• rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    This is just the Socratic method. It’s like…the oldest formal rhetorical strategy.

    • abbenm@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I don’t think so? The Socratic method wasn’t necessarily a strategy intended to carefully persuade someone by bypassing psychological blockers. If anything, Socrates’ counterparts were often antagonized and angered by his questions because he exposed contradictions.

      I think the ethos behind it was that Socrates presumed he knew nothing, other people seemed like they knew things, so he asked them what they knew, since others were so bold as to make knowledge claims.