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Topic: Elenchus

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Socratic method

Euthyphro

Elenchos

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	20th WCP: Socratic Paideia: How It Works and Why It So Often Fails
		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.
		Socrates' inquiry with Critias is particularly revealing of this second aspect of the elenchus, the relation of dialectic to the ideal of rationality and to the formation--or refusal of the formation--of the normative attitude of objectivity.
		In other words, the elenchus potentially involves the interlocutor in a rite of passage, confrontation with a self whose irrational attachments of appetite and ego are exposed and must be overcome for the interlocutor to progress in and through the cathartic element of the inquiry.
	www.bu.edu /wcp/Papers/Teac/TeacSchm.htm (3985 words)

	ELENCHUS
		'Elenchus' in the wider sense means examining a person with regard to a statement he has made, by putting to him questions calling for further statements, in the hope that they will determine the meaning and the truth-value of his first statement.
		Here the elenchus is explicitly subsumed under the general notion of education, and explicitly preferred to another form of education in words of the highest praise.
		The elenchus which Plato came to approve was a contest in which both parties openly admitted that the questioner was trying to refute and the answerer was trying not to be refuted.
	www.ditext.com /robinson/dia2.html (5105 words)

	Elenchos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Elenchos (Greek: ἔλεγχος, a cross-examination for the purpose of refutation), sometimes spelt 'elenchus', is the central technique of the Socratic method.
		In Plato's early dialogues, the elenchos is the technique Socrates uses to investigate, for example, the nature or definition of ethical concepts such as justice or virtue.
		The exact nature of the elenchos is subject to a great deal of debate, in particular concerning whether it is a positive method, leading to knowledge, or a negative method used solely to refute false claims to knowledge.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Elenchos (323 words)

	Bryn Mawr Classical Review 94.10.04
		The four essays previously published are: (1) "The Socratic Elenchus" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 [1983] 27-58); (2) "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge" (Philosophical Quarterly 35 [1985] 1-31); (3) "Is the 'Socratic Fallacy' Socratic" (Ancient Philosophy 10 [1990] 1-16); (4) "The Historical Socrates and Athenian Democracy" (Political Theory 11 [1983] 495-515).
		For by means of the elenchus Socrates can show that the contradictories of his "paradoxes" cannot be consistently maintained along with other true beliefs held by his interlocutors.
		It is surely not the case that elenchus is necessary to deduce analytic truths.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/1994/94.10.04.html (1371 words)

	The Sacred Fount in Plato's Cave (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-15)
		Socrates' only condition to the discussion is that it proceed, like almost all of his discourses, by elenchus: scrupulous cross-examination of all points relating to the interlocutor's truth-claim, with the attendant risk that, contradicted, the interlocutor must acknowledge his aporia and the refutation of his principles.
		It is by the elenchus that Socrates realizes in himself and others the Delphic wisdom that he is wisest who 'has recognized that in truth he is not worthy in respect of wisdom' (Apology 23e).
		The aim of the Socratic elenchus is not, as in the narrator's travesty of it, to debilitate.
	www.utpjournals.com /product/utq/713/713_furlani.html (5504 words)

	U of Vic Philosophy Student Union (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-15)
		If he is able to demonstrate that the slave is able to answer questions about which he has not received instruction, Socrates feels he has demonstrated that the slave already possessed knowledge of geometry, and by implication that all knowledge is known, if only lying dormant.
		Elenchus is key in pointing out our ignorance, and aporia is key to opening our minds to other possibilities.
		In doing so he demonstrated the inconsistencies in the beliefs his audience had and, in stoking their desire to need to know, he encouraged them to find a philosophy which is internally consistent.
	web.uvic.ca /philosophy/sophia/issues/Meyer.html (3156 words)

	Bryn Mawr Classical Review 96.6.6
		But unlike many interpreters, most notably the late Gregory Vlastos, Benson does not think that the elenchus as practiced in the early dialogues is thought by Socrates to establish those doctrines.
		Throughout Benson's analysis is careful and his overall argument well structured and ought to force the ongoing debate to a higher level of sophistication.
		William Charlton tackles logic and metaphysics in the later Plato ('Plato's Later Platonism') the central thrust of which is an analysis of predication and negation in the Sophist.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/1996/96.06.06.html (2200 words)

	Moral demands of good dialog (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-15)
		Elenchus, then, has as much to do with honesty, reasonableness, and courage as it does with logical acumen - the honesty to say what one really thinks, the reasonableness to admit what one does not know, and the courage to continue the investigation.
		This book argues that elenchus is central to Socratic philosophy and that only if we understand how elenchus places moral demands on questioner and respondent will that philosophy make sense.
		The purpose of elenchus is to facilitate discovery, but in a Socratic context, discovery is not a sudden flash of illumination; it is something which must be prepared for, something which the soul must earn.
	www.pioneer.net /~tkerns/religsite/dqsite/dq-moraldialog.html (636 words)

