[A different version of this commentary appeared under the title, "Socrates and the Pedagogy of Critique," in 14 Legal Stud. F. 231 (1990)]

What makes the teaching by way of conversation that Socrates undertook of continuing interest to us today? How does Socrates teach? What would bring students and educators who pursue law as our calling to continue this long conversation about Socrates?

I am a teacher, one willing to admit that I am no fountain of great knowledge. Still, I see and find hope in teaching. I hope that some of my students learn something of importance as we carry on our conversations about lawyers, the work they do, and the ethics we hope to have in doing the work. But there are days when this hopeful vision seems little more than an illusion. What do my students learn? Does my effort to have each student reach beyond the clichéd images of lawyers provide any real value in their quest to be lawyers? We attempt to talk about ethics in a world in which the moral perspective appears increasingly confused by cacophony of voices.

It is my doubt and hope, and the conflict and confusion that swirls around us that brings me to Socrates. It is a "time of reassessment of dominant ideas across the human sciences . . . extending to law, art, architecture, philosophy, literature, and even the natural sciences." [George E. Marcus & Michael M.J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences 7 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)]. In times such as these, we might do well to revisit Socrates. Socrates sets us in search for what is worth knowing and believing, for methods of seeing and knowing that will create a more inhabitable world. The search for meaning, the re-making and re-visioning of the limited worlds we inherit takes us on a heroic quest. In the archetypal hero quest, the Socratic journey entails dangers and trials. Socrates, in the imagination of teachers, is an authentic and tragic hero.

How should one live? Bernard Williams argues that the question posed by Socrates remains the focal point of moral philosophy: "The aims of moral philosophy, and any hopes it may have of being worth serious attention, are bound up with the fate of Socrates' question, even if it it not true that philosophy, itself, can reasonably hope to answer it." [Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985)]. What work should I take up? How much of myself should be invested in that work? Can I use my work to serve others as I use it to sustain my worldly needs? How does the culture in which my own drama is enacted--the culture I inherit--limit me? What possibilities of freedom does it make possible? What possibilities of freedom and knowledge do I enact in my teaching? What kind of culture will my students create with the education they receive?

Socrates raises the moral and philosophical questions that are historical precursors to the questions every student of law and legal studies confronts: what do lawyers do and how can it be justified within the larger moral universe in which all "practices" and "local knowledge" must be judged? How can we justify the way we live and the culture we embrace?

How is one to know how to live? Are we simply to take the well-worn path and trust that success will follow? And what can be said about those who hallucinate the voice of an imagined "society" that tells them (and us) who to be, how to think and talk? With what "voices" does culture speak to us? How do we "listen" to culture? How can we recognize culture as it appears in our own speaking? How do we talk back to culture? How is one to talk to teachers, to authorities, to colleagues, to students? What is one to do with the books she reads, the education she is offered? What kind of knowledge do we need this world and the world that is possible? What beliefs and understandings do we now accept that get in the way of knowing how best to live?

These questions about culture are questions we inherit from Socrates. Williams argues that

[p]hilosophy starts from questions that, on any view of it, it can and should ask, about the chances we have of finding out how best to live; in the course of that, it comes to see how much it itself may help, with discursive methods of analysis and argument, critical discontent, and an imaginative comparison of possibilities, which are what it most characteristically tries to add to our ordinary resources of historical and personal knowledge. [4].

If the question of philosophy is how we are to live, then we are all in our own way philosophers. "There is no escape from philosophy," Karl Jaspers told us. "The question is only whether a philosophy is conscious or not, whether it is good or bad, muddled or clear. Anyone who rejects philosophy is himself unconsciously practising a philosophy." [Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom 12 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951)].

Where are we to look for guidance in responding to these questions?Jacob Needleman captures, in his description of our modern condition something of the problem we face: "Now and here, like Socrates, I am surrounded by scientific knowledge, by the remnants of great religious traditions, the surviving messages of exalted teachings, by symbols--broken and disfigured, but still retaining beauty and power. Like Socrates, I am surrounded by moralities and commandments--some echoing the greatness of ancient wisdom, others constructed only yesterday in order to accommodate some new forms of civilization; still others constructed just a moment ago for my own or others' comfort or egoistic profit. Like Socrates, I am met all the time by voices claiming this or that opinion to be truth, voices inside and outside myself." [Jacob Needleman, The Heart of Philosophy 25 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982)]

Of all that lies before me--everyday reality, routines and habits, conventional schemes of meaning, canonical texts of disciplines, narratives (sacred and profane)--what am I invited to be? How am I invited to think and speak? What claims and arguments can I make for interpretations and meanings that I bring to education, to the study and practice of law and culture? The Socratic ethos "nurtures a critical spirit and immunizes students against the facile notion that any view is as good, or bad, as any other. Students are taught to distinguish clearly untenable views from the few positions that appear to be defensible." [Walter Kaufman, The Future of the Humanities 29 (1977)]

I can, without effort, answer the question--how should one live? We live ordinary everyday lives in which we assume that we know how to live. If I believe that I know what I am doing and that what I do is basically right, then I must know how it is good to live. We resist, in every way possible, the idea that we know less than we think (about both ourselves and the world), and that what we think might have consequences that we have not considered and if considered, would be difficult to accept. We oppose with great energy the thought that our lives might be plagued by self-deception.

