If a liberal education liberates, one of the constraints from which the student is liberated is the professor. That this occurs from a method exercised by the professor is one of the great powers of Socratic dialectic in the classroom, and one of the paradoxes, perhaps mysteries, of our privileged vocation in the university.
Why, When, & How to Lead a Discussion
Be humble: Imitate Jesus and Socrates. —Ben Franklin, The Autobiography
Franklin’s paradox—that there is something not quite so humble about taking world historical exemplars of humility for one’s models of behavior—does not undermine his point: when trying to do something well, imitate the best. Although it may seem obvious, even trite, to call up Socrates from the old underworld to think about classroom discussions, I will be doing just that. (I leave Jesus for another day.) Tradition works in many ways, but one way it works is by recovering and renewing ancient texts for contemporary purpose. As a Shakespearean, I am cautioned by Glendower’s boast in Henry IV, Part 1—“I can call spirits from the vasty deep”—and Hotspur’s retort—“Why, so can I, or so can any man, / But will they come when you do call them?”[1] I will let the reader decide if I meet Hotspur’s challenge.
After defining the “what” of Socratic dialectic (as extracted from one episode of Plato’s Euthyphro), I will explore the why, when, and how. The “why” will examine the relationship between the two dominant modes of teaching—lecture and discussion—and argue that, although both have merits, lecture alone will fail to fulfill all of our pedagogic goals in liberal education, one of which is teaching students the art of interpretation. This is the “when,” and here I will examine the way that discussion upon a text, properly guided, can not only inspire, discipline and profit student responses from mere opinion to reasoned opinion, but also produce understanding for student and teacher alike, understanding not had by any one participant beforehand, even the teacher. The “how” will then offer a series of discursive moves arranged into steps, illustrated with a sample from one of my own literature classes. The conclusion will suggest that such class discussions are one means to liberal education since they liberate students from professorial interpretation toward their own, a liberation, though, guided by the professor. The professor sometimes does not profess, paradoxically, but instead shows others how to profess.
What is “Socratic dialectic”?[2] It is not a single thing in Plato’s dialogues, of course, but generally it is the disciplined discussion of a topic through question and answer during which provisional answers are revealed to be inadequate and newer ones offered, newer answers, in turn, often then revealed to be better but still inadequate. Its primary topic of invention is definition—the “What is X?” question—but other forms of reasoning come into play. This process of “clarification” arises as a result of “refutation,” and both are good translations of the Greek term, elenkhos, at least as used by Plato. This clarifying refutation often ends in “confusion” or “disorientation”—that is, aporia. Socratic, clarifying refutation creates disorientation, wherein one realizes that one does not know what one thought one did know.
The discussants realize with Socrates that the only knowledge available to human beings is to know one does not know, as Socrates puts it in the Apology, the merely human wisdom which answers the Apollonian mandate to know thyself: Know thyself by knowing that the only thing you know is that you do not know.[3] This Socratic humility may lead to extreme skepticism—you know only that you do not know anything—or moderate—know what you do or do not know. I encourage to students in the latter view while acknowledging the possibility of the former.
Allow me to offer one brief moment from the Euthyphro as an instance of Socratic dialectic (as represented by Plato). Socrates and Euthyphro have met at the Stoa of the Archon (a preliminary stage in legal proceedings in Athens at the time, Euthyphro to prosecute his own father for murder and Socrates to defend himself against the charges brought against him—the speech given in the Apology. H.N. Fowler indicates that “the purpose of the dialogue is… to inculcate correct methods of thinking, more especially the dialectical method” (3). I shall not examine the progress of the entire argument, only one moment of clarifying refutation in which Socrates elicits, then questions Euthyphro about his definition of “the holy” until the latter contradicts himself in aporia.[4] First, he leads him to a definition of “the holy”:
S: Tell me then, what do you say holiness is, and what unholiness?
