Themenaufsatz 12 – jahrgang 9 – ausgabe 1 - 2013 Selling Socrates, or the Unexamined Life and the University Marije Altorf St. Mary’s University College, London E-Mail: marije.altorf@smuc.ac.uk Abstract This article starts from Martha C. Nussbaum’s claim that the dominant understanding of (higher) education as a commercial undertaking needs to be countered by Socratic pedagogy. Nussbaum makes this claim both in her recent Not for Profit (2010) and her earlier Cultivating Humanity (1997). For her, the future of democracies is at stake. Nussbaum’s claim starts an investigation into my own teaching practice at an Institute of Higher Education in the United Kingdom. First, I consider some of the consequences of the marketisation of higher education for this practice. Secondly, I consider a particular practice of Socratic dialogue, namely that developed by the German philosopher and mathematician Leonard Nelson and others. I will conclude that this form of Socratic Dialogue indeed provides an alternative to the growing marketisation of Higher Education, but questions Nussbaum’s confidence in Socratic Dialogue as a tool for promoting democracy. I will also argue why it is essential, as well as difficult, to introduce practice into this debate. Schlüsselwörter Socratic Dialogue, Higher Education, Leonard Nelson, Marketisation, Martha C. Nussbaum altorf.indd 12 9/10/13 15:30 PM