This chapter examines the troubled relationship and complex reception of the Socratic method
in the early national period of American education (1776–1840). I argue that the account of
Socrates’quest for self-knowledge has been largely reduced to a“technique”for encouraging
creative thinking and individual self-expression. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although
it does raise a number of questions about the nature of modern higher education, and more
specifically, the role played by the touchstone“Socratic method”in leading students to self-
knowledge. As this account suggests, the early national period was an exciting but also
transformational time for the rediscovery of Socrates in America. Readers may be surprised to
find out that attitudes toward Socratic teaching and learning were surprisingly negative. For the
Socratic method to succeed in the United States, it would have to be stripped of its philosophical
power, modernized for polite society, and transformed to suit the purposes of a virtuous
citizenry.
The first part of this chapter describes in brief and general terms the historic context of Socrates’
method in educational and academic theory. The second part surveys a selection of factors con-
tributing to the transformation of the Socratic method in the United States. The third part examines
Benjamin Franklin’s attempt to make the Socratic style“sociable.”The fourth section looks at
Thomas Jefferson’s critique of Socrates, with a view to further clarifying the moral and political
reasons for the“Americanization”of the Socratic method.
The Problem of the Socratic Method
A number of problems plague any attempt to study the reception of Socrates’teaching in post-
revolutionary America. First, there is what I would call a“speciation”problem. It is not obvious to
anyone even vaguely familiar with Plato’s or Xenophon’s Socrates whether the modern Socratic
method (as practiced in law schools, for example) is meaningfully similar to the“method”as
practiced by the historical Socrates. Even today, the exact nature of theelenchusas practiced by
Socrates is fairly open to debate: should we understand it as a positive method leading to knowledge
or as a negative method used essentially to refute false claims to knowledge? There is also a dis-
ciplinary complexity. Socrates’trademark method may be applied in radically different ways, in a
law school setting or in a Great Books program. Add to this the bewildering proliferation of
pedagogical theories, one could see why it may no longer make any sense to speak oftheSocratic
method in any meaningful way. Finally, there is a historical problem. As the following will dem-
onstrate, the utility or value of teaching in a Socratic manner varies across time and among various
schools and political contexts.
Having noted only a few of the difficulties, let us turn to a brief summary of the reception of the
Socratic method in the modern Westernworld. The following overview will be useful in providing a
basic historical context for thinking about the reception of Socrates as a teacher in the early national
period in the United States.