The Socratic Method is spoken of today in a thousands different contexts. Some speak about the “Socratic Method” as a way of teaching classes in schools. Others speak of the “Socratic Method” as a way of solving problems. What should concern us is that most of the people who are talking about the Socratic Method offer no evidence that they’ve every studied the teaching of Socrates or any true “method” that might be named after him. As a classicist, I’d like to answer the question, “What is the Socratic method?”
- The Fake Socratic Method
- Understanding the Socratic Method
- The Aristotelean Method
- The Scholastic Method
- What Exactly is the Socratic Method?
The Fake Socratic Method
The primary source of the fake Socratic Method is found in educators and schools who are pretending to be something that they’re not. Knowing that many are unhappy with modern schools, it’s easy to create something that is different on the surface and then dress it up with all kinds of historical words to make ignorant people think that it is substantially different from the modern schools. This is comparable to Starbucks’ strategy in re-branding coffee as a luxury beverage by raising the prices, doubling the amount of coffee used and using fancy names for the drinks and their sizes.
One of the reasons why this question has to be answered is because there are many people today, well, I shouldn’t say many, there are a relatively small number of people today that are advertising their teaching, their schools, their publications who claim to use “the Socratic method” as a method of instruction. These schools (and publishers who do the same thing) are part of the fake classical education movement that I’ve talked about in other videos, and one of their main selling points, is this false and unfounded appeal to “the Socratic Method”.
Now, in these schools and in these publications, “the Socratic method” is simply a cover to hide the fact that the “teachers” do not have systematic knowledge of the subjects that they teach and do not teach as teachers who do. That’s what this is really about. When a teacher shows up to a classroom to teach a group of students who are being required to pay tuition, he’s not going to give them a masterful, efficient, systematic, and certain lecture, teaching them some important topic in a scientific manner–when we use the word “scientific” in the ancient sense. You’re not going to have teachers who are masters who can explain things, scientifically, which means systematically, and certainly, you’re going to have poorly educated, incompetent, barely employed men and women, leading classes that they themselves don’t understand. And when you think, “How can we have people leading classes and teaching subjects which they have no mastery of? How can they produce lectures? How can they organize instruction?”
The answer is that they can’t.
And so this modern, fake classical education movement leaves these fake teachers free to just talk with the students every day, with no organized lectures, no systematic knowledge of a subject, no real curriculum, no accountability. And they call this class lazy discussion “the Socratic method”. They use the term “Socratic method” to justify charging tuition for students to sit with men and women called “teachers” who are not able to teach the subjects they’re being paid to teach. If we take a man who barely has a college degree in any field, or we take someone who has a relatively useless degree, like English or theology, and is working as a layman and we hire him as a teacher, and we barely pay him anything, because he’s not a competent worker (let’s say we pay him $40,000 a year), we have to explain to the parents paying all the tuition, how it can be okay to hire someone who clearly can’t provide a systematic lecture on a subject with demonstration. And the way that the schools do this is by telling the parents who examine nothing and ask no questions is that he teaches with “the Socratic method”.
And this is total baloney.
The man is not a teacher, he cannot teach the subjects he pretends to teach because he does not possess what the ancients called science or systematic knowledge of the subjects. And therefore, what he does in class is merely babysits students and talks with them, acting like a teacher and telling them that his aimless babbling is some kind of ancient method that he learned from Socrates–one of the wisest and most influential philosophers who ever lived. It’s “the Socratic method”.
For example, the Angelicum Academy, speaking of classes for 3rd-8th grade children, asserts–with no evidence anywhere:
“The dialectical method is conversation between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter guided by reasoned (logical) arguments and critical thinking.”
No, the Socratic Method is not a “conversation”. What these classes are doing is nothing, at all, like anything Socrates did. Socrates didn’t have conversations with 3rd graders. A parent comments,
“My son is involved in the Socratic Discussion. The group he is involved in is the 3rd grade group. It has helped him to be more confident and secure in expressing his thoughts about things. He would always look to us after making a comment on something and say “Am I right?” Now he makes a statement about something and has more confidence in his answers and ability to think for himself. This new ability for him has lead us into some very interesting conversations, whereas before he would just listen and not express any thoughts on the subject. I would recommend it for anyone, child as well as adult.”