E: Well then, I say that holiness is doing what I am doing now, prosecuting the wrongdoer who commits murder or steals from the temples or does any such thing, whether he be your father, or your mother or anyone else, and not prosecuting him is unholy. And, Socrates, see what a sure proof I offer you—a proof I have already given to others—that this is established and right and that we ought not to let him who acts impiously go unpunished, no matter who he may be. Men believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, and they acknowledge that he put his father in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children, and he in turn had mutilated his father for similar reasons; but they are incensed against me because I proceed against my father when he has done wrong, and so they are inconsistent in what they say about the gods and about me.
. . . .
S: [T]ry to tell more clearly what I asked you just now. For, my friend, you did not give me sufficient information before, when I asked what holiness was, but you told me that this was holy which you are now doing, prosecuting your father for murder.
E: Well, what I said was true, Socrates.
S: Perhaps. But, Euthyphro, you say that many other things are holy, do you not?
E: Why, so they are.
S: Now call to mind that this is not what I asked you, to tell me one or two of the many holy acts, but to tell the essential aspect, by which all holy acts are holy; for you said that all unholy acts were unholy and all holy ones holy by one aspect. Or don’t you remember?
E: I remember.
S: Tell me then what this aspect is, that I may keep my eye fixed upon it and employ it as a model and, if anything you or anyone else does agrees with it, may say that the act is holy, and if not, that it is unholy.
E: If you wish me to explain in that way, I will do so.
S: I do wish it.
E: Well then, what is dear to the gods is holy, and what is not dear to them is unholy.
S: Excellent, Euthyphro, now you have answered as I asked you to answer. However, whether it is true, I am not yet sure; but you will, of course, show that what you say is true.
E: Certainly.
Notice that Socrates had to explain why a definition is necessary and how examples are not definitions. Now, he interrogates the definition, revealing it as internally inconsistent:
S: Come then, let us examine our words. The thing and the person that are dear to the gods are holy, and the thing and the person that are hateful to the gods are unholy; and the two are not the same, but the holy and the unholy are the exact opposites of each other. Is not this what we have said?
E: Yes, just this.
S: And it seems to be correct?
E: I think so, Socrates.
S: Well then, have we said this also, that the gods, Euthyphro, quarrel and disagree with each other, and that there is enmity between them?
E: Yes, we have said that.
S: But what things is the disagreement about, which causes enmity and anger? Let us look at it in this way. If you and I were to disagree about number, for instance, which of two numbers were the greater, would the disagreement about these matters make us enemies and make us angry with each other, or should we not quickly settle it by resorting to arithmetic?
E: Of course we should.
S: Then, too, if we were to disagree about the relative size of things, we should quickly put an end to the disagreement by measuring?
E: Yes.
S: And we should, I suppose, come to terms about relative weights by weighing?
E: Of course.
S: But about what would a disagreement be, which we could not settle and which would cause us to be enemies and be angry with each other? Perhaps you cannot give an answer offhand; but let me suggest it. Is it not about right and wrong, and noble and disgraceful, and good and bad? Are not these the questions about which you and I and other people become enemies, when we do become enemies, because we differ about them and cannot reach any satisfactory agreement?
E: Yes, Socrates, these are the questions about which we should become enemies.
S: And how about the gods, Euthyphro? If they disagree, would they not disagree about these questions?
E: Necessarily.
S: Then, my noble Euthyphro, according to what you say, some of the gods too think some things are right or wrong and noble or disgraceful, and good or bad, and others disagree; for they would not quarrel with each other if they did not disagree about these matters. Is that the case?
E: You are right.
S: Then the gods in each group love the things which they consider good and right and hate the opposites of these things?
E: Certainly.
S: But you say that the same things are considered right by some of them and wrong by others; and it is because they disagree about these things that they quarrel and wage war with each other. Is not this what you said?
E: It is.
S: Then, as it seems, the same things are hated and loved by the gods, and the same things would be dear and hateful to the gods.
E: So it seems.
S: And then the same things would be both holy and unholy, Euthyphro, according to this statement.
E: I suppose so.
