ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Socratic Method and the problematic implications that emerge when assuming that Socrates has a singular and systematic approach to his philosophy, as might be related to the theme of education and learning. In addressing this issue, I introduce the “protreptic” (exhortative) component of the dialectic practice of Socrates, which I map onto the discussion of Socrates as a “ zetetic -skeptic,” whose denial of the possession of truth must be taken seriously because he is a co-participant in the learning process, which is structured around the quest for the philosophical understanding of the virtues. This indicates that Socrates seeks ( zeteo ) after truth and is not someone who possesses truth ( echein-“to have”) in the same way that the philosopher rulers “have truth” in the Republic. I then move to consider the ontology of Socratic questioning, where the groundwork is laid for understanding Socratic learning or Being-educated in terms of finite human transcendence, which indicates that Socrates as philo-sopher is attuned to the unique condition of being “in-between” god-like wisdom and complete ignorance within an ontological context bounded by the horizons or the limits imposed by finitude, indicating that the heart of the Socratic project or curriculum of care for the soul is permeated by a “lack” or “privation”— existential nothingness . I argue that the transformation of the character or disposition ( hexis ) is relatable to the philosophical hermeneutic experience of “dialecticity,” through which learners become other to themselves in the face of the other or in the presence of “difference” (alterity), which they can neither fully assimilate nor embrace in terms that are wholly familiar.
