Platonic Dialogue, Maieutic Method and Critical Thinking

Platonic Dialogue, Maieutic Method and

Critical Thinking

FIONA LEIGH

In this paper I offer a reading of one of Plato’s later works,the Sophist, that reveals it to be informed by principlescomparable on the face of it with those that have emergedrecently in the field of critical thinking. As a development ofthe famous Socratic method of his teacher, I argue, Platodeployed his own pedagogical method, a ‘mid-wifely’ or‘maieutic’ method, in the Sophist. In contrast to the Socraticmethod, the sole aim of this method is not to disabuse thereader or learner of her false opinions. Rather, its purpose isto supply her with the skills and dispositions as well as theclaims and counter-claims she needs to critically evaluate aview, and so facilitate knowledge acquisition, for herself. Butthe text does not merely teach critical thinking in this indirectmanner. One of the strategies its author employed was toencourage the reader/learner to consider under whatconditions a claim or idea would be false. To the extent that itachieves this, the Sophist provides both a model and anapplication of that particular kind of critical thinking in thelearning environment that Jonathan Baron has described as‘active open-mindedness’.

INTRODUCTION

One of the more significant innovations in educational theory in recenttimes has been the identification and development of active learning andcritical thinking in the learning environment. Broadly, active learningoccurs, as the name suggests, when the students themselves engage in theprocess of knowledge acquisition, while critical thinking involvesreflective evaluation of reasons or evidence for a view under consideration(Fisher, 2001, p. 10). Conceived thus, critical thinking forms a subset ofactive learning. In his extensive study, Jonathan Baron coined the term‘active open-mindedness’ (Baron, 1994, p. 31ff). This is very like criticalthinking, except that a greater emphasis is placed on actively searching outthe conditions under which a claim or belief may not be true, or may evenbe false. In active open-mindedness, the focus is on rigorous testing of a

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2007

r 2007 The AuthorJournal compilation r 2007 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

view, argument or belief. Students typically learn to think critically orpractice active open-mindedness in one of two ways. They can study thetopic directly, with the aid of a textbook such as Anne Thomson’s CriticalReasoning: A Practical Introduction (2002), or they may encounter thesemodes of thinking indirectly, in the course of studying material ofdifferent content.

In this paper I will argue that in his late dialogue, the Sophist, Platoprovides a model of inquiry designed to indirectly instruct the reader inactive learning, critical thinking and active open-mindedness, bystimulating the reader to engage in these modes of thought. Plato hasbeen justly celebrated for bequeathing the ‘Socratic method’ tophilosophers and educators alike (in such works as, for example, Meno,70a–80a; Euthyphro, 6bff). That method, in both the ancient andcontemporary pedagogical context, consists in questioning a student’s orone’s own set of beliefs on a given subject in order to bring contradictionswithin the set of beliefs to light (Steiner, 2003, p. 28; Brownhill, 2002, pp.70–4; Nozick, 1997, pp. 145–6). To the extent that the outcome of themethod’s application is that the person who originally espoused the beliefis left confused and without knowledge, the method can be characterisedas a negative method. Nonetheless, an application of the Socratic methodis an instance of active learning in some sense, since the person beingquestioned is herself engaged in the questioning process. Under somedefinitions of it, an application of the Socratic method is also an instanceof critical thinking, since the person is brought to the judgment that thecontradictory beliefs cannot both be right (for example, John Dewey’sclassic definition, 1909, p. 9). In contrast to the Socratic method, themethod of inquiry embodied by the Sophist has more positive outcomes.This method is centred on teaching the reader to (i) engage as a partner inthe positive process of knowledge acquisition, (ii) reflect upon and lookfor evidence or reasons that lend support to a claim or could cause one todoubt it, and (iii) creatively seek out reasons or evidence that willadequately test a claim or belief’s veracity for herself. This in turnsuggests that in his more mature work, Plato sought to go beyond histeacher’s methodology for pedagogical reasons. The results, I hope toshow, remain instructive for educators today.1

THE DIALOGUE FORM IN THE SOPHIST

A great deal of scholarly interest has been shown in the more literaryfeatures of Plato’s dialogues in recent times (for example, Blondell, 2002;Klagge and Smith, 1992; Vlastos, 1991). Over the past decade or so, thisapproach has extended to his late dialogues (Notomi, 1999; Gill andMcCabe, 1996). In the following study of the dialogic elements of theSophist, I will maintain that the strategies and framing devices he employsare not merely literary: they serve distinct pedagogical purposes, intendedto provoke the reader to think intelligently for herself. On the question ofthe relation between the dialogue form and the philosophical business of

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the dialogue, I will claim that Plato uses that literary form to convey aserious pedagogical point to the reader. Through a series of prompts andsuggestive demonstrations, the reader is induced to be an activeparticipant in the dialogue in the sense that understanding its argumentsand their achievements requires her involvement. What is more, bothcritical thinking and active open-mindedness are required to work throughthe puzzles of the second half of the dialogue, and so to properly grasp thetheory Plato fashions there.

