Primary school pupils in Clackmannanshire, taught to philosophise ‘like Socrates’, have evidently demonstrated dramatic improvements in IQ and other tests. But since the philosophy they are taught is all about working together to seek answers to problems — a worthy aim, of course — it is not at all clear how Socratic they are actually being.
The whole point about Socrates is that he began from one simple premise: that he knew nothing. That was why he was so baffled when a friend of his, Chaerephon, asked the oracle at Delphi whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates, to which it replied ‘No’. Reluctantly — ‘for the god cannot lie: that would not be right’ — Socrates decided that he had to test the proposition by finding someone wiser than himself. So, he tells us in Plato’s version of his trial defence speech (apologia), he approached politicians, people with a reputation for wisdom, poets and craftsmen and found that they all suffered from exactly the same fault: they thought they knew what they were talking about, but after questioning it emerged that the reverse was the case.
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