Socrates as presented in Plato’s Dialogues bred much enmity among the self-proclaimed “experts” he questioned due to their embarrassment and humiliation after the Socratic Method – the technique of “question and answer, questioning the answers, questioning those questions, question some more, repeat as necessary” – revealed their ignorance of the subject about which they claimed to have knowledge. This ultimately led to his death. Erroneous accusations of corrupting the youth and advocating religious heresies were made against Socrates and he was brought to trial. The jury of 501 Athenians found Socrates guilty and sentenced him to death by hemlock.
I argue that all education should follow the heresy of Socrates; however, the Socratic Method is not without its share of cautions. Simon Blackburn writes:
… Socrates, in Plato’s Dialogues, is infuriatingly fond of getting his stooges to say something, showing that they cannot defend it by articulate general principles, and concluding that they didn’t really have any right to claim what they did. However, the case of grammatical knowledge suggests that this is a bad inference. Consider as well how in perception, I may recognize something as a Pomeranian, or a member of the Rolling Stones, or my wife, without knowing any general principles that ‘justify’ the verdict. My perceptual system may operate according to some general principles or ‘algorithms’ for translating visual input into verdicts, but I have no idea what they are. So I couldn’t answer a Socrates who asked for general principles underlying my recognition. I could only flounder and splutter. But I recognize the Pomeranian, or Rolling Stone, or my wife, for all that. Socrates’ procedure is only apt to give philosophers a bad name. [1]
This is not to suggest that the Socratic Method should be discarded. I take this as a warning to ensure that the questions we ask – and the answers we seek – are utilized to bring us closer to truth and not used as a means of making other people look foolish. The romanticized Socrates – the Socrates of history put in the best possible light, to whom we who do philosophy view as an exemplary seeker of truth, virtue and knowledge – is a source of inspiration for all students and critical thinkers, and the Socratic Method (when applied appropriately) is an indispensable device in both education and the search for truth.
Socrates is presented as an example of one who devoted his life to the search for truth and lived by this conviction even though it ultimately cost him his life. Socrates was branded a heretic for his incessant questioning and critical thinking, and condemned to death for ruffling the wrong feathers.
I too am a heretic, in the tradition of Socrates. While I have not been condemned to death (yet), and by no means do I consider myself a victim, I have experienced firsthand the fallout of (and backlash to) my heresy. For the ideologues, dogmatists and the equally closed-minded out there, the Socratic Method will prove unprofitable, even frustrating. As Norman Melchert asserts:
To profit from a conversation with Socrates, you must (1) be open and honest about what you really do believe; and (2) not be so wedded to any one of your beliefs that you consider an attack on it as an attack on yourself. In other words, you must have a certain objectivity with respect to your own opinions. You must be able to say, “Yes, that is indeed an opinion of mine, but I shall be glad to exchange it for another if there is good reason to do so.” This outlook skirts two dangers: wishy-washiness and dogmatism. People with these virtues are not wishy-washy, because they really do have opinions. But neither are they dogmatic, because they are eager to improve their opinions. We might ask to what extent people must have this attitude if they are to be able to learn at all. [2]
I would go even further and suggest that we must ask to what extent people must have this attitude. Learning implies gaining knowledge, which implies an elimination of an ignorance or a correction of a belief discovered to be incorrect. One cannot learn what one already knows. If someone were to tell me, “2+2=4,” I would not have learned anything, because I already know 2+2=4. Moreover, one cannot learn if one believes they already know. Such a student will refuse to learn, remaining in willful ignorance, because they accept their beliefs as knowledge the same way I accept “2+2=4.” A good philosophy of education must include not only the Socratic Method, but the presumption of objectivity among students.
An unanswered question is better than an unquestioned answer. This is my heresy. I will stand before whoever deems themselves to be my 501 Athenians and plead guilty as charged. For the sake of education and the relentless pursuit of truth, my modus operandi emulates that of Socrates. As Christopher Phillips writes:
Socrates didn’t think he knew the answers, or that knowledge was the rarified domain of so-called intellectuals. The one thing Socrates knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was fond of saying, was that he didn’t know anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet Socrates, contrary to what many think, did not try to pose as the ultimate skeptic… Rather, he was emphasizing that what he had come to know, the truths he had discovered by hard-won experience, were slippery, elusive, always tentative at best, always subject to new developments, new information, new alternatives. Every last bit of knowledge, every assumption, Socrates felt, should always be questioned, analyzed, challenged. Nothing was ever resolved once and for all. [3]
One who desires to be a student of the world must approach the subject of one’s study objectively. Those who truly care about education (whether student or teacher) “subject their beliefs, their worldviews, to cogent objections and alternatives. They recognize that philosophical inquiry requires each of us to evaluate radically and continually our beliefs, our lives, our selves, our place. They refuse to accept any class of so-called truths at face value. They think it’s always open to debate whether a certain set of beliefs is humane or rational, wise or good. And they clearly believe that it is up to them to discover their place in the world.” [4]
The understanding of the universe we have today and the better understanding of it we will have in the future is due to the Socratic Method – the “intellectual midwifery” of Socrates – and the presumption of objectivity, for Socrates was the teacher of Plato, and Plato was the teacher of Aristotle, who is considered the “Father of the Sciences.” The education we enjoy today has been built on the foundation Plato and Aristotle laid. Our words “academy” and “academic” come from the name of the philosophical institution of learning founded by Plato. A philosophy of education worth implementing should continue those practices, without which we would not have the education we are benefited with today.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Simon Blackburn, Think (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 39.
2. Norman Melchert, The Great Conversation (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995), p. 62.
3. Christopher Phillips, Socrates Cafe – A Fresh Taste of Philosophy (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001), p. 8,9.
4. Ibid., p. 45
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