S: Then you did not answer my question, my friend. For I did not ask you what is at once holy and unholy; but, judging from your reply, what is dear to the gods is also hateful to the gods.[5]
This episode of clarifying refutation ends in aporia, but, of course, they will begin again.[6] But the moment lets us see that Socratic dialectic is the disciplined discussion of a topic through question and answer during which provisional answers, answers grounded in definition, are revealed to be inadequate and newer ones offered, newer answers, in turn, often then revealed to be better but still inadequate, the discussants realizing with Socrates that the only knowledge available is to know one does not know, as we see at the end of the dialogue when, after a third clarifying refutation and aporia, Euthyphro abandons the discussion, running off and leaving Socrates alone to next defend himself in the Apology for just such Socratic dialectic.
We should draw out responses to questions from students, then interrogate them about their responses until those responses are both stronger because more reasonable and more humble because more alert to limitations.
Why? What is the relationship between the two dominant modes of teaching—lecture and discussion? Let me grant that lecture, or what Socrates would call epideiksis, “display speech,” has an important role to play in education. When one must provide and explain the material of one’s disciplinary subject, one needs to display that material in a clear, orderly and engaging way so students might know something—or, rather, under the influence of Socrates at least, know what is or is not known. Professors should not be afraid of professing, and some Socratic visions go too far, in my opinion, by arguing that one should seldom if ever lecture.[7] Plato’s Socrates often argues just that, even though he himself indeed lectures on occasion.[8] Let me grant, too, that it is good for students to see someone interpret a text well so that they can imitate such an activity; thus, the delivered interpretation in lecture is pedagogically important, as well. (Notice that we should not conflate those two modes: our knowledge is not identical to our interpretations.) I often lecture, as well, on the structure of the literature we are discussing so students can see the mimetic whole within which any episode to be discussed resides: its plot, in Aristotelian terms.[9] Even so, display speech—in the form of a lecture on subject matter, or an enactment of textual interpretation, or an outline of plot—while necessary, is not sufficient. Students need to engage in interpretation themselves, in both their oral and written work. Ultimately, we want them not only to know the material, understand our interpretations and discern artistic forms, but also to be able to fashion their own interpretations. One of the best ways to teach this activity is through Socratic dialectic about the text at hand during class discussion.
This is the “when”: discussion upon a text, properly guided, can not only inspire, discipline and profit student responses from mere opinion to reasoned opinion, but also produce understanding for student and teacher alike, understanding not had by any one participant beforehand, even the teacher. The texts we study and teach are more capacious than any one soul can discern and understand, and they require communities to be more fully encountered. Sometimes, that is the community of historical traditions of interpretation; sometimes, that is the present community of the classroom itself, a community that we govern, but one which we should be willing, at times to be governed by, as well.[10] Perhaps no more important moment in any class is the moment the professor corrects him or herself in response to a student’s observation about a text since, in that moment, Socrates is revealed to be a subject position any of us may inhabit, including the student.
How does one do this? Let me offer a model for leading a class discussion, a model adapted from Socratic dialectic, and itself needing be adapted to different pedagogic situations. (As you will see soon enough, I myself do not always adhere to and fulfill my own method.) So please forgive the schematic character of “The Seven Stages of Socratic Dialectic in the Classroom.” I am not selling an education program.
The seven stages are these: 1) Set a question, if possible a controversial one; 2) deliver a part of the text; 3) ask the question; 4) query the response given through principles of evidence and reasoning; 5) refute the student’s first response, or allow another student to do so; 6) clarify the question; and 7) reformulate the response to accommodate the clarifying refutation and in order to prepare the next question.
The first stage is very helpful for students, having a question to answer. Some models of class discussion emphasize the need for students to bring their own questions to a text, and that is very important; even so, the set-question establishes the same question for everyone in the community. Such questions can be provided beforehand in the study guide, or given the day of class. (I often have students write a brief response to the question in a note to me so I can get “a sense of the House” before we begin the discussion itself.) Where possible, ask students to define the central term of the topic under discussion. This lets you teach definition and division from within the discussion.[11]
The second stage is to actually deliver, or have students deliver, a passage to focus the discussion of the text analytically, even if one will ask them to synthesis that passage with others so that one can suggest the structure of the whole work and the consequent relationship of its topics. Even if the students have not done the reading—not that that ever happens in a university course—the presence of the passage itself will invite response; even those who have done the reading will appreciate the re-enactment, especially if well delivered. The art of public speaking can be incorporated here, as well. Reading aloud, and doing so well, to students is more important than we realize.
