Which Socrates?
The man everyone quotes came from two very different sources
Socrates wrote nothing. And yet he is one of the most quoted men in Western history. Every word attributed to him passed through someone else’s hand. That fact alone should give us pause when we invoke “Socratic questioning” as though its meaning were self-evident.
Two students left substantial accounts of the man: Plato and Xenophon. They knew the same person. They watched him work. What they recorded is so different that scholars have been arguing about which one got him right since Friedrich Schleiermacher published “The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher” in 1818 — arguing that Xenophon’s Socrates, decent and practical and morally instructive, would never have drawn Plato’s fascination or the Athenians’ death sentence. The debate has not been settled since.
Xenophon’s Socrates
Xenophon was a cavalry officer, a mercenary general, and a practical man in every sense. His Memorabilia reads like a defense brief and a conduct manual simultaneously. Socrates here advises on household management, military leadership, friendship, and professional competence. The conversations have destinations. Socrates asks, the interlocutor agrees at each step, a practical lesson lands at the end. Nobody goes home confused.
The divine sign operates accordingly. Xenophon is explicit at Memorabilia 4.8.1 that the daimonion (δαιμόνιον) “foretold both things that he should do and things he should not do.” At 1.1.4, Xenophon specifies that it issued positive guidance — directing action, not merely restraining it. Plato’s divine sign only said no. Xenophon’s also said yes — which is exactly what you’d expect from a man who spent his career deciding when to advance and when to retreat.
This is part of a pattern that runs through Xenophon’s other major works as well. His portrayal of Cyrus the Great in the Cyropaedia displays the same virtues as his Socrates: self-discipline (enkrateia, εγκράτεια), plain speaking, practical wisdom over theory, conventional piety. His biography of Agesilaus repeats the template. In the Anabasis, Xenophon writes about himself and describes a man who looks remarkably like his Socrates. The subjects change. The character does not. At some point you have to wonder whether Xenophon was writing biography or autobiography with other people’s names on it.
Plato’s Socrates
Plato’s early dialogues give us something structurally different. The method has a name: elenchus (ἔλεγχος), cross-examination. Socrates professes to know nothing. He asks what piety is, what courage is, what temperance is. Every definition offered gets dismantled — not by Socrates substituting a better one, but by showing that the person offering it is committed to things that contradict it. The dialogues end in aporia (ἀπορία): genuine puzzlement, no resolution. Euthyphro cannot define piety. Laches cannot define courage. Charmides cannot define temperance. As a therapeutic method, this would raise some eyebrows. As philosophy, Plato considered it the beginning of wisdom.
The daimonion here operates differently. At Apology 31c8-d4, Plato’s Socrates says precisely: the divine sign “turns me away from something I am about to do, but never encourages me to do anything.” It is exclusively apotreptic — restraining, never directing. That fits the elenctic practice: what drives Socrates forward is not divine instruction but philosophical obligation. The daimonion clears the path by blocking the wrong turns.
Plato’s Socrates also describes in the Apology (31c-32a) a deliberate withdrawal from conventional civic life. He did not seek office, did not pursue the active political career available to a man of his standing. At 28e, he compares himself to a soldier who holds his post regardless of the danger. At 30e, he compares himself to a gadfly on a horse — not directing the animal, but keeping it from going to sleep.
Two Different Relationships to the Examined Life
What separates these two figures is not just method. It is orientation.
Xenophon’s Socrates exemplifies a life of action organized by philosophical principle. He is useful, practical, embedded in the world. His self-mastery serves effective living. Philosophy is instrumental here: it makes the excellent man more excellent at what he already does.
Plato’s early Socrates exemplifies something closer to the contemplative life. The elenchus does not produce action. It produces the recognition that you do not yet know what you thought you knew — and that sitting with that recognition honestly is the beginning of wisdom. At Apology 38a, Socrates delivers the line that has echoed for twenty-five centuries: “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” He is not talking about examining your performance. He is talking about examining your assumptions.
These are not minor interpretive differences. They represent two genuinely distinct conceptions of what philosophy is for.
Where “Socratic Questioning” Actually Lives
When a teacher says she uses Socratic questioning, she means she asks questions that force students to examine their own assumptions, sit with uncertainty, and arrive at understanding through their own reasoning. She does not mean she asks leading questions until a student agrees with a pre-determined practical lesson.
The first is Plato. The second is Xenophon.
The method that became a cornerstone of Western pedagogy derives from Plato’s early dialogues — specifically from the elenchus that Xenophon’s Socrates never employs. Xenophon gave us a portrait of admirable character. Plato gave us a method.
The historical Socrates probably contained elements of both. But the Socrates who changed how we think about thinking — that one belongs to Plato.
Readers who want to explore how this division maps onto Plato's own psychology of the self can find that discussion here: The Divided Socrates