This has nothing to do with the real Socratic Method. Anyone who reads the dialogues of Plato or who has studied Aristotle’s Topics would understand how absurd this is.
Thomas Aquinas College, goes even further, referring to the Socratic Method as “the Discussion Method“, stating:
“In the classroom, students sit around a table with their peers and with a faculty tutor as a guide, and together they grapple with the greatest works of Western civilization. There are no lectures, no didactic discourses, no simple regurgitation of others’ conclusions. Instead, ideas are proposed, rebutted, and defended, until, through discussion and critical argumentation, the class discerns the meaning of a given text and, more important, its veracity or error.”
This sounds simple, but why would this free discussion among peers seeking the truth for themselves cost Catholic students $35,000 per year? Why would Catholic students not be interested in learning the “regurgitation of others’ conclusions”, when those “others” are canonized saints and doctors of the Catholic Church? Is catechesis, then, a bad thing? Wouldn’t these discussions be able to be conducted in a chatroom, online, for free?
The more we think about this, rather than just running stupidly into it, the worse it gets. If this is the way of learning at a college named after Thomas Aquinas–may we not ask whether St. Thomas himself taught like this? Were Catholic schools ever run like this? Was St. Thomas Aquinas opposed to “lectures and didactic discourses”? No, this is exactly how he taught. We know this for a fact because we have his lectures.
Study the REAL Socratic Method in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy’s Classical Reasoning courses. Get started today!
It’s no surprise that people who fall for fake classical education will also fall for a thousand other errors. The advantage that these teachers have, if they teach for multiple years, is that they have a chance to read through the book, or at least parts of the book multiple times. And they can participate in these live class discussions with knowledge that appears to be greater than that of the students who are often completely unfamiliar with the books and are just reading them for the first time. So there’s always this ability to show some appearance of knowledge, but what is not found in these fake teachers, in these fake classical schools, is any ability to teach a subject systematically. So they resort to this lazy, unprepared class discussion, which is the same thing that modern graduate schools do, which really have no purpose other than hand out degrees in exchange for tuition checks. These fake “classical” Christian schools and colleges do the same thing, charging families tuition, to have the kids come to school, sit in classes and talk about books with “teachers”–who are no teachers at all. They claim that this arrangement is some kind of “classical’ method called “the Socratic method”.
And this exploitation of parents and students is common through this fake classical education movement. You’ll see “the Socratic method” all through their catalogs and websites and school brochures. You’ll see “the Socratic method”, “the Socratic method”, “the Socratic method”–and all that means is that incompetent men and women are being paid as publishers and teachers who are unable to provide efficient, helpful, systematic lectures for the students who are paying tuition. Again, this is excused by pretending that these class discussions are “the Socratic method”. So that’s one reason why this discussion is very important to clarify, this advertising gimmick of false classical Christian Schools and publishers.
The other reason why this this question is important is because modern democratic society, and many of the devil’s temptations, in general, make use of a fallacy. That’s called a false dilemma. Understanding the Socratic method rightly will help us to understand the false dilemma and will greatly assist us in our thinking and decision making. So for the sake of exposing the fake teachers in the classical education movement, who claim to use the Socratic method, and to help with thinking in modern democratic society, I’d like to answer the question:
What is the Real Socratic Method?
Understanding the Socratic Method
Let’s begin by simply looking at the name, the Socratic method. And this name implies two important things.
1. The Real Socratic Method is a Method
First of all, it’s a method. We’re talking about a method or a procedure, something that can be practiced, that has a certain characteristics. It’s a certain method. And everyone knows what the word method means. If I were to ask you, how do you handle your family’s laundry? What’s your method? You might be a well organized housewife and say, “Oh, well, here’s what I do. First of all, I have these three hampers in the bathroom, and the children put their dirty clothes into one of these three.” You can go through the details of the method or procedure that you use to handle the laundry. Or the same could be true of grocery shopping. A man may have a method for how he goes about exercising. He may have a workout, he may have a certain weekly routine, etc., and if I were to ask him, “How do you stay in shape?”, he would explain. “This is my method for staying in shape.” We understand what a method is. It’s a method, a way of doing something, a set of procedures which are followed to accomplish some desired end. That’s a method; everyone understands that.
