HKB
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Often appears with: tacitus · reason and the intellect · plato’s dialogues · logic, method, and demonstration · education and the training of the young · demosthenes
Usually: narrative (1) · wonder (1)
“The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the *intellectus sibi permissus*, the understanding which has made up all its bundles of associations under the guidance of popular phraseology.” John Stuart Mill, Autobiography · insight
Mill continues reading Latin and Greek authors with his father—Demosthenes, Tacitus, Juvenal, Quintilian, and Plato—arguing that Plato’s Socratic method trains precise thinking via elenchus and distinctions.
opposite conclusion, scarcely even attempting to confute the reasonings of their antagonists; and, therefore, at the utmost, leaving the question, as far as it depends on argument, a balanced one. During this time, the Latin and Greek books which I continued to read with my father were chiefly such as were worth studying, not for the language merely, but also for the thoughts. This included much of the orators, and …