Does socrates have a method the socratic secret dialectic

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Does SOCRATES

Have a Method?

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e d i t e d

G A R Y

Does

b y

A L A N

S C O T T

SOCRATES Have a Method?

Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Does Socrates have a method? : rethinking the elenchus / edited by Gary Alan Scott. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-271-02173-x (alk. paper) 1. Socrates. 2. Methodology—History. I. Scott, Gary Alan, 1952 – b318.m48 d64 2002 183 .2 — dc21 2001035790 Copyright © 2002 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48 –1992.

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CONTENTS

Abbreviations for Plato’s Dialogues

ix

Preface

xi

Gary Alan Scott Introduction

1

Gary Alan Scott Part One: Historical Origins of Socratic Method 1

Parmenidean Elenchos

19

James H. Lesher 2

Forensic Characteristics of Socratic Argumentation

36

Hayden W. Ausland 3

Elenchos and Exetasis: Capturing the Purpose of Socratic Interrogation

61

Harold Tarrant 4

Comments on Lesher, Ausland, and Tarrant

78

Charles M. Young Part Two: Reexamining Vlastos’s Analysis of “the Elenchus” 5

Variety of Socratic Elenchi

89

Michelle Carpenter and Ronald M. Polansky v

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Contents

6 Problems with Socratic Method

101

Hugh H. Benson 7 Elenctic Interpretation and the Delphic Oracle

114

Mark McPherran 8 The Socratic Elenchos?

145

Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith Part Three: Socratic Argumentation and Interrogation in Specific Dialogues A. Clitophon, Euthydemus, Lysis, Philebus 9 The Socratic Elenchus as Constructive Protreptic

161

Francisco J. Gonzalez 10 Humbling as Upbringing: The Ethical Dimension of the Elenchus in the Lysis

183

François Renaud 11 The (De)construction of Irrefutable Argument in Plato’s Philebus

199

P. Christopher Smith 12 Elenchos, Protreptic, and Platonic Philosophizing

217

Lloyd P. Gerson B. Four Interpretations of Elenchus in the Charmides 13 Socratic Dialectic in the Charmides

235

W. Thomas Schmid 14 The Elenchos in the Charmides, 162 –175

252

Gerald A. Press 15 Certainty and Consistency in the Socratic Elenchus John M. Carvalho

266

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Contents

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16 Questioning the Self: A Reaction to Carvalho, Press, and Schmid

281

Joanne B. Waugh About the Contributors

299

Works Cited

303

Index

319

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S FOR P L ATO ’ S D I A L O G U E S

Alc. i Alc. ii Ap. Charm.

Cl. Crat.

Crit.

Cri. Epi. Euthyd.

Euthyp.

Grg. Hipp.

Hi. Ma. Hi. Mi. La.

Alcibiades i (or Major) Alcibiades ii (or Minor) Apology of Socrates Charmides Clitophon Cratylus Critias Crito Epinomis Euthydemus Euthyphro Gorgias Hipparchus Hippias Major Hippias Minor Laches

Lov. Lys. Men. Min. Parm.

Phd. Phdr.

Phil.

Pol. Prot.

Rep. Soph.

Symp.

Thg. Tht. Tim.

ix

Lovers (or Rival Lovers) Lysis Menexenus Minos Parmenides Phaedo Phaedrus Philebus Statesman (or Politicus) Protagoras Republic Sophist Symposium Theages Theaetetus Timaeus

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PREFACE

This book grew out of a series of sessions devoted to a reexamination of elenchos (or elenchus) that were held at the sixteenth annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in Binghamton, New York, in October 1997. The original idea behind these sessions was to bring together scholars from various schools of Plato interpretation to address a topic of interest to all of them, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. The present volume extends this original idea even further, adding seven essays to those originally presented at the conference. The result is an extended dialogue among scholars who take vastly different approaches to the reading and interpretation of Plato’s dialogues. We hope that this conversation between and among scholars representing divergent approaches to the same issue will serve to stimulate (or provoke) further exploration into ways of thinking about Socrates’ method of interrogating and arguing in Plato’s dialogues.

I should say something about the conventions followed in this volume.

Full citations of works are given the first time the work is cited by an author.

Thereafter only short citations are provided. A complete list of works cited supplies any missing information. The list of works cited is not meant to be an exhaustive bibliography but only a compilation of those works cited by one or more authors in this collection. Most authors have transliterated the Greek words or lines quoted in their essays, but in a few cases the dependence of the philological argument upon the original Greek dictates that the extracts be left in Greek characters. But English translations are generally supplied.

Three of the essays included in this collection are revised and expanded versions of previously published articles or parts of books. James H. Lesher’s “Parmenidean Elenchos” (Chapter 1) contains parts of “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 1–30. xi

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Preface

His opening note explains what is new and what is taken from the earlier article. The reprinted parts of the earlier article are used here with permission from Lesher. Parts of Chapter 7, Mark McPherran’s “Elenctic Interpretation and the Delphic Oracle,” appeared as part of Chapter 4 in The Religion of Socrates (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). We are grateful to Penn State Press for permission to reprint here. Parts of Chapter 13, W. Thomas Schmid’s “Socratic Dialectic in the Charmides,” appeared in his Plato’s Charmides and the Socratic Ideal of Rationality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 64 –78; reprinted by permission here.

A Kenny Summer Fellowship from the Jesuit Community of Saint Peter’s College afforded me the leisure to carry out the early stages of editing for this collection. I am grateful for this support. I am also thankful to all of the contributors to this volume, who offered comments and suggestions on the volume’s Introduction, but especially for the generous and extremely helpful comments of Hayden Ausland. In addition, the volume benefited immeasurably from the comments of two anonymous referees commissioned by Penn State Press. Especially helpful were the detailed and constructive criticisms of Jill Gordon, whom I now know was the referee whose report spanned ten single-spaced pages generously offering helpful criticism on almost every chapter.

A number of people at Penn State Press played vital roles in the production and marketing of this book. Sandy Thatcher, the Press’s Director, read an early version of the manuscript and then diligently supervised the reviewand-approval process. Cherene Holland, Managing Editor, shepherded the book through its various stages, with Jennifer Norton, Design and Production Manager, Steve Kress, Designer, and Patty Mitchell, Production Editor. Keith Monley’s superb copyediting standardized the “look” of the book, and his discerning eye surely saved all of the contributors and myself from one or more embarrassing errors. I believe I speak for everyone included in this collection when I say that we are most grateful to Mr. Monley for his professional care and his outstanding effort on our behalf. The team responsible for bringing this book to the public’s attention deserves much credit as well for their hard work and ingenuity. Tony Sanfilippo, Marketing Manager, committed his usual outstanding effort to the marketing of this volume, aided by Susan Shoup, Publicity Manager, Brian Beer, Advertising Manager and Direct Mail Coordinator, and, most prominently, Jennifer Herrera, Exhibits Manager. Whatever modest success a volume such as this may have is due in great measure to the efforts of these dedicated professionals.

Finally, words cannot express my appreciation for the invaluable editorial

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xiii

assistance of Hilde Roos. She gave tirelessly of her time in proofreading, cross-checking, compiling, and inputting corrections, in addition to solving computer problems, rekeying Greek text, and checking for stylistic uniformity throughout the manuscript. All of the contributors, but especially the editor of this volume, owe her a debt of gratitude.