2. The Real Socratic Method is Socratic
Secondly, we have an adjective that describes this method. And we say that it’s Socratic. It’s a method that is Socratic. What that means is that this method is a method that we claim was used and taught by Socrates, in history.
Another question that arises is, “What is the end or purpose of this method?” In the example of doing the laundry, the end of that method is to provide all of the family members with clean clothes. The end of the method of a man’s exercise is to develop and maintain good physical health. A method serves an end or goal.
When we come to the Socratic Method, we have to ask “What was the end that was sought, by Socrates, with what was named the Socratic method?”
If we look back to the life of Socrates and into the history of philosophy we find a method that allows us to show that certain opinions are false. This method helped Socrates to advance in the pursuit of truth and wisdom. The Socratic Method was a method taught and used by Socrates in the pursuit of wisdom. It was a philosophical method of investigation. The Socratic Method was the philosophical method that was developed and used by Socrates.
Socrates, is a real historical person. We can learn about Socrates from a number of different sources. The most important source from which we can learn about Socrates is the writing of the philosopher Plato. Plato was a student of Socrates, who used the “Socratic Method” in his own philosophical studies, and writing. We can also learn about the Socratic Method from Xenophon, who was a friend of Socrates and writes about Socrates and his method. However, we can learn about the Socratic Method in a more formal and scientific way, through the study of Aristotle’s Organon[efn_note]The Organon was Aristotle’s collection of treatises through which he taught the complete art of Reasoning. The word Organon means instrument or method to be used in philosophical investigation. The Organon consists of six books: The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Elenchi. All of these are studied in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy’s Classical Reasoning courses.[/efn_note].
Aristotle, was a student of Plato. So Aristotle was in this line of “Socratic” philosophers, and Aristotle taught and explained, systematically, the method of Socrates in his work on the “Topics”[efn_note]Aristotle, Topics. Translated by Thomas Taylor. (1818).[/efn_note].
So, we have a number of historical and philosophical sources from which we can learn about the method that Socrates developed and used in his pursuit of wisdom.
Now, just by knowing that much we can already be certain that what schools and publishers are claiming to be the Socratic Method has nothing to do with any method ever employed by Socrates in his philosophical pursuits. To have a group of students reading a book, sitting around a table, or in a classroom, talking about the book may certainly be considered a method of teaching, but it’s not any method that has anything to do with Socrates. It’s not a philosophical method at all and it has nothing to do with Socrates. It’s an alternative to formal modern class lectures, but it’s not the Socratic Method.
Again, the reason why a school would charge tuition for instruction, but not provide formal class lectures, is that the teachers are unable to provide formal class lectures. They’re not experts. They do not have the kind of knowledge of a subject that a true teacher has. They cannot give systematic knowledge to their students because they do not have it.
What student wouldn’t prefer an efficient, formal class lecture from a wise, experienced teacher to an inefficient, wandering class discussion where his classmates are talking most of the time?
Socrates was not teaching classrooms full of tuition-paying, credit-seeking students. Socrates was a philosopher. Socrates was engaged in private philosophical discussions, through which he was seeking to answer ONE question by means of a strategic investigation. Socrates was using his method because no better method was available at the time. The superior method of philosophical investigation was established by Aristotle, a generation later.
The Aristotelean Method
When Socrates was arguing in the streets and banquet halls of Athens, the art of Reasoning was yet unknown. Sophists had their way throughout Greek culture and no one could resist them–except Socrates. Socrates engaged with false teachers and proved that their ideas lead to self-contradictions that prove their systems of thought to be false. Proving people false was all that the Socratic Method could do. This was the state of philosophy at that time.
Fifteen years after Socrates died, Aristotle was born. Aristotle would grow up to study under Socrates’ greatest pupil: Plato. Plato would use the Method of his teacher to present his philosophical ideas through written dialogues in which contrary ideas were shown to be impossible. The Socratic Method allowed Plato to prove that his opponents were wrong–but it did not allow him to prove that his philosophy was true.
