INTELLECTUAL MIDWIFERY by SOCRATES

and
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE by PLATO
 Submitted by: Mark John Carlo B. Mayuga
ARC 501
Submitted to: Mrs. Anna Editha A. Ileto

INTELLECTUAL MIDWIFERY
SOCRATES

Socratic technique, otherwise called maieutics, strategy for elenchus, elenctic technique,
or Socratic debate, is named after the traditional Greek scholar Socrates. Elenchus is a type of
helpful contentious discourse between people, in light of requesting that and noting questions
fortify basic considering and to draw out thoughts and fundamental assumptions. It is an
argumentative strategy, frequently including a discourse in which the defense of one point of view
is addressed; one member may lead another to repudiate themselves somehow, in this manner
debilitating the defender's point. This strategy is presented by Socrates in Plato's Theaetetus as
midwifery (maieutics) in light of the fact that it is utilized to bring out definitions understood in
the questioners' convictions, or to enable them to promote their knowledge and understanding.

The Socratic technique is a strategy for theory disposal, in that better speculations are found
by relentlessly distinguishing and eliminating those that prompt contradictions. The Socratic
strategy scans for general, ordinarily held facts that shape convictions, and investigates them to
decide their consistency with different convictions. The fundamental shape is a progression of
inquiries planned as trial of rationale and actuality proposed to enable a man or gathering to find
their convictions about some point, investigating the definitions or logoi (solitary logos), looking
to describe the general qualities shared by different specific examples. Aristotle credited to
Socrates the revelation of the strategy for definition and enlistment, which he viewed as the
embodiment of the logical technique.

ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

 PLATO

2400 years ago one of the historys most famous thinker, Plato, said life is like being
chained up in a cave, forced to watch in shadows flitting across a stone wall. He envisioned the
ideal society by examining concepts like Justice, Truth and Beauty.
In the allegory, a group of prisoners have been confined in a cavern since birth with their
backs to the entrance unable to turn their heads and with no knowledge of the outside world.
Occasionally however, people and other things pass by the cave opening, casting shadows and
echoes unto the wall the captives face. The prisoners named and classified these illusions,
believing theyre perceiving actual entities. Suddenly, one prisoner is freed and brought outside
for the first time. The light hurts his eyes and he finds a new environment disorienting. When told
that the things around him are real, he cannot believe it. But gradually, his eyes adjust until he can
look at reflections in the water, at objects directly and finally at the sun. The prisoner returns to
the cave to share his discovery, but he is no longer used to the darkness and has a hard time seeing
the shadows on the wall. The other prisoners think the journey has made him stupid and blind, and
violently resist any attempts to free them.
Plato introduces this passage as an analogy of what its like to be a philosopher trying to
educate the public. Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance but hostile to anyone
who points it out. With the cave parable, Plato may be arguing that the masses are too stubborn
and ignorant to govern themselves. But the allegory has captured imaginations for 2400 years
because it can be read in far more ways. Importantly, the allegory is connected to the theory of
forms, developed in Platos other dialogues. Like shadows on the wall, things in the Physical world
are flawed reflections of ideal forms. In this way, the cave leads to many fundamental questions
including the origin of knowledge, the problem of representation and the nature of reality itself.
The theory illustrates the problem of grouping concrete things under abstract terms. Others still
wonder whether we can really know that the things outside the cave are any more real than the
shadows.