Socrates’ Methods

A sum­mary of some the meth­ods and char­ac­ter­is­tics used by the father of mod­ern day phi­los­o­phy.

The Socratic Dialogue

Per­haps the most arrest­ing fea­ture of Socrates’ legacy is his unique method of teach­ing and arriv­ing at the truth. Socrates didn’t claim the truth is this or the truth is that. He sought to ques­tion stu­dents in a way that would lead them to arrive at the truth them­selves. Socrates fre­quently claimed to know noth­ing. Yet, if Socrates knew noth­ing, why were peo­ple so eager to hear him talk? The rea­son was that Socrates was able to make peo­ple recon­sider their own ingrained ideas; Socrates had a way of mak­ing peo­ple think for them­selves and con­sider truth from dif­fer­ent angles.

This method of con­ver­sa­tion incurred the ire of some peo­ple; they were not happy that Socrates was able to show the lim­i­ta­tions of their think­ing. Yet, the genius of the Socratic method was that he never had to directly tell peo­ple their inad­e­qua­cies; they came to realise it themselves.

Inde­pen­dence of Thought

One of Socrates most admired traits was that he did not fol­low pop­u­lar opin­ion. He ques­tioned every ortho­dox belief and decided inde­pen­dently if it was worth pur­su­ing. Socrates looked at issues from both per­spec­tives; he did not allow him­self to be tied down by reli­gious, polit­i­cal, or social conventions.

This inde­pen­dence of thought and mind was par­tic­u­larly pow­er­ful given the forces of con­for­mity pre­dom­i­nant in Greek soci­ety. The impor­tance he placed on inde­pen­dence of thought can be seen by his response to his trial and death. Socrates had numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to flee; how­ever, he didn’t wish to flee — he felt that escape would weaken his philo­sophic independence.

Socrates was also non dog­matic; he had friends with both Oli­garchs and Democ­rats. At the same time, he had ene­mies in both par­ties; Socrates would never mod­er­ate his words to curry favour with others.

Read more about tak­ing an inter­est in the wel­fare of oth­ers, not fear­ing death, hav­ing self con­trol, being tol­er­ant of oth­ers, dis­re­gard­ing out­ward appear­ances, and know­ing thy­self at Rad­i­cal Think­ing: What You Can Learn From the Time­less Phi­los­o­phy of Socrates | PickTheBrain

On a side note: I think the fact that philosophy.com is owned by some ran­dom cos­met­ics com­pany is a bit of a travesty.