The struggle, at the heart of philosophy, animated by Socrates' teaching is both the desire and the fear of submitting ourselves to questioning about the life we have chosen, and that we have let others chose for us. Resistance to questioning, Richard Taylor explains, lies in what we think we already know:

The question [how one should live] is one about which everyone has an opinion. Indeed, virtually all men [and women], except the most thoughtful, assume that they know the answer, and that it is so obvious that they need not even give it thought. They may not formulate the answer in words, and of course if they do it will invariably turn out to be something silly, but most men [and women] seem nevertheless to assume that no one could possibly have anything to say to them about ethics. If they read on this subject it is less with a view to learning than to appraising what they read in terms of what they imagine they already know. Their "knowledge," however, more often than not turns out to consist of nothing more than certain superficial attitudes. . . . [Richard Taylor, Good and Evil 3 (1970)]

Socrates presents us with a paradox of learning and teaching: know thyself and know the self you find inadequate. Socrates is known for this dictum "Know thyself" and yet, he is also known for the equally consistent practice of turning the conventional world of belief and language on its head. If one seeks to learn only by discovering the truth within oneself, the truth may turn out to be that we are enamored with resistance to change and critical reflection, that we are narcissists. But if the truth within oneself is hidden from oneself, then some means of excavation and uncovering other than the thinking we are presently doing will be necessary.

Socrates did not present a philosophic map of a consistent set of propositional principles. (Philosophy does not hold out for us a set of self-evident truths.) James Boyd White says of the Gorgias, as one might say of other early Socratic dialogues, that they seek to "teach" the reader, but not by way of a set of propositions or fixed principles, or even a seamless argument. The Socratic dialogues do not, says White, teach the use of a particular language, even the one being used in the dialogue. Rather, the dialogues teach us "how to remake a language" of our own. The reader of the Gorgias is asked "not to learn a particular set of questions and dialectical responses, to be repeated on other occasions, but . . . how to ask questions of one's own." [James Boyd White, The Ethics of Argument: Plato's Gorgias and the Modern Lawyer, 50 U. Chi. L. Rev. 849, 869 (1983)]

Socrates' philosophy is found in the way he speaks, the way he listens, and the trust he puts in conversation and argument. Conversation (found in contemporary legal scholarship under the guise of dialogic politics) is what Socrates would have us put to work in teaching and in public life. We are much in need of re-vitalized conversation, education and public life (to realize what Socrates called "citycraft"). We need in public life a Socratic dialectic on the good. We need Socrates for our teaching and in our teaching.

With Socrates we imagine teaching as conversation. We engage our students in inquiry and struggle and do it by conversation. The Socratic inspired teacher is "committed to the rigorous examination of the faith and morals of the time, giving pride of place to those convictions which are widely shared and rarely questioned. Reliance on consensus and prestigious paradigms are prime targets." In following Socrates "it is a point of honor to swim against the stream." [Walter Kaufman, The Future of the Humanities 22 (1977)]. In Socratic teaching we explore "compelling alternatives to current fashions." We "ask how various orthodoxies of our time look from the outside, how well grounded our common sense and all sorts of scholastic as well as non-academic consensuses are, and what might be said for and against each alternative." [Id. at 29]

Socratic teaching asks us to confront and re-vision the philosophy we enact in the discourse of everyday life, a discourse revealed in the way we speak and regard others in conversation. For Socrates, who lived in the context of an oral culture, helps us see and re-vision the philosophy that we enact in the discourse of everyday public and private life, a discourse that we construct by the way we speak and regard others in conversation. "For Socrates, who lived in the context of an oral culture, to philosophize meant . . . to engage in conversation with other people about certain topics that mattered more than others, because they referred to fundamental issues of human nature and man's life. Philosophy, in a way, was potentially present in every man's soul, and Socrates philosophized by instigating this potential to manifest itself." [Tullio Maranhao, Therapeutic Discourse and Socratic Dialogue 175-176 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986)]

Socrates turns philosophy back to everyday life by finding philosophy in the choices exposed in conversation when we are confronted with questions about how we choose to live and tell our lives. "[O]ur views of what we should do are the result of experience, emotion, and conversation. This conversation occurs in a social and historical context. The conversation will continue as long as human beings live in a society that permits them to talk freely with each other. And as long as the conversation continues, we will reconsider and sometimes revise our beliefs." [Joseph Singer, The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale L. J. 1, 26 (1984)]

Tullio Maranhao describes Socrates' famous questioning as the distinguishing feature of Socratic conversation and philosophy.