Aristotle wasn’t content with the Socratic Method. He knew that its use was limited and that it couldn’t demonstrate what was true. He knew that it could not produce “scientific” knowledge of a subject. He also knew that the Socratic Method didn’t solve the problem of the Sophists in Greek society.
What was lacking when Socrates died, and when Plato taught, was knowledge of the art of Reasoning. Gifted, philosophical individuals could be found who were able to argue effectively, but there was no “method” to be studied and practiced. Men argued effectively by natural ability or by experience with arguments or by luck. Seeing this, Aristotle knew that a method existed but hadn’t been discovered yet.
Aristotle worked to establish the art of reasoning. He saw that the Socratic Method, which relied on asking a certain kind of question and then stringing together answers to those questions until contradictions were discovered, started with men’s answers rather than absolute truth. This is why the Socratic Method could not demonstrate what was true. For something to be proven true it must be concluded not from premises that appear true to men, but from premises that are absolutely certain and require no demonstration themselves. Aristotle knew that the truth could only be demonstrated by reason from self-evident truths, but how?
The actual process of reasoning had to be understood and explained, and Aristotle worked to explain this process in his “Organon”. He had to learn how the mind actually draws conclusions and is persuaded.
As he studied, he realized that the mind depends on words and that words are the causes of confusion and error. He learned that ideas are produced by the mind to represent objects outside the mind–and that these ideas are shared by all men. He also learned that words are created by men to represent their ideas–and that this creation of words as artificial. He saw that the use of words to represent ideas was a source of confusion and error among men, and one of the sources of the Sophists’ deceptions. He explains this in the first book of his Organon, the “Categories”.
He also learned that words and ideas, by themselves are neither true nor false, but that they become true or false through combination with others. These combinations are called “propositions”. He showed that truth and falsehood were only present when words were combined in certain ways, but that there were other modes of combination that did not produce truth and falsehood and could lead to confusion and error. He explained this in his work “On Interpretation”.
Most importantly, however, he learned that just as words are combined to make propositions that are true or false, so also propositions, when combined, make new propositions. Aristotle showed that the mind does this automatically–and that this is the process of reasoning! Sometimes, certain pairs of propositions produce a third proposition that is true, and sometimes others produce a third proposition that is false. He explained this in his word “Prior Analytics”.
Aristotle had established how human ideas, language and reasoning worked. The last step was to who what kind of propositions they were that produced true conclusions. This he accomplished in his work “Posterior Analytics” After finishing this, he went on to consider what exactly Socrates was doing in his method and what role it served in the life of the philosopher. He did this in his work titled the “Topics”.
Thus, a generation after Socrates argued in the streets, Aristotle established the art of Reasoning itself. Once he achieved this, he had in hand a method that was far superior to the Socratic Method. While the Socratic Method could show that an individual man’s answers to questions were self-contradictory, Aristotle could go further–
Aristotle’s method could demonstrate the truth.
Aristotle then went on a rampage through philosophy, using his method to establish the answers to questions that plagued men since the beginning of time. Aristotle investigated subjects not by means of haphazard dialogues but by laser sharp reasoning that began from self-evident premises, which led to conclusions that were absolutely certain. He then used those true conclusions as premises to produce new conclusions which were, likewise, absolutely certain. Within one generation, the greatest questions in rational, moral and natural philosopher were answered, and those answers were provided in systematic form, with demonstration.
Philosophy was, for all intents and purposes, finished business. It was simply a matter of time for the Aristotelean Method to be applied to all subjects and sciences be produced for them.
Teaching, after Aristotle, simply means teaching the philosophical sciences established by the Aristotelean Method. The means of teaching in this way is by formal, systematic instruction.
The Scholastic Method
As God would have it, the works of Aristotle would be partially lost and his amazing achievements of no benefit for men. His ideas remained in the world conquered by his disciple, Alexander the Great, but his writings ended up in the possession of Arabs, by whom they would be preserved, unknown to the men of Europe.
At this time in history, the Pax Romana was established and with philosophy completed and peace in the world, the times were accomplished at which the Word of God should take on flesh and bring all of divine revelation to perfection. It is most important to understand that the Christian message was set within the context of Aristotelean philosophy in a time of political peace.
