У статті з’ясовано етичний потенціал майєвтики як версії діалектичного
методу, представленого Сократом в якості мистецтва ведення філософської бесіди таким чином, щоб у зіткненні різних точок зору виявити
істину.
The paper deals with the clarifying of ethical potential of maieutics as an
educational method in the Western culture. The work with primary sources of
Xenophon and Plato is mediated by their reception by the history of prominent
researchers of the ancient philosophy, such as A. F. Losev, V. F. Asmus,
F. Kh. Kessidyi and others. Elaborated by Socrates, the method of maieutics is
exposed in prospects of its content and form (methodology). Maieutics makes
possible the comprehension of the key issues for virtue life while discussing
matters from real moral practice (virtue, goodness, justice, bravery, courage). The
author mentions that Xenophon and Plato as disciples of Socrates give us the
relevant primary sources about Socrates’ life, activity and method, although they
represent them in different ways. Xenophon outlines the image of Socrates as a
good-natured eccentric man, while striving for Socrates’ posthumous rehabilitation
among Athenians. Instead of this, Plato represents Socrates as a rebel, who confused young people: he put a question, demonstrated its complexity, and after
that he ended up in trouble. Thereafter Socrates’ interlocutor himself collapsed into
embarrassment, without a ready recipe of a "right answer" from Socrates, who saw
his mission to help an interlocutor to comprehend oneself, to recollect one’s own
hidden knowledge and to fix it. The author argues that maieutics is a version of a
dialectical method that was represented by Socrates as a technique for twisting a
discussion for comprehension of the truth in a clash of different opinions. Common
features (humanistic themes, teaching personal and public virtues) and differences
(eristic and rhetoric instead of maieutics / dialectics, "ascholia" instead of "schola") of
sophists’ and Socrates’ activities are outlined in the paper. The author concludes,
that it was Antiquity when and where maieutics had acquired features of invariance,
and entered the "great time" of culture as inevitable part of educational process.
