Socratic Irony and Argumentation

Timo Airaksinen

doi:10.1007/s10503-021-09556-0

Abstract

Socratic irony can be understood independently of the immortal heroics of Plato’s Socrates. We need a systematic account and criticism of it both as a debate-winning strategy of argumentation and teaching method. The Speaker introduces an issue pretending to be at a lower intellectual level than her co-debaters, or Participants. An Audience looks over and evaluates the results. How is it possible that the Speaker like Socrates is, consistently, in the winning position? The situation is ironic because the Participants fight from a losing position but realize it too late. Socratic irony compares with divine irony: divine irony is a subtype of Socratic irony since you lose when you challenge gods. Socratic irony is also, prima facie, a subtype of dramatic irony when the Audience knows more than the Participants on the stage. We must distinguish between the ideal and realistic elements of Socratic Irony. The very idea of Socratic irony looks idealized, or it is an ideal case, which explains the Speaker’s consistently winning position. In real life, the debate must be rigged, or the Dutch Book argument applies to the Participants, if the Speaker is so successful.

Highlights

Introduction to Socratic IronyThe idea of irony entails that the surface sentence meaning and the deeper meaning are not the same
SI) involves Participants who have a preassigned losing role in the debate against the Speaker; they do not know they cannot win. This irony is different from the dictionary definition that focuses on the initial moves in a debate
The Participants are on the stage together with the Speaker under the gaze of the Audience. Because they know more than some characters on the stage, we have here a straightforward example of dramatic irony: the Audience knows, just like Plato’s readers, that the unsuspecting Participants will lose the debate against the Speaker

Summary

Introduction to Socratic Irony

The idea of irony entails that the surface sentence meaning and the deeper meaning are not the same. SI) involves Participants who have a preassigned losing role in the debate against the Speaker; they do not know they cannot win. This irony is different from the dictionary definition that focuses on the initial moves in a debate. Type-B irony follows from the systematic losing role of the Participants. We discuss a method of argumentation that utilizes SI: it contains two parts: (A) the speaker pretends she does not know and that (B) leads to her success.2 In this way, we identify a Socratic method of debating and arguing based on SI. The conclusion is that Socrates cannot be a real-life person but an ideal type of debater. He was supposed to be the personification of virtue, like the “Good Bishop,” George Berkeley, in his time.

Self‐Knowledge and Erroneous Beliefs

Dramatic Irony

Argumentative Know‐How and Educational Effort

Divine Irony