If we accept Plato’s testimony, the ability accurately to describe thecraft of sophistry is an ability the Athenian people conspicuously lacked,at least in the case of Socrates. One imagines that the execution of histeacher would have bred in Plato a strong desire to distinguish aphilosopher like Socrates from people who, he thought, were guilty ofcorrupting the young—that is, the sophists. The Platonic corpus generallygives one reason to suppose that Plato’s low regard for sophists in generalis very likely a product of his high regard for one thing they commonlyprofess to be able to teach—virtue—and the sentiment is echoed by theStranger in the Sophist.2 A further motive, too, becomes evident in ourdialogue: the sophist is someone who is not only a poor teacher of animportant subject; he is also a willing deceiver, prepared to deny theexistence of his stock in trade—falsehood (236dff, 261b–264b).

For these reasons one imagines that properly identifying the sophist wasan urgent issue for Plato, morally and metaphysically. And, reading thedialogue, one gets a definite sense that its author held reasonably strongviews on the subject of sophistry. Yet what Plato chose to ‘say’ in theSophist about sophistry and falsehood, as well as truth and its object,reality, he did not of course say directly. He did not write a doctrinaltreatise in his own voice, as his star pupil Aristotle was to do many times.Instead he chose to construct a dialogue in which no character is namedafter him, and indeed whose main character is a conspicuously unnamedstranger from Elea. As with other dialogues he wrote, the reader is leftwondering why, if Plato wanted to present a positive account on a topic hecared about deeply, he did not choose to set it out in a treatise.

And, as with other middle or late dialogues, it seems clear that thereader is being asked to consider at least two positive views over thecourse of the dialogue. The Sophist begins with Theodorus turning up for ameeting with Socrates in the company of a foreigner (a ‘stranger’ inGreek) from Elea, whom he has just met. Socrates asks the Stranger to tellthe group (the young Theaetetus is also present) how the Eleaticsdistinguish the sophist from the philosopher and the statesman. Whatfollows is a long dialectical conversation between the Stranger andTheaetetus, ending in a description of the sophist as an arch dissembler,and during which Theaetetus often says very little. In the first part of thedialogue, after several unsuccessful attempts to define the sophist, the pairagree that he deals in mere appearances, not being, and makes false claims(236d–e). The Stranger then explains that the sophist would reject thisdefinition, on the grounds that it relies on a conception of ‘not being’ or‘what is not’, and it is surely absurd to suppose there is any such thing.

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The Stranger and Theaetetus then embark on a lengthy ‘digression’ until264c, which sees the Stranger lead Theaetetus through key elements of histheory of being and not being, taking in and dispatching previousmetaphysical theories along the way. At the dialogue’s close, havingargued that ‘not being’ is indeed something, the Stranger concludes thatthey have exposed the sophist as falsely saying about ‘what is not’ that itreally is. Thus, the reader is left with two apparently significantphilosophical claims—one concerning the definition of sophistry, theother a theory of reality—both of which are difficult and requireinterpretation.

In the case of the Sophist in particular, moreover, the importance of thephilosophical issues is not the only aspect of Plato’s choice to write indialogue form that raises questions. The so-called ‘early’ and ‘middle’period dialogues contain an element of drama and richness of personalityin their characters not replicated in the later works. Generalising, onemight think these later works are more straightforward debates betweenproponents of opposing views on some philosophical position that hasbeen identified by the interlocutors.3 But though the Sophist, like other latedialogues, lacks dramatic elements such as conflict and characterdevelopment, it is unlike them in not straightforwardly recording a debateor dialogue between the main interlocutors on the central topic. Indeed,the Sophist does not contain much by way of debate or dialogue or evenproper conversation, philosophical or otherwise. The young Theaetetus isselected to be the Stranger’s respondent just because Socrates says he willnot give him any headaches but be tractable. The youth goes so far as topromise as much (217d1ff; 218a4–5) and is good to his word, sayingrelatively little throughout the entire dialogue. In the case of the Sophist,then, the usual question about Plato’s literary choice of the dialogue formbecomes especially pointed—what was achieved from a philosophicalpoint of view in writing this way?

