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You ask people hard questions. Then they kill you.

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    26 Comments

    1. Nate says:

      Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

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      November 22, 2009, 4:29 pm

    2. yankee says:

      I don’t think this is right at all. What you do is state the answer in the form of a question, and then your student says “Yes, Socrates.”

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      November 22, 2009, 4:40 pm

    3. Thales says:

      Also, the questioning is done in a symposium with lots of super strong wine with pulpy grape lees drunk out of large handled bowls, and many hetairai (really high class literary and musical prostitutes) present. So at least you have fun before you get killed.

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      November 22, 2009, 4:47 pm

    4. Mike McDougal says:

      Thales: and many hetairai (really high class literary and musical prostitutes) present. 

      Which law school is that?

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      November 22, 2009, 5:00 pm

    5. DjDiverDan says:

      Mike McDougal: Which law school is that? 

      With high priced prostitutes? All of them.

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      November 22, 2009, 5:04 pm

    6. Tom Ault says:

      No, no, no. Law school is where they teach you how to become a high-priced prostitute. It takes several years of practice to actually turn you into one.

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      November 22, 2009, 5:50 pm

    7. readery says:

      The only difference between that and what’s done in Oregon is that they don’t really ask any hard questions.

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      November 22, 2009, 6:39 pm

    8. corneille1640 says:

      I’m not sure that Socrates actually existed, at least not in the way that Plato and a handful of others depicted him. He (Socrates) seems just a literary character, an ancient and more sophisticated version of Slats Grubnik.

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      November 22, 2009, 6:39 pm

    9. readery says:

      The pharmacy, that is, not the law school.

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      November 22, 2009, 6:41 pm

    10. readery says:

      Socrates taught that the spoken word was supreme — that human interaction, not the written record thereof, is what is truly real. He refused to write down his own dialogues.

      Naturally we moderns wouldn’t think he would exist!

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      November 22, 2009, 6:43 pm

    11. Tom from RI says:

      I had Jim McElhaney for Evidence in law school. He would do oral, snap quizzes. He asked one student: “A woman’s mental competence is at issue. Is her out-of-court statement: ‘I am the Pope’ admissible?” The student respond, “yes.” “Right, now why?” The student paused and then said: “Because it’s an admission?”

      This slayed Prof. McElhaney in the proverbial sense.

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      November 22, 2009, 7:19 pm

    12. ChrisTS says:

      yankee: I don’t think this is right at all. What you do is state the answer in the form of a question, and then your student says “Yes, Socrates.” 

      Or, “Please, Socrates, can you explain this further?”

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      November 22, 2009, 10:00 pm

    13. EvilDave says:

      Technically he killed himself. He always had the option of banishment.

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      November 22, 2009, 11:39 pm

    14. D.O. says:

      How many law profs conduct classes by repeating “I know that I know nothing”?

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      November 23, 2009, 7:05 am

    15. greg says:

      You ask people hard questions. Then they kill you.

      The people or the questions?

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      November 23, 2009, 8:58 am

    16. Chris Newman says:

      I think the main reason Socratic Method doesn’t seem to work as well in law school as in Plato’s dialogues is that Plato got to draft the answers Socrates got as well as the questions.

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      November 23, 2009, 10:35 am

    17. Thales says:

      “corneille1640” Perhaps, but a) the execution of Socrates for charges that we would view as unacceptable in a liberal society (and the dark side of a purely democratic one) is a well-documented real event, no more in doubt than the assasination of Julius Caesar and b) in terms of his legacy and philosophy, why does it matter whether “Socrates” the Platonic dialogist was actually representative of Socrates the person, in the same way that it doesn’t matter whether a person actually named Shakespeare wrote the plays of Shakespeare?

      “EvilDave”: and it is telling about the centrality of a meaningful life within a society in his thought that he chose forced suicide rather than banishment.

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      November 23, 2009, 11:45 am

    18. ChrisTS says:

      EvilDave: Technically he killed himself. He always had the option of banishment. 

      What, and move to Thessaly? Hemlock was clearly preferable.

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      November 23, 2009, 12:54 pm

    19. Tweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The Really Traditional Socratic Method -- Topsy.com says:

      [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Peter Black, David Trahan. David Trahan said: HA! “The Really Traditional Socratic Method–You ask people hard questions. Then they kill you.” (cf. http://is.gd/523dI) [...]

      November 23, 2009, 3:08 pm

    20. WisdomOfTheAges says:

      Someone should have counseled Socrates that you can’t win your case in oral argument, but you can lose it....

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      November 23, 2009, 4:32 pm

    21. Logos kai Apokalupsis » The Traditional Socratic Method says:

      [...] From the Volokhs:  “You ask people hard questions. Then they kill you.” [...]

      November 23, 2009, 5:28 pm

    22. corneille1640 says:

      Thales,

      Point well taken, but I do get peeved when people say “Socrates said this” or “Socrates believed that” when in fact, it was (probably) Plato using Socrates as a character to explain his own views. Nothing wrong with Plato doing that, but it is Plato.

      Also, as I understand it, the charges used against Socrates were pretexts for his really problematic behavior in Athens after (during?) the Pelopponesian (sp.?) War. Of course, the charges are not the less repugnant for being pretexts.

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      November 23, 2009, 7:33 pm

    23. uberVU - social comments says:

      Social comments and analytics for this post...

      This post was mentioned on Twitter by PeterBlackQUT: eugene volokh: “the really traditional socratic method: you ask people hard questions. then they kill you” http://j.mp/50WPkj...

      November 23, 2009, 10:16 pm

    24. mtelleen says:

      Socrates would be thrilled that a post in his name is being tweeted. We may not know much about the real Socrates, but I think we can all agree he LOVED Twitter.

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      November 24, 2009, 9:11 am

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