“Socratic method” has now come into general usage as a name for any

educational strategy that involves cross-examination of students by

their teacher. However, the method used by Socrates in the
conversations re-created by Plato follows a more specific pattern:
Socrates describes himself not as a teacher but as an ignorant inquirer,
and the series of questions he asks are designed to show that the
principal question he raises (for example, “What is piety?”) is one to
which his interlocutor has no adequate answer. Typically, the
interlocutor is led, by a series of supplementary questions, to see that
he must withdraw the answer he at first gave to Socrates’ principal
question, because that answer falls afoul of the other answers he has
given. The method employed by Socrates, in other words, is a strategy
for showing that the interlocutor’s several answers do not fit together
as a group, thus revealing to the interlocutor his own poor grasp of the
concepts under discussion. (Euthyphro, for example, in the dialogue
named after him, having been asked what piety is, replies that it is
whatever is “dear to the gods.” Socrates continues to probe, and the
ensuing give-and-take can be summarized as follows: Socrates: Are
piety and impiety opposites? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: Are the gods in
disagreement with each other about what is good, what is just, and so
on? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: So the very same actions are loved by
some gods and hated by others? Euthyphro: Yes. Socrates: So those
same actions are both pious and impious? Euthyphro: Yes.) The
interlocutor, having been refuted by means of premises he himself has
agreed to, is free to propose a new answer to Socrates’ principal
question; or another conversational partner, who has been listening to
the preceding dialogue, is allowed to take his place. But although the
new answers proposed to Socrates’ principal question avoid the errors
revealed in the preceding cross-examination, fresh difficulties are
uncovered, and in the end the “ignorance” of Socrates is revealed as a
kind of wisdom, whereas the interlocutors are implicitly criticized for
failing to recognize their ignorance.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that, because Socrates

professes ignorance about certain questions, he suspends judgment
about all matters whatsoever. On the contrary, he has some ethical
convictions about which he is completely confident. As he tells his
judges in his defense speech: human wisdom begins with the
recognition of one’s own ignorance; the unexamined life is not worth
living; ethical virtue is the only thing that matters; and a good human
being cannot be harmed (because whatever misfortune he may suffer,
including poverty, physical injury, and even death, his virtue will
remain intact). But Socrates is painfully aware that his insights into
these matters leave many of the most important ethical questions
unanswered. It is left to his student Plato, using the Socratic method
as a starting point and ranging over subjects that Socrates neglected,
to offer positive answers to these questions.

Aristotle

Another important source of information about the historical Socrates

—Aristotle—provides further evidence for this way of distinguishing
between the philosophies of Socrates and Plato. In 367, some 30 years
after the death of Socrates, Aristotle (who was then 17 years old)
moved to Athens in order to study at Plato’s school, called the
Academy. It is difficult to believe that, during his 20 years as a
member of that society, Aristotle had no conversations about Socrates
with Plato and others who had been personally acquainted with him.
There is good reason, then, to suppose that the historical information
offered about Socrates in Aristotle’s philosophical writings are based
on those conversations. What Aristotle tells his readers is that Socrates
asked questions but gave no replies, because he lacked knowledge;
that he sought definitions of the virtues; and that he was occupied with
ethical matters and not with questions about the natural world. This is
the portrait of Socrates that Plato’s writings, judiciously used, give us.
The fact that it is confirmed by Aristotle is all the more reason to
accept it.