My response to the question is this: despite the fact that in writing theSophist Plato wrote a dialogue containing so little dramatic dialogue, theliterary form of the work encourages the reader to engage in the activitythat lies at the heart of dialogue—critical examination of some claim orother. The dialogue form itself facilitates active rather than passivelearning and encourages active open-mindedness in several ways.

In a recent article, Michael Frede has pointed to the historical reasonsPlato would likely have had for turning away from the literary form mostconducive to passive thinking and learning, the treatise form (thoughFrede does not discuss active or passive thinking and learning). Fredeargues that even where Plato has a positive view to put forward he doesnot express it in a treatise form. One significant aspect of his teacher’slegacy, according to Frede, is an ‘elevated, Socratic conception ofauthority’, such that only indefeasible reasons justify adopting a positionof authority (Frede, 1996, p. 141–2). Thus, since Plato could only rarely besure that the reasoning behind any given positive view was completelycorrect and could withstand some future Socratic questioning, he wouldnot presume to speak in a single voice from a position of authority in a

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treatise. In this connection, Frede also reminds us that Plato’s intellectualcontext differs markedly from our own. Whereas we read and write in anenvironment in which it is understood that an author adopts theauthoritative voice temporarily, for only as long as the arguments stand,Plato did not.4

Socrates is not the only historical figure Frede thinks would haveinfluenced Plato’s attitude towards the authority invested in the authorwho writes in his own voice. Heraclitus speaks from a position of greatcertitude; he even appears to do so in his own voice.5 And considerableauthority is implied by Parmenides’ Goddess, in her pronouncement ofdoctrine and injunctions.6 Indeed, the references in our dialogue toParmenides as an authoritative figure—fatherly (241d5; 242a1–3), great(243a3) and superior to the Stranger and his audience who are merechildren (242c8–9)—indicate, Frede thinks, that Plato took Parmenides tothink of himself in this way. That Plato also considered him to be mistakenin doing so is revealed by the criticism the Stranger directs toward him(242c4–6; cf. 243a7–b1) and the ‘parricide’ he commits (241d3). This isone reason, then, why the Sophist is not written in treatise form: WhilePlato deems the positive views it contains as worth consideration, he doesnot consider them ‘authoritative’ in the sense that they should be closed tofuture revision. I would add to Frede’s view the further suggestion thatPlato’s reason for shunning the authoritative authorial voice was that thepassive thinking and learning it encourages is only acceptable when theauthor’s view is beyond revision. Only then—and Plato is surely right tosuspect that such cases turn out to be rare—may one consider the authorityof the author or teacher to be beyond question.

ACTIVE LEARNING, CRITICAL THINKING AND

THE DIALOGUE FORM

In active learning, where the learner is involved in the articulation of atheory, she may be required to join the dots, so to speak. One way toencourage this is to supply the premises of an argument central to a theory,but without explicitly drawing an inference from one to the other. If thelearner is to properly grasp the theory, she is thereby forced to draw theinference herself. Another way to encourage the learner’s activeinvolvement in articulating a theory is to employ, in some obvious way,an unusual or surprising assumption without any explicit supportingargumentation or reasoning. Let us suppose that the assumption isconsistent with, or perhaps even supported by, other claims andassumptions propounded in an earlier context. Where this is the case,the learner or reader will only understand the warrant for the assumption ifshe reflects on the extent to which it is supported by the earlier material.She may even begin to investigate whether the assumption is contradictedby, or, alternatively, entailed by, the other previously canvassed premisesin the theory or view. If she does so, the learner is engaging in that subsetof active learning, critical reflection upon and evaluation of a view.



Involving the learner in testing a claim or theory, or some part of it, is amore complex matter. One could present the learner with a puzzle orapparent contradiction, in part consequent upon the theory or reasoning sofar elucidated. This forces the learner at least to choose which of thealternatives is right, since both alternatives cannot be right. At most itencourages her to work out from the premises already accepted which ofthe alternatives must be the product of mistaken reasoning or falseassumptions (or both). For, since they end in a puzzle or outrightcontradiction, one or both of the claims must be false. Further, if one ofthe claims receives support from other claims or premises elsewhere in thetext whilst the other is merely assumed, the learner has potentially beensupplied with the means to solve the puzzle, provided she is willing toexpend the intellectual effort required herself.7

It is difficult to imagine how these pedagogical strategies—with thepossible exception of a mild form of the first strategy (leaving someinferences for the learner to draw herself)—could be employed in writinga philosophical treatise. The gymnastics of style any such attempt woulddemand would, in turn, surely transform the piece into one composed in aliterary form altogether different from a treatise. But it is, of course, veryeasy to see how these strategies could be employed if one were writing adialogue. Let me give an example of each strategy from the Sophist itself.

