Socrates Taught

http://www.san.beck.org/SOCRATES3-How.html#2

This lengthy analysis by Sanderson Beck examines the particular teaching methods used by Socrates.