The Socratic questioning stakes out the path of the conversation within the ideological framework of his interlocutors. Since the topics under discussion are strictly kept within the horizons of the understanding of all participants in the debate, chances that they might lose the thread of argument or build up concealed disagreement are minimal. If opposition arises, Socrates tries to overcome it by recasting the conversation in terms acceptable to all. This, of course, is obtained by means of his unrelenting questions forcing every one to speak out, voice his opinions, and take a stand in relation to all statements. No opinions are allowed to lurk in the recess of a grudging mind and no argument is allowed to proceed in the absence of consensus and full understanding. [Maranhao, at 177-178]

For Socrates, philosophy emerges from conversation in which confrontational questions become the basis of mutual inquiry. "The form of the Platonic dialogue was quite certainly created by a historical fact--the fact that Socrates taught by question and answer. He held that form of dialogue to be the original pattern of philosophic thought, and the only way for two people to reach an understanding on any subject." [Werner Jaeger, 2 Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture 19 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)]

To follow Socrates, we must practice standing forth and making our moral stances known. Socrates demands honesty. A Socratic conversation requires:

that the people whose voices we hear be intimately connected with the positions they take. The first rule of Socratic elenchus [refutation] is that the respondent must say what he really thinks. When Protagoras attempts to break this rule by adopting a hypothetical view about the nature of virtue, Socrates stops him immediately. When Callicles shows hesitation in answering Socrates, Socrates replies that unless he has the courage to speak freely, the inquiry cannot proceed. Even when the respondent's compliance would make his job much easier Socrates insists that the respondent not say anything short of what he truly believes.

* * * *

It follows that elenchus is more than an exercise in philosophical analysis. In asking people to state and defend the moral intuitions which underlie their way of life, Socrates inevitably reveals something about their characters. Elenchus, then, has as much to do with honesty, humility, and courage as it does with logical acumen: the honesty to say what one really thinks, the humility to admit what one does not know, and the courage to continue the investigation. Most of Socrates' respondents are lacking in all three. Protagoras becomes angry, Polus resorts to cheap rhetorical tricks, Callicles begins to sulk, Critias loses his self-control, Meno wants to quit. While their reactions leave much to be desired, Socrates' respondents do emerge from the pages of the dialogues as real people. Not only is there a clash of ideas but a clash of the personalities who have adopted them. [Kenneth Seeskin, Socratic Philosophy and the Dialogue Form, 6 Philosophy as Literature 181, at 181-182 (182)]

Participation in a Socratic conversation requires searching questions, "active listening," and a willingness to confront one's own ignorance (as Socrates pronounces his own ignorance and confronts that of others). Socrates would have us confront, in conversations with others, what we know about virtue and what we assume to be virtuous in our work (our professions).

The paradox in Socrates' approach to virtue is his claim that virtue cannot be taught even as he proceeds to demonstrate and do what he contends cannot be done. [For an exploration of this paradoxical quality of Socrates teaching, see Thomas D. Eisele, Must Virtue Be Taught? 37 J. Legal Educ. 495 (1987)]. Tom Eisele, using Plato's Protagoras as his text, explores Socrates' well-known claim that virtue cannot be taught and points out that "Socrates is an example (or exemplar) of virtue or excellence; he enacts or performs excellence in his incessant questioning and questing. He may not be able to articulate fully what virtue is--but this only shows perhaps that virtue is not a matter of propositional knowledge. Socrates is able to embody it. And his example teaches us what virtue or excellence is. We learn virtue from his example." [Id. at 497]. It is Socrates' enactment or demonstration of virtue that has captured the attention of commentators. [See e.g., Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action 182 (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1987)]. Socrates makes virtue, virtue reflected in what we have already become and what we are in the process of becoming, the basic conversation about the good life.

What would it mean to make Socrates the patron saint of our teaching? To make conversations with our students our teaching? Is it no more than bitter irony that Socrates is claimed as the patron saint of legal education? [At least one colleague has argued that it is Protagoras, not Socrates, that provides a more appropriate guiding spirit for legal education. See William C. Heffernan, Not Socrates, But Protagoras: The Sophistic Basis of Legal Education, 29 Buff. L. Rev. 399 (1980)]. While Socrates may be associated with the revered and feared law school classroom interaction of teacher and students named in his honor, law students are never introduced to Socrates, his philosophy and teaching, or the "method" he actually used in his conversations

What philosophy, what course of pedagogical instruction, does Socrates help us enact? How does our exposure to Socrates effect the way we think about philosophy?

In the Protagoras, Socrates, by his questions, calls us to re-examine learning, to judge whether what we seek to learn is worthwhile or merely popular, and whether what we seek to learn might not have the potential to poison the psyche as tainted food poisons the body.