First, the strategy of encouraging or forcing the learner to drawinferences for herself. There are, arguably, many examples of this strategyin our dialogue. I shall give what I take to be an uncontroversial one.8 Inthe debate between the Stranger and the more gentle giants at 247d–e andthen again at 248c, the Stranger defines ‘being’ as whatever has the powerto act or be affected. It is clear that the Stranger takes it that the definitionis meant to range over the cases the pair have just discussed (this is whythe imaginary interlocutors here, the giants, accept the definition). So thecausal definition of being is meant to account for the inclusion of thingslike rocks and trees as items in the ontology, as well as things like justice,which can come to be present in a soul. This claim about the scope of theStranger’s incipient definition of being, however, is not explicitly statedanywhere in the text. Instead, it is left to the reader to make the connectionbetween these remarks of the Stranger’s.

An example of the second strategy, of employing an unusual orsurprising assumption, can be found in the lengthy discussion of negationfrom 255e to 263e. The Stranger appears to be operating with a peculiarassumption about what the negative particle ‘not’ signifies, in as much ashe shifts from using it to distinguish two individuals as distinct or non-identical to using it to assert that the subject fails to possesses someproperty or other. We might say that he assumes that one need have noqualms about shifting from a claim of non-identity to a claim of negativeattribution, as if the two sorts of claims did not have different semanticand logical features.9 If this is right, then it seems that Plato is deliberatelyemploying a significant assumption in the metaphysical theory he isdeveloping without explicitly arguing for it. My present suggestion is thathe did so for a reason that has both pedagogical and philosophical merit,

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namely, to encourage the reader actively to engage with the argument bysearching the text for premises that would explain and lend support to thisunified conception of negation.

The third strategy that encourages the learner to engage in activethinking and learning is a strategy aimed squarely at the learner testing theclaim or theory she is presented with. It is to this extent a strategydesigned to encourage the reader to engage in active open-mindedness. Inparticular, this strategy encourages or even forces the reader to considerunder what conditions a claim would be false. This is an important featureof active learning, since it requires the learner to envisage and seek out‘disconfirmatory’ evidence, evidence that would either cast serious doubton a claim or else prove it to be false (Baron, 1991, pp. 169–86, and 1994,pp. 30–40, 250–3). There are clear logical advantages of developing thedisposition for habitually determining the conditions under which someclaim or other is false. For it is typically hard or impossible to provide adeductively valid constructive proof of a claim, while it is more frequentlypossible to falsify a claim, by showing that it contradicts another claimbeyond doubt or else leads to absurd or otherwise unacceptableconsequences. Moreover, developing this disposition does not comenaturally to thinkers. That is, people are more likely to look for evidenceor reasons that support an idea or claim or argument, and typically makethe mistake of being satisfied by such evidence. Some psychologists havereferred to this tendency as a ‘confirmation bias’ (e.g. Snyder and Swann,1978; Baron, 1994, pp. 252–5). Research has even shown a tendency tofavour beliefs that have already been formed, finding supporting evidenceeven where there is none (Chapman and Chapman, 1967, 1969). Theability to conceive of the conditions under which a claim would be false is,as Plato seems to have intuited, a learning skill that itself needs to betaught, either directly or indirectly.

Several examples of this third strategy can be found in the Sophist. Ineach case, the reader, like Theaetetus, is induced to consider that someclaim is false, and to figure out why it is false, as a result of beingconfronted by a deep puzzle or dilemma or apparent contradiction. Ourinterlocutors describe a puzzle or aporia on four separate occasions in thedialogue—at 236e–237e (the difficulty of saying to what the name ‘thatwhich is not’ applies); at 238a–239b (the difficulty of thinking or speakingabout what is not, even when attempting to reject it as a coherent idea); at245d–e (the contradictions and confusions that arise for those—thedualists and monists—who say that being is either one or two); and at249d–250e (the contradiction between the claim, on the one hand, thatbeing of its nature neither moves nor rests, and, on the other, the claim thateverything either moves or rests). I shall discuss the last of these aporiaihere.