Gary Alan Scott July 2001

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Introduction

GARY ALAN SCOT T

Nowadays people know very well what “the Socratic method” is. “Socratic method” has come to mean any pedagogy conducted through question and answer, as distinguished from pedagogy conducted in lecture form. What is usually signified is thus loosely and generally understood to be virtually any educational strategy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student. Our knowledge of such a question-and-answer method as deriving from an ancient Greek philosopher named Socrates—who is also famous for not having written anything himself— comes primarily from the portrayal of a character called Socrates in the philosophical dramas written by Plato, and to a lesser extent from Xenophon’s Socratic conversations, the comedy of Aristophanes, and the writings of Aristotle. All of the other, numerous examples of the ancient genre known as Socratic conversations, or discourses (logoi sokratikoi), have been lost to us. Yet despite frequent reference to an activity called “the Socratic method” in the field of education, and notwithstanding the confidence with which the phrase is used in general discourse, it is an understatement to say that interpreters of Plato fail to agree on a definition of “the Socratic method.” Indeed, scholars disagree even about whether Plato’s Socrates has a method, that is, whether he can be said even 1

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Does Socrates Have a Method?

to possess a single, unified procedure for interrogating and arguing, much less one that is proprietary to him or of which he is the originator. There is further disagreement, among those who believe that Plato’s Socrates does have some kind of method, about precisely what best characterizes what it is that he does. Beyond that, one must again ask: What about this method is distinctively Socratic, having originated with, or been appropriated in some particular way by, Socrates, such that it should have come to be known as “the Socratic method”?

The controversy surrounding the question whether Socrates in Plato’s dialogues employs any special method or set of methods, and, if he does, just what makes this method or set of methods Socratic, persists no matter how one defines “Socratic method.” Whether it is meant to cover Socrates’ entire way of philosophizing, his whole approach to testing, cross-examining, and refuting the people he meets, or is meant only to capture some one narrow form of argument, disagreement ensues over whether Socrates really does have such a method in Plato’s dialogues. Put otherwise, to most readers of Plato there seems to be something special about what Socrates does in the conversations Plato dramatizes, and something distinctive about the way he does it, but scholars have been frustrated in their attempts to reduce its essential and unique elements to any simple formula.

Whether, or to what extent, Plato’s Socrates appears conscious of having a special method, by which is meant some special technique or some unique form of argument, is also disputed. Various terms are used in the dialogues in connection with Socrates’ manner of inquiring and interrogating, but none of them is used consistently by Plato in any precise or technical way that would legitimize it as Plato’s label for the philosopher’s approach. A few have attempted to enumerate the multifaceted rhetorical techniques with which Plato equips his Socrates, many of which have been appropriated from conventional rhetorical practices, especially forensic oratory, from the poetic tradition, and from the tradition of “serial review” (of the available ways of thinking) inaugurated by the thinkers that we now call pre-Socratics. But no one has succeeded in advancing any thesis about the method used by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues without that assertion coming under serious challenge from others.

Still, in the last thirty or forty years, it has become rather standard for commentators to use the term “Socratic elenchus” as a label for Socrates’ way of philosophizing in the dialogues. The secondary literature has reflected concern for something called “the elenchus” ever since Richard Robinson and Gregory Vlastos began talking and writing about it in the 1950s,

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Introduction

3

and especially since the publication of Vlastos’s influential paper “The Socratic Elenchus” in the early 1980s.1 Vlastos thought that “the problem of the elenchus” consisted in the question why Socrates and his interlocutor abandon the original hypothesis put forth in answer to one of Socrates’ patented “What is X?” questions and embrace its negation, when the original hypothesis has not really been refuted but only shown to be inconsistent with other premises held (or put forth) by the interlocutor (38).

In a 1995 essay entitled “The Dissolution of the Problem of the Elenchus,” Hugh Benson claimed to have dissolved this “problem” by showing that Socrates neither claims nor believes that he has proved anything other than the mere inconsistency of the interlocutor’s beliefs, and thus that Vlastos’s “problem” never truly arises.2 In “Professor Vlastos’s Analysis of Socratic Elenchus,” Ronald Polansky criticized Vlastos on another issue, one that is reiterated by Joanne Waugh in Chapter 16 of the present volume. He wrote: “We might well wonder why these interlocutors so rarely renounce their prior admissions when they discover the problems they cause them.

This is an important question and one that we might expect Vlastos to consider. But in fact it does not occupy him at all.” 3 Central to this debate over Vlastos’s account of “the elenchus” has been the question why the search for definitions of the virtues plays such a key role in Socrates’ method of cross-examination and refutation, since the method Vlastos called “the elenchus” never seems adequate to the task of 1. Gregory Vlastos, “The Socratic Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 27–58. Vlastos says that George Grote was the first to use the term elenchos as a label for Socrates’ method, and he cites him in note 7 of his 1983 paper. Richard Robinson introduced the term to English-language audiences in the 1941 first edition of his influential study Plato’s Earlier Dialectic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). But it was not until the second edition was published in the United Kingdom twelve years later (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953) that commentators in the United States began to pursue the idea of an elenchus. Robinson devoted chapter 2 of Plato’s Earlier Dialectic to “the elenchus.”

Vlastos notes that Henry Sidgwick, following Grote and Lewis Campbell, used the term shortly thereafter, and Vlastos began to appropriate the idea himself in his 1956 introduction to the Jowett and Ostwald translation of Plato’s Protagoras and in his 1957 lecture “The Paradox of Socrates.” See Vlastos, introduction to Plato’s Protagoras, trans. Benjamin Jowett and Martin Ostwald (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), and “The Paradox of Socrates,” in The Philosophy of Socrates: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1971), 1–21. Vlastos’s 1983 paper, which draws heavily on Robinson’s insights, reworks the ideas that he had presented in his 1956 and 1957 papers.

2. Hugh H. Benson, “The Dissolution of the Problem of the Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 13 (1995): 45 –112 (see esp. 49).

3. Ronald M. Polansky, “Professor Vlastos’s Analysis of Socratic Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985): 248.

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Does Socrates Have a Method?

formulating a definition of any of the virtues or even of securing agreement about what would make a definition adequate. Perhaps more important, Benson and others criticized Vlastos for assigning a label to Socrates’ method that neither Socrates nor Plato gives to it.

In his “Dissolution” essay, Benson criticized Vlastos for failing to limit his general conclusions to the one dialogue in which he seems to find this “problem”: the Gorgias. In his “Afterthoughts,” in response to Richard Kraut’s commentary on his “Socratic Elenchus” paper, Vlastos acknowledged that he may have been drawing general conclusions from the Gorgias; but in the revised version of the original paper that appears in Socratic Studies, edited

by Myles Burnyeat, Vlastos does not restrict his claims to the Gorgias, but again bases his general view of “the elenchus” on what he finds there.4 But these are not the only difficulties with the notion of “the elenchus.”

It is fundamentally unclear whether “the elenchus” is supposed to refer to a process (in which case it could mean “to cross-examine,” “to put to the test,” “to put to the proof,” or “to indicate”) or a result (in which case it could mean “to shame,” “to refute,” or “to prove”). In short, there is no general agreement about “the elenchus,” and therefore no consensus either about its employment in the dialogues. Does an “elenchus” occur only when a form of the word elenchos (or one of its cognate verbs) is used? Does an “elenchus” occur only in those cases in which Socrates brings an interlocutor to an explicit admission of ignorance or perplexity (aporia)? Or does “elenchus” occur any time an inconsistency in an interlocutor’s beliefs or opinions is exhibited, whether or not the interlocutor acknowledges or even appears aware of it?

