/lit/ - Literature

Before I am berated for having a ridiculous view of the Method let me at least express my other notion of the Method, this one being more flattering. The Socratic Method is about ignorance. Ignorance is where the Socratic Method begins and ignorance is where it ends, with the slight difference between the beginning and the end being that once is more knowledgeable of one's own ignorance (it's curious that the college professors I mention didn't use the term ignorance or truth or knowledge; they talked about "underlying beliefs"). In order to engage in the Socratic Method you have to have some knowledge of your ignorance, or at least be arriving at that knowledge. I think a lot of people read Plato (and I haven't read much of Plato by the way) and this is the impression they get of Socrates: he was a kind of mischievous fellow that was cleverer than everybody else and through clever questioning he managed to embarrass everybody in Athens by showing them how stupid they were. This is an unflattering image of Socrates, but I think this is how most people with a bit of cleverness interpret him - the Socratic Method is about being more clever than others and proving it. Yet I have the idea that Socrates wasn't joking when he called himself ignorant; he didn't call himself ignorant just to bait unwary fools into embarrassing themselves to Socrates' amusement. Socrates sincerely believed that he was the most ignorant man alive, and that's why he went about asking people questions - he just wanted to know something, and he assumed other people knew something that he didn't. This is a much, much different picture of Socrates; he's gone from being intellectually proud to intellectually humble. Socrates was sincere about his ignorance, and that's why his Method worked. The Socratic Irony is not that Socrates was pretending to be more ignorant than his fellow though he secretly knew he was the more knowledgeable; no, the Socratic Irony is that Socrates really and sincerely thought that he was more ignorant than his fellow . . . and time and time again he discovers, to his disappointment, that his fellow didn't really know anything after all and that there's nobody wiser than himself (he that knows nothing!).

Do you see the difference between the first notion that I have and the second? There's an ocean between them. The first Method is the Method of a sly manipulator who plans on brainwashing the unsuspecting by posing as a fool. The second is of some kind of quaint, eccentric man who somehow is truly convinced he doesn't know anything, and as such he goes about asking anybody and everybody to tell him what he knows, and examines their testimony because he is really that interested in acquiring knowledge. You see, if I enter into a discussion with Socrates (the Socrates of my second notion), he will tell me how ignorant he is, and how eager he is for me to tell him what I know. I will then tell him what I know (out of pity for somebody so ignorant) and because he is so earnest in his inquiry he will begin to ask me for further explanation of what I've told him. I will gradually come to realize that my understanding is limited, but gentle Socrates will say to me reassuringly, "well, at least you aren't as ignorant or as limited as I am, young man." However, if I enter into a discussion with a modern professor who is very cunning, he will begin to ask me questions that force me to "examine my beliefs". Once we have arrived at a question that I cannot, through my own limitations, answer, he will then begin to prompt me in a certain direction. This man would, in that moment, have seized control over my mind, as I would be in a state of anguish as my dearly held beliefs are scattered, which would make me immediately reliant upon an authority to comfort and guide me. Eventually my brain would be reprogrammed with the propaganda that the professor had in mind in the first place and the brainwashing would be complete. I would describe the second Method as being the Method of a mild sheep, and the first as being that of a wolf in sheep's clothing.

So was Socrates the inventor of a technique of psychological manipulation, or was he an inquisitive old fool who just happened to discover over and over again that everyone was more foolish than himself? Or am I speaking nonsense? Please tell me if I am, and share your thoughts on the Socratic Method.

>>5117612
>I was banned at the time for telling /sci/ that science sucks

Are you 14 ?
I wouldn't be surprised really, this is 4chan.

>>5117612
TL;DR

>>5117612
poo

>>5117616
>Socrates sincerely believed that he was the most ignorant man alive

No. He thought everyone was ignorant it's just that he was aware of his own ignorance.

>>5117612
>(and I haven't read much of Plato by the way)

>>5117612
Sorry OP, I feel like we've discouraged you. This board needs more posters like you, just shorten it a bit next time please.

