3/27/2019 Socrates as midwife

Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College
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Socrates as Midwife
Requirements

Weekly Schedule What in the heck was Socrates doing with his life?

Lectures Socrates regularly used two metaphors to describe what he considered his life-work to be. One
metaphor was that of the gadfly, the horsefly that stings the intellectually and morally sluggish
citizens of Athens with his questioning. "For Athens is a great and noble steed that is tardy in its
Research Project
motions," and needs someone to sting it to life, he says.
Study Questions The other metaphor he uses to describe his work is that of the midwife who helps others give birth
to the wisdom that is in them. He says it thus, in The Theaetetus , 150 b-c
Discussion Qs
My art of midwifery is in general like theirs [real midwives]; the only difference is that
Self Evaluations my patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the
soul that is in travail of birth. And the highest point of my art is the power to prove by
Business Stuff every test whether the offspring of a young man's thought is a false phantom or
instinct with life and truth. I am so far like the midwife that I cannot myself give birth
to wisdom, and the common reproach is true, that, though I question others, I can
myself bring nothing to light because there is no wisdom in me. The reason is this.
Heaven (Jowett: "the god") constrains me to serve as a midwife, but has debarred
me from giving birth. So of myself I have no sort of wisdom, nor has any discovery
ever been born to me as the child of my soul. Those who frequent my company at
first appear, some of them, quite unintelligent, but, as we go further with our
discussions, all who are favored by heaven make progress at a rate that seems
surprising to others as well as to themselves, although it is clear that they have
never learned anything from me. The many admirable truths they bring to birth have
been discovered by themselves from within. But the delivery is heaven's work and
mine.

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