Maiêutics is the name of Socrates' method: asking questions that help the other to give birth to the truth they already carried within themselves. The word comes from the Greek maieutiké, the art of midwifery.
The art of the midwife
The choice of the word is not by chance. Sócrates' mother was a midwife, and he said he practiced the same job in terms of ideas. Just as the midwife does not generate the child, but creates the conditions for it to come into the world, Socrates did not impose conclusions: he asked questions, and the truth was born in the interlocutor himself.
How it works
The method attacks doxa, the unfounded opinion that dresses up with the authority of knowledge. Socrates asked precise, persistent, apparently innocent questions, which dismantled layer by layer the certainties that the interlocutor carried without ever having examined them. The result was not humiliation, but liberation: the person realized that they did not know what they thought they knew, and only then could they truly begin to search.
Therefore, the result of maieutics depended entirely on the quality of the questions. A well-formulated question is what elicits the answer. Hence the Socratic thesis: the question is always superior to the answer, just as the cause is superior to the effect.
Why it still matters
In a culture obsessed with quick answers, maieutics reminds us that thinking is not about receiving information, it is about letting ourselves be questioned. The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance: it is ignorance that does not recognize itself as such. Maieutics is the labor that undoes it.
Socrates' method is alive in any serious reading. See how it operates dialogue Meno, by Plato, and in our recommended readings.
Readings from Nous
Read the classics in depth
Our list of more than 130 recommended books, commented and organized by theme, so you don't read in the dark.
See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is maieutics?
It is the Socratic method of asking precise questions to help the interlocutor to give birth, for himself, to the truth he already carried within. The word comes from the Greek maieutiké, the art of midwifery.
Why did Socrates call his method the midwife's art?
Because his mother was a midwife. Just as the midwife does not generate the child, but creates the conditions for birth, Socrates did not impose conclusions: he asked questions that brought the truth to light.
Does maieutics serve to humiliate others?
No. It frees the interlocutor from a false certainty that prevented him from searching. Only those who recognize that they haven't found it yet begin to truly search.
Continue: What is the philosophical attitude · Plato's dialogue Meno · Living the questions, by Rilke
Home class (Community NousCast): O maior inimigo da sua inteligência