The third stage is to ask the question. (I often ask the question both before and after the delivery.) The question must be the focus of the discussion, but students will veer off from it if allowed. Humanely maintaining focus is crucial here, or discussion will devolve into random response, even chaos itself. (I speak from experience.)
Once a student responds, query the response, the fourth stage. Here, the agonistic character of clarifying refutation should be downplayed in order to encourage response and discourage embarrassment. The first line of clarifying refutation is through evidence. Sometimes, the text says the opposite of what they think it does; often, it says something more subtle than what they think it does. But “attending to the text” is crucial since if reason is composed of providing evidence and reasoning—the empirical and the rational—then their responses must be grounded in the text before one can begin the Socratic method. (Socrates seldom refers to a text, although see the Phaedrus; instead, he often simply assumes his interlocutors remember, as he does, all of Homer.[12]) We often assume our students have read the text and that they remember it, but that assumption is worth testing empirically. The empirical refinement might be thought of as external consistency, the rational internal.
The second line of clarifying refutation is through reasoning, especially, but not limited to definition. I tend to draw on the topics of invention of definition, comparison, and causality in class discussions, and query their categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive enthymemes.[13] One cannot have productive discussion, especially dialectical discussion, without defining, and coming to, terms.[14] The more interesting the term to be defined is to the students, the more involved in the discussion they will be. (I have never led a tepid undergraduate discussion of what “love” is.)
The fifth stage is actual refutation, where you lead the student to see that his or her response is inconsistent with either the text, with itself or with the student’s own belief (a more precisely Socratic effect). Tone is almost everything here. One needs to mute the customary academic aggression that characterizes so much of our work, to congratulate the student on the intelligence of the response, then lead him or her to see its limitations. Generous paraphrase here is crucial—as is praise. As Aristotle would have it in his Rhetoric, we should praise what we would persuade others to do.
The sixth stage reformulates the question in response to the student’s response by putting the question into dialogue with the response and the text, the abstract character of the definition in contact with the particularities of the text and the response.
The seventh and final stage asks a new question, one that has arisen with the clarifying refutation of the fifth and sixth stages. And the process of the seven stages begins again.
What would this look like in an actual class? Fortunately, in the era of Zoom, we all now have an archive of our own teaching. I was at first reluctant to share my transcript of a class with university professor readers (of philosophy no less) since I will quite quickly and clearly to be shown to be a much more limited teacher than my argument might make the reader think, but I realize that it would actually be more helpful to see an experienced teacher leading a discussion that could be improved by means of the method being discussed. Plato wasn’t writing my dialogue, and although I have been able to execute each of the seven stages well during different discussions, I doubt I have ever done them all well in any single discussion.
The class for the day was Literary Tradition II, the Christian Epic, and we were studying Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically the fifth canto of Inferno when Dante pilgrim encounters Francesca and her lover Paulo.[15] I set the question beforehand—Is it appropriate for Dante the pilgrim to pity the lovers?—and had them write a brief note to me in the Chat section so I would have a “sense of the House,” then delivered the text:
No sooner had the wind bent them toward us
than I urged on my voice: “O battered souls
if One does not forbid it, speak with us.”Even as doves when summoned by desire,
borne forward by their will, move through the air
with wings uplifted, still, to their sweet nest,those spirits left the ranks where Dido suffers
approaching us through the malignant air;
so powerful had been my loving cry.“O living being, gracious and benign,
who through the darkened air have come to visit
our souls that stained the world with blood, if Hewho rules the universe were friend to us
then we should pray to Him to give you peace
for you have pitied our atrocious state.Whatever pleases you to hear and speak
will please us, too, to hear and speak with you,
now while the wind is silent, in this place.The land where I was born lies on that shore
to which the Po together with the waters
that follow it descends to final rest.Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart,
took hold of him because of the fair body
taken from me—how that was done still wounds me.Love, that releases no beloved from loving,
took hold of me so strongly through his beauty
that, as you see, it has not left me yet.Love led the two of us unto one death.
