The Socratic Method, the Liberal Arts, and Illiberal Threats
Liberal arts education in North America is in decline. The humanities have been especially hit hard,
with declining student enrollment, cutbacks to programs, and fewer full-time job opportunities for
professors.^1 However, there is another reality today: both the institutions and the culture of liberal
democracy are under threat from illiberal forces within Western society. We see this particularly on
the political right and the rise of demagogic politicians such as Trump who appeal to populist anger;
but we also see it on the left, especially on university campuses roiled by identity and sexual
politics, and students making stringent demands. A question arises: is the decay of liberal demo-
cratic culture linked with the decline of liberal arts education?^2
It is against this background that this chapter will consider challenges to the Socratic method in
today’s university classrooms. The method has long been considered an essential feature of liberal
education, primarily taught in introductory philosophy classes but applicable to other disciplines. It
stands as the first and perhaps most exemplary model of open, free, and critical thinking in a liberal
society. Though Socrates is presented in Plato’s dialogs as being critical of democracy (Republic,
557a–565c), he nevertheless recognized and appreciated how the democratic city of Athens
tolerated his philosophizing (Apology,37c–d;Crito, 52a–53a). Of course, even Athenian patience
ran out: after years of cultural decline during the Peloponnesian War, the city executed Socrates in
399 BCEfor impiety and corrupting the youth. Notwithstanding the official charges against
Socrates, he was essentially executed for shaming his contemporaries because he revealed that they
did not know what they claimed to know. The method is therefore perilous for practitioners who live
in democracies gravitating toward decadence and illiberality.
Though there is no universally agreed upon definition of the“Socratic method,”a number of
features stand out in Socrates’approach to pedagogy as depicted in Plato’s dialogs. First, the
method is adialecticalform of argumentation, proceeding as a discussion between two or more
people, not as a lecture or sermon. Second, in the dialog an“interlocutor”states an opinion/
hypothesis, which is then submitted to a series of questions asked by someone else, to determine
whether the opinion is implicitly true or riddled with contradictions and weaknesses. This is
elenchusand is what most people understand as the“Socratic method.”If a position is refuted, the
interlocutor experiences perplexity (aporia); however, the primary purpose of the method is not for
the questioner to get pleasure out of this. Though Plato often depicts Socratic discussions ending in
aporia, true dialectic goes further; indeed, Socrates warns against“misology”–the radical skep-
ticism of all arguments (Phaedo, 88c–91c). Hopefully the interlocutor, once his argument has been
shown lacking, will be motivated to find a better argument and, with prompting, articulate
something true. The dialectical philosopher, in Socrates’words, is like a“midwife,”helping a soul
give birth to wisdom (Theaetetus, 149a–151d). This means that a dialectician must employ the rules
of logic, a well-known feature of the method. But Plato’s Socrates also uses images, myths, and
poetic references to enhance certain arguments, or to make points that cannot be made through