Unfortunately, the men who would take up the Christian message, though holy and excellent men with regard to religion and theology, were under the influence of Plato’s philosophy rather than that of Aristotle. The early Church, then was marked by Platonism as regards philosophy, which prevented the Church from articulating many of the doctrines that would become essential to Christianity and cause it to triumph over all heretics later in time.
In the middle ages, the works of Aristotle made their way back into Europe and were eventually taken up by Christian scholars. These scholars, however, found them to be filled with error and inferior to the philosophy of Plato. However, St. Albert the Great and his student, St. Thomas Aquinas took up the study of Aristotle’s works and found that what these Christian scholars were criticizing was not the actual teaching of Aristotle, but the false interpretation of Aristotle’s teaching by the Arab scholars.
St. Thomas Aquinas purged the works of Aristotle from their Arabic misinterpretation and proved, by his commentaries, that Aristotle’s philosophy and method were superior to those of Plato and perfectly harmonious with the Christian faith. St. Thomas not only proved that the Aristotelean Method was true, but he took it up as his method of investigation and applied it to problems within Christian theology and the false teachings of heretics and unbelievers.
The combination of the Aristotelean Method with Christian theology produced a new method known as the “Scholastic Method”. And, just as Aristotle quickly produced scientific knowledge of the great philosophical subjects, so also did St. Thomas Aquinas produce scientific knowledge of Christian theology. This system of Christian thought is known as “Scholasticism”. We can read the scholastic teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas in his two most famous works, the “Summa Contra Gentiles”, and the “Summa Theologica”.
Like Aristotle, the Scholastics taught systematically by means of lecture–not by means of the “Socratic Method”. Doing so would have made no sense.
What Exactly is the Socratic Method?
Having explained the actual history of the Socratic Method and how it was eclipsed by the rise of the Aristotelean and Scholastic Methods, let’s talk about what, exactly, the Socratic method is.
If we want to learn what the Socratic method is, instead of reading books and articles by men who’ve never even studied the classical liberal arts, or schools trying to sell tuition to desperate modern parents, or homeschool catalogs looking for a marketing gimmick to sell their throwaway study materials, let’s look to the actual sources, where we find Socrates speaking, and teaching.
Let’s look at the dialogues of Plato. What do we see Socrates doing? We don’t see Socrates sitting at a table with a group of students talking about some book they’re reading. We don’t see Socrates using the Socratic method as a way to lead class discussions in exchange for tuition payments. We do see the Socratic method being used as a method by which Socrates investigates a question. A question that at the time of investigation, doesn’t have a known answer. The Socratic method is the method, the method that Socrates uses to answer a question–a philosophical question.
If you were to ask Socrates, “What is the nature of man?”, or “What is man?”, Socrates would begin the investigation by asking questions, but these are not questions for people’s opinions or class discussions. The questions Socrates asked were a very specific kind of question. And this is the difference between this nonsense about the Socratic method in fake classical schools and the real thing. Socrates does ask questions. That’s true. But he asks a specific type of question. And this question, this specific type of question, is what makes the Socratic method to be the Socratic method.
What Socrates asks, are called dialectical questions, and the method that Socrates uses is what Aristotle called the dialectical method, which is explained in the “Topics”, as said above. The dialectical method is different from the demonstrative method, which Aristotle developed and taught a century later. The dialectical method asks a question that allows only one of two answers.
I’ll repeat that.
The Socratic Method asks a question that allows only one of two answers.
So, the question, “What is man?” cannot be answered by the Socratic Method. It is a broad, open-ended question with an infinite number of possible answers. It is not a dialectical question, and answering this question will lead to endless, unproductive talk. This is what schools do that use the fake “Socratic Method”. They just babble endlessly and unproductively, expressing their own opinions, which is the opposite of everything philosophy seeks to do.
If we were to investigate the question of the nature of Man using the Socratic Method, we would have to establish a list of strategic dialectical questions that might lead us to some helpful end. We could begin by asking the question “Whether man is mortal, or not mortal?” This is a dialectical question, the kind of question Socrates would ask in his philosophical investigations. Notice the nature of the question: “Whether man is mortal, or not mortal?” The question allows for only one of two possible answers. The reason why only two answers are possible, is because the answer choices are one positive answer, and then it’s opposite. “Is man mortal?”–that’s the positive–or “Is man not mortal?” –that’s it’s opposite. The dialectical question is a question that allows only an answer, or it’s contrary: A or not A. Those are the only two options, and this is very important.
