After leaping into an online forum yesterday and unwittingly short-circuiting  someone else’s Socratic dialogue, I mentioned in the aftermath on Twitter that law school soured me on the Socratic method. Mark, the unfortunate victim of my zeal, said he would be interested in hearing more about that. So I promised a blog post. Here it is.

For those unfamiliar with the art of Socratic dialogue, I’ll not go into the detailed background here (try the excellent Wikipedia article instead). But conversing like Socrates usually means that one party to the conversation uses a series of questions to force the other into clarity (the better to attack their views), contradiction (in which case their views crumble under their own weight), or illumination (after which no further persuasion is necessary). After suffering through Socratic interlocution by several law school professors, I developed five objections to the Socratic method.

People who use the Socratic method, including Socrates himself, often seem disingenuous. Socrates famously observed that he was wise because he knew that he knew nothing. So he asked questions. That’s great, Socrates; I think you’re lying. And I think questioners who pattern themselves after Socrates are employing the device of feigned ignorance to drive their questioning. People who use the Socratic method, whether law professors or otherwise, are rarely just looking for general illumination by way of dialectic; they are not really using ignorance as a springboard to knowledge. Instead they often have a particular outcome in mind and they are using a series of questions to push the other person toward it. Law students would say they are “hiding the ball.” Instead, let’s play ball.

Especially when they are disingenuous, Socratic interlocutors seem arrogant. Not all people who use the Socratic method are disingenuous, but I think most of them are. And it strikes me as rather arrogant. While pretending to ask innocent questions, the subtext of the interlocutor is something like this: “I understand this concept, but you do not and cannot yet, until you jump through all the hoops I set before you, leading you step by step to my position, where you will finally know what I know.” Really? Why not just tell me what you’re thinking and then see if I need further clarification? Why assume that I’m a fool? Or, if you know that I am a fool, why not just lay it bare immediately, instead of letting me believe otherwise and talking down to me in the meantime?

The didactic value of the Socratic method is questionable. What do people at the receiving end of the Socratic method really learn? Taking them by the nose through a series of questions, especially when the questioner is not extremely skilled at using the method, only reinforces a particular way of reaching a given conclusion. Any tendency to take another route, think creatively, or beat a path to a better conclusion, will be headed off by the questioner. Some Socratic questioners allow creative thinking, so that the conclusion is something other than what they desired, but in my experience, they are in a tiny minority. So the Socratic method is usually only good for reinforcing the views of the questioner.

Going round and round with the Socratic method can be a waste of time. Sometimes people launch into the Socratic method when they perceive that someone else has a problematic view, and sometimes that perception is wrong. After many, many questions, the Socratic interlocutor may discover that the victim was illuminated all along, but believed the questioner was talking about something else. This is especially likely when the person using the Socratic method is not very skilled at using it. There are other, quicker methods for rooting out real disagreements and bringing them to the forefront of the discussion. For example, restating the other party’s position in your own words and ensuring that you have agreed-upon definitions for key terms.

The Socratic method works better as a literary device than as a practical tool. We learned the Socratic method by reading Plato, who wrote the Socratic dialogues to illustrate the teachings of Socrates. And those dialogues make excellent reading because they present tricky ideas in an engaging way: by putting them into the mouths of two people who are arguing. And everybody loves a good argument. Maybe Socrates’ real-life victims learned something, too, but the dialogues are not transcripts. They convey that Socrates asked questions and they illustrate his famous observation that true wisdom means knowing the limits of your own knowledge, but ultimately, as they appear in the written dialogues, they are a literary device. They present opposing ideas without resorting to the conceit of pretending to know others’ minds. But for the reasons articulated above, I am doubtful about the practical value of the Socratic method for participants in Socratic dialogues.

When people want to discuss controversial topics, explain their ideas to those who may disagree, or persuade others to adopt a different view, I much prefer a direct path to the controversy. Lay it out. Be honest, be polite, say what you are thinking, and focus on the substance of the conversation. Don’t waste time. Be frank about your ignorance, recognize, as Socrates did, that you do not know everything, but don’t make conspicuously curious ignorance into your modus operandi when you really do know something. Concede the points that ought to be conceded, hold the points that ought to be held, and get to the points that ought to be gotten to.

If all the circumlocution of my last post made you dizzy and you are still recovering, I would not blame you. It makes me dizzy to reread it. Luckily, I have not yet thought of anything else to write.

In the meantime, for your pleasure and amusement, here is an excerpt from a footnote on page 64 of The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson, by Sadakat Kadri, which is shaping up to be an excellent read:

[T]he medieval world’s preeminent Jewish philosophers, Maimonides and Isaac Ben Yedaiah, . . . each devoted considerable attention to the question of why removal of the foreskin was so delightful to God. Maimonides suggested around 1190 that it encouraged premature ejaculation and thereby freed up time for prayer. Isaac Ben Yedaiah, writing a century later, explained how the process worked. The uncircumcised man had “testicles of iron” and “ejaculated like a horse,” he theorized, which caused women to cling to him and long for his continued attentions. His circumcised counterpart, on the other hand, “emits his seed as soon as he inserts his crown” and was, as a happy result, detained neither by the act of intercourse nor by any interest from his partner.

Kadri cites his sources: “For Maimonides’ discussion of circumcision, see Moses ben Maimun (Maimonides), The Guide of the Perplexed, tr. Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London, 1963), p. 609, and for that of Isaac Ben Yedaiah see Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Harvard, 1980), pp. 97-98.”

My fiancée was in stitches when I read that passage aloud.