The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook

by Ward Farnsworth

is natural to imagine that a philosopher—a Socrates—would try to talk you into accepting his beliefs as your own. But that isn’t the Socratic method. Or if Socrates wants to show that you’re wrong, you might expect that he would attack what you’ve said as inconsistent with the facts or as morally repellent. That isn’t quite the Socratic method, either. The Socratic method, in its classic form, consists of internal critique. It tests whether you’re being consistent with yourself and believe all that you think you do. Socrates doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong; he shows you that you think you’re wrong.

Internal critique