Caina waits for him who took our life.”
These words were borne across from them to us.When I had listened to those injured souls,
I bent my head and held it low until
the poet asked of me: “What are you thinking?”When I replied, my words began: “Alas,
how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing,
had led them to the agonizing pass!”Then I addressed my speech again to them,
and I began: “Francesca, your afflictions
move me to tears of sorrow and of pity.But tell me, in the time of gentle sighs,
with what and in what way did Love allow you
to recognize your still uncertain longings?”And she to me: “There is no greater sorrow
than thinking back upon a happy time
in misery—and this your teacher knows.Yet if you long so much to understand
the first root of our love, then I shall tell
my tale to you as one who weeps and speaks.One day, to pass the time away, we read
of Lancelot—how love had overcome him.
We were alone, and we suspected nothing.And time and time again that reading led
our eyes to meet, and made our faces pale,
and yet one point alone defeated us.When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by one who was so true a lover,
this one, who never shall be parted from me,while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
A Gallehault indeed, that book and he
who wrote it, too; that day we read no more.”And while one spirit said these words to me,
the other wept, so that—because of pity—
I fainted, as if I had met my death.And then I fell as a dead body falls.[16]
Then, we discussed it. I asked the question:
Me: Who thinks that it is appropriate for him to pity them? [Long pause.] Nobody? [Pause.] Sharon?
Sharon: I think it’s appropriate for him to pity them because, well, with pity it’s people usually putting themselves in the other person’s shoes. He himself is not exactly in the same place, but he does have an arranged marriage and he’s not in love, and when you feel pity for someone, it’s because you can relate to them. So that’s why I think it’s appropriate because it’s a basic human feeling.
Me: Very good. So it’s appropriate for him to sympathize with a fellow human being who is experiencing something terrible. Would you go so far as to say that it’s a mandate or requirement? Is that sympathy in any way related to Christian love?
Sharon: I don’t think any emotions are ever required. I think it’s just something that people feel at the moment. It’s not… like no one can ever tell you how to feel. Yes, there are ways people should feel, but instinctual emotion, like, a very raw upfront emotion that just comes—like pity and like getting surprised at something: those things no one can ever tell you how to feel, so you can’t really answer it that way.
Me: Very good. So you’re saying that this is all but an automatic human response of emotion, and of course “sympathy” has within it pathos itself, right, to experience pathos “with” or sun. To sympathize is automatic and appropriate because it is, because it is. Very nicely, very nicely said. I do think there’s an argument—this isn’t your case—but I just want to add one point before I, before I move to “the other side” so to speak, and say that one argument is a natural human emotion of sympathy or suffering—pity and fear Aristotle will call it in the Poetics, which you will read in Literary Tradition III—um, that that is actually on the road toward Christian love or agapê, which is not an emotion, but an actual virtue, in fact the summit of Christian virtue itself after faith and hope. Very nicely, very nicely said, and I like the fact that you wouldn’t let me kind of push you to make the case that I just made—“Well, go ahead, but that’s not the case I’m making”—so thank you for being clear, being clear about that. Professorial paraphrase can have a tendency to over-read what you have said, and it’s always good to say, “No, no, that’s not actually what I, what I said. That’s what you said.” Um, well, well done.
I found the above exchange especially promising since the student did answer the question with a thesis—“It is appropriate for him to pity them”—she did so with a definition—“Pity is automatic sympathy”—and she declined my extension of her case when I suggested that “pity” is an activity of Christian love. (I pushed this too hard since I knew from years of discussions of the passage many other students would argue that, since God has condemned these souls, we as readers should feel no pity for them.) Since she had declined the nudge, I decided to highlight the pedagogic question, making the students more alert to the art of class discussion itself. I should have highlighted her definition of “pity” as such and interrogated it. I had earlier lectured on what makes a good definition, but did not harvest that here.
