What are "Socratic" discussions?
They're not at all what you think...
(The image above is of Mt Etna in Sicily)
Socrates was born in Alpeke near the end of the 4th c. BC & he was executed by the Athenians in 399BCE
Socrates wrote nothing: he was a commoner from outside the city of Athens walls; but he was also a teacher in the sense that he had a student, who happened to be one of the great writers of the Athens in the 4th c.
So it was that one of his hearers was Plato (which was a nickname, meaning “broad” or “wide”) born as “Aristocles” [480 - 323 BCE]
The nickname “Plato” presumably described some aspect of his physique, though we’ve no idea what…
Plato was one of the great writers of Athens in the classical period; he devoted himself for the better part of his life to writing about Socrates
Plato’s “Socrates” is thus both based upon an actual person & at the same time a fictional creation
Plato invented the word “dialogue” to describe the form in which he writes about Socrates
In all of his writing Plato shows Socrates engaging his partners in questioning, but a peculiar form of questioning which Socrates called elenchus (which we would render as “cross-examination”)
Socrates stopped his interlocutors with “questions” like “You must know a great deal about justice?”
This is his question to Thucydides, about whom we know nothing but what Plato wrote in the “Thucydides,” the first of Plato’s dialogues
Socrates was bald, with a long beard, as was true of every man at the time; he was about 50yrs old when Plato started listening to the old man talking to his interlocutors
Socrates would stop the person with an inquiry about his intentions, as he does in the Thucydides dialog; the only departure from this format is the Republic, in which Plato’s two brothers—are featured talking to Socrates’ about his walk down to the Piraeus, which remains the port of Athens
The conversation in the Republic is about “justice,” which the brothers propose because it is the shorter way to the truth!
But let’s take the Thucydides as an example of Socrates’ “method:” in it Thucydides answers Socrates’ question & is thus “hooked:” he must make good on his claim to be best informed about “justice”
Another departure from the standard “Socratic dialogue”—as the form Plato invented for his depiction of Socrates are known—is the Apology (which we would render as “defense”)
Socrates “defends” himself by describing his usual questioning of others as good for the Athenians! He does as much in the final dialogue, the Phaedo…
Plato was present at Socrates’ death, but we are not told this; Plato observes the scene in which Socrates takes his own life by drinking the hemlock
Thus he is present for the final moments of Socrates’ life: of all the philosophers of whom we know, Plato’s “Socrates” is the one we identify with Athens…