Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each statement by whether it is a fair or unfair characterisation of the elenchus.
Groups: Fair characterisation · Unfair characterisation
- Socrates uses it to advance doctrines of his own
- It shows that confident people cannot say what they are doing
- It typically ends without a surviving definition
- It is purely destructive and achieves nothing
- It works from the interlocutor’s own beliefs
Hints
- The method never asserts a rival position of its own.
- Exposing unfounded confidence is a genuine achievement, not a failure.
Show the answer
Fair characterisation: It works from the interlocutor’s own beliefs, It typically ends without a surviving definition, It shows that confident people cannot say what they are doing
Unfair characterisation: It is purely destructive and achieves nothing, Socrates uses it to advance doctrines of his own
Why
The method is negative in form and not in value: exposing that confident people cannot justify what they do is a real result. And it advances no doctrine, which is what lets Socrates run it while disclaiming knowledge.
Practise Socrates
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Philosophy I is free to start.
More questions on Socrates
- Socrates was tried and executed in 399 BC. How many years ago was that, counting from the year 2000 AD?
- Why does Socrates conclude he is wiser than those who claim knowledge?
- The elenchus typically concludes in aporia rather than a positive definition. What follows from this outcome…
- Socrates held that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it.
- Arrange these events in the order they occurred.
- Which claims are attributed to Socrates?