Contextualizing Midwifery: Theaet. 149a-151d

The famous passage on “Socratic midwifery” at Theaet. 149a-151 has long puzzled scholars. The vast majority of scholars attributes midwifery to the historical Socrates (Taylor 1911, Burnet 1916, Cornford 1935, Humbert 1967, Guthrie 1971, Tarrant 1988, Cianci 2018), while others think that the passage at Theaet. 149a-151 should be taken as reflecting a development of Plato’s mature thought, given its (implicit and/or explicit) implications with the theory of recollection outlined in the Meno (Burnyeat 1977, Vlastos 1994, Sedley 2004). It is a well-known fact that “Socratic midwifery” plays a key role in Theaetetus (see not only 149a-151e, but also 157c-d, 160e-161b, 161e, 184b, 210b), but seems to be absent from the rest of the Platonic corpus. The metaphor of pregnancy occurs in another famous passage of Plato, Symp. 206d-207a. But Socrates plays here no specific role as a midwife; and birth is conceived as “immortal” and “in beauty”. The sole fact that Diotima imparts this view to Socrates makes it likely that here Plato is putting forward his own idea of education, in a deliberate attempt to sift it from Socrates’ practice of elenchus. In my paper, I claim that such an attempt can be also found in the passage Theaet. 149a-151d, and that, consequently, “Socratic Midwifery” should be understood as a concept Plato devises to distance himself from both Socrates and the Socratics of his own generation.