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  1. #1
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    Default did socrates invent the socratic method?

    surely he is the namesake and surely he was well known for the method... but at the same time, it's just interrogation which is a natural part of language

    and then he didn't even coin the phrase. but at the same time... he is the godfather of the method.

    but at the same time...

  2. #2
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    did he?

  3. #3
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    i honestly don't know

    no wait i don't think so, plato invented it. but socrates did it..............

  4. #4
    talk less, say more Clifton's Avatar
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    What do you mean by "Socratic method"?

    Greek philosophy before Socrates basically splits into two groups:

    1. Poets who were sweeping but vague, and who flirted with profound truths and paradoxes but didn't do much to develop their ideas ("Presocratics"); and

    2. Orators, most of whom were baldly relativists and profiteers. ("Sophists")

    Socrates, by asking questions like, "What do you mean by X?", "What *is* X?", etc., invented real philosophy. Is that what you mean by "the Socratic method" (I assume, "of inquiry"), or do you mean something else?

    If you mean the way seminar classes in college are taught, I don't know who invented that, but it wasn't Socrates. I don't know if I ever took a good seminar. BS and rambly, pretentious time-wasting run rampant in that format. At the undergraduate level at least. Others may have different experiences.

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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Were Socrates and Plato Greek?

  6. #6
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by RidonKs
    surely he is the namesake and surely he was well known for the method... but at the same time, it's just interrogation which is a natural part of language
    Is interrogation a natural part of language? It is now, but was it before. For example, is interior monologue a natural part of fiction? or did Joyce have to recognize/invent it.

    Somebody has to do it first, whether it's Socrates or not. Somebody had to have the insight of breaking a complex concept into a series of simpler questions could help solve the the problem.

    Without the Eureka! moment of insight it may not be part of our language or it may have not become part of the language for another few hundred years.

  7. #7
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    He did not invent it, he just made it famous.

    Just like google did not invent "googling".

  8. #8
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by KevinNYC
    Is interrogation a natural part of language? It is now, but was it before. For example, is interior monologue a natural part of fiction? or did Joyce have to recognize/invent it.

    Somebody has to do it first, whether it's Socrates or not. Somebody had to have the insight of breaking a complex concept into a series of simpler questions could help solve the the problem.

    Without the Eureka! moment of insight it may not be part of our language or it may have not become part of the language for another few hundred years.
    i don't think your analogy quite fits but having never read joyce and not really knowing what interior monologue is, i have to hold my tongue

    this was the point of the thread in a nutshell. it's on odd thing to ask because questioning is so easy for us, it's on the tip of your tongue every time, why.. which then you turn onto other people when you hear them speak. maybe i'm wrong but that is my shitty encapsulation of the socratic method.

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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by iamgine
    He did not invent it, he just made it famous.

    Just like google did not invent "googling".

  10. #10
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Recorded history only goes back so far. At some point, it's really just a matter of the oldest case of something being written down.

  11. #11
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by RidonKs
    i don't think your analogy quite fits but having never read joyce and not really knowing what interior monologue is, i have to hold my tongue

    this was the point of the thread in a nutshell. it's on odd thing to ask because questioning is so easy for us, it's on the tip of your tongue every time, why.. which then you turn onto other people when you hear them speak. maybe i'm wrong but that is my shitty encapsulation of the socratic method.
    My point is that things that look absolutely standard to us still had to be invented. Even things like metaphors and similes were inventions at one point.

    Interior monologue is hearing the thoughts inside a character's head. It's pretty basic to storytelling nowadays, but it's only about a 100 years old. It's also known as stream of consciousness. Joyce didn't invent it, but he probably had the most famous use of it in Ulysses. The whole last chapter is one character's thoughts as she lays in bed next to her husband.

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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by KevinNYC
    My point is that things that look absolutely standard to us still had to be invented. Even things like metaphors and similes were inventions at one point.

    Interior monologue is hearing the thoughts inside a character's head. It's pretty basic to storytelling nowadays, but it's only about a 100 years old. It's also known as stream of consciousness. Joyce didn't invent it, but he probably had the most famous use of it in Ulysses. The whole last chapter is one character's thoughts as she lays in bed next to her husband.
    yeah i've heard of it, i think the reason i have stayed away from joyce for so long is because it sounds awful and i'm scared of the idea. but yeah there is an origin story for everything.

    my question is how integral to the functioning of our language is the 'interrogative'? or how fundamental if you like. moreover but totally different how integral to the development of our language has the 'interrogative' been? like in terms of the distillation process for semantics or grammar specifics or stuff like that

  13. #13
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    Quote Originally Posted by RidonKs
    yeah i've heard of it, i think the reason i have stayed away from joyce for so long is because it sounds awful and i'm scared of the idea. but yeah there is an origin story for everything.

    my question is how integral to the functioning of our language is the 'interrogative'? or how fundamental if you like. moreover but totally different how integral to the development of our language has the 'interrogative' been? like in terms of the distillation process for semantics or grammar specifics or stuff like that
    You're probably thinking if Finnegan's Wake which is impenetrable. Ulysses and especially the monologue is quite good. But you can start with early works like his short story collection Dubliners which includes

    Araby
    The Dead

    both of these deliver a punch right at the very end

    and an earlier less experimental novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Hell, Ulysses is read in pubs every year it can't be that awful.

  14. #14
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    i have two copies of finnegans wake both unread bought three years apart both times knowing it's something i should read but probably won't

  15. #15
    talk less, say more Clifton's Avatar
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    Default Re: did socrates invent the socratic method?

    my question is how integral to the functioning of our language is the 'interrogative'? or how fundamental if you like. moreover but totally different how integral to the development of our language has the 'interrogative' been? like in terms of the distillation process for semantics or grammar specifics or stuff like that
    Well, there has always been mythology. Mythology, it seems to me, is a culture's answer to certain questions that present themselves to intelligent but limited beings like us.

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