Now, this dilemma or aporia is the culmination of a preliminaryexamination of their newly defined account of being. Being was earlierdefined as whatever has the power to act or be affected (247d–e; 248c).The pair have also just discussed the view of the so-called ‘friends of theForms’, that all true beings rest, but ended up arguing against the friends,



claiming that reality (to pan) includes both what moves and what ismotionless (249d). At 250a, the Stranger treats the three—being, motionand rest—as items that can be discussed as objects in their own right, andasks about the connection between them. His questions, and Theaetetus’answers to them, lead him to claim that Being is outside of both Motionand Rest,10 and that Being of its nature neither moves nor rests (250c6–7).But this last cannot be true if the assumption that every thing either movesor rests is also true, and so they are in a state of aporia about their newconception of Being.

However, there are further premises in our text in support of the claimthat Being neither moves nor rests. At 250b8–9 the Stranger emphasisesthe intelligible or purely abstract nature of the properties considered intheir own right—Being, Motion and Rest—by pointing out that they areaccessible to the mind (strictly, the soul for the Greeks, psuche ). The idea,familiar from other Platonic dialogues, is that we experience or haveaccess to physical things via our senses, while we experience or haveaccess to the non-physical abstract things in the world that we think aboutconceptually, such as numbers or (according to Plato) Platonic Forms. It isleft to Theaetetus, and so to the reader, to draw the inference that it is invirtue of being an abstract, intelligible object that Being is not a physicalthing in space-time, and so is something that of its nature neither movesnor rests. Therefore, it is the assumption that all things either move or restthat ought to be scrutinised and questioned. This assumption, that is, is theone the reader is being encouraged to doubt, and to begin to considerunder what conditions it would be false. And the answer, of course, is notfar to seek. If all of the things that together make up reality—all themembers of the ontological population—were physical things, theneverything would be in space-time and everything would either move orrest. Therefore, the assumption that everything either moves or rests willbe false just in case there are some non-physical things. Plato, of course,famously introduced such entities into his metaphysics, as at Sophist250b–c. The aporia or dilemma, therefore, is designed to bring the readerto see that if she accepts abstract objects as part of reality, she need nolonger hold onto the principle that everything either moves or rests.

I have been arguing that Plato wanted to encourage, or perhaps evenforce, the reader to contemplate what would falsify some claim or otherand so teach her to think in this active and more logically powerful mode.If I am right, he would not simply supply the reader with a reasoned claimfor its falsification on the surface of the text, as it were, but would insteadsupply her with the means to put the claim together herself. Clearly thedialogue form, and not the treatise form, is the literary form more suited tothis purpose.

THE MAIEUTIC METHOD AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD

The dialogue form allows the reader to participate in the articulation andcritical examination or testing of a theory as it is developed at various

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stages throughout the text, or so I have been arguing. But there is yetanother way in which the Sophist serves this pedagogical function: it canbe read as designed to facilitate a dialogue of sorts between the reader andthe text, taken as a whole. This dialogue would take place after the readerhas already gone right through the text and is reflecting upon the theory itcontains. This dialogue is, therefore, a conversation the reader has withherself (cf. 263e), in which one side of the discussion is guided andprompted by the text that has been read. It is this dialogue that brings thelearner to the point of understanding, elsewhere described as giving birth(Theaetetus 148e–151d), and is in this sense an expression of ‘mid-wifely’or maieutic method. Consistent with the pedagogical strategies argued forabove, the purpose of the dialogue between the reader and the text is toprovide the reader with enough argumentative material (considerations,counter-claims and so on) to grasp the Stranger’s metaphysical theory.For that theory is not laid out in an unambiguous fashion. On the contrary,considerable interpretive effort is required on the part of the reader towork out exactly what the Stranger’s positive account amounts to, as thegreat number of different and incompatible interpretations in the literatureattests (for example, Frede, 1967; Owen, 1970/1986; Brown, 1986/1999,1994; Notomi, 1999; McCabe, 2000; Miller, 2004). The task ofattributing a theory to the Stranger that is well supported not just byone part of the text but by the text as a whole is no mean feat. Thus,a kind of dialectical play between the whole and its parts can be discernedin the text.

