Socratic Midwifery: Plato’s Rhetorical Ploy?

Note: I have informally been studying philosophy as an autodidact (meaning too amateur of a philosopher to even call yourself an amateur philosopher). I want these posts to be accessible and for others to follow me on this journey. Learning philosophy (what tiny fraction I have so far) has changed my life in more ways than I thought. This page of the blog will be reserved for some academic reflections as I go through the Western canon and some informal reactions as my brain gets tied in knots. :)

If learning is nothing but a process of recollection of what we already know, there is no need for teachers or students. Rather, the Platonic innovation of the Socratic dialectic tells us we need a “midwife”; a facilitator that through careful questioning, can allow us to “birth” an idea through this mode of recollection. To Socrates, the immortal soul has infinite knowledge that it has gained in the Underworld; making the discovery or “recollection” of knowledge a rather ontologically pure process. In this way, Plato, arguably unambiguously, depicts the Socratic method to be extremely universal: we all should be able to reach the same conclusions through proper intellectual midwifery because we all already know through the Eternal.

Socrates describes his “art”, as midwife, as being able to “bring on or alleviate the birth pangs” that come with bringing to light “the many admirable truths which they [his listeners] discovered by themselves from within” (Plato).   In the Meno, Socrates even uses his method on a young slave boy to show how “accessible” this infinite knowledge is (Plato). The Socratic dialectic was a methodological way to reach commonalities, universals, and clear reasoning that we all can access through our mode of recollection. For contemporary Western thought, we are aware of the necessary rigor that is alongside a tight methodology. We are expected to have terminology, definitions, universals, commonalities, and hypotheses to examine as we attempt to acquire knowledge; but, until Plato crystallized this, it wasn’t always apparent that reasoning needed to be done this way.

It can be argued that the dialogues are a refutation of the Sophists. The Sophists, far from the neutral facilitator Socrates was, claimed to have knowledge and often sold that “knowledge” to the wealthy or those in public affairs. This kind of espousal of knowledge claims into the public sphere without the proper “midwifery” was troubling to Plato. Plato uses several rhetorical ploys in the way he paints Socrates’s interactions with his interlocutors. He gives Meno and his companions very little intellectual prowess in Meno, making their arguments crumble under the Socratic method (Plato). Yet, in Phaedo, the fictionalized account of the moments before Socrates’s mandated death, Socrates’s closest friends are suited to understand the pursuit of arriving at more concrete knowledge through Socratic methodology (Plato). 

Plato uses rhetoric often in the way he describes questioning of the Socratic method. Specifically in the Meno, Socrates asks very neutral questions and seeks agreement in common terms from Meno, all the while leading him into a trap (Plato). This apparent neutrality and universal truth is a broader rhetorical trick that masks particular metaphysical views. Socrates and Plato’s fictionalized writings of him are seldom as innocent as they seem.

In the Phaedo, Socrates describes how our bodies are needy obstacles to the truth we can bask in that exists in the world of the Forms (Plato). Our senses are limited, even deceptive, but we have perceptive abilities that allow us to recognize “copies” of the highest Forms that are in our ever-changing material and visible world. The role of the midwife is important here as a medium to bridge reasoning through these perceptions of the material world to what is not yet perceptible to be known (in Platonic idealism, the Forms). Here, arguably, Plato is cautious of the outright knowledge claims the Sophists will espouse without the proper methodological examination of them. Ontologically, Platonic idealism can be concerned with perception and for Plato, our perception of the Eternal is extremely limited: we only get glimpses at it through the “copies” of the Forms in our sensory world.

In Theaetetus, Socrates asserts himself to be and act as a barren psychic midwife, stating the nature of his intellectual position without accounting for its provenance. Yet to be “barren” midwife of the intellect, Socrates should be lacking the intellectually-productive properties that allow for his listeners to “birth” these ideas. Rather, the ultimate originator of the idea is none other than Socrates himself (Giannopoulou). Socrates is the one endowing them with a particular mental disposition and allowing them to “come to life” or disappear as he pleases through his method. Due to this, Socratic midwifery becomes a bit more rhetorical on Plato’s part; showing a more ideal methodology for “teachers” to examine arguments with their listeners, yet avoiding any knowledge claims to set Socratic method apart from the popular Sophistry of the time. Though in the Meno, Socrates says there need be no teachers and students due to learning being recollection, Plato arguably knew there would be the need for a teacher, just one who is more “wise” and less close to the Poets that Sophists were (Plato). Plato, the cute idealist and lover of reasoning he was, likely wanted to reform the way discourse under the Sophists was occurring and show that if teaching were necessary, there needed to be a tractable method.

-A

References

Giannopoulou, Zina. Plato’s Theaetetus as a Second Apology. Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Plato, et al. Meno. Focus, an Imprint of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2021. 

Plato, et al. Phaedo. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Plato. Theaetetus. Macmillan, 1986.