Or should “elenchus” be construed to mean any form of Socratic interrogation that “puts to the test” the character or beliefs of someone? Or does “elenchus” mean rather some kind of refutation? And if so, can a Socratic refutation be accomplished through means other than argument—for example, by means of a myth or story? Can the meaning of “elenchus” be stretched so widely that it includes any question-and-answer style of conversation at all? Finally, we might wonder—as Vlastos did—why Plato did not “baptize,” or christen, Socrates’ way of philosophizing with this label if 4. Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and Benson, “Dissolution,” 48 n. 11. See also Richard Kraut, “Comments on Gregory Vlastos, ‘The Socratic Elenchus,’” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 59 –70, and Vlastos, “Afterthoughts on the Socratic Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 71–74. Vlastos’s “Afterthoughts” is reprinted in Socratic Studies.

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Introduction

5

he thought it best described what Socrates does in the dialogues? 5 And if “the elenchus” is neither unique to Socrates nor the best term for describing Socratic argumentation in general, we might still wonder what Plato seems to think is most distinctive about Socrates’ approach as he portrays it in the dialogues.

For the most part, Vlastos, his followers, and many of his critics have focused upon the logical features of arguments in which cross-examination is used and in which refutation occurs, attempting to determine whether Socrates uses only one form of argument 6 or more than one,7 whether the premises in “an elenchus” are self-evident, are taken from received opinion (endoxa), or are adduced in some other way, and whether Socrates truly be5. Vlastos’s focus on a logical form of argument, which he called “the elenchus” and which he used to characterize something greater and more general about what Socrates does, has had the effect of ushering commentators and general readers alike into a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” to borrow a phrase from Alfred North Whitehead. For the focus upon the logic of Socratic argumentation has occluded, or diverted scholarly attention away from, many other interesting and important features of what Socrates does in Plato’s dialogues. Vlastos himself admits that Socrates never uses the word methodos to label what he does but claims further that the philosopher “never discusses his method” in those dialogues with which he is concerned.

Vlastos admits: “[Socrates] never troubles to say why his way of searching is the way to discover truth or even to say what this way of searching is. He has no name for it. Elenchos and the cognate verb elenchein (to refute, to examine critically, to censure) he uses to describe, not to baptize, what he does; only in modern times has ‘elenchus’ become a proper name” (28).

6. See Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, “Socrates’ Elenctic Mission,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 9 (1991): 131–59 (see esp. 139). In this essay, Brickhouse and Smith clearly articulate the richest view of the purposes to which Socrates puts “the elenchus,” but they do not think different forms of argument are required to fulfill these different purposes.

As an example, they show how Socrates’ cross-examination of Meletus in Apology may fulfill several purposes at once. According to them, Socrates uses his cross-examination of Meletus, first, to diagnose Meletus’s character; second, to reproach him for his carelessness in bringing the charges against Socrates (26e); third, to refute the charges and (by using him as an example) to refute the beliefs his jurors harbor about him; fourth, to expose the contradictions or confusions in Meletus’s opinions; and fifth, to exhort Meletus and by extension the jury, through his reproaches, to act rightly and justly in the matter before them. If one considers what Socrates does with Meletus to be also an attempt either to further his self-knowledge or to exemplify something, then Socrates would be using cross-examination for as many as seven purposes in a fairly short time.

7. See, for example, Paul Woodruff, “Expert Knowledge in the Apology and Laches: What a General Needs to Know,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 3, edited by John J. Cleary (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 79 – 115. Woodruff delineates three different forms of the Socratic elenchus: exhortation, interpretation, and refutation (which he calls the “disproof of knowledge”). See also Mark McPherran’s “Commentary on Paul Woodruff’s ‘Expert Knowledge in the Apology and Laches: What a General Needs to Know,’” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1987): 116 –30.

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Does Socrates Have a Method?

lieves he has refuted the interlocutor’s initial statement of belief (the refutand). Whether he is justified in using the refutand as a premise in a followup or counter-argument has also been a matter of controversy. Perhaps this focus on the logic of an argument is simply too narrow to encapsulate or characterize all of Socrates’ tactics in Plato’s dialogues. Perhaps the more one pays attention to Socrates’ larger objectives with the characters he encounters, the less uniform and generic his method appears to be in the various “case studies” Plato has dramatized for posterity.

Despite the lack of consensus regarding the meaning of “elenchus,” commentators after Vlastos began referring to “the Socratic elenchus” as a label for the equally ambiguous “Socratic method,” without really being able to show that this method is some kind of technique (or techne¯) and without really being able to say precisely what kind of skill it requires. Although it has been construed in a variety of ways, the widespread assumption after Vlastos has been that a narrowly specialized form of argument called “the Socratic elenchus” furnishes the name for the unique procedure or aim of Socratic interrogation and argumentation. The essays in this volume carry out an extended dialogue with many of the issues to which Vlastos’s formulation has drawn attention. The various authors each owe a debt to Vlastos’s work, whether the author pursues Vlastos’s own concerns or takes issue with his approach or with his findings. The attention his paper attracted confirms that Vlastos put his finger on an important issue in Platonic scholarship. But we hope that by rethinking Socratic method this collection will serve to reorient the discussion of the multifarious strategies and tactics employed by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues and to spawn new scholarly research into previously neglected aspects of the topic. Many of the essays included here take the first steps toward a thorough reconsideration of what Socrates does in Plato’s dialogues and of Plato’s method of presenting his own written philosophy.

Readers will quickly notice that the authors included here approach the question of Socratic method in very different ways. Several of the essays question the suitability of elenchos for characterizing the most important aspect of what Socrates does with most interlocutors, and a few of the essays investigate in detail other tactics that Socrates uses with the people he encounters. Other authors propose new ways of thinking about Socratic method. The essays by James Lesher, Harold Tarrant, P. Christopher Smith, and to some extent W. Thomas Schmid suggest other terms for Socrates’ method of inquiry or for his manner of argumentation. Lesher and Hayden Ausland trace the similarities between Socrates’ methods and those common

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Introduction

7

to other practices prevalent at the time, showing that elenchos is not entirely or especially Socratic.

Nearly all of the essays in this volume attempt to turn our attention to problems respecting Socrates’ method other than those to which Vlastos called attention, although half of the essays carry out extended discussions concerning “the elenchus” in specific dialogues. Each of these eight essays devoted to specific dialogues in some way raises the question why Plato has Socrates use the particular tactics he does with specific characters and in the specific contexts in which he uses them. More than one essay—at least those by Michelle Carpenter and Ronald Polansky and the commentary by Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith—raises the specter that Socrates has no method at all by which he argues and inquires.

The range of perspectives brought to bear here on this fascinating topic attests to the diversity in scholarly approach to the questions and issues surrounding Socratic method, specifically, and the interpretation of the dialogues, in general. Plato scholars have attempted in vastly different ways to characterize the philosopher’s methods of interrogating and refuting others, investigating philosophical topics, and constructing arguments for various positions on these matters. Most of the major approaches, or schools of interpretation, are represented in this collection. The aim in doing this is to place in dialogue with one another philosophers who share an interest in Plato and in the Socrates he depicts but who disagree fundamentally on issues of methodology and hence about how to regard either Plato’s or Socrates’ method of philosophizing.

Each of the book’s four sections features three essays followed by a response written by someone from a different interpretive approach. The result is a lively conversation that should offer something of interest to all readers of Plato and students of Socrates. It should be noted that the authors of the first three chapters in each section are not afforded the opportunity to respond to their commentators, and this permits the critics to have the last word. But I believe that readers will be able to judge for themselves how appropriate and how damaging the criticisms in each case are, and in this way readers are also left to make up their own minds concerning the fairness of criticisms raised in the response chapters. By presenting various interpretive approaches in dialogue with one another, this volume allows readers to see how different schools of interpretation treat a common issue. That there is internal disagreement between and among the authors of these sixteen essays seems like a fittingly Platonic strategy, since such internal disagreements and debates are characteristic of Plato’s dialogues themselves.

