Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
elench . - noun A genus of gastropods.
- noun A genus of Strepsiptera.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Same as
elench .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun rhetoric A technique of
argument associated with Socrates wherein the arguer asks theinterlocutor to agree with a series ofpremises andconclusions , ending with the arguer's intended point.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In the dialogues of this group, the elenchus is a negative instrument, but in the Gorgias Socrates seems to use it in support of his bedrock principle.
Plato's Shorter Ethical Works Woodruff, Paul 2005
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Alexandri quod fertur in Aristotelis Sophisticos elenchus commentarium, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 2.3,
Byzantine Philosophy Ierodiakonou, Katerina 2008
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The elenchus questions our reasons, typically by revealing an inconsistency in our accounts of why we believe what we do.
Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology Silverman, Allan 2008
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The desire to ensure irrefutability, perhaps the legacy of reflection on the Socratic elenchus, drives him to the conclusion that one really has recollected the Form only when one has become a metaphysician.
Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology Silverman, Allan 2008
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Socrates responds to Agathon's fancy speech about love with an elenchus, so that his emptiness, his lack of knowledge, flows into Agathon, destroying the wisdom of great beauty that had won his tragedy a first prize the day before (175e4-7).
Plato on Friendship and Eros Reeve, C. D. C. 2007
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However, he never explained what sort of education would make people wise and virtuous; his own method of interrogation – the elenchus – was hardly conducive to wisdom.
The Irrational 2007
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If they are not, they will be incoherent and the lover who employs them will find himself embroiled in a love story he does not understand, a love story whose incoherence the elenchus, or psychoanalysis, or just plain critical scrutiny will reveal.
Plato on Friendship and Eros Reeve, C. D. C. 2007
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What the elenchus needs if it is to satisfy rather than frustrate love, in other words, is the theory of Platonic Forms.
Plato on Friendship and Eros Reeve, C. D. C. 2007
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First off, "law professors" have an extremely loose definition of Socrates' elenchus his method.
Archive 2005-10-01 2005
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First off, "law professors" have an extremely loose definition of Socrates' elenchus his method.
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