ABSTRACT
The central elements of the Socratic method are often understood as a questioning of an argument (elenchus) with hypothesis elimination, analysis, and logic to simulate critical thinking. However, there is another understanding of the Socratic method which is “dramatic” in nature: philosophy is not merely a study of arguments but also points to a way of life or type of existence. This chapter explores these two meanings of the Socratic method–elenchus and the dramatic–and how they are connected by the notion of Socratic ignorance. The use of the Socratic method in the first sense results in aporia, puzzlement, with Socrates’ interlocutors not appreciative of Socrates’ irony, i.e., his admission of his own ignorance. They are unable to see a different type of existence available to them, one where Socrates is self-consciously ignorant but not as ignorant as those who are mistakenly self-conscious knowers. This conflict is at the core of the Socratic method as understood as dramatic.
