What role(s) does irony play in Socrates' method ?

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Portraying and praising Socrates, Alcibiades in the Symposium rebukes Socrates for his behaviour towards him. When Socrates was offered Alcibiades' body, he notably rejected Alcibiades' advances with ?characteristic irony? (218e). Here, Alcibiades uses the adjective ?characteristic? to qualify the irony of Socrates. Irony is indeed one of the most well-known aspect of Socrates' character. The name ?Socrates? is intimately linked with the notion of irony. Thereby when a rhetorician talks about this concept of irony and wants to show that it has not only a role in rhetoric art but also that ?a whole life may be filled with irony?, he cites the life of Socrates as an example (Quintilian IX, 2, 46). Now Socrates, as a philosopher, dedicaded his whole life to philosophy, that is to say to the quest of truth. Socrates' aim was not to find the truth but to look for it and he spent his time told young people in the streets of Athens about typical philosophical subjects (what is courage, what is virtue,...). To reach the truth Socrates used a very special method called elenchus which was basically a question and answer method: Socrates interrogated someone and waited for his answer. Each given answer was examined by Socrates who made apparent the weakness of the response. Each time he showed how inconsistent the answer was. In summary, Socrates was famous particularly for his irony and as a philosopher he spent his time pursuing the truth by using a peculiar method. The question is also : what role(s) does irony play in Socrates' method ? Does his use of irony undermine his claim, for example in Apology 17b, to frankness of speech (parrhesia) ?

Extraits

[...] Being ironical about the weather has a stronger effect on the audience than just saying weather is bad”. People face a contradiction between what is said ( weather is beautiful” ) and what is reality ( the rain This contradiction surprises them and leads them to be more sensitive to what I say. But there is another kind of irony, an insincere one which is the fruit of boastfulness and contempt of the audience. In this case, using irony is an attempt to show one's superiority. [...]

[...] As aporetic, dialogues always end without any statement. Since the reader becomes frustrated, since he wants to be able to assert “virtue is such and “beauty is such and such” he goes on by himself the questioning started with Socrates. This function is strongly linked with the latter. It is because listeners give up their knowledge that they can discover the truth. In conclusion, we have seen in a first part that Socrates' irony cannot be a way for him to manifest his superiority on his interlocutors because irony is not simply a way to mean the contrary of what we say but also to deliver a talk on arcane subjects. [...]

[...] Question : What role(s) does irony play in Socrates' method ? Does his use of irony undermine his claim for example in Apology 17b, to frankness of speech ( parrhesia ) ? Portraying and praising Socrates, Alcibiades in the Symposium rebukes Socrates for his behaviour towards him. When Socrates was offered Alcibiades' body, he notably rejected Alcibiades' advances with “characteristic irony” ( 218e Here, Alcibiades uses the adjective “characteristic” to qualify the irony of Socrates. Irony is indeed one of the most well-known aspect of Socrates' character. [...]

[...] The question is also : what role(s) does irony play in Socrates' method ? Does his use of irony undermine his claim, for example in Apology 17b, to frankness of speech ( parrhesia ) ? What is irony ? The most commonly accepted definition of irony is the one Quintilian delivered as early as the first century : irony is a trope or a figure which is “franker in its meaning, and, despite the fact that it implies something other than it says, makes no pretence about ( Quintillian, X Irony is thereby a literary device which makes the listener understand the contrary of what is said. [...]

[...] In Socrates irony is incarnated an "infinite negativity" - a force that undermines all received opinion to leave Socrates' interlocutors bewildered - and responsible for their own thoughts and values. That is, Socratic irony forces his interlocutors to reflect on themselves, to distance themselves critically from their immediate beliefs and values. Socrates' irony has therefore a paradoxical status : it is negativity of truth ( since irony says the opposite of what is meant ) but allows to reach truth. Accordingly, Socrates by using irony is a parrhesiastic figure. What is “parrhesia” ? [...]