Socratic irony

Feigned ignorance in order to provoke discussion and advance the search for truth. Practiced by Socrates in the [Platonic Dialogs]?, this term has become widely used to describe the practices of other philosophers who's method is analogically similar to that of Socrates in the dialogs.

For example, it is often said that Kierkegaard, practiced Socratic irony, because his major aesthetic works were written under a variety of pseudonyms, and it is clear that Kierkigaard would not agree with all the positions taken by these pseudoauthors. In fact, the pseudoauthors sometimes even comment on one another, but Kierkegaard's work contains no real dialogs.