It is made quite clear at the outset that the dialogue is meant to be takenas a single structured whole: Plato has Theodorus report that the Strangerhas heard it often before and remembers it well (217b8–9). The idea isreinforced by the Stranger’s statement that the best way to deliver what hehas to say is in a dialogue with a tractable person who will not give himany headaches (217d1–2). Otherwise, the next best mode is a lengthymonologue (217d2–3). Here the Stranger is making it clear that he doesnot want the account he is ready to repeat to be interrupted: he wants toperform it of a piece, as a whole. Serious philosophical challenges wouldhave the effect of altering the shape and structure of the piececonsiderably, as well as modifying the content the Stranger already hasin mind as relevant to the task at hand, identifying the sophist. Seriousphilosophical dialogue is not thereby ruled out, however, only deferred.Finally, it is noteworthy that Plato has Socrates recommend the‘notoriously talented’ Theaetetus to the Stranger as a suitable, pliantinterlocutor and not Theodorus, with whom he arrived and to whom he isalready chatting (Frede, 1996, p. 138). Behind his nomination lies theimplication, I think, that his prodigious intellect not only renders himcapable of following the contours of the piece but also makes him asuitable ‘inheritor’ of it—that is, able to commit the entire piece tomemory, just as the Stranger has done before him. He will then be atliberty to return to it, to reflect on it and also to test the positive account heunderstands it to contain against this structured whole. Thankfully, notquite so much is demanded of the reader. Since the dialogue is written, the



reader is simply invited to spend the (not inconsiderable) effort required tounderstand it, not to remember the whole thing as well. Readprogrammatically, then, the passage from 217b–218a instructs the readerto treat the dialogue as a whole, returning to its arguments as many timesas are needed to understand the view being proposed. The text is presentedas a project that comes with a programme for its own completion.11

We can now see that the concept of ‘dialogue’ at work here is that of aconversation centred on a critical examination of some view, by exploringthe conditions under which it would be true, and under which it would befalse. It is this conception that allows Plato to move beyond his teacher’spedagogical concerns and the Socratic method. Conceived as founded onPlato’s desire to encourage critical thinking and active open-mindedness,dialogue (as I have described it) is capable of achieving what Socratessays in the Phaedrus (274c5–275e6) cannot be achieved by writing. Thatis, whereas the writing Socrates has in mind in the Phaedrus consists inthe espousing of a positive account or doctrine presented as authoritativeand passively accepted as such by the learner, a (written or verbal)dialogue encourages one to ask for clarification, examine underlyingassumptions and conceive of and raise objections.12

Now, we ought to concede that a doctrinal account could do this too, tosome extent, although it would be impossible for the author to anticipateall the objections a reader might make or all the clarifications a readermight require. For each reader comes to a dialogue with his or her own setof beliefs and prior assumptions. If the learner is reading, then, in order forher to engage in critical questioning of the view she is reading, she willhave to do more than simply assent to what she reads. For her to engage indialogue as I have characterised it, she has to compare and contrast theviews presented with her own set of beliefs, and where there is acontradiction, to determine the conditions under which one or both isfalse. So the onus is on the reader to evaluate the claims of a text forherself, in light of her unique set of beliefs and prior assumptions.Perhaps Plato thought the onus was on her as much as it is on theinstructor presenting the view not to treat the learner as a child, but ratherto care whether the learner is following the view being presented (cf.243a–b).

If this is the outcome Plato desired in writing the Sophist, thepedagogical methodology that the work embodies is an interestingcontinuation and development of the Socratic elenctic method. In the caseof both methodologies the intention is to motivate people to expend effortto think hard for themselves. Insofar as the excellence or virtue of the soulwas the ethical issue for the Greeks (Annas, 1993, pp. 9–14), theStranger’s remarks about ignorance being an ugliness for the soul suggeststhat Plato in the Sophist, like his teacher Socrates, considered the processof learning to have ethical, as well as epistemological, value. However, wesaw above that the Socratic method is an essentially negative method,designed to leave the hapless interlocutor refuted by a contradiction andacutely aware of her confusion and ignorance. Unlike Socrates, theStranger is no expert in refutation, as the introductory discussion makes

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clear (216b5–8). Indeed, the Stranger shows little interest in refutation,viewing discourse with a compliant interlocutor to be the most suitableway to get clear on what kind of craft sophistry is (refutation, recall, is noteven his second preference; giving a long speech is). The Sophist cannot,therefore, be classed as an elenctic dialogue. And even though I haveclaimed that a positive account is contained within the text, the fact that itis not plainly spelt out, but instead demands interpretation, means that thedialogue cannot be considered purely dogmatic either.

Instead I have suggested that the Sophist ought to be understood as amaieutic or mid-wifely dialogue. In this I am following David Sedley’srecent work on the Theaetetus (Sedley, 1996, pp. 80, 95–6, 101–2; 2004,pp. 5–35). For the dialectical interplay between reader and text that I haveclaimed is suggested by the Sophist resembles the type of dialectic Sedleyhas identified as maieutic in relation to the Theaetetus. In that dialogue,Sedley thinks, Plato practises this type of dialectic on the reader. Hewrites:

. . . the dialogue’s address to us, the readers, is also one of intellectualmidwifery, this time on Plato’s part. For Plato to end up by telling us thecorrect definition would be a clear dereliction of duty. Instead, and inabsolute conformity with maieutic method, he delivers us to the pointwhere we should ourselves be ready to give birth (Sedley, 1996, p. 103;cf. pp. 80, 95–6, 101–2).13

Plato’s interest in, and appreciation of the value of, critical thinking andactive open-mindedness does not appear to be confined to just the onedialogue from the later period.

