In his 5/2/00 Phys-L post of the above title, Jack Uretsky comments
on Socrates and Plato. I list below Jack's comments (U-N) and my
responses (H-N).
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U-1. "So Plato gives us two different Socrates'. Which one is more
likely true?"
H-1. According to Vlastos,(1)
a. Plato DOES give us two different versions of Socrates:
Socrates-E (SE) of the Early elenctic dialogues and Socrates-M (SM)
of the middle dialogues.
b. The true or historical Socrates is SE.
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U-2. "Plato is apparently not yet 30 when Socrates dies. So Plato
is like a grad student or post-doc recording the words of the great
man. Xenophon, as I understand it, spent most of his young years
traveling in Asia."
H-2. True, so the reports of Plato and Xenophon regarding Socrates
need to be regarded with the scholarly caution of a Vlastos.
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U-3. "I don't find Aeschines to be much of a witness; the fragment
that Vlastos quotes ..... (p. 103 of ref. 1).... says only:
Quote T20: '... Though I had no knowledge through which I could benefit him by
teaching it to him, nevertheless I thought that by associating with
him I could make him better through my love.' "
H-3. Directly under Quote T20 (above), Vlastos writes: "This fragment
is preserved in the seventeen oration of Aelius Aristides, a
rhetorician of the second century A.D., well versed in the Socratic
literature of the fourth century B.C. In another of his .... (I
assume "his" means "Aristides") ..... speeches he remarks:
Quote T21: "It is agreed that he [Socrates] said that he knew
nothing. This ALL who associated with him declare." (My CAPS.)
Now Aristides knows that among those who associated with Socrates was
Aeschines. So Aristides is effectively saying that Aeschines was one
of those who agreed that Socrates said that he knew nothing. Thus
Aeschines (through Aristides) is witness to the validity of the
Vlastos interpretation that the historical Socrates is the Socrates
of the Early dialogues.
U-4. "So we have two Socrates, and the one in Meno is the early one,
right? The one closest to being a contemporary report. So I don't
understand."
H-4. NO! According to Vlastos,(1) the Meno is from the "TRANSITIONAL"
(NOT the Early elenctic and not - as I earlier mistakenly stated -
the Middle) dialogues. Vlastos thinks that ONLY the Socrates of the
Early dialogues is the historical Socrates. If one assumes that
Vlastos is correct, then the Socrates/Slave-boy dialogue in Meno is
not the "epitome of the Socratic method" as stated by Cliff Swartz(2)
in his physics-education-research bashing editorial in the March 2000
issue of "The Physics Teacher." More generally, the Socratic method
should not be dismissed on the basis of its misrepresentation in the
Meno. In my opinion, and that of others,(2-6) the Meno is an example
of BAD pedagogy.
Vlastos evidently believes that the methods of the historical
Socrates are to be found only in the Early elenctic dialogues. I
think that those methods, unlike those of the Meno, bear at least
some resemblance to the Socratic method as used successfully by some
present-day physics teachers(4, 7-12). According to Arons (ref. 8,
p. 325):
"What one must learn to do is ask simple, sequential questions,
leading students in a deliberate Socratic fashion. After each
question, one must shut up and listen carefully to the response
One must learn to wait as long as four or five seconds, and one then
finds that students having been given a chance to think, will respond
in sentences and truly reveal their lines of thought. As the
students respond to such careful questioning, one can begin to learn
to discern the errors, misconceptions, and missteps in logic that are
prevalent. One learns nothing by giving students 'right answers' or
'lucid explanations.' As a matter of fact students do not benefit
from such answers or explanations; they simply memorize them.
Students are much more significantly helped when they are led to
confront contradictions and inconsistencies in what they say and then
spontaneously alter their statements as a result of such
confrontation."
U-5. "What justifies saying that Plato was lying? That may or may
not be a permissible conclusion, but I see no such bald statement in
Vlastos."
H-5. No one that I know of has stated that "Plato was lying."
Vlastos puts it this way (ref. 1, Chapter 2, p. 52-53):
"We must assume that philosophical inquiry was the "primum mobile" in
the composition of those earlier dialogues, no less than of any he
.... (Plato) .... was to write thereafter, and that throughout this
first phase of his writing Plato remains convinced of the substantial
truth of Socrates' teaching and of the soundness of his method. But
the continuing harmony of the two minds, though vital is not rigid:
the father image inspires, guides, and dominates, but does not
shackle Plato's philosophical quest. So when he finds compelling
reason to strike out along new paths, he sees no need to sever the
personal bond with Socrates. And when these lead him to new,
unSocratic and antiSocratic conclusions, AS THEY VISIBLY DO BY THE
TIME HE COMES TO WRITE THE MENO, the dramatist's attachment to his
protagonist, replicating the man's love for the friend and teacher of
his youth, survives the ideological separation. And so, as Plato
changes, the philosophical persona of his Socrates is made to change,
absorbing the writer's new convictions, arguing for them with the
same zest with which Socrates of the previous dialogues had argued
for the views the writer had shared with the original of that figure
earlier on.
Such is the scenario I shall be fleshing out in this chapter and the
next two. That it is offered as a hypothesis, not dogma or reported
fact, should be plain. Such it will remain as I pursue it step by
step. Of its truth the reader must be the judge." (My CAPS.)
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
REFERENCES
1. G. Vlastos "Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher," (Cornell
Univ. Press, 1991).
2. C. Swartz, "Buzzwords and Newspeak," editorial. Phys. Teach.
38(3), 134(2000).
3. Swartz, C. (1994). "The Classic Socratic Method," Phys. Teach.
32(3), 138-141 (1994).
4. R.A. Morse, "The Classic Method of Mrs. Socrates," Phys. Teach.
32(5), 276-277 (1994).
6. A.G. Rud, "The Use and Abuse of Socrates in Present Day Teaching,"
Education Policy Archives, 5(20), (1997); on the web at
<http://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v5n20.html>.
7. R.R. Hake, "Socratic Pedagogy in the Introductory Physics Lab,"
Phys. Teach. 30, 546-552 (1992); a version slightly updated on 4/98
is on the web at <http://physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>.
8. A.B. Arons, "A Guide To Introductory Physics Teaching"
(Wiley,1990). [Reprinted with minor updates in "Teaching Introductory
Physics" (Wiley, 1997).]
9. L.C., McDermott, P.S. Shaffer, and M.D Somers, "Research as a
guide for teaching introductory mechanics: An illustration in the
context of the Atwood's machine," Am. J. Phys. 62(1), 46-55 (1994).
10. M. Wells and D. Hestenes, "A modeling method for high school
physics instruction," Am. J. Phys. 63(7), 606-619 (1995).
11. E.F. Redish, J.M. Saul, and R.N. Steinberg, "On the effectiveness
of active-engagement microcomputer-based laboratories," Am. J. Phys.
65(1), 45-54 (1997); on the web at
<http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/ripe/perg/cpt.html>.