What the Socratic method is, with an example

The Socratic method is a way of teaching that never hands over an answer. It asks for a definition, asks for a case where that definition fails, leads the other person to the point of admitting they do not know, and starts again from there. This post is the short definition. How I use it day to day is in another post.

The three steps

First, a definition is demanded. If you say you know what courage is, say what it is. You have to put what you know into your own sentence.

Second, a counterexample. If courage is "not retreating", is not retreating from a fight you are certain to lose also courage? The definition gets revised, and another counterexample follows. Each one draws a little more of the boundary.

Third, the dead end. After a few rounds the other person arrives at the point of realising they did not know after all. Socrates gives no answer here, because only someone who knows they do not know starts asking real questions.

Midwifery, drawing knowledge out

Socrates called what he did midwifery. His mother had been a midwife. A midwife does not make the child; she helps a child that is already there come out. He said his job was the same: not putting knowledge in, but asking until what was inside came out.

Plato's Meno has the famous scene. A boy who has never studied geometry is asked only questions: how long must the side be to double the area of a square? He first says twice as long, is questioned until he sees that is wrong, and is questioned further until he arrives himself at the diagonal. Socrates never states the answer.

Aporia, the name of the dead end

Aporia is Greek for "no way through". In the method it names the moment someone admits "I do not know this".

That moment is the starting line, not the finish. Questions before aporia carry a trace of pretending to know. Questions after it ask about what is genuinely unknown. That is why the same person, on the same topic, ends up keeping the answer differently.

One dialogue in six lines

• What is courage? (definition)
• Not retreating even when afraid.
• Is not retreating from a fight you are sure to lose also courage? (counterexample)
• That is recklessness. Courage is knowing when to retreat and when not to.
• Then is courage a kind of knowledge? Is everyone who knows brave? (counterexample)
• I do not know. I thought I knew what courage was. (aporia)

All three steps in six lines. The real dialogues are far longer, but this is the skeleton.

In the classroom

Teachers use it by asking instead of explaining, letting students build the answer. It looks like seminar discussion but is not. Discussion trades opinions between many people; the Socratic method narrows one person's thinking through questions. The law school professor who keeps questioning a single student about a case is the closest modern example.

Why it became useful again after 2400 years

The method always had one constraint: someone to ask and answer had to be sitting next to you. There was one Socrates, and the people who could talk to him were the few who could reach the Athenian agora.

That constraint is gone. I learn with AI this way. I can ask at dawn, ask the same thing five times without the other side tiring, and admit I do not know without losing face. That is how the oldest method became the newest way to learn. How I use it is in Learning from AI the Socratic way, and the exact questions are in Seven Socratic prompts.