So using that example, the first question we’d investigate is “Whether man is mortal, or not mortal?”. And we would seek to look for arguments or evidence that proves that man is mortal or not mortal. We’d like to see that “man” is taken as a genus, as a class, and we’d like to speak universally if we can. When we say “man”, we mean “all men” and ask “Whether all men are mortal?”. The contrary to that, is that “No, all men are not mortal.” The discussion that would follow would be a dialectical discussion. And that would be an example of the true Socratic method–asking questions, which allow only an answer or it’s contrary.
It’s not simple questioning and discussion, and this is where these modern fake classical schools are wrong. Socrates did not teach by discussion. Socrates investigated philosophical questions by asking a very specific type of question, a question which allows only an answer and it’s contrary. By collecting the answers to these questions, one by one by one, results would begin to appear. It would be seen that these answers to these dialectical questions were leading to a certain general conclusion, or they were leading into contradictions. And, if it could be shown that the answers that were being given to the dialectical questions were leading to contradictions, then one or more of the previous answers must be false. And so, when the two men discussing the issue (or one man thinking through the issue) ran into a contradiction he would need to walk back through the conversation and find that question whose false answer led to the contradictions. And he would know that that answer must be false. And that’s how this method would reveal what could not be true.
That’s the Socratic method.
When we read Plato’s dialogues, that’s what Socrates is doing, and we see exactly that method as Socrates investigates. Often, what’s most beneficial about the Socratic method is that we find that answers to questions that we or our society take for granted, are actually impossible. And this leads us to a state of mind that’s called “doubt”. And we begin to doubt whether we actually know what we think we know.
And if you remember, Socrates, claimed that he was the wisest man in the world because he was the only man who knew that he didn’t know anything (at that time, at least). He was the only man who doubted his own knowledge, and his self-doubt was his wisdom. His self-doubt is that which made him the only wise man in the world. That’s what he taught people. He told others that the Oracle at Delphi told him that he was the wisest man in the world because he was the only one who doubted himself and actually examined the truth of things which men assumes they already know–but don’t.
We learn in most logic classes, even bad logic classes, like those taught at fake classical schools, the law of non-contradiction. This law is an axiom that both a statement and its contrary cannot be true. The reason why that’s important is because the Socratic method is based on that axiom, that a statement, and its contrary, cannot both be true at the same time. That’s the foundation of the Socratic method, and the reason why it works.
So how does this affect modern life? Before I said that this issue is at the heart of modern errors in thinking. How does this Socratic method, how does a true and right understanding of the Socratic method affect modern life? How can it help us? Well, the danger that people face who don’t study the actual art of reasoning, and who don’t spend their time in the pursuit of real scientific and philosophical knowledge. And when I say “scientific”, I’m not talking about modern science experiments. When I say scientific, I’m using the word in the ancient sense, which means knowledge that is absolutely certain and systematically organized. When men don’t study the art of reasoning, and don’t work to develop in themselves, in their own souls, science or true systematic knowledge, they’re vulnerable to many deceptions. They’re easily deceived. And in our society, deceiving people is like taking candy from babies.
When I taught in private schools, every year, I gave a presentation that was well known among all the students. And in this presentation, I demonstrated to the students how easily they could be deceived. What I did was every year, I made the same presentation. The older students already knew the presentation. And younger students heard it for the first time each year. I would have students coming back who had graduated to attend this annual presentation because it drove the kids crazy. And in this presentation, I would demonstrate how they could be deceived. And they would have no way to know how I did what I did. Because they don’t know. They don’t learn the art of reasoning. They have no way to discern false arguments And they the education that they received, even though they paid an incredible price for their private school education. Close to $20,000 a year. The education they received in a modern school did not lead them to a systematic knowledge that protected them from deceptions. And so they were easily deceived. The presentation that I gave every year was one that the kids could appreciate. It was a very athletic school, the kids were healthy, very interested in health and fitness. And the presentation I gave every year was that Diet Coke is healthier than orange juice. Everyone knew that this was not true. Or they think they did. But as the presentation went on, one by one, the kids faces would change. And they would start to think, and they would look confused. And by the end of the presentation, I’d have the mall convinced the Diet Coke was healthier than orange juice. Now, I can do this by using a number of different fallacies. But they’re not able to detect especially in a discussion.