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Does Socrates Have a Method?

The essays in Part One and Part Two reexamine, in various ways, the key terms that have been used to describe Socrates’ method of argument: elenchos (and its cognates), epago¯ge¯, dokimasia, and exetasis. Indeed, some even dispute whether the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues has a method in anything close to what we understand or intend by the term today. The first two essays show the extent to which forms of philosophical argumentation employed

by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues derive from conventions already established in other discursive traditions: poetry, forensic oratory, and “serial review,” a tradition inaugurated by Parmenides. James Lesher shows how widely the meaning of elenchos words could range in the writings of Plato’s predecessors, and Hayden Ausland illustrates how much the manner in which Socrates argues in the dialogues (both of Plato and Xenophon) owes its structure and purpose to the conventions of forensic practice. Both essays examine the textual bases for historically situating and evaluating Plato’s employment of these terms.

Lesher’s “Parmenidean Elenchos” traces the meaning of elenchos from Homer to Plato, arguing that “it is difficult to accept Furley’s disjunction of ‘shame’ or ‘refutation’ as a satisfactory account of the meaning of elenchos from Homer to Socrates” (21). He shows how the meaning of elenchos words shifts from “shame” to “contest” or “put to the test,” to “show” or “indicate,” to “cross-examine,” to “prove” or “put to the proof,” to “refute.” “This multiplicity of meanings for elenchos in the fifth century,” he writes, “would thus represent a process of bifurcation that can be observed elsewhere in Greek and Latin” (27). Lacking a definitive etymology for elenchos (and elencho¯), and in virtue of the different etymological lines extending from the to elenchos of Homer and Hesiod and the ho elenchos of Pindar, it is impossible to know, Lesher concludes, whether the connotation of shame was added by Homer or whether this amounts to a narrowing of earlier connotations. In addition to illustrating how widely the meaning of elenchos words could vary in the classical period, he argues that Parmenides’ use of elenchos in Fr. 7 of his poem cannot mean refutation, the focal meaning it is often taken to have in Plato’s dialogues, but must rather mean “testing of a person to determine his or her truthfulness or innocence” (25). He concludes that the sense of “examining” or “putting someone or something to the test” is still very much present in the elenchos of the Platonic Socrates.

Hayden Ausland’s “Forensic Characteristics of Socratic Argumentation” carefully traces the similarities in form and purpose between Socratic argumentation and conventional forensic argumentation in the fifth and fourth centuries. Through this detailed comparison, Ausland establishes the many

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9

ways in which Socrates’ disputational mode of argument is firmly rooted within, and heavily indebted to, the practices and procedures of forensic discourse. He shows that the differences between the two have more to do with Socrates’ friendly demeanor and his concern for his interlocutors than with any distinctive form of argument. Hence Ausland’s essay, like Lesher’s, is bound to provoke readers to wonder: What is so Socratic about “the Socratic elenchus”? Although Ausland admits that Socrates transforms some of what he inherits, such that it will never be the same after him, he questions whether Socrates is accurately and fairly credited as the father of modern logic, or even as the one who invents the inductive method. He shows that many devices that have previously been taken as elements of “the Socratic method” are, as he puts it, “literary applications of relatively unspecialized principles, or even specialized techniques properly at home in a nonphilosophical discipline” (38). Ausland concludes that it is the poetic, rhetorical tradition and the intensely competitive climate of political life at the time, far more than concern over “ambient theoretical controversies,” that would have shaped Socrates’ manner of speaking in Plato’s dialogues.

Harold Tarrant investigates the occurrences of elenchos and its cognates in the dialogues Vlastos regarded as having been composed by Plato prior to Republic, in order to show that these terms just do not occur that frequently as a description of Socrates or his method of interrogation. Tarrant argues that, outside of the Gorgias, Euthydemus, and Hippias Major— dialogues in which the occupations of Socrates’ interlocutors may account for the relative frequency of elenchos words—these terms are not used very often in the dialogues Vlastos considers “early,” and never really to describe something unique about Socrates’ method. Tarrant’s question for Vlastos seems to be: Since elenchos words occur frequently enough in the dialogues to confirm that Plato could have used them explicitly to describe Socrates’ method of interrogation if he had wanted his audience to construe this as the essential element making Socrates’ approach unique, then why does he not do so?

Tarrant endeavors to show, moreover, that elenchos words describe encounters between rivals hostile to one another and that they, therefore, cannot be justifiably extended as a general description of Socrates’ method. Through an examination of Socrates’ own reflections upon his manner of interrogation in Apology, Tarrant proposes that exetasis may be a more appropriate term for the philosopher’s interrogation of friendly interlocutors than what he sees as the highly competitive contexts in which elenchos words are employed.

In his perspicuous response to Chapters 1–3, Charles Young offers some

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penetrating—and sometimes critical—insight that serves to underscore the strengths and weaknesses of each author’s argument. Regarding Lesher’s paper, for example, he points out that as rich as Parmenides’ methodological legacy is, none of his successors simply takes over the method of serial review without adapting it and altering it for his own purposes. He notes also that in none of the passages that Lesher cites from Plato to illustrate the procedure’s similarity to the Parmenidean elenchos does Plato himself use a form of the word elenchos to describe the entire procedure.

Young calls Ausland’s paper “a useful corrective to the occasional tendency of philosophical analysts to read Plato’s dialogues more or less in isolation” (81). Young sees Ausland’s study as pointing out the need for, and the benefits to be derived from, further research into the similarities and differences between Socratic argumentation and forms of argument in forensic practice. Young is less laudatory of Tarrant’s paper, primarily because he is suspicious in principle of computer counts and of the very notion of a “stylistic feature,” but also because he is not convinced that elenchos only describes a confrontational exchange while exetasis only describes a friendly, cooperative one.

The essays in Part Two attempt to shift our attention from Vlastos’s problem to various other problems with Socratic method. In Chapter 5, Michelle Carpenter and Ronald Polansky argue that scholarly understanding of Socrates’ method of cross-examination should be expanded beyond the narrow “view of the logic of elenctic refutation” (90). Their essay shows that Socrates’ methods do not fit a single form and do not serve only one general purpose. They present several examples of refutation that have previously been overlooked, and they argue that Socrates’ refutations are much more frequent and more varied in form, object, and purpose than has usually been appreciated. The essay’s survey of examples of refutation shows that Socrates does reflect on method, pace Vlastos (see note 5), but that his reflections are quite local and context-specific. The authors also provide evidence that Socrates’ refutations cannot be conceived as directed solely toward opinions or beliefs, since sometimes they commence before any opinion or belief has been put forward. Socrates’ methodology, they maintain, is always tailored for a particular interlocutor in concrete circumstances, so it is not really appropriate to speak of him as having one, single, constant method.

Hugh Benson’s “Problems with Socratic Method” also endeavors to turn scholarly attention away from the logical form of the elenchos because, in his judgment, Vlastos’s thesis that Socrates proves the apparent refutand false simply does not hold up. According to Benson, Socrates can only be

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construed as proving the inconsistency of the interlocutor’s beliefs, unless we attribute implausible views to him. Whether Vlastos’s problem is dissolved or insoluble, in this essay Benson wishes to direct scholarly attention toward “two other problems with the Socratic method that Socrates explicitly discusses in the early dialogues” (101). More fundamental than “the problem of the elenchus” to Socrates’ philosophical activity, he argues, is the problem of recognizing the expert or the one who knows without being knowledgeable oneself, which Benson calls the Charmides problem, and the problem of coming to know what one does not know, which he calls the Meno problem. Benson concludes that the real challenge to Socrates, as Plato portrays him, has nothing to do with the employment of any particular method but rather concerns the fundamental question: How does one search for the knowledge one lacks?

