Method
Socratic questioning
Overview
Socratic questioning (or Socratic maieutics) is an educational method named after Socrates that focuses on discovering answers by asking questions of students. According to Plato, Socrates believed that "the disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning enables the scholar/student to examine ideas and be able to determine the validity of those ideas". Plato explains how, in this method of teaching, the teacher assumes an ignorant mindset in order to compel the student to assume the highest level of knowledge. Thus, a student is expected to develop the ability to acknowledge contradictions, recreate inaccurate or unfinished ideas, and critically determine necessary thought.
Socratic questioning is a form of disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including the following: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we do not know, to follow out logical consequences of thought, or to control discussions. Socratic questioning is based on the foundation that thinking has structured logic, and allows underlying thoughts to be questioned. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that the former is systematic, disciplined, deep and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
And this is prudence in affairs private as well as public; he will learn to order his own house in the best manner, and he will be able to speak and act for the best in the affairs of the state. Do I understand you, I said; and is your meaning that you teach the art of politics, and that you promise to make men good citizens? That, Socrates, is exactly the profession which I make.
Plato, Protagoras
The author is tied to Socratic questioning in the knowledge graph.
2. _The Principle of the Good._ This, in short, is Socrates’ method. The affirmative, what Socrates develops in the consciousness, is nothing but the good in as far as it is brought forth from consciousness through knowledge—it is the eternal, in and for itself universal, what is called the Idea, the true, which just in so far as it is end, is the Good. In this regard Socrates is opposed to the Sophists, for the…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Socratic questioning is.
Under present conditions the scholastic method, for most persons, means a form of knowing which has no especial connection with any particular subject matter. It includes making distinctions, definitions, divisions, and classifications for the mere sake of making them--with no objective in experience. The view of thought as a purely physical activity having its own forms, which are applied to any material as a seal…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Socratic questioning is; the author is tied to Socratic questioning in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Socratic questioning
Related ideas
- Argument
- John Dewey
- Evidence
- Plato
- Psychotherapy
- Socrates
- Critical thinking
- Truth
- Thought
- Logical consequence
- Question
- Logotherapy
- Rational emotive behavior therapy
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of logic.