Abstract

I emphasize four points: Socratic dialectic challenges the interlocutor not only to acquire the correct moral opinions, but to question and think for oneself and to develop one's own moral rationality; it involves anticipatory acts of several types of virtue: courage, moderation, and justice and concern for the common good as opposed to competition and jealousy; what is at stake is not only the topic of the particular exchange, but the opportunity for membership in a rational/educational community; and the fact that Socrates' interlocutors typically reject the opportunity for moral insight and personal growth he makes available to them explains why he cannot be said to possess a techne of moral education, and why he insists that virtue cannot be taught. The process of education through the elenchus is not a matter of correct instruction, but of rational elicitation, which must be responded to by personal choice. Thus Socrates' principles may represent not only beliefs he has tested over many years of dialogue, but also values he has come to through participation in elenctic inquiry, the idealized extension of norms required by and created in the practice of dialectic. Socratic education involves the interlocutor in the confrontation with a self whose irrational attachments of appetite and ego are exposed and must be overcome for the interlocutor to experience catharsis.