Diagram of the Socratic Method

(1) First, a question arises: e.g. Is is true that political justice is simply whatever is in the interest of the stronger, as Thrasymachus the Sophist maintains in Book I of the Republic?

(2) We begin by making relevant sense observations of examples of justice. A just doctor heals and improves the weaker man, the patient who is sick; a just teacher of horse handling teaches and improves the weaker man, the man who does not know how to handle horses; and so with other cases.

(3) We then make an inductive generalization on the basis of these examples (and this is inductive reasoning): it seems that justice is in the interest of the weaker rather than the stronger.

(4) The fourth step is understanding the necessity of this universal which we have arrived at, by understanding the reason for it: justice is always in the interest of the weaker because of what justice essentially is, by its own nature. In step three we know the fact; in step four we understand the reason for it.

(5) We can then proceed to the application of the universal to the particular by deduction. We apply our general principle to the specific example under discussion, political justice, by deductive reasoning: Since justice is in the interest of the weaker, not the stronger; and since political justice is a form of justice; therefore political justice too must be in the interest of the weaker, not the stronger.

*excerpted from SOCRATIC LOGIC, A LOGIC TEXT USING SOCRATIC METHOD, PLATONIC QUESTIONS, & ARISTOTELIAN PRINCIPLES, 3rd Edition, by Peter Kreeft, pp.211-212