Mark McPherran’s “Elenctic Interpretation and the Delphic Oracle” examines the origins of Socrates’ vocation on behalf of the god Apollo, arguing that the philosopher believes himself to have a categorical duty to philosophize. From the Delphic oracle’s few words reported to him, Socrates derives his pious obligation to examine those fellow citizens who believe that they are wise. McPherran argues that Socrates comes to recognize the great benefit the process of examination by elenchos provides for its practitioner as an antidote to hubris, and so the philosopher turns the oracle’s descriptive pronouncement into a prescriptive command. The essay suggests that the chief lesson of this story from Plato’s Apology of Socrates is the way Socrates here “fuses rational examination to the religious ‘revelation’ of an oracle” (115). In McPherran’s view, Socrates is obliged repeatedly to attempt to disconfirm his wisdom, and he uses elenchos to remind himself constantly of his ignorance, while coming increasingly both to know what he does not know and to gather inductive evidence for certain core beliefs he already holds.8 The basic position maintained by Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith in their chapter commenting on the previous three essays is announced by the question mark that they place at the end of their title: “The Socratic Elenchos?” They hold that there “is no such thing as ‘the Socratic elenchos’” (147). Using disagreements among the arguments of Benson, McPherran, and Carpenter and Polansky to underscore the lack of consensus 8. For another recent account of elenchos as a tool Socrates employs to build the weight of evidence toward his, still in principle provisional, conclusions or beliefs, see Don Adams, “Elenchos and Evidence,” Ancient Philosophy 18, no. 2 (1998): 278 –307.

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among interpreters, they contend that, although it is highly tempting to group all of Socrates’ arguments under a single heading, “the elenchos,” there is “nothing in Plato’s texts” that compels such a grouping. In fact, they conclude that the attention to the “problem of the elenchus” generated by Vlastos’s paper “has distracted us from the Socratic mission, which is what made Socrates what he was” (156). That mission, they say, is to live the examined life, a life available to everyone, without prior training in some specialized skill, a life devoted to all forms of reasoned argument aimed at discharging ignorance and seeking wisdom.

The essays in Part Three examine Socratic argumentation in specific dialogues, from both within and without the rubric of the elenchos. Chapters 9 –12 are devoted to Clitophon, Euthydemus, Lysis, and Philebus, and the essays in Chapters 13–16 examine the Charmides from four different perspectives. Francisco Gonzalez argues in Chapter 9 that Clitophon’s powerful critique of Socrates’ method raises an inescapable question, which his essay puts to Plato: namely, Is Socrates’ method of philosophizing, as it is portrayed in the dialogues, able only to exhort people to the pursuit of philosophy, without being able to provide direction toward further goals or even to set out the specific path one should follow toward the attainment of virtue? Then, using Socrates’ discussion with the brothers Dionysodorus and Euthydemus in the Euthydemus, Gonzalez argues that for Socrates to suggest any goal beyond philosophical activity would be to reduce philosophy to a merely instrumental good, when it is, for him, a good in itself. He concludes that many, if not all, of Plato’s dialogues are protreptic, but it is important to see that the exhortation the dialogues do provide is not empty or useless, according to Gonzalez, because “in turning us toward the pursuit of virtue and wisdom,” the dialogues are “already providing them.” He continues: “Philosophy is not something completely distinct from what it pursues” (179 – 80). Philosophy, for Socrates, is an activity that, as Aristotle would later put it, has its end in itself.

In Chapter 10 François Renaud attempts to show how Socrates uses elenchos to humble or chasten his interlocutors as a way of purging them of their false conceits and turning them toward philosophy. Through a close examination of Socrates’ approach to Lysis in the dialogue of the same name, Renaud shows how attention to dramatic form and context are integral to discovering the dialogue’s ethical dimension, because the ethical dimension of the elenchus and the dramatic form of the dialogue are, he says, inseparably linked. Renaud argues against Vlastos that the process of elenchos and the process of maieutics are also interconnected. He shows how Socrates puts to

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the test and refutes both Lysis and Menexenus, but maintains that the form each elenchos takes is customized, or tailored, for its particular object.

Christopher Smith examines the argumentation of the Philebus with a view to showing that this dialogue, like Phaedo and Phaedrus, is not really about its express topic, which in this case is pleasure, but rather is concerned to show “how one might secure against sophistical refutation one’s own arguments on any subject matter” (200). Smith argues that the movement of the Philebus is more expository than refutational. According to his interpretation, Philebus is, at bottom, a dialogue about three distinct methods of argument: sophistical disputation, philosophical dialectic, and Plato’s manner of presenting these two, which Smith says is most appropriately construed as dialegesthai, or “talking through.” According to Smith, Plato employs this method of argument because “talking something through” leaves matters ultimately indeterminate or inconclusive and requires that the talking be unending. Smith argues that Plato is showing how the “irrefutable arguments” constructed to overcome the sophistical strategies directed at what he calls the ambiguity of word names and the logical categories they must superimpose on reality will collapse of themselves because destruction is inevitable in all such systems of classification (215).

Lloyd Gerson’s commentary on Chapters 9 –11 levies several severe criticisms against unacknowledged assumptions that he believes underwrite all three essays (although some of his criticisms may be aimed at commentators beyond the present volume). Gerson devotes the first part of his essay to an extended discussion of several problems hotly debated among interpreters of Plato today. He goes on to examine the differences between doctrinal interpretations and nondogmatic approaches to the dialogues. He distinguishes interpreters who have what he calls “strong” theories of the way a dialogue’s drama bears upon its philosophical teachings from those who view the dramatic and literary features as relevant only in a “weak” sense. Gerson goes on to make the case for the theory that has come to be known as “developmentalism” as the most satisfying way to explain differences among the dialogues, and this is a theory central to Vlastos’s account of “the elenchus.”

Gerson chastises “nondogmatists” for paying so much attention to dramatic detail, when they do not purport to believe that any positive views are discoverable in them, and for relying on terms such as “early” and “aporetic” (as a trope for “early”), when they claim to disavow the belief in a theory of Plato’s development.

The four essays on the Charmides represent recent work on a dialogue that has previously received insufficient attention in the secondary literature,

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as Gerald Press points out in his chapter. Readers should profit from having the dialogue examined from four different perspectives side by side. And because the Charmides is a dialogue that does not seem to fit well into the developmentalists’ chronology, which divides the dialogues into “early,” “middle,” and “late” periods, it again raises the issue of Plato’s development and the theory of developmentalism defended by Gerson. Not only does the search for the definition of so¯phrosune¯ in the Charmides end aporetically, but, as Press points out, the dialogue’s second half consists of a kind of abstract “theoretical” discussion not usually found in the dialogues believed to be “early” (253).

In Chapter 13 Tom Schmid focuses on dialectical argument in the Charmides to show that “standard accounts of the dialectic do not sufficiently explain Socrates’ typical failure to engage his interlocutor, as measured by the standard set forth at Sophist 230a–d” (235). Schmid argues that since the Charmides focuses on the psychotherapeutic aspects of the elenchos, this dialogue discloses much about the way Socrates uses dialectic to further his educational goals. In both the drama and the arguments, according to Schmid, the Charmides illustrates four ways in which Socratic dialectic intends “to draw the interlocutor into philosophical self-expression and turn him toward a philosophical life and membership in the philosophical community” (235). This effort is shown by Schmid to yield both positive and negative results.

