Socratic Irony

Definition. Feigned ignorance deployed as an instrument — the questioner plays the fool so the expert can discover he is one.

Mechanism. The Greek eirōneia originally meant something close to sly dissembling; Socrates elevated it into method. The expectation is set by the pose (“I know nothing; teach me”); the reversal arrives when the expert’s answers, faithfully followed, dismantle themselves. The audience of this irony is the interlocutor — eventually.

Commonly confused with. Sealioning and bad-faith questioning. The test is the direction of the harvest: Socratic irony aims to leave the interlocutor knowing more (starting with the size of what they don’t). Its bad-faith twin aims only to exhaust.

Exemplars

• Socrates — the patent holder, and the form’s first casualty
• A Modest Proposal — a cousin: the feigned sincerity rather than feigned ignorance