SOURCE: "The Socratic Method," in Socratic Method and Critical Philosophy: Selected Essays, translated by Thomas K. Brown III, Yale University Press, 1949, pp. 1-40.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1922, Nelson discusses the Socratic method, defining it as "the art of teaching not philosophy but philosophizing, the art not of teaching about philosophers but of making philosophers of the students." Nelson goes on to offer examples of how the method works in practice and notes some difficulties of applying the Socratic method.

As a faithful disciple of Socrates and of his great successor Plato, I find it rather difficult to justify my acceptance of your invitation to talk to you about the Socratic method. You know the Socratic method as a method of teaching philosophy. But philosophy is different from other subjects of instruction; in Plato's own words: "It does not at all admit of...