	Plato and Mathematics
		The elenchus or philosophical refutation became in ancient times already so much a part of the philosopher's method that it is very difficult for us to conceive it as a fresh new experimental mode of thought.
		This is the use and purpose of the elenchus in Plato, where we find it used over thirty times in all, and frequently in the earlier half of the work, most frequently in the early dialogs.
		In short, I maintain that the elenchus at its inception was a conscious transfer from the mode of mathematical argument to the mode of philosophical argument, that it was probably a stunning success, as the comparison of Socrates to the electric ray implies, but that it wore thin when heavily used.
	community.middlebury.edu /~harris/Philosophy/Plato.html (3120 words)

	Zappen "Socrates"
		As a method of discovery, the elenchus employs inductive arguments to refute, clarify, or support a universal definition (Gulley 14), usually for the purpose of demonstrating to the one who proffers the definition that he does not know what a particular virtue is and therefore cannot know how to live in accordance with it.
		As the traditional reading of this passage suggests, the elenchus is not only a method of discovering the truth or falsity of universal definitions via inductive arguments but also a method of persuasion, the purpose of which is to refute an opponent.
		Seeskin maintains that the elenchus is persuasive in the sense that it "is not aimed at a general audience but at the individual respondent: its purpose is to get him to change his mind" (24-25).
	www.rpi.edu /~zappenj/Publications/Texts/socrates.html (5955 words)

	SparkNotes: Charmides: Important Terms
		Elenchus - The elenchus is the primary method of Socratic philosophy.
		It proceeds by an intensive series of questions and refutations, and aims to lead the interviewee to conclude for himself that he does not know what he thought he knew (a state of uncertainty with regard to the topic at hand).
		The elenchus becomes the specific object of dispute at one point in the dialogue, when Critias accuses Socrates of being more concerned with refuting him than with advancing the discussion.
	www.sparknotes.com /philosophy/charmides/terms.html (400 words)

	PES Yearbook: 1998: Rob Reich, Confusion about the Socratic Method
		The elenchus lays at the heart of the Socratic method, for it was through refuting or cross-examining people that Socrates aimed to shame them into a recognition that their beliefs were false and in need of revision.
		The elenchus is a tool of refutation and establishes the inconsistency of the current claim of an interlocutor with an earlier claim.
		Two reasons: First, I agree that the elenchus serves only to test consistency and is incapable of justifying truth claims; Second, and more importantly, it is not that we should give up on the notion of truth, but rather that it should serve as a regulative ideal.
	www.ed.uiuc.edu /eps/pes-yearbook/1998/reich.html (5038 words)

	Classical Greek Rhetoric: 02/27/2005 - 03/05/2005
		From this angle, the elenchus appears to be “protreptic,” discourse that merely converts one to a philosophical way of life (162).
		Thomas Schmid describes elenchus as an opportunity for a right of passage for the interlocutor, a “confrontation with a self whose irrational attachments of appetite and ego are exposed and must be overcome for the interlocutor to progress” (247).
		From what we have gathered we can conclude that the purpose of the elenchus is to make the interlocutor aware of his ignorance and redirect him towards a virtuous life, beneficial to the soul and pleasing to the gods.
	spcm4210.blogspot.com /2005_02_27_spcm4210_archive.html (6951 words)

	Plato (427 -347 BC)
		Use of the elenchus is prominent in them as it is not, for example, in Republic (apart from book I, sometimes regarded as an early work subsequently reused as a preface to the main body of the dialogue).
		Both are refuted by further Socratic elenchus, and in each case the argument points to the difficulty of achieving an intellectualist account which is not effectively a definition of virtue in general as the simple knowledge of good and bad.
		They all present Socrates engaging in extended question and answer sessions, although only in Hippias is this an elenchus with real bite: in the other dialogues his principal interlocutors are boys with no considered positions of their own inviting refutation.
	www.muslimphilosophy.com /ip/rep/A088.htm (15005 words)

	Methodos, vol.29
		What is essential for the elenchus to suceed, however, is to lead the answerer to rethink and (frequently) abandon his initial moral belief p by himself, no matter what epistemic basis of the premises the questioner has.
		They argue that although a single elenchus can establish only the inconsistency of a set of beliefs, Socrates can claim to have established inductively the truth of not-p, because he has demonstrated through many elenctic examinations that p is a menber of different inconsistent sets of moral beliefs and cannnot consistently survive the elenchi.
		The inquiry in III 4 signifies that the virtue (the good) of man is not wholly included in that of citizen but can be thought of in itself independently, which might suggest how Aristotle thinks of the relation between the individual and the State.
	www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp /ancphil/methodos/methodos29.html (1473 words)

	ELENCHUS
		In an indirect elenchus the falsehood to which the refutand is shown to lead may be of any kind or sort whatever, provided that the answerer recognizes it to be a falsehood.
		Failing, thirdly, to distinguish the indirect elenchus which reduces the thesis to a self-contradiction from that which reduces it to another kind of falsehood, he habitually thought and wrote as if all elenchus consisted in reducing the thesis to a self-contradiction.
		The fact that every successful elenchus persuades the answerer to deny his former opinion, that is, to contradict it, made it easier for Plato to assume that every elenchus achieves this result by showing that the former opinion contradicts itself.
	www.ditext.com /robinson/dia3.html (4640 words)

	Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2002.07.05
		Neither elenchus nor examination, however, can do more than test for personal knowledge, so the claim in Gorgias that the elenchus can test the validity of propositions is, according to Tarrant, a Platonic rather than Socratic claim.
		More controversially, Benson actually seems to define an elenchus as an argument in which Socrates demands that the interlocutor states his firmly held beliefs, but he needs to consider the several cases where Socrates waives this demand and the normal Greek use of the term where no such constraint is involved.
		Gonzales uses Clitophon to argue that the elenchus essentially has a protreptic function, but that it does not point to anything beyond itself, since philosophy is not a means to the good but is itself the good.
	ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/2002/2002-07-05.html (1665 words)

	Socrates (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-15)
		It is a measure of the reverence that Plato felt for his former teacher that he kept Socrates central in all of his work, even after his philosophy had extended far beyond the scope of his mentor's.
		Sometimes called the dialectic, the elenchus is a cross-examination with the intention of amending or improving the beliefs of Socrates' or conversational partner.
		The important thing is that the interlocutor thought he knew, and by subjecting him to the elenchus Socrates has morally and intellectually improved him.
	www.stormpages.com /r/republicbk1/infoSocrates.txt (230 words)

	Scientific Activity - Elenchus fontium
		At the time of its establishment, the founders of the Commission thought it would be useful to prepare some instruments of work that would make possible the comparative study of European cities.
		One of the work topics was the preparation of the Elenchus fontium, an anthology of medieval sources to 1250, published separately by country or by groups of countries.
		Initially a few volumes were organized and published, but presently the initiative has been suspended because of the very high costs of publication, which does not have a market great enough to be able to amortize the editorial expenses.
	www.historiaurbium.org /english/elenchus_en.html (99 words)

	Higgins / SOCRATES' EFFECT/MENO'S AFFECT: SOCRATIC ELENCHUS AS KATHARTIC THERAPY
		By construing Socratic elenchus as a selfishly motivated, interpersonal side-effect of a more important intra-personal process, one rules out the possibility of seeing in these interpersonal encounters something of educational or therapeutic value.
		In this passage, the Stranger seems to be describing Socratic elenchus, and describing it as a educational process.
		Thus, we see that Socratic elenchus comprises a form of katharsis, but one quite different from the medical metaphor of purgation presented in the Sophist, one with important affinities to the Aristotelian theory of katharsis in tragedy.
	www.ed.uiuc.edu /eps/pes-yearbook/94_docs/HIGGINS.HTM (4370 words)

	InfoCore, Inc. - InfoCore News
		Elenchus Services Limited was formed 3 years ago to provide an independent service to businesses seeking to implement advanced systems, with a significant emphasis on secure systems.
		Elenchus Services seeks to ensure that all clients are provided with advice that is timely, relevant and directly related to the overall business needs and not just the technology that may be available at any time.
		The company works with a number of associates and affiliates to ensure that the best expertise is always brought to bear on a particular problem.
	www.info-core.com /news_031501.htm (342 words)

	Chapter One: Vlastos’ Argument
		Vlastos may be correct that the aim of elenchus was the knowledge of true and false, but this does not mean Socrates attained it.
		Plato had learnt in the past that the elenchus method did not aid in finding infallible knowledge, so why did he revert to it again.
		If we are searching for something it would seem that we are using the elenchus method, but Vlastos did not say that this was the case.
	oak.cats.ohiou.edu /~cr733888/MasterThesis3.htm (10139 words)

	Socrates Lecture Notes
		Elenchus, Elenchi, from elencho to disgrace, to put to shame, to dishonor; or to cross-examine, to refute.
		According to Richard Robinson, the difference between elenchus and eristic is that Socrates always starts with statements which the interloctor believes himself or to which he will assent.
		Soc-E is a philosophical populist using the elenchus on virtually everyone he meets, whereas Soc-M is a philosophical elitist who restricts his conversions to a few trusted and fawning disciples.
	www.class.uidaho.edu /ngier/soclec.htm (3421 words)

	Sorbiere, Samuel
		Title Elenchus motuum nuperorum in Anglia: or, A short historical account of the rise and progress of the late troubles in England.
		Motus compositi: or, The history of the composing the affairs of England by the restauration of K. Charles the Second, and the punishment of the regicides: and other principal occurents to the year 1669.
		BM Edited by Edward Almack from anonymous translation of Latin original Translation of: Elenchus motuum nuperorum in Anglia "This edition is limited to 320 copies for sale and 30 for presentation and review." "Note on the binding.
	www.geocities.com /paultabaka/sorbiere.html (3959 words)

	SparkNotes: Laches: Important Terms
		The elenchus is Socrates's primary means of deepening the wisdom of his students.
		By convincing other characters in an elenchus that they do not actually know the nature of something they thought they did, Socrates brings these characters closer to one single truth and grain of knowledge—namely, that they know nothing.
		At the conclusion of the dialogue, it is unanimously decided that Socrates will be chosen as an appropriate teacher for the children of Lysimachus and Melesias.
	www.sparknotes.com /philosophy/laches/terms.html (700 words)

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