I now wanted to get the counter-thesis:
Me: Anybody more disturbed by what they think is inappropriate, inappropriate pity? A number of you mentioned it in your notes, I could tell. [Long pause.] Wow, for a minute, I thought my whole screen froze it got so quiet. [Long pause.] Yes, Charity.
Charity: I think he probably overreacted, overreacted a little bit, by fainting. I mean I’m not sure what the times were like back then, and if people fainted more easily—I don’t know. [My laughter.] I think pity was proper, but, yeah, I just think the fainting was a bit much.
Me: That was very good. So notice that you are conceding what Sharon said: “OK, yes, that natural sympathy, which we’re calling ‘pity,’ is appropriate, but the fainting is,” I think you said, “a bit too much”; i.e., the degree of the pity is excessive. But why? Why is it mistaken for him to be excessively pitiful?
Charity introduced the topic of degree, and I wanted to emphasize her concession as one, in part to put Sharon at ease since she was being disagreed with (never a completely pleasurable experience), in part to encourage Charity in not over-arguing her case. We now had a new, more refined question: To what degree should Dante the pilgrim pity the lovers? She also identified an important narrative detail, Dante the pilgrim’s fainting, as a sign of the excessive degree of pity.
Grace had had her hand raised during my exchange with Charity:
Me: Grace? Do you want to develop Charity’s comment?
Grace: Maybe, but I don’t know if this really answers the question, but it strikes me, he says at the end, he faints out of pity, “as if I had met my death, and then I fell as a dead body falls.” And we’re told that these lovers are here because love led them to death. Um, and there’s a sense in which his own pity for them is leading him to a similar kind of death in this place as if he’s repeating the same mistaken they’ve made, or something. He’s too close to it to be able to judge it properly.
Me: Yeah, very good. Your first comment, I think, is interesting. You said, “Well, the consequence was he fell as though he were dying,” indicating that we should be thinking there is a problem, there is a problem with this. But then you went further and said he pitied them too much, but why?
Grace: Well, I was commenting that, um, we’re told early on that these people are here because they loved to the point of death themselves. A lot of them are lovers who killed themselves because of love, or themselves were killed because of love, and so there is a connection between love and death that he seems to replicate in his extreme pity.
Me: Yeah, excellent. By the way, the extremity of the pity—the way you just phrased it—I think, is in line with what Charity was saying. So the argument is that it’s too much there’s an extremity of pity here that indicates that he’s at least sharing the consequence of their lust, falling as though dead, and then you wonder, “Is this pity actually a form of self-pity?”
Grace develops Charity’s empirical point—Dante the pilgrim faints—by emphasizing the simile Dante poet uses—“Then I fell as a dead body falls” (142, emphasis mine)—to make the case that excessive pity, sympathy for a sinful other, might led one to so identify with the sinner as to fall into the sinner’s sin. I introduced the idea of “self-pity,” an idea Grace left unremarked. I should have followed up with her about the “connection between love and death,” a promising point.
Back to Sharon:
Me: Are we talking, Sharon, not about natural human sympathy, not, as I was suggesting, the highest Christian virtue of love, but the kind of sentimentalized excess of pity, which turns out to be self-pity? Sharon, go ahead and respond.
Sharon: So, actually, there is something else that I thought of that Grace actually made me remember, that….
Me: Please.
Sharon: It’s…. Another way to look at it is when you get a wake-up call to something, it does shock you, so fainting is a normal response, when you realize that you’re on the road to do something really bad. In that way, it’s also another appropriate response because if you realize that you’re messing up your life in a sense, shock is a natural response.
Me: No, that’s interesting.
Here, Sharon picked up the empirical point—Dante the pilgrim faints—but interpreted it differently, as a sign that he is getting better, not worse, and connected it to her earlier thesis that pity is a “natural” response here. Her conception of “nature” as an unqualified good here was probably anachronistic—more Romantic than Medieval. I probably should have asked her about that assumption.
