Recently I have been reading Symposium, Apology of Socrates, and Euthyphro, written by Plato. There books are well known for portraying about Socrates’s life, especially th trial and death of Socrates.
Reading about Socrates is a very humbling experience. Socrates is a very humble (and yet arrogant) person. He truly believes he knows nothing (whereas he thinks most people are not willing to admit their ignorance); and famously denies being wise. Since the Oracle of Apollo (Oracle at Delphi) says that he is the wisest man, Socrates is on his quest to discover wiser men, but the more he talks to people, the more he realises people don’t actually know as much they think they do.
I would love to talk more about his views on justice, love, freedom, life and death, and goodness, but for this post I want to focus on the idea of asking questions.
Socrates is very good at asking questions. This is a key part of a process he called ‘philosophicalisation’. This is very inspiring in terms of pedagogy. How to guide someone to think of something through questions?
He is generously very humble. Throughout all his conversation/argument with others, his goal is never to attack or educate the opponents; but rather to understand more about the essence of the subject matter. He does not establish counterargument; but instead, he asks questions to make the opponents realise the contradiction and blind spots of thinking. The questions lead the opponents to refute the central logic of the statements; and push the understanding towards the essence of subject matters.
In terms of holiness (ethics), Socrates asks:
Is it divinely approached because it’s holy? Or is it holy because it is divinely approached?1
In terms of love, Socrates asks:
If Love is the desire for beauty and wisdom, then is Love itself the lack of beauty and wisdom?2
Even though my aim to not to make my students fight their own pints, I do believe I could show them the contradiction and blind spots by well asked questions.
This is a better form of education because I am not proposing a solution for them or forcing my opinions on them. I want students to have passions on their own research topics; and I want to be able to push them towards where them want to go. I always say that if end up liking what I like (matching my own aesthetic viewpoints), then I am a very bad teacher. Asking questions as a form of teaching is very important because it allows the students to generate their own aesthetics, instead of being forced to a certain direction.
1 Plato, (2003), The Last Days of Socrates, (London: Penguin), 19.
2 Plato, (2003), The Symposium, (London: Penguin), 34.