Gerald Press, in Chapter 14, attempts to clarify the exact steps taken in the long elenchos with Critias from Charmides 162 to 175 and to explicate the critical factors that shaped Plato’s decision to construct this argument in the way he does. Press shows how literary, dramatic, and historical factors influence the course the argument takes in this particular case: the character of Critias, historical and political events, Socrates’ need to expose both Critias’s ignorance and his lack of so¯phrosune¯, and Plato’s aim of exhibiting the pitfalls of the kind of epistemic utopia of which Critias dreams. According to Press, these factors all influence the form and substance of the argumentation in this dialogue. The essay concludes by proposing that such analyses are necessary and worthwhile when analyzing any argument in the dialogues.

In Chapter 15, John Carvalho explores the effects of the practice of elenchos on its practitioner, focusing on its employment in the search for selfknowledge. In his view, the Charmides seems to show that cross-examination and refutation are designed to produce consistency, not certainty, in Socrates, and that this consistency of all of his beliefs and premises, rather

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than any specific set of beliefs or premises, is what makes Socrates unique among his peers. Carvalho takes seriously the idea that “the formation of [a] virtuous character, not the formation of a positive moral doctrine, is the constructive effect of the Socratic method” (267). Carvalho differs with the positions taken by Schmid and Press in that he holds that Socrates sets out to refute an interlocutor only when the interlocutor’s beliefs are inconsistent. The essay uses the Charmides to show how Socratic cross-examination and refutation have the power to shape human character through sustained practice.

In the volume’s concluding chapter, Joanne Waugh highlights the common thread in the three essays on the Charmides by Schmid, Carvalho, and Press: namely, that all three authors see “that the elenchus has the potential to reform the character of those exposed to it, a potential that many who discuss the elenchus seem to miss” (286). She regards Carvalho’s thesis as a valuable corrective to those who would regard Socrates (anachronistically) as “positively ‘Christian’” (286). In her own analysis, she acknowledges that cross-examination and refutation could indeed be tools for shaping and testing the characters of those who engage in it, but Waugh notes that these benefits are lost on most of Socrates’ interlocutors in Plato’s dialogues.

Certainly Critias and Charmides do not benefit from the Socratic elenchus, as their disgraceful behavior as part of the Thirty makes clear, behavior that would have been well known to Plato’s early audiences. Waugh suggests that Plato’s relatives fail to benefit from this exchange with Socrates because they—like so many of their contemporaries— do not possess a clear idea of the soul or self. On her analysis, the Charmides undertakes the work that is a prerequisite for the therapeutic use of the elenchus noted by Schmid, Carvalho, and Press: to show the audience—both in and of the dialogue— that they are badly confused about the self, about knowledge of the self, and about so¯phrosune¯. Until or unless they clear up this confusion, they will not be able to give answers to Socrates’ questions or be able to defend conventional beliefs, or unconventional ones for that matter. More important, they will not be ready, willing, or able to grasp the idea of the psuche¯ that has come to be identified with Socrates.

Like Gerson’s commentary in Chapter 12, Waugh’s response to these three chapters is prefaced by an extended discussion of issues in Plato interpretation. Her essay articulates some of the problems with the approach advanced by Gerson and defends a contrary way of reading Plato’s dialogues.

The essay argues that the contemporary discipline of philosophy, interested only in philosophical arguments and not in literature, conceives of “philos-

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ophy” as a set of problems to be addressed, and this is certainly not philosophia in Plato. Quite to the contrary, in Plato’s world, philosophia arises out of ordinary conversation, and the dialogues’ more speculative flights into metaphysics always seem to return to the highly practical question: How should one live one’s life? For Waugh, as for many other authors in this volume, Plato does not simply present his audiences with a set of problems or a set of doctrines he wants them merely to accept as true; rather, he presents his audiences with dramas evocative of an entire kosmos, a kosmos enlivened by conversation and by philosophia. Yet even in this world in which many different perspectives are heard, these dialogues, no matter what the topic, appear to show their audiences far more than they ever tell them.

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P A R T

O N E

Historical Origins of Socratic Method

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1 Parmenidean Elenchos

JAMES H. LESHER

The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues typically practiced elenchos, but neither the term nor the activity originated with him. Both occur in philosophical and nonphilosophical works composed before the latter half of the fifth century, when the historical Socrates was in his prime, hence well before the period in the fourth century in which Plato wrote a series of philosophical dramas featuring a character of the same name. So if our aim is to understand the This paper is a revised version of “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking: The Polude¯ris Elenchos of Fragment 7,” which appeared in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 1–30. I am grateful to the editor of Oxford Studies for allowing me to retain the copyright for this article.

The present account differs from the 1984 paper in (1) omitting any discussion of the novelty of Parmenides’ view of thought as subject to the control of the individual and (2) offering a different analysis of the structure of Parmenides’ main argument. My view of the development of the meaning of elenchos from Homer to the fourth century and its meaning in Parmenides’ poem remains unchanged. In the sixteen years since the Oxford Studies paper appeared, there has been relatively little discussion of the meaning of elenchos in Parmenides’ poem (and a great deal about the Socratic elenchus), but the view of elenchos as a “test” or “examination” has been endorsed in several accounts: A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986); David J. Furley, Cosmic Problems: Essays in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

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nature of elenchos as practiced by the Platonic Socrates, it might be useful to consider the character of this earlier elenchos. In what follows I offer such an account, focusing on the meaning of elenchos in Fragment 7 of Parmenides of Elea.

I. The Meaning of Elenchos in Parmenides, Fragment 7 Fragment 7 of Parmenides begins with an announcement by an unnamed goddess of something like a basic principle of thought or logic: “For never shall this be forced: 1 that things that are not are.” She then directs a “youth” (presumably Parmenides himself) to keep his thought “away from this way of inquiry and not let much-tried custom [ethos polupeiron] force you to ply an aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue down this path.” 2 Instead, the youth is to “judge by means of discourse a polude¯rin elenchon spoken by me.” While very few of the goddess’s remarks can be assigned a clear and uncontroversial meaning, the general sense appears to be that the youth, Parmenides, and perhaps the rest of us as well, must resist the pull of a conventional view of what there is—a view gained largely through sense experience and the testimony of others—and form a judgment about this matter based entirely on the “discourse” she presents.

1. The text, the grammatical structure of the sentence, and the meaning of dame¯i are all matters of dispute. Most translators opt for “prevail” or “win out” and take the “this” to refer to the sentence’s final clause, so that what will never prevail, or win out, is “that things that are not are.” But in the passive, as here, damadzo¯ means “be overpowered, mastered, subdued, or forced.” The first three of these options would give rise to the impression that “that things that are not are” is being presented as an “unconquerable truth,” which would be just the opposite of what the goddess needs to say. Only the last option, “forced,” provides us with a way of regarding this as a state of affairs that is impossible to achieve—“this will never be forced (to be the case): that things that are not are.” The rejection at Fr. 8.46 of the possibility that “what is not” might prevent “what is” from meeting up with its like appears to be one of several applications of this general principle.

2. Following the text as given in Hermann Diels and Walter Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed., 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1952); henceforth cited as DK. I assume without argument that polupeiron modifies ethos and means “much-tried,” the two words together signifying “habitual practice,” that e¯che¯ssan modifies both ear and tongue, and that the relevant function of the tongue is not taste but forming words into speech (cf. Iliad xx.248: glossa . . . polees muthoi). The dominant image in this passage is the indeterminacy or “unfocusedness” of perceptual experience: the “untargeted eye” and the “echoing of the ear and tongue.”

