BENJAMIN J. GRAZZINIdenial of being a teacher and his denial of being responsible for the
subsequent actions of his associates closely echoes Apology 33b3– 6: “And
whether one of these becomes an upright man or not, I would not be
justly held responsible, since I have never promised or taught any in-
struction to any of them.”^6
The emphasis on his interlocutors bringing forth from within
themselves also seems to invoke the notion of recollection as it is devel-
oped in the Meno and Phaedo: that learning is a matter of recollecting
knowledge attained by the soul prior to a human being’s birth. Here,
too, Socrates’ patients are said not to gain knowledge from him, but—if
at all—from their own experience of conceiving and giving birth to
psychic offspring.^7 The other point I want to highlight is what Socrates
marks out as “the greatest part” of his art of psychic maieutics: his capac-
ity to test the psychic offspring of others and distinguish between the
true and the false, between fruitful offspring and images (150b9– c3).
Although Socrates does not tell Theaetetus just how this testing is ac-
complished, the invocation of the elenchus, the process of examina-
tion and refutation by questioning that is the hallmark of “Socratic”
method, seems unmistakable.^8 That is, the picture of Socrates, psychic
maieute, is a picture of Socrates as one who claims no wisdom of his own
and who spends his time talking with others, questioning them and try-
ing to show them where their opinions are at odds with one another.
This is the Socrates who claims to have devoted his life to this prac-
tice in the service of the god, and who is occasionally prevented from
certain actions by a daimon. It may even be the Socrates who claims
that learning is really a matter of recollecting knowledge grasped by the
soul prior to birth. In short, this is the Socrates we have all heard about
since the time we were children (or at least undergraduates). Socrates,
psychic maieute, appears to be as familiar to us as those facts psychic
maieutics is supposed to explain are to Theaetetus. As R. G. Wengert
puts it: “Everyone is familiar with the image of Socrates as a spiritual
midwife.”^9
It is all the more puzzling, then, that upon further refl ection the
picture of Socrates that emerges from his account of psychic maieutics
becomes less and less familiar. In the fi rst place, it is Plato’s Socrates who
is so easily recognized therein. I do not emphasize this point in order
to enter into speculation about what in Plato’s texts can be marked out
as historically “Socratic” and what “Platonic.” It is not clear what would
count as criteria for such a distinction—but even if there were grounds
for making it, Socrates, psychic maieute, is evidently a piece of Platonic
fi ction. Some have suggested that a reference to the miscarriage of an
idea in Aristophanes’ Clouds (137) supports the claim that the image of
midwifery was historically associated with Socrates, but as Myles Burn-