A Long Month with Socrates

Hey! How are ya all?

Okay, I'm sure you have all noticed my long absence, but honestly, I have been trying to find time to update. College is going well, and is also the reason I haven't been on here for so long. I just happened to get the grumpiest and strictest writing teacher in the whole school and he gives ENORMOUS loads of homework every day. Since that is about the only thing I have had time to work on, I thought I would share my most recent writing assignment with you! I hope Socrates doesn't bore you all to death as much as he does me, and if he does, feel free not to read it. ;-)

Socrates’ Methods: What Can We Really Learn From Him?

Many have heard it said that Socrates’ life and teachings stand at the foundation of Western philosophy.  From his use of critical thinking, to his unwavering commitment to the truth, Socrates set the standard for all future Western thinking. However, despite these seemingly great accomplishments, many readers today find him simply annoying, and have a hard time putting up with his methods of argumentation.

If you are anything like I was when I first heard of this great Greek philosopher, the first thing that probably crossed your mind was, “Who on earth is Socrates?” To help answer this question, I have provided the following brief summary of who this man was. Following that, I will discuss who his audience was, what methods he used, why he used them, and if he actually succeeded, or simply annoyed those he sought to teach.

Socrateswas born in 469 B.C. the son of a stonemason, an honorable and important trade at the time. He lived a simple life, renouncing wealth and holding himself aloof of political ambitions, in Athens, Greece and was executed in 399 B.C. after being accused of leading the youth of Athens astray, and of inventing new deities.

His teachings were directed primarily towards the youth of Athens, making a point to single out anyone who considered themselves wise and knowledgeable of the ways of the gods (i.e. Euthyphro, Meno, and Anytus).  What drove Socrates to seek out this particular group was his desire to understand the oracle of the god Delphi, who stated that no man was wiser than he. As he states in his own words in “Apology”, “So even now I continue this investigation as the god bade me – and I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise. Then if I do not think he is, I come to the assistance of the god and show him that he is not wise.”He sought to teach them because as he says to the Athenian counsel in “Apology”, “I was concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or elder brother to persuade you to care for your virtue.”

The thing that stands out the most about Socrates’ Methods of teaching is that he never took things at face value. He took things commonly accepted as truth and examined them to see if he could identify any loopholes or contradictions, and then he challenged them against themselves and with other similarbeliefs. He asked questions of logic (Webster’s 1828 Dictionarydefines Logic as“the science or history of the human mind, as it traces the progress of our knowledge from our first conceptions through their different combinations, and the numerous deductions that result from comparing them with one another”) as in Meno, where he asked questions about shape and color.

  It seems that the questions Socrates asked wereintended to help the people he was teaching to discover what they truly believed about a certain topic.He would often go to those he considered wiser than himself in the ways of the gods, and engage him or her in conversation. He would ask the people to bestow upon him, as if he were “their humble student,” the knowledge they possessedand their answers to his simple questions concerning true piety, virtue, and what isgod-loved. When those he questioned had finished telling him what they believed, he would then begin to interrogate them in order to compare their reasoning to commonly held beliefs of that day.

By asking these logical questions, Socrates caused the people he was speaking with to have to examine and defend their core beliefs, and eventually the person would realize that they could not even defend the simplest aspects of what they believed against Socrates’ logic.Often the questions he asked would cause them to have to contradict what they had originally said they believed, thus confusing them and making them question their beliefs. Once this happened, he then led them to follow him in finding out what is true piety and/or virtue, by beseeching them to join him in the search for truth as he does in Meno, where he states: “Nevertheless, I want to examine and seek together with you what it may be.”

Many people found Socrates’ endless questioning and at times circular reasoning extremely annoying.  As Euthyphro exclaims in “Plato’s Five Dialogues”, “But Socrates, I have no way of telling you what I have in mind, for whatever proposition we put forward goes around and refuses to stay put where we establish it".  Often afterwards, the people Socrates sought to teach left the debate confused, bewildered, and not knowing exactly what they believed anymore, or even what the truth really was. They would realize that perhaps they did not truly know as much as they thought they did.

I do not think the success of Socrates’ methods was at first evident. The dialogues never show Socrates and his students actually coming to a conclusion, but I think the questions Socrates would ask would probably stay with his students for a long time, and cause them to analyze what they believed on their own, without his guidance.  Also, the results were not immediate. During his lifetime he was very unpopular among the Athenians, so much so that they eventually put him to death in 399 B.C. As he said during his trial, “As a result of [my] investigation, men of Athens, I acquired much unpopularity, of a kind that is hard to deal with and is a heavy burden (Apology).” But now here we are in the 21st century, looking back on Socrates as a wise teacher and philosopher, and even using his methods in things such as psycho-therapy and law school. So I think in a way, he did succeed, although he never lived to see it.

If we were to sum up Socrates’ teaching method into one simple phrase, I suppose we could say that he taught by asking his students questions instead of giving them answers, and thus he would cause his students mind to have to stretch to answer him.  Likewise, we should aspire to train our minds to be inquiring, constantly probing into a subject with questions and not willing to blindly accept whatever everyone else accepts as truth.Moreover, when teaching our own children, we should use Socrates’ method of asking, not telling to strengthen their minds, and to cause them to search out the truth, no matter what, because “truth is the most important thing we have” (Mark Twain).

Sorry if that was too boring! I promise to try to get a real post on here hopefully this weekend. 

Fare thee well, for now

Sierra