Socratic pedagogy in Plato's dialogue Meno

Abstract

The study focuses on the psychological and didactic methods employed in Plato’s dialogue Meno. Using the method of dramatic reading, the author analyses the two main parts of Socratic pedagogy: the negative one (aporetic), characterized by elenchus with a scope for identifying and eliminating misleading ideas, and the positive one (euporetic) aiming to help the student to find out her own new ideas and, by means of argumentation, lead her to better understanding. The author concludes that the main goal of the dialogue is to show the difference between “sophistic” and “Socratic” way of teaching. While the first one is based on memorizing the authoritative words and knowledge of the teacher, the Socratic one is based on a mutual search for better arguments. Such method leads to better understanding in both senses of the word – the social one (the capability of moderation and cooperation) as well as the epistemological one (the capability of contextual understanding opened for further investigation).

Keywords

• socratic pedagogy
• plato
• meno
• argumentation
• understanding