Perhaps he's attempting to use the principles of negative space to define his argument. It's a plea for help and understanding, but pressed into the formless substance that is text, and then further mirrored by the author's own reflections. The full-empty dichotomy of his post captures the very essence of what we each feel inside when we attempt to catalogue our own talents in respect to our fading mortality. By remaining formless and not making gauche commitment to any particular, belief, topic, or even a single coherent idea, it allows us to impress our own hopes and fears onto it- allowing us to transform it's meaning to something unique to our own perceptions. It is this facet of his dissertation that makes his study of the works of such men as Nietzsche evident. The quote from that immortal philosopher, "All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?", is readily evident to be the driving influence between the lines of this particular textual work. By allowing himself to be driven by whimsy, or at least using such cunning guile and device that a layman could not hope to tell it apart from whimsy, OP brilliantly manages to avoid both truth and lie, striking to the heart of literary genius and looking upon the very quintessence of what we all strive to achieve with what can truly be said to be Nouveau Yeux.

I do believe that OP's almost Taoist ability to express an idea, no, to express an archetype of thought itself, rivals that of the very best pieces of utterly incomprehensible literary genius. Should this review of his work be retyped on a five by seven inch card and placed on a wall adjacent to a print of his masterpiece, I would not be surprised for it to sell for less than five-thousand U.S dollars as a modern art piece.

>>5117612
Long-winded OP, be more succinct or fuck off.

Read Plato and Xenophon, OP.

Socrates may or may not have been a sophist. Hard to tell since we'll never meet him. Even if he intended it as a negative method to disprove knowledge it might have been perceived as a positive method to prove knowledge by others. The elenchus may or may not be an awesome brainwashing technique for convincing girls to polish your knob but like any tool it is neither good nor evil. Its true mystical purpose, and make no mistake philosophy is a mystical practice, is for the achievement of aporia and theoria so that one can wax theoretic without betraying philosophy as a praxis. Unfortunately, few philosophers understand that.

>>5120129
To continue on with that. The aporetic state of confusion imparted by this dialectical method does not seek to make one reliant upon an authority. It is rather designed to make the student self-reliant. It undermines the arguments from authority that the student might have held previously. Then the student can pursue truth in its fullness from this steady footing of self-knowledge.

>>5117737
False. He didn't think that after he learned it. You quoted the part before he learned it.

bump

>>5117612

i hope you kill yourself, faggot

>opens with text wall
>wants to discuss
neh

That's a really nice statue of Kripke.

>The aporetic state of confusion imparted by this dialectical method does not seek to make one reliant upon an authority.

This seems to be the key difference between the two interpretations of the method, and I think this interpretation seems more correct. The Socrates of Plato's dialogues was often meeting people who thought they new a great deal, often because they had been trained by this or that famous sophist or rhetoritician of the day.

One constantly recurring weapon in Socrates' arsenal he keeps coming back to in dialogue after dialogue is getting people to agree about the nature of art vs experience. Too often, some pompous orator tells Socrates, essentially, that they no, for example, more about medicine than a doctor, or at least can appear to know.

By teasing out the assumptions they're making about appearances, Socrates manages to trip up almost everyone on this point. Art is not the same as experience, but someone who has neither can only be expected to fool they very stupid.

One of my favorite authors is Montaigne, and HIS reading of Socrates is fascinating. In the various essays where his hero Socrates comes up, Montaigne does alot to deepen the discussion about art vs experience.

>>5117612

what the fuck

>>5120170
OP here

but do you not agree that in this moment of confusion, doubt, and perhaps distress, that the man is vulnerable to manipulation? I helieve that's the conflict I'm trying to bring out. It seems that the Socratic Method could be used for a sinister purpose by tyrants, and it seems that modern professors have the tyrannical SM in mind when they say its use is to undermine the man's beliefs.

Here's a tldr for those that don't want to read.

What is the purpose of the Socratic Method, is it to make a man aware of his own ignorance so that he will fall in love with knowledge and begin a journey of discovery, or is it to make a man aware of his own ignorance so that you can bully him into accepting your own theories superior to his? It seems that the method can be used for both depending on the moral goodness of its practitioner. I have sensed a disturbing trend in modern teaching of Socrates which seems to lean towards the tyrannical use of the method where its purpose is to send a man into a psychological shock as he begins to doubt his cherished beliefs, and being untrained in the method as the learned professor is the now lost man becomes reliant on him to piece together his now shattered worldview.

I suppose this does all come down to whether or not you are a sophist, because if you are a sophist and believe you know the truth you would tend to use the method as a technique for bringing others to the truth you know, whereas if you are a Socrates that knows nothing then the method can be seen as a sincere venturing for the truth that one does not know.

im generally skeptic about the decrease on post quality brought by summer and im still but has anyone noticed the increase of textwalls and endless tirades or is it just me?