Hi. Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you

with the support of King's College London and the Liver Hume Trust. Today's episode, Method Man, Plato's Socrates.

Anyone who has spent time in a classroom, whether as a teacher or a student, has probably encountered the Socratic method.

It means of course teaching someone by asking them questions, perhaps leading questions, but

questions nonetheless.

When practiced rigorously, the Socratic method requires that the teacher never say anything apart from questions.

This can descend into parody pretty quickly.

The student asks for the dates Plato was born and died, and instead of saying that he was born in 427 BC,

the teacher says, well, when do you think he was born and died?

But practice in moderation, the Socratic method is an excellent way to teach. It forces

the students to figure things out for themselves, rather than passively sitting there waiting

to be filled with knowledge as if teaching were like pouring wine into the empty vessels

that are the student's heads.

Socrates was of course a prominent user of the Socratic method, if not its inventor.

According to Plato, he had a very good reason for using the method, namely that he had no wisdom of his own to impart anyway.

Socrates claimed to be ignorant about the things he was out to discover.

The reason he gave for cornering the good people of Athens in the marketplace

and pestering them to tell him what courage or piety or virtue in general might be, was that he himself

really didn't know what courage or piety or virtue is.

He was desperate to find someone who could help him answer these most important questions,

questions that became the basis for many of Plato's dialogues. In Plato's Lechis, Socrates asks military men to explain what courage

is. In the Uthofro, he asks a man who is prosecuting his father for murder to explain what piety

...