For a defense of this reading, see A. P. D. Mourelatos’s “Determinacy and Indeterminacy as the Key Contrast in Parmenides,” Lampas 8 (1975), with an expanded version in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. vol. 2 (1976).

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What we are to judge, precisely, is a polude¯ris elenchos, which has been variously translated as a “strife-encompassed refutation” (Kirk, Raven, and Schofield), “very contentious challenge” (Mourelatos), “very contentious disproof” (Gallop), “hard-hitting refutation” (Furley), “much contending refutation” (Barnes), “heavily contested refutation” (McKirahan), “much contested argument” (Robinson), “much disputed question” (Wheelwright), “much contested proof” (Tarán), and “much debated proof” (Vlastos and Cornford). So far it seems safe to say only a “much-somethinged something.” The choice of “refutation” was favored by Liddell and Scott and justified to some degree by the refutational orientation of the fifth-century Socratic elenchos. As David Furley explained,3 the original meaning of elenchos—“shame” or “disgrace”—had been replaced by that of “refutation.”

This reading makes some sense in the context of the poem: since Fragment 8 soon speaks of a single way that remains (leipetai), it seems natural to infer that some other way or ways of thinking and speaking have been refuted.

It is therefore this elenchos as “refutation” that the goddess is asking the youth to judge or decide.

It is hard to fault the logic of this crisp disjunctive syllogism, and equally hard to fault the minor premise; the “shame” meaning of elenchos would be singularly out of place in Parmenides’ account. But it is difficult to accept Furley’s disjunction of “shame” or “refutation” as a satisfactory account of the meaning of elenchos from Homer to Socrates. Pierre Chantraine, whose 3. David J. Furley, “Notes on Parmenides,” in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, ed. E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and A. O. Rorty (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973), 1–15. Montgomery Furth made a similar claim: “[H]is own word for his argument is elenchos which we must assume means for him as it presently was to mean for Socrates, the technique of refuting an opponent by reasoning from a premise that the opponent accepts to a conclusion that he must regard as intolerable” (“Elements of Eleatic Ontology,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 [April 1968], 111–32; reprinted in The PreSocratics, ed. A. P. D. Mourelatos [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Press, 1974.]). Furth, at least, faithfully follows out the implications of viewing the elenchos as the Socratic elenchos by inventing an opponent, Betathon, a believer in some nonexistences, whom Parmenides proceeds to refute on Betathon’s own terms. Furth is entitled to his imaginative reconstruction (which he prefaces by a disclaimer for historical accuracy), but it is not correct to say that Parmenides’ elenchos is mere dialectical criticism, for the repudiation of the erroneous way relies crucially on several key Parmenidean assumptions about knowledge, truth, and meaning. Furth elsewhere says that Parmenides is “floating a critique of ways or roads of inquiry” and that there is “a sole survivor of this critique” (“Elements of Eleatic Ontology,” in The Pre-Socratics, 248).

This is both true and relevant to the real meaning of elenchos in Parmenides (as I will argue shortly), but it cannot be seriously maintained that Parmenides thought of his account of ways of inquiry that exist for thinking as a cross-examination of some misguided individual.

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account Furley adopted, was himself less than fully confident of the story he had told.4 Admitting that the etymology of elencho¯ from elachus was uncertain, he also acknowledged that “[l]’évolution de sens entre le vocabulaire homérique et le grec ionien-attique est remarquable” (335). The etymologies offered by Emile Boisacq and Hjalamar Frisk are equally diffident.5 In fact, a survey of the employment of elenchos and elencho¯ from Homer and Hesiod to the middle of the fourth century shows a much larger range of meanings than the simple “shame or refutation” dichotomy can accommodate.

Only when a full sense of the possible choices for elenchos is in hand can we make an informed choice concerning the right rendering for polude¯ris elenchos in Parmenides’ Fr. 7.

There is no reason to doubt that seventh- and sixth-century writers used both the neuter noun and the verb form to convey the idea of shame and disgrace, as in the Muses’ famous speech: Shepherds of the wilderness, things of shame [kak’ elenchea], mere bellies, We know how to say many false things resembling what is true.

(Hesiod, Theogony 26 –27) And in Theognis: . . . accursed old age disgraces [elenchei] one who is beautiful.

(1011) Tyrtaeus had already spoken of having one’s “splendid image [eidos] disgraced [elenchei],” but as one might expect in so military-minded a poet, the greatest shame comes “to one who does not stay and fight” (6.9). The linking of shame or disgrace with a failure in valor is not peculiar to Tyrtaeus, but was a constant feature of the use of elenchos and elencho¯ in Homer. The following are typical. (a) For elenchos (as well as for elenchie¯ and the adjectives elenche¯s and elenchistos): 4. Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968), s.v. elencho¯.

5. Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris: Klincksieck, 1938); Hjalamar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1960).

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Son of Tydeus, what has happened to us to make us forget our furious valor, But come here and stand by my side, for a disgrace [elenchos] it will be If Hector of the flashing helm captures the ships.

(Il. xi.313–15) (b) For elencho¯: Telemachus, the stranger who sits in your house does not disgrace you [ou . . . elenchei].

I did not miss the mark, nor did I grow weary in stringing the bow.

(Od. xxi.424 –25) In the nineteen passages in which either the noun or verb appears, the idea of the elenchos is consistently linked with a failure in a military or athletic mission or contest.6 Lacking an established etymology for elenchos (or elencho¯), it is not possible to know whether Homer has added the idea of the contest to an older shame word, or whether the Homeric usage is a surviving instance of an older complex notion of elenchos as “shame incurred through a failure in valor.” If the latter, then the simple “shame” use of elenchos/elencho¯ in Hesiod and Theognis would represent a selective narrowing of its original meaning. But whether the idea of “failure-shame” is the original form or not, it is clear that, after Homer, other writers express the same idea. When Pindar uses forms of the verb elencho¯, it is to designate a shaming in an athletic contest: when they went down to the races, they put the Hellenic hosts to shame [e¯lenxan] through their swiftness of foot.

(Pythian xi.49) 6. Anne Amory Parry noted this fact in Blameless Aegisthus (Leiden: Brill, 1973): “[E]lenchos and its derivatives in Homer are almost exclusively connected with failures in valor.” Even where combat and feats of physical prowess are absent, there is still an elenchos if these noble warriors have somehow failed in their intended purpose. In the embassy of Phoenix to Achilles in Iliad ix, Phoenix says that Achilles’ rejection of the pleas of Ajax and Odysseus would be an elenchos of their words and their having come to him. The frequent association of disgrace and reproach with a failure in action is discussed by Arthur W. H. Adkins in Merit and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 30 –57. For a dissenting view (though conceding a mainly “shame in failure” meaning to elenchie¯), see A. A. Long, “Morals and Values in Homer,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 90 (1970): 121–39.

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he was handsome to look upon, and by deed he did not disgrace his beauty of form [ou kata eidos elencho¯n] when he won the wrestling match.

(Olympian viii.19) It is therefore not surprising that when a masculine form of elenchos makes its appearance, it means not “disgrace” but a “test” or “contest” in which one incurs or avoids disgrace: “For many tales have been told, and in many ways, but to put one’s new inventions 7 to the test by a touchstone [basano¯i es elenchon] is altogether risky” (Nemean viii.20 –21). For Pindar, the ultimate test of human excellence is athletic competition, and the paragon of arete¯ is the victor of an athletic contest. Nowhere is this said more succinctly than in Olympian iv: “This is a word that never will be tainted with falsehood: Trial [diapeira] is the test [elenchos] of mortals” (17–18). This elenchos is clearly not the to elenchos of Homer and Hesiod but the ho elenchos of Nemean viii, the testing in which excellence is attained or, as in Nemean iii, disgrace avoided: “In the contests [elenchessin] your Aristocleides did not dishonor [ouk . . . emiane] by being worsted in the pankration” (15 –17).

