These interlocutors who were known as providers of "education" were called sophists - meaning wise or knowledgeable persons. They worked for a fee, and would give lessons on any subject for which there was a demand, and for which they considered themselves qualified. But the main demand was for training in law and public speaking. Much of what I know about the sophists derives from Plato's writings that i have studied, and

The emphasis on questioning is closely bound up with skepticism, in that Socrates was some what of a skeptic. However, Socrates is always perfectly aware of this skepticism, as he always claims that by saying you know you know nothing, you are claiming to know at least one thing.

**In the Gorgias, where the concern is to distinguish philosophy and sophistic rhetoric, the focus is on the structure of the Socratic method as its function is to reveal inconsistent beliefs.

For Socrates, the core philosophical skill was that of dialogue or dialectic - the art of progressing towards the truth through question-and-answer discussion. Nowadays we tend to think of a dialogue as a non-confrontational discussion, in which two or more parties try to achieve a compromise. But Socrates's method was far from non-confrontational, and I don't believe that his objective was compromise. He used his questioning to test and destruct the accounts put forward by different protagonists, and the process could prove emotionally painful and humiliating. What Socrates did was to adapt the a model to the pursuit of truth. Plato was motivated to distance Socrates from the sophists because of their reputation for perverting the truth for the sake of winning the argument. But Socrates believed that the method was sound, provided that all participants co-operated in having the truth as their objective. - winning the argument would then be the same as arriving at the truth according to Socrates. With philosophical dialectic with regards to Socrates, : a dialogue where he portrays himself to be the only expert and the other participants are novices could be is as much a training session for him to practice this art of rhetoric as oppossed to searching for the truth; and this may be one of the reasons why it doesn't matter if the search happens to end inconclusively.

(ii) Because of the possibility of self-contradiction, the socratic method requires intellectual moderation, in the sense of humility before the truth, the willingness to admit that one was mistaken or that one's reasons fall short.

It is not so much that Socrates started out from particular cases, but that he started out from what other people said, whether what they said was a particular observation or a general principle. Depending on the circumstances, Socrates might try to t

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