In Plato’s Sophist we find a demonstration of how to encourage activelearning as well as indirectly teach critical thinking and active open-mindedness to students. In contemporary learning contexts in whichlearning typically takes place in a group environment, traditional (spoken)dialogue is possible. Once the students have been enlisted in the learningprocess by being invited and induced to draw inferences for themselves,ask questions and expect to have questions asked of them, the teacher orinstructor is well placed to employ the mid-wifely or maieutic method. By,for instance, introducing an assumption when he knows the students arenot expecting it, having laid the groundwork for its critical evaluation, theinstructor provides the stimulus and the tools for critical thinking, whichhe can then oversee and guide where necessary. Or, for example, byleading a group discussion to a point of contradiction between the view ortheory being studied and a relevant common misconception, the instructoris able to facilitate a search, by the students, for the conditions underwhich the conflicting claims would be false. Across the range of possiblestrategies, the principles of the method in the Sophist are clear: (i) initiatea dialogue to involve the student as active participant in the learningprocess; (ii) induce the student to join in critical dialogue by encouragingor inducing her to reflect upon and evaluate evidence or reasons for aclaim or theory being presented; and (iii) stimulate and accustom the



student to engage in active open-minded thinking, in which she habituallyconceives of the conditions under which a view is false. In both itsstrategies and its principles, Plato’s method provides a model that remainsinstructive for educators today.

Correspondence: Fiona Leigh, School of Philosophy and Bioethics,Monash University, Building 11, Wellington Road, Clayton VIC 3800,Australia.E-mail: [email protected]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to Mary Margaret McCabe, Dirk Baltzly, SamuelButchart and Paul Woodruff for helpful criticisms and suggestions onearlier drafts of this paper.

NOTES

1. The reading of Plato’s Sophist that I will go on to argue for in this paper, therefore, is at odds

with the view that the main character in Plato’s later works is a mere mouthpiece for some

Platonic doctrine, being spelt out in an authoritative manner in the text. Bob Brownhill, for

instance, contrasts the Socratic method of the earlier dialogues with an ‘autocratic and

authoritarian’ version of that method in the later dialogues, in which ‘Socrates becomes the

mouthpiece for Plato’s theories’ (Brownhill, 2002, p. 70).

2. Sophist, 223a4–6, 224b9–d2, 267c2–e6; cf. Meno (71cff), Gorgias (459d–460a; 465c),

Protagoras (321d–328d), Euthydemus (274d–e). Cf. Antiphon, 1–7, Oxyrhynthus Papyrus XI

no.1364, ed. Hunt, col. 1 line 6-col. 7 line 15 5 B44, as cited in Cohen, Curd and Reeve, 2000,

pp. 86–7.

3. For instance, the Philebus can easily be read as a debate on opposing views of the role of

pleasure in the good life, and likewise the Theaetetus can fairly easily be read as a debate on

opposing views of what constitutes knowledge.

4. If this is right, Plato was interested in putting forward theories for discussion and examination

without supposing them to be absolutely correct or beyond refutation (for example, the theory

of Forms, the tripartition of the soul, recollection). He would be wary, therefore, of

proposing doctrine. Against Frede’s suggestion, it could be objected that Aristotle refers

to the ‘doctrines’ (doxa) of Plato (Metaphysics I.9, 990b21–22, 28, XIII.4, 1078b9–10, 1079a18–

25 cf. Metaphysics I.6, 987b4ff). But Aristotle may be referring to the Platonists who followed

Plato rather than to Plato himself, and Aristotle’s arcane remark about the ‘unwritten doctrines’

(agrapha dogmata, Physics 4.2, 209b13–15, cf. Metaphysics I.6, 987b18ff; Simplicius, In

Physica, 151.8, 453.28, 545.23) can perhaps even be taken as evidence supporting the line Frede

is proposing: If Plato had positive theories he wished others to consider, he would not want to set

them out authoritatively as doctrine, as if they were beyond revision. Instead he would write

dialogues, for the reasons Frede gives, and would take great care not to write down his positive

views, leaving them unwritten. Note also, with W. D. Ross, that neither Aristotle nor Simplicius

(nor Alexander nor Asclepius nor Syrianus) ‘connects the doctrine with any of Plato’s

dialogues’—Porphyry alone connected it with the Philebus (Ross, 1924, p. 170).

