Plato: Phaedo the Socratic Method

Plato: Phaedo The Socratic Method The Socratic Method of teaching philosophy is also the method by which an understanding of a particular philosophical attitude, argument, or theoretical tone is best achieved for the teacher and the learner. As is well-known, Socrates was dedicated to painstakingly careful reasoning when considering any subject that needed to be addressed. It was all done in pursuit of truth.

And because Socrates actually wrote nothing down for posterity, the only way students and scholars today can learn about his methods is through the writings of Socrates' brilliant student, Plato. While Socrates sought genuine knowledge, he was also willing to call just about everything into question.

When it came to his style of dialog and debate, he was known to have been influenced by some of the polemical tricks used by the Sophists - who didn't pursue the truth with the same intensity as Socrates did, but nonetheless the Sophists understood how to outwit their rhetorical adversaries during political debates. A sophist used crafty methods of logical argumentation. For example, when Socrates asked, "And what kind of man am I?" In Plato's Gorgias, he was posing a question.

That is the first step in the Socratic Method. 1. Wonder (pose a question like "what is X?"). The second step is 2. Hypothesis (suggest a plausible answer, or definition "...from which some conceptually testable hypothetical proposition can be deduced" (http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Dye/method.html). And the third step is 3. "Elenchus"; e.g., "testing" and "refutation" or what lawyers today would call "cross-examination" in a court of law when a witness is on the stand.

A thought can be pursued in this third step "by imagining a case which conforms to the definiens [a word serving to define another word] but clearly fails to exemplify the definiendum [a word or an expression being defined]." These cases of Elenchus are called "counterexamples" and if a counterexample is generated, "return to step 2..." otherwise move on to step 4.

Step 4, "Accept the hypothesis as provisionally true." But, go back to step 3 if you can possibly come up with any other case which could show the answer to be "defective." Step 5. "Act accordingly." What is the strength of the Socratic Method? The real strength of the Socratic Method is that it exercises the mind in a very righteous - as opposed to self-righteous - format. Let's accept the fact that the mind is a vitally under-used tool in today's electronic, entertainment-driven 21st Millennium society.

Citizens - especially youthful citizens - tend to let their eyes and senses be blasted by images and stories and games that bring easy delight. The community of bright people too, college students in particular, often let the ingenious devises (iPods, X-boxes, Porches, DVDs, the Internet, text messaging, etc.) and strategies of others set the mood, rather than seize upon a deep philosophical discussion the likes of which would stimulate Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sartre, among many others.

But indeed, engaging in spirited dialogue - utilizing the Socratic Method - brings out the strength in a person's mind, and challenges all the available academic, intellectual and emotional power one has to present one's ideas and positions. Challenges like that make a person stronger, and moreover, make a person quick on one's feet and resilient to unfair attacks by lesser intellects. According to the University of Toronto Quarterly, elenchus is the "scrupulous cross-examination of all points relating to the interlocutor's truth-claim" (Furlani, 2002).

The interlocutor [someone who participates in a conversation] runs the "attendant risk," according to Furlani, that if he or she is contradicted, the interlocutor "must acknowledge is aporia and the refutation of his principles." In other words, if one is out-classed in a deep debate, and clearly the other person's cross-examination shows his side to be more verifiable than yours, you must admit he is right and acknowledge the strength of his position. The Socratic method is not limited in any way to philosophical genre.

In fact, in the "Law School Approach" (http://www.wcl.american.edu) to the Socratic method, the student is asked to recite the case, in a "clear and concise fashion," and explain what the problem was in the case, what the legal conundrum was, what were the facts from which the case arose, and how the case was resolved through the court.

Criticisms of Socratic Methodology? There can be criticism in reference to the Socratic Method in the law genre; that happens when counsellors take the method to arrogant extreme: when counsellors employ the use of polemics to make points that are actually rhetorical, that lean towards the pithy, but sound powerful to a jury.

Phaedo - Plato In Plato's Phaedo dialogue, readers learn that this is a conversation long after Socrates has taken the poison and has died; Echecrates is asking Phaedo, a pupil of Socrates, for a good recounting of exactly what happened that day. Plato himself was not at the scene of Socrates' death, apparently due to his being ill.

