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Socrates dictates a complete textbook of logical fallacies to the bewildered Theaetetus. When Socrates tells the child that he (Socrates) will later be smaller without losing an inch because Theaetetus will have grown relative to him, the child complains of dizziness [a]. In an often quoted line, Socrates says with delight that "wonder ...
Socrates, rather than simply listing reasons as Lysias had done, begins by explaining that while all men desire beauty, some are in love and some are not. We are all ruled, he says, by two principles: one is our inborn desire for pleasure, and the other is our acquired judgment that pursues what is best (237d).
In this way Socrates tries to show the way to real wisdom. One of his most famous statements in that regard is "The unexamined life is not worth living." This philosophical questioning is known as the Socratic method. Strictly speaking, the term Socratic dialogue refers to works in which Socrates is a character.
The first application of the phrase to self-knowledge in the modern sense occurs in Plato's Phaedrus, in which Socrates says that he has no leisure to investigate the truth behind common mythological beliefs while he has not yet discovered the truth about his own nature.
One example is when he denies having knowledge. Vlastos suggests that Socrates is being ironic when he says he has no knowledge (where "knowledge" means a lower form of cognition); while, according to another sense of "knowledge", Socrates is serious when he says he has no knowledge of ethical matters.
Socrates says he dreams, however, of a world in which no one pretends to be something he is not (173a-d). In the end, Socrates appears to have recruited a new disciple to philosophy: Charmides says he is willing to be charmed every day by Socrates, and Critias tells the boy that if he is willing to do this, he will have proof of his temperance.
One such dialogue of Plato's that utilized the Socratic Method was the Meno. The participants were Socrates, Meno, Anytus, and one of Meno's slave boys. The dialogue begins with Meno asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught. Socrates responds by stating that he does not know the definition of virtue.
Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one's ignorance. Guthrie writes, "[Socrates] was accustomed to say that he did not himself know anything, and that the only way in which he was wiser than other men was that he was conscious of his own ...