5. Heraclitus DK B1; B108. But see B50. (See Freeman, 1948, pp. 24, 32 and 28 respectively.)

6. Parmenides DK B1.14; 22–32. (See Freeman, 1948, pp. 41–2.)

7. There is a parallel to be drawn between this pedagogical method, which I am attributing to Plato

in the Sophist, and some recent developments in learning and teaching in lecture environments in

universities, at the junior levels. A Harvard physicist, Eric Mazur, has pioneered a method that

involves periodically pausing the lecture and posing a moderately challenging multiple-choice

320 F. Leigh


question to the students, based on the material so far delivered. The students select their answer

by using an electronic response system. The lecturer then allows a few minutes for the students to

try to convince their neighbours that their response is the correct one, after which time the

students ‘vote’ again. A surprising number of students select the right response the second time.

The lecturer then informs the class of the correct answer and moves on. Though the method does

not challenge the students with a flat contradiction, it encourages the same style of thought: the

learner is best served by determining the conditions under which one or more possibility is false

(Mazur, 1997; Crouch and Mazur, 2001, pp. 970–7; Stuart, Brown and Draper, 2004, pp. 95–102;

Draper and Brown, 2004, pp. 81–94).

8. In saying this I am acknowledging that one potential downfall of this way of reading Plato is that

any incoherent passage of text can be read as though it is really employing this strategy—if only

we readers were clever enough to draw the inferences Plato intended!

9. One might object here that Plato was not working with any such assumption. He simply failed to

see the point I have just made, and so his character, the Stranger, reasons fallaciously (cf.

Bostock, 1984, passim, but see especially pp. 115–119). It is possible, of course, that this is right.

However, I would argue that there are good textual reasons for supposing the Stranger to be

working with just one conception of negation, which embraces non-identity and negative

attribution, which coheres with his account of difference and which is consistent with his account

of being. On this conception, if the subject is not F, then the subject is simply being something

different from F. It is certainly how the text reads at first sight, no matter how puzzling to us (and

see Nehamas, 1982/1999, pp. 209–10). But that is a topic for another paper.

10. The upper case here is meant to reflect the Stranger’s treatment of them as objects in their own

right, which can be spoken of as subjects in statements. He will later call them kinds or Forms

(from 254b–d onwards).

11. The idea that a writer would try to communicate to the reader that the work forms a discrete

whole and is profitably viewed as such, is perhaps one that would not have been alien to the

ancient Greeks. At least, writers of dramatic works employed the device of a set-piece speech

frequently enough: in Sophocles’ Antigone, the epic language of the messenger’s speech seems

to set it apart as a set-piece that must be delivered whole (1193ff); in Oedipus Tyrranus (also by

Sophocles), Oedipus’ tale of killing an old man at the crossroads is also told in language that

differs markedly from the language we find in the text both before and after this story, suggesting

that the story somehow floats in its own ‘poetic space’, as a unified and properly ordered whole

(800–833). That Plato would employ the device in one of his own works is hardly surprising,

since Socrates’ description of a speech as having discrete ordered parts, like an animal, in the

Phaedrus, shows clearly that he was alive to the idea of a properly ordered text, structured as a

whole (264c2–5). (I am grateful to Paul Woodruff for pointing out these passages to me, and for

the image of ‘poetic space’.)

12. As the pair progress through the fairly straightforward divisions in the first half of the text, the

young Theaetetus stops the Stranger’s recitation whenever he does not fully understand,

particularly on points likely to be important, by Plato’s lights. At 227d–229a for instance, the

Stranger says that ignorance is a kind of ugliness of the soul, akin to disease of the soul

(wickedness) but not the same as it, and that it can be remedied by teaching. But when he first

introduced the idea of a distinction between the two kinds of ‘badness’ of the soul, wickedness and

ignorance, Theaetetus informed him straightaway that he didn’t understand (228a3; cf. 255a9).

13. Sedley also argues, in his more recent book on the Theaetetus, for a maieutic interpretation of

that dialogue (2004, passim, but see especially pp. 5, 8–13, 28–37) and claims, as I do in relation

to the Sophist, that Plato deliberately constructed the Theaetetus in such a way as to enact what

he calls an ‘external’ dialectic between the text and the reader (p. 6).

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Platonic Dialogue, Maieutic Method and Critical Thinking

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