ABSTRACT
Introduction Nothing is more characteristic of Socrates than talking, and nothing is more characteristic of his talks than asking questions. Socrates is asking questions all the time. He greets people with questions, he teaches and refutes them with questions, he leaves them with questions-he actually talks to them with questions. The center of every Socratic session consists of Socrates asking questions and demanding answers that are short and to the point. If the interlocutor declines to answer, Socrates imagines an interlocutor-hoi polloi in the Protagoras, his rude house-guest (his alter ego) in the Hippias Major-and holds a question-and-answer session with him. When Socrates is not talking, he is probably holding a silent question-and-answer session with himself (Apology, 21B). Hence, Plato’s definition of thinking: ‘dialogue without voice of the soul with itself (Sophist, 263E). In a large measure we know Socrates from his questions, and so it makes good sense to study and examine his questions in some detail. We shall proceed by collecting a sample of Socrates’ questions from Plato’s early dialogues, by sorting out the questions that can be raised about Socrates’ questions, and by discussing the pragmatics, syntactics, and semantics of Socrates’ questions.
