Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T17:26:16.640Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Socratic Midwifery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Julius Tomin
Julius Tomin
Affiliation:
Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Plato's Theaetetus Socrates is portrayed as a midwife of the intellect. The comparison of Socratic questioning to midwifery had until recently been commonly attributed to Socrates himself. In 1977 M. F. Burnyeat published Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration, which transformed the way in which the dialogue has since been perceived. The author maintains that the midwife comparison is in no sense to be attributed to the historical Socrates.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 97 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Robinson, R., Plato's Earlier Dialectic(Oxford, 1953), pp. 83–4.Google Scholar

2 Ryle, G., Plato's Progress(Cambridge, 1966), pp. 119–21.Google Scholar

3 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 24 (1977), 16 n. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Examples in Epistemology: Socrates, Theaetetus and G.E.Moore’, Philosophy 52 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Examples in Epistemology’, op. cit., 381.Google Scholar

6 Geach, P.T.,‘Plato's Euthyphro,An Analysis and Commentary’, Monist 50 (1966), 372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books(1958), p. 20. Quoted from Burnyeat,‘Examples in Epistemology’, op. cit. n. 4, 383.Google Scholar

8 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Examples in Epistemology’, op. cit., 398.Google Scholar

9 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, op. cit., 7.Google Scholar

10 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, loc. cit.Google Scholar

11 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, loc. cit.; n. 3, p. 14Google Scholar

12 In quoting from the TheaetetusI follow McDowell's translation in the Clarendon Plato Series.

13 Plato, Meno80a—c.

14 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, op. cit., 14 n. 4.Google Scholar

15 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, op. cit., 11 and n. 17, p. 16.Google Scholar

16 Burnyeat, M.F.,‘Socratic Midwifery’, op. cit, 14 n. 4.Google Scholar

17 Dover, K.J.,‘The Date of Plato's Symposium’, Phronesis 10(1965), 2–20, at p. 15; Thesleff H., ‘The Interrelation and Date of the Symposiaof Plato and Xenophon’. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 25 (1978), 168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Burnyeat, M.F., loc. cit.Google Scholar

19 Burnyeat, M.F., loc. cit.Google Scholar

20 Tr. according to H. M. Hubbell's tr. of Cicero, De Inventione51, 52, and G. C. Field's tr.of the fr. in Plato and his Contemporaries(1930), p. 151; cf. schol. of Victorinus ad. Cic. loc.

21 H. Diels, ‘Ueber das dritte Buch der Aristotelischen Rhetorik’, Abh. der Bert. Akad.(1886), 22.

22 Dittmar, H., Aeschines von Sphettos(Berlin, 1912), p. 283; cf. n. 1, p. 281.Google Scholar

23 Burnyeat, M.F., ‘Socratic Midwifery’, 13.Google Scholar

* I would like to express my gratitude to Bridget Hadaway for raising the English of my article to a level adequate to the subject discussed.