Western Civilization I / Unit 4 WC1 0316 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Socrates and the Method of Questions
Captions available
The idea
Socrates, four sixty-nine to three ninety-nine, wrote nothing; Plato recorded him. Essential truths exist but need relentless self-questioning. The Socratic method asks questions until bias and gaps show, leaving a sounder belief, against the Sophists' relativism.
In practice
Writing, he held, destroys memory.
Where people slip
Socrates is known only through others. What you read is Plato's Socrates.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it