Plato’s Euthyphro

Week 4: The Socratic Method and Socrates’ Methods

The Socratic method as it is generally understood

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth Edition) defines the Socratic method as “A pedagogical technique in which a teacher does not give information directly but instead asks a series of questions, with the result that the student comes either to the desired knowledge by answering the questions or to a deeper awareness of the limits of knowledge.” While this does reflect the popular understanding of the term, the reality of Socrates’ methods is considerably more nuanced.

In many of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is shown questioning people, usually people who profess to understand a particular moral concept. Socrates’ questions generally cause consternation in his interlocutors because they come to see that their views lead to puzzles or even contradictions. For example, if someone says, “Courage is the ability to face danger without running away.” Socrates might ask, “Is a drunken or enraged person courageous if he gets into a furious fight with someone larger than himself?” The interlocutor may try to amend his initial definition, but Socrates will ask further questions to cast doubt on what may seem, initially, as plausible views.

Socrates (in Plato’s writings) spends more time asking questions than expounding his own views, so the term “Socratic method” has arisen to describe a method of teaching (once popular in law schools) that relies primarily on questions. A law school professor might ask, “What was this case about?” “What was the plaintiff’s chief argument?” “What was the defendant’s response?” “Which argument did the court approve and why?”

Are Socrates’ questions genuine?

We have already touched on an issue related to Socrates’ method of questions: his “irony” or claim not to know. Was Socrates sincerely asking others to supply his ignorance or did he — for some reason — conceal what he thought were good answers to the questions he was asking? This is a complex subject, as indicated by the following:

• In the Apology, Socrates recounts that his philosophic method arose after a friend of his went to the Delphic oracle and asked, “Is anyone wiser than Socrates?” and got a negative answer. Socrates found this answer surprising, so he set out to question prominent figures in Athens about moral concepts. He discovered that they claimed to know many things that they did not. So, Socrates says, I concluded that I was wiser in the sense that I knew what I did not know, while others believed erroneously that they knew.
• In the Republic, Socrates begins by questioning people about the meaning of justice. After shooting down several suggestions, he spends the rest of the dialogue expounding his own (rather peculiar) views on the subject.
• In the Meno, Socrates attempts to show that what appears to be learning is really recollection of knowledge gained in a previous life. He questions an uneducated lad, Meno, about a mathematical concept related to the Pythagorean Theorem. Using only questions, he induces the lad to come to the right answer.

As these examples indicate, there is no simple answer to the question, “Did Socrates know the answers to his questions?” We must also remember that Socrates is a character from Plato’s pen, so it is possible that Socrates’ own conversations have been filtered through Plato’s literary purposes.

Socrates’ search for definitions

One recurring feature of Socrates’ conversations is his request for a definition of the concept under discussion. We see this in the Euthyphro. Once Euthyphro has explained his intent of prosecuting his father because (he feels) it is the pious thing to do, Socrates asks him to explain “what do you say the pious is, and what the impious.” (5d) Euthyphro’s first response is, “What I am doing, prosecuting someone who committed an injustice, is pious.” After some banter, Socrates expresses himself dissatisfied with this response. He complains (6d) that Euthyphro has provide an example of piety, but not a definition. Socrates wants to know what pious acts have in common. He seems to think as follows:

• To know the meaning of concept, you must be able to give a general definition.
• It does no good to define the concept by examples because if you don’t have a general definition then you can’t be sure whether your examples are good ones or not.

This approach has been called (by some) the “Socratic Fallacy,” suggesting that there is something unfair about demanding a general definition of a concept. It can be argued that we don’t know whether a particular definition of a concept is correct unless it covers all the examples to which we know the concept applies. In that case, Socrates’ persistent demand that Euthyphro produce a definition of piety may be misplaced.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. To take a simple example, suppose we go to Africa and see several large animals with trunks and tusks. We call them “elephants”. It appears that we can understand and apply this concept even though we don’t know much about elephants or what makes them different from other animals. To take a more abstract concept, even children seem to have a pretty good concept of justice when they cry “That’s not fair!” though they may be far from being able to give a general definition of justice. On the other hand, it may take scientific research to determine whether these two trunk-and-tusk-bearing animals are the same kind of elephant. Moreover, history shows us that intelligent people may disagree about whether particular acts are just or unjust.

We will discuss further what Socrates (or Plato’s Socrates) is trying to do by asking for definitions. In the process it might be worth considering as well what we use definitions for.

Euthyphro’s first two definitions of piety

Euthyphro’s first attempted definition is that piety is “what the gods like.” (6e) Socrates shoots this down easily by pointing out that the gods — at least as depicted in the Greek classics of Homer and Hesiod — disagree about many things (supporting opposite sides in the Trojan War, for example). How then can “what the gods like” define anything? Euthyphro responds that the pious can be defined as “what all the gods like.” (9e) We will see Socrates’ question about this definition next time. We will also consider whether Euthyphro should be considered an “orthodox” believer in the Greek gods. Remember that Socrates meets Euthyphro on the courthouse steps where he is to answer a charge or impiety. Is Euthyphro guilty of the same?

Dialectic

Whatever we determine about the nature of the Socratic method or methods, we can say that the process centers on what he and his successors called dialectic — which is really nothing more or less than conversation (from the Greek διαλεκτική [τέχνη], from the verb διαλέγω). The term has accumulated layers of further meanings in the intervening centuries, but that’s the basic idea behind it. Socrates eschewed both speech-making (except when required to do so, as in the Apology) and the publication of written books: he believed at bottom that truth emerged chiefly from the back-and-forth of an exchange of arguments.

If you’re reading along in Greek, cover 8b7-10a4.