WAS SOCRATES A TEACHER?
I. He does not claim to be a teacher:
A. In the Apology, he says he was never a teacher of anyone, therefore can’t be responsible for the character and behavior of his listeners. Far from having anything to teach, he’s trying to find a good man that may also recognize him as good.. He’s engaged in a search.
II. His program is not that of a “teacher”
A. Not a clever device to deceive, to win arguments, or to force others to disclose what he is unwilling to disclose
B. No, he does not simply transfer his knowledge to his student’s head
C. Teaching in other senses: engaging in elenetic argument with his students so that they may learn their own ignorance; and,
D. Allowing them to discover for themselves some justified true belief
III. His motives: Not that he doesn’t care that you know the truth, but he cares much more that if you are to come to the truth it must be by yourself and for yourself: moral autonomy
IV. NOTE: we don’t see any evidence of some student of his who became a better person from knowing him.
V. Can’t teach what he doesn’t claim to know:
A. Only time he makes a claim to know virtue is in the early dialogues
B. Distinguishes knowledge, which can be explained to others, from true beliefs. He does not avow knowledge of arête, just some true beliefs about some particular, limited examples of virtuous behavior
C. So, he couldn’t teach it, but he was an examplar
VI. Socrates never offered a positive program of morals, and also claimed that he did not know virtue.
VII. Alexander Nehamas
A. “Socrates disavows the role of moral teacher in all seriousness, and we must believe him when he says so.”
B. “Socrates offered to teach no one, since he believed he had nothing to teach. He did not even claim to provide an example for others…Socrates’ mode of life made others hope that if they lived as he did they would become like him.” His pursuit of the good may have been a good, not that he found it.