Me: So, Charity, now the argument is that the fainting actually is a sign of self-knowledge on his part, and that the pity is indicating, not simply an excess of self-pity, but in fact a recognition that he needs, he needs to be careful with respect to this particular sin. Charity, did you want to respond to that?
Charity: Well, it really depends on whether he is pitying himself, and I’m not sure if we actually know that he’s pitying himself or just them.
Charity challenged my bringing in “self-pity” to the discussion, and this is an important moment since she has her imperfect Socrates on the run. At this point, my alarm, which I set to release students on time, had gone off, and I need to conclude the discussion:
Me: No, very good and then the question is how would we—it’s a really good challenge—how would we ascertain if an act of pity was actually an act of self-pity? Now I think Grace has opened up one path and that is to say, “Well, if he starts to resemble, if he starts to resemble them”—but even there, you’d have to ask, “Well, maybe he resembles them because sympathy or pity tends to be a kind of identity with the object of pity, object of sympathy.” So it may just refine the hermeneutical question, the question of interpretation: How do we know if he’s acting through self-pity? Uh, and there I would say, “We do know that he’s involved in the activity of love.” Her lines are, by the way, are echoing the love poetry that he himself wrote. But that still leaves the question whether or not he is pitying himself, and therefore using them as a kind of sentimental excuse, if you will, not to address his own sin.
Notice that the reformulation of a new question after clarifying refutation came from a student, even if I articulated the new question for us.
I certainly did not follow “The Seven Stages of Socratic Dialectic in the Classroom” perfectly, but the discussion was characterized, if imperfectly, by Socratic dialectic nonetheless, and during the classroom moment, all of us—students and professor alike—were engaged in interpretation. I supplied a little knowledge along the way, modeled interpretation myself, and hinted at literary form, but the most important activity of that class was this: the students interpreted the text for themselves, even while challenging, and being challenged by, each other and me. Socratic dialectic, of which I was the agent, liberated them to freely interpret the text themselves. I could have led the class discussion better, but what merit it had came not only from the fine students, but also from my reading some of Plato’s dialogues, as a teacher—from my calling the Socratic spirit from the vasty deep, not of the underworld, but of Platonic literature understood as centrally a mimesis of a method of thinking together about what matters.[17]
If a liberal education liberates, exercising the intellectual agency of students, one of the constraints from which the student is liberated is the professor. That this occurs from a method exercised by the professor—that the professor can liberate students to profess—is one of the great powers of Socratic dialectic in the classroom, and one of the paradoxes, perhaps mysteries, of our privileged vocation in the university.[18]
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Notes:
[1] 1 Henry IV (3.1.52-54) in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974).
[2] I am indebted throughout to six scholarly treatments and two popular ones of Socratic dialectic. The former are the following: Hugh H. Benson’s ed. of A Companion to Plato (Maldon, MA: Blackwell, 2006), esp. his own “Plato’s Method” (85-99), Charles M. Young’s “The Socratic Elenchus” (55-69), and R.M. Dancy’s “Platonic Definitions and Forms” (70-84); W.C.K Guthrie’s Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971); Richard Robinson’s Plato’s Earlier Dialectic, 2nd ed. (Clarendon Press: Oxford UP, 1953); and Gregory Vlastos’ Socratic Studies, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), especially its first chapter (1-29). The latter are Ward Farnsworth’s The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Guide (Boston: Godine, 2021) and Jeffrey Lehman’s Socratic Conversation: Bringing the Dialogues of Plato and the Socratic Tradition into Today’s Classroom (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic P, 2021). The best preparation for teaching through the Socratic method is reading Plato’s dialogues, especially the earlier, aporetic ones. I could not recommend too highly Farnsworth’s treatment as the one book on the topic every teacher hoping to be Socratic would want to read.
[3] That, anyway, is my interpretation of Plato’s Apology, esp. Socrates’ recounting of the Delphic oracle’s response to Chaerephon’s question and his own response to it through what will become known as “Socratic dialectic” (20c-23c) in the Fowler Loeb ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982). Hereafter cited internally.
