Socrates called his questioning technique a kind of midwifery
Socrates claimed he taught nothing. Instead he asked question after question until his partner either reached a conclusion unaided or tangled themselves in contradiction and admitted they did not know. He compared the job to a midwife's: helping others give birth to ideas they already carried.
The method took shape as an alternative to the sophists, paid teachers of the late 5th century BC who used rhetoric to impress and persuade. According to the traditional story, Socrates' old friend Chaerephon asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates and was told no one was. Puzzled, Socrates set out to test the claim by questioning his fellow Athenians. Not everyone credited him with the invention: the biographer Diogenes Laërtius attributed the method to Protagoras.
Its core move is the elenchus, Greek for cross-examination or refutation. Starting from beliefs someone already holds, Socrates probes whether they fit together and square with other things the person believes. In Plato's early dialogues, such as Euthyphro and Ion, the targets are concepts like piety, courage, temperance and justice, and the conversation usually ends in aporia, a state of baffled uncertainty. Socrates concluded that he was wiser only because he knew his own ignorance, while others mistook theirs for knowledge. In Theaetetus he gives the midwife image, which is where the English word maieutic comes from.
The method was better at dismantling than building. Socrates seldom used it to assemble a consistent theory and often reached for myths and allegories instead. In the Parmenides, the older philosopher turns the same questioning on the theory of forms that Socrates defends, exposing its weaknesses. Plato's later dialogues moved towards a different technique he called dialectic, and questioning and myth came to be seen as complementary, left-hand and right-hand paths towards wisdom.
The stakes, for Socrates, were moral. He held that caring for the soul mattered more than wealth, arguing that goodness produces riches rather than the other way round, and insisted an unexamined life is not worth living. Adapted versions of his approach are still used in many kinds of teaching.
Source: Socratic method