In the early Socratic dialogues, we see how conventional views--views that grow out of everyday thinking popular culture, education, disciplinary training, and public life -- are themselves problematic. For both Socrates (and as well as Plato) "it was a special feature of philosophy that it was reflective and stood back from ordinary practice and argument to define and criticize the attitudes involved in them." [Bernard Williams, at 2]. Socrates was a critic and left us a legacy in philosophy what Alfred North Whitehead described as an attitude of mind towards doctrines ignorantly entertained." [Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought 171 (New York: Free Press, 1968)]. "Socrates spent his life in analysing the current presuppositions of the Athenian world. He explicitly recognized that his philosophy was an attitude in the face of ignorance. He was critical and yet constructive." [Id. at 173-174]. A teaching philosophy that follows Socrates, follows the philosophy that Whitehead says, "reverses the slow descent of accepted thought towards the inactive commonplace." [Id. at 174]

"The first step in building a sound philosophy of living" following Socrates, "is getting rid of the confused mass of social convention and opinion that passes for knowledge--that is, a critical re-examination of one's accepted habits of thought and conduct." [Robert F. Davidson, Philosophies Men Live By 18-19 (New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1952)]

"The Socratic power is to penetrate, again and again, behind the world of appearances; the world of emotional appearances as well as the world of perceptual appearances--that is, the world as I like it or dislike it, the world to which I am attached in my emotions, the world of my emotions. [Needleman, at 24]. Richard Mitchell in a short commentary on Socrates recalls "Socrates talking about the difference between being good and seeming good. It is obviously possible that the outward appearance of goodness is a sign of inward goodness, but it is just as possible that it is not. As to which is which, experience is a remarkably poor teacher." [Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire 96 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)]

To penetrate beyond the world of appearances means to allow the studied transformations of my opinions, my certainties, and finally, my beliefs, not only about the world around me, but the world I construct with my knowledge. The Socratic dialogue is a lesson in "seeing through," in seeing what is held forth as knowledge is a mistaken or false belief.

"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt--particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs become certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself." [Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy 9 (New York: Time, 1962)]

Socrates disorients and exposes and criticizes habits of an already constructed world that has been placed, with encouragement, beyond question. Our habits of understanding are reflected in our presuppositions and it is our habits, our understanding of the world, and our presuppositions that are challenged by Socrates. (We must choose to allow ourselves to be challenged, indeed seek challenge, even in the face of the disorientation we fear.) To see ourselves from the distant gaze of philosophy or from the in search of critical conversation we must suffer the disorientation of the emigrant.

In the Socratic dialogue the reader/student/teacher is pulled toward a more critical stance. It is, we learn, difficult to be critical, critical in the sense of being open to what we do not know, open to the possibility that we think we know more than we do, and paradoxically, that we know more than we assume and know more than we adequately express in public dialogue.

Socrates can help us develop the skill of questioning and listening and seeing. This skill requires that we hear the confusion in our own voices and see how we "misread" texts--of a literary kind, of a conversational kind, and of the kind we make with our lives. When we struggle with this kind of critical thinking and critical searching we act in the spirit of Socrates, the master teacher of an ancient political and pedagogical art that need not be forgotten.

Two Socratic dialogues (authored by Plato)(Socrates, an imagined image here to the left, left no writings that have been located) most relevant to Practical Moral Philosophy for Lawyers are Protagoras & Gorgias. I particularly recommend the opening sections in the Protagoras.

Protagoras (Benjamin Jowett translation)

A Brief Historical Sketch on Protagoras

Gorgias (Benjamin Jowett translation)

Notes on James Boyd White's Reading of the Gorgias (textual commentary only)

Crito

The Last Days of Socrates (Department of Philosophy, Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa)(hypertext versions of Crito, Euthyphro, Phaedo, and Apology)

Plato's Apology (Benjamin Jowett translation) / Plato's Apology (Sanderson Beck translation)

Phaedo (Benjamin Jowett translation) / Phaedo (Sanderson Beck translation)

Confucius and Socrates: The Teaching of Wisdom
introduction to the life and moral teaching of these revered teachers

Socrates' Effect/ Meno's Affect: Socratic Elenchus as Kathartic Theory (Chris Higgins, Teachers College, Columbia University)(response to the Higgins essay) / Plato's Meno (Benjamin Jowett trans.)

A Teacher's Notes on the Meno

Socrates: Philosophy's Martyr (Anthony Gottlieb, Executive Editor, The Economist)

Bahthin's Socrates (James P. Zappen, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

The 'It's Too Theoretical' Syndrome (and some commentary on the Socratic method)

Introduction to Socrates and Plato

Socrates on Justice

Plato (a short introduction)

Plato's Alcibiades (Sanderson Beck, translation)

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