The first step of the Socratic Method takes awhile to get into, as the men are conversing in a general way - it might be called "small talk" today - about Socrates' date with death. It's a story within a story, and there are sidebar stories that contain valuable, lovely little nuggets of philosophical information as the stories roll along, and the dialogue heats up a bit. The emotional roller coaster the men were on set the stage for the more serious Socratic musings and pronouncements and debates.

"...I knew he was soon to die, and this strange mixture of feeling was shared by us all; we were laughing and weeping by turns..." Phaedo remembered.

The first substantive question posed by Simmias, who wanted to know if Socrates would communicate his thoughts regarding his impending demise, even though the "attendant" who was to give Socrates the poison told the group that Socrates was not to do much talking, "for by talking heat is increased, and this interferes with the action of the poison." Some people have to take the poison more than once, they were told, because they got too excited.

Socrates shows good humor - or at least irony - by saying, "let him mind his business and be prepared to give the poison two or three times, if necessary..." The second step, the Hypothesis, is given by Socrates; "...he who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die," since after death the "greatest good" (eternal life?) will come.

And, Socrates adds, the "true disciple of philosophy" is misunderstood by normal men because they don't realize that he has had "the desire of death all his life long..." Then Simmias laughs, and begins his hypothesis, prior to his launch into "cross-examination" of Socrates, which of course Socrates turns into his own elenchus. Simmias says that people hearing what Socrates said will agree that since a philosopher desires death, then he deserves death too.

And Socrates launches a (question) "wonder": "Do we believe that there is such a thing as death?" And after Simmias says yes death is real, Socrates presents a hypothesis: "And is this anything but the separation of soul and body?" So, in other words, when the soul leaves the body, that is defined as death? Socrates hypothesizes. Socrates then goes into his testing (elenchus): "Do you think that the philosopher ought to care about the pleasures...of eating and drinking?" Simmias says the philosopher should not care.

And what about love, Socrates continues. No, he shouldn't care, Simmias. And what about nice things like sandals or clothing - should he care, Socrates wonders. Again, the answer is no, as the elenchus continues. Hence, would it be fair to say the philosopher is only concerned with the soul, and not the body then, Socrates asserts. "That is true," Simmias replies. This goes on for a considerable time. And every new argument Socrates makes, time after time, Simmias replies in the affirmative.

Socrates gets deep into his hypothesis that the soul is what matters, and yet individuals are very much attracted to bodily pleasures. "...Wars are occasioned by the love money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and in consequence of all these things the time which ought to be given to philosophy is lost," Socrates explains.

And after this philosophical dialogue about the soul's immortality continues for quite a long time, with Cebes and Simmias both participating - albeit, studying the dialogue closely it is in reality a kind of Socratic cross-examination by Socrates of himself - Socrates ends his brilliant series of explanations by saying that a soul "seeks to live while she lives, and after death she hopes to go to her own kindred and to be freed from human ills." And that soul "at her departure from the body" will be "scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere and nothing." Then "for a considerable time there was silence" prior to Cebes and Simmias starting up a conversation between themselves.

Socrates asked them to come forward with their thoughts if they were "still doubtful about the argument." The two proceed to make a sophisticated argument, contrary to Socrates' points, that were counterexamples to the points about the body and the soul that Socrates had been making with such eloquence. It was cross-examination, but it was also a series of new hypotheses that Cebes and Simmias presented to the philosopher whom they held in the highest regard, of course.

Basically, they argued that the existence of the soul during the bodily period has been sufficiently proved; but as to what happens to the soul after death, is "unproven," Cebes offered.

And it went on for awhile, convincingly; and when the narrator Phaedo brought the story back to real time, he recounted that the listeners to Socrates "had been so firmly convinced" and yet after the cross-examination (elenchus) by Cebes and Simmias, "either we were not good judges, or there were no real grounds of belief." What argument can I ever trust again?" said Echecrates. And, Echecrates was eager to find out from Phaedo how Socrates responded to these brilliant observations from Cebes and.