[4] For a defense of Socrates’ reasoning in the dialogue, see Albert Anderson’s “Socratic Reasoning in the Euthyphro” in The Review of Metaphysics, 22:3 (March 1969): 461-481.
[5] Fowler’s trans. of 5d-8a.
[6] See Fowler’s delineation of the entire chain of arguments (3-4).
[7] This appears to be the method of St. John’s College: “Most of the teaching at St. John’s takes the form of a discussion. The conversational methods of the seminar are carried over into other classes. As much as possible, the actual instruction in all seminars, tutorials, and laboratories is made to depend on the activity and initiative of the students. The tutors function as guides, more intent on listening to the students and working with them than imposing upon them their own understandings.”
[8] The Gorgias offers an example: In the dialogue’s opening, he comes late to Gorgias’ display speech (447a-c); in its close, he offers one of his own (523a-527e). Even Socrates, then, is not absolutely opposed to lecturing.
[9] A plot or muthos, for Aristotle, is “the structure of events [hê tôn pragmatôn sustasis]” from Steven Halliwell’s Loeb trans. of the Poetics (Camridge, MA; Harvard UP,1995), 1450a15. Identifying and articulating episodes in the “plots” of the texts we teach, whether obviously literary or not, is crucial to our lectures, I suspect.
[10] The literature and philosophy on tradition is vast, but see Paul Ricouer’s Time and Narrative, esp. “Towards a Hermeneutics of Historical Consciousness” in Vol. 3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988), 207-240. The relationship between diachronic dialectic through historical time and synchronic dialectic within a moment of time is beyond my capabilities, but I would suggest that that relationship has pedagogic consequences: Students need to engage in synchronic dialectic with us and one another at moments in class; they need to study diachronic dialectic by examining the hermeneutic traditions around major texts; and they need to engage in synchronic dialectic about those diachronic traditions. I suggest that the first might govern the lower division (Core or general educational, in the American system) phase of their education; the second, the upper division (major) phase; and the third, the graduate phase.
[11] On definition, see Peter Kreeft’s Socratic Logic: A Logic Test Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions and Aristotelian Principles, 3rd ed. (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s P, 2010), 123-137, and on division, 47-67.
[12] In the Phaedrus, the occasion of the dialogue is a speech by Lysias, one Phaedrus has left the city to memorize, and one Socrates requests (230e-234c), parodies (237b-241d) and transvalues (243e-257b) during the dialogue.
[13] For a modern treatment of the topics of invention, syllogistic reasoning and the enthymeme, see Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Conners’ Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), 84-137, 38-51 and 52-60, respectively.
[14] Sister Miriam Joseph puts this well in her Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, ed. Marguerita McGlinn (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002): “If the listener or reader receives through language precisely the ideas put into it by the speaker or writer, these two have ‘come to terms’” (71).
[15] The University of Dallas bulletin offers the following description of the course: “A treatment of Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, establishing terms different from the classical epic by which to understand heroic action and its ends, within an imaginative cosmos shaped by Revelation and by Christian tradition.”
[16] The trans. of The Divine Comedy is Allen Mandelbaum’s in the Everyman’s Library ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 1.5.79-142.
[17] This has been recognized at least since W.C.K Guthrie, who puts it well in A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. IV (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975): “What [Plato] has left us [is] the mimesis of dialectical discussion itself” (65).
[18] This essay began as guest lecture at Maynooth University (14 October 2021) via Zoom for its Dean of Teaching and Learning Seminar Series. I am grateful for the invitation by Alison Hood and Philipp Rosemann. I also presented a version at the UD Teaching and Learning (January 16, 2024). Thank you to Kevin Kambo for offering a response. My understanding of the Euthyphro has benefitted enormously from guidance from my teacher and colleague David Sweet. And special thanks to the three students involved in the sample class discussion and, indeed, all the students in that class and the many other Lit Trad II classes I have been so fortunate to teach.