But the most important and most useful fallacy that’s used all through our society, and I believe it’s the devil’s favorite fallacy, is the false dilemma. I can guarantee that you have been influenced by the false dilemma, and here’s what the false dilemma is. When we look at a true dialectical question, we saw that the question allows only one of two answers an answer and it’s contrary. And in dialectical questions, we have true dilemmas. In dialectical questions, we have true dilemmas, because there really are only two possible answers: “A or not A?” That’s it.
There are many questions which cannot be investigated as dialectical questions, especially when the question relates to something that exists more like a spectrum, and not as contraries. If you study the art of reasoning, you can learn about all of this in detail. But it’s enough for this talk to say that there are true dilemmas like those we see in a dialectical question. Choosing between a statement and it’s contrary. And we can create an appearance of a dilemma. We can we can create an appearance that a person must choose between two things and cause this to look like a dialectical question cause this to look like a true dilemma. But it’s actually a false dilemma.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve answered the question, “What is the Socratic method?”. The Socratic Method is a method of seeking truth and wisdom that was developed and used by Socrates as a method of philosophical investigation. It is not appropriate for teaching or “class discussion”. It is not mere debate. That’s not the Socratic method. The Socratic method asks a specific kind of question and serves a specific end. It has nothing to do with teaching class lessons or organizing a curriculum. It has nothing to do with that, especially in the 21st century, where these questions have already been investigated by wise men centuries ago and require no new investigation. The answers have already been demonstrated and Christian teachers should be teaching them authoritatively to students rather than pretending that we are are living 2000 years before Christ and asking these questions for the first time. We should be investigating new dialectical questions with the Socratic Method. That’s what it’s for.
If men claim to be teachers of truths already demonstrated, they should be doing so by lecturing according to the Aristotelean and/or Scholastic Method, not pretending to discuss things with something called the “Socratic Method”.
Catechisms Make this Plain
When the church wanted to teach the faithful the Christian religion, they gave us catechisms. They gave us questions and answers that ask the question and answer it authoritatively. The church doesn’t give us discussion questions, to share our own opinion, as these people are doing in this fake classical education movement. All these fake classical homeschool publishers are just duping the ignorant Christian parents who don’t ask questions–and we can see they don’t ask these questions because of the way they talk about politics, the way they talk about abortion, the way they fall for all the marketing gimmicks that use false dilemmas. They’re suckers, and they don’t examine things and they don’t ask for proof. These schools and publishers get away with this nonsense, telling them not only that they’re “restoring classical education” (which they’re not), but that this method, which is no method, is actually “the Socratic method”, when all it is, as I said, is an excuse to hire people who are not masterful teachers, who cannot produce systematic class lectures, because they’re not experts in their fields. They collect the tuition money for the school, they put the kids in classrooms, and they just let them have class discussions, lazy class discussions, in exchange for tuition being paid for formal education, pretending that this method is some kind of ancient method used by the famous Socrates, which is just a lie. They have no historical proof that what they do in their classes was ever done by Socrates. It can be proven that what Socrates did, was not anything like what they’re doing. And yet none of these foolish Christian parents has the guts to call them out for it, or ask for proof that what they’re doing is, in fact, the Socratic method.
The lies and false advertising I’ve described here are the greatest obstacle to the progress of the work of restoring true classical Catholic education. The challenge that we face is not from the public schools. It’s not from the world. It’s from the confusion and error that’s being introduced by people who are sophists, pretenders who have made and continue to make money selling things to lazy parents who do not ask for proof. This is the greatest obstacle to the restoration of classical Catholic education, and I hope that we can get over it.
If you’d like to discuss this any further or have any more questions about the Socratic method, please ask them I’d be happy to help you get the answers you need.
God bless.
William C. Michael
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