Just as to elenchos as “shame” has been joined by ho elenchos as “test,” so elencho¯ as “shame oneself or another in a test” comes to mean “test” or “be a test of.” So, at least, it appears in Bacchylides’ comparison of wisdom and truth with the “touchstone,” the Lydian stone, used to distinguish gold from inferior metals: For the Lydian stone reveals gold, But it is wisdom and all powerful truth That are the tests for [elenchei] excellence among men.

(Fr. 14) While the verb elencho¯ in Pindar had retained the idea of “shaming” (oneself or another) in a test or contest, here in Bacchylides the context requires something along the lines of “tests for,” “indicates,” or “shows.” Elenchei parallels manuei—“reveals,” “discloses,” or “indicates”—and wisdom and truth must be telltale indicators of virtue, rather than a shaming of it. It is 7. neara d’exeuronta. I take these “inventions” to be the poet’s own odes (reinforced by the reference to logoi at line 21) and the elenchos to be the “trial” by the touchstone of public opinion.

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clear then that at some point in the first half of the fifth century b.c.e., elenchos and elencho¯ began to lose their strict connection with the idea of shame or disgrace, a connection characteristic of their employment in Homer, and began to designate in addition a test or testing process through which the nature of a thing or person might be ascertained.

The idea of elenchos as a testing of a person’s truthfulness or character becomes a common refrain in the works of fifth-century writers. In the Suppliant Maidens, written in the first half of the century (ca. 463), Aeschylus writes that “an unknown companion is brought to the test [exelenchesthai] in time” (993). In their note on this passage, Friis Johansen and Edward Whittle comment: “elenchetai denotes a process through which the true nature of a thing is revealed.” 8 We also see in Aeschylus’s plays the first signs of a “legalized” form of elenchos, a “cross-examination” or testing of a person to determine his or her truthfulness or innocence (cf. Eumenides 433: “exelenche him and decide justly”; and Libation Bearers 851: “I wish to elexai the messenger”). One can find in Sophocles’ plays both elenchos as “contest” and elenchos as the testing of someone’s words: “Eteocles ousted me from my country by persuading the people and not by elenchon of hand or deed of war” (Oedipus Coloneus 1297); and “an elenchos of the queen’s words” (Oedipus Tyrannos 603). In Euripides, the most common meaning of elenchos is the one already familiar from Pindar and Bacchylides: it is the testing that reveals the true nature of a thing or person: Having been exposed in the elenchon, it now comes out who you really are.

(Alcestis 640) The bow is no elenchos of a man, it is a coward’s weapon; the real man stands in the ranks and dares to face the spear (Heracles 162 – 63) Your wife, fearing that if put to the elenchon she might be proved a sinner, wrote a letter.

(Hippolytus 1310) 8. Aeschylus, The Suppliants, ed. H. Friis Johansen and Edward W. Whittle (Copenhagen: I Kommission hos Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1980), iii:285.

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That is what misfortune means among mankind; upon no man who wished me well at all, could I wish this acid test [elenchon] of friends might fall.

(Heracles 58 –59, trans. Arrowsmith) Herodotus also speaks of an elenchos as a test to which a thing or person is put: [W]hen I return, you will bring your son here before me to be put to the test [ton paida es elenchon]. (History i:209) The belief in the river Oceanus is grounded in obscurity [aphanes] and lacks a testing [ouk echei elenchos]. (History ii:23) 9 There is, however, one passage in Herodotus in which the verb elencho¯ refers not to the testing or examination of an account, but rather to the controverting or refuting of one. In ii:115, the men who traveled with Alexander are permitted to tell their own version of what happened, and when Herodotus says that “they e¯lenchon his story,” he appears to mean that they refuted it.

The idea of an elenchos as a refutation is familiar to us from the character of the Socratic elenchos in Plato’s early dialogues. Socrates tests his interlocutors, he cross-examines them, and he routinely refutes them. Perhaps the first unmistakably “refutational” uses of elenchos occur in the Protagoras (at 344b) and Gorgias (473e), but a refutational sense of the term is also prominent in Aristotle (elenchos is defined as a syllogismos antiphaseo¯s in the Sophistici Elenci) as well as in the Peri Theo¯n (3.8) of Philodemus, written some two hundred years later.

The older meaning of elenchos as “testing” has now been augmented— not, as we shall see, replaced—by elenchos as “refutation,” and there is yet another remarkable development. In Gorgias’s famous speech “The Defense 9. Herodotus’s statement that this belief does not “have elenchos” has been variously understood: “does not admit of testing,” “does not have a proof,” “does not have a refutation,” “does not need a refutation.” The presence of the term aphanes is, however, significant, since it reflects a tendency among many fifth-century writers (e.g., the author of On Ancient Medicine) to treat the older cosmological beliefs about “what is above the heavens and below the earth” as “nonevident,” that is, as lying beyond the range of what can be tested and known to be true or false. I think it is plausible to suppose that Herodotus is here taking the belief in Oceanus to be one of those beliefs that lie beyond the range of testing.

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of Palamedes,” composed at some time in the last quarter of the fifth century, elenchos appears to mean neither “test” nor “refutation” but “proof.”

“And of the things that my accuser himself has said, not one of the things he has spoken is a proof [apodeixis], so his own account succeeds only as abuse, not having elenchos” (Fr. B11, sec. 29). And when in section 34 Gorgias states that “you must not prefer aitiai to elencho¯n,” he appears to be contrasting mere accusations with solid proofs. The most natural explanation for all this is that the elenchos that had designated a testing of a thing’s nature or a person’s character came to be used in the context of testing a person’s veracity, and those who passed the test could be said to have had an elenchos of their claims, that is, a “proof,” while those who failed it could be said to have had an elenchos, that is, a “refutation,” of theirs. This multiplicity of meanings for elenchos in the fifth century would thus represent a process of bifurcation that can be observed elsewhere in Greek and Latin (for example, in Greek sumphero¯, where what is literally “brought together” becomes both “benefits” and “misfortunes,” and in the Latin altus, where altus, from alo, meaning “nourish,” comes to mean both “high” and “deep”).

A parallel development can be observed in the use of the verb elencho¯. In the Gorgias, it appears along with the refutational elenchos and marks not just an examination but a refutation (473b9 –10): Polus: That is more difficult to refute [exelenxai] than your first point.

Socrates: Not difficult, but impossible, for the truth is never refuted [oudepote elenchetai].

Elsewhere, elencho¯ seems to mean, as Georges Daux maintained, not simply refutation but cross-examination “with the intention of refuting what is said.” 10 And even as late as the Republic, one can find both elenchos and elencho¯ in the sense of “test /testing” rather than “proof” or “refutation.” In 10. Georges Daux, “Sur quelques passages de ‘Banquet’ de Platon,” Revue des Études Grecques 55 (1942): 252 –53. Daux also provides convincing evidence that the verb elencho¯, as it is used in Andocides’ speech “de Mysteriis” (given in 399 b.c.), must sometimes be translated as “cross-examine” and sometimes (even in a succeeding sentence) as “prove.” Socrates’ investigation of the meaning of the statement, made by the Pythian priestess at Delphi, that “no one was wiser” than Socrates would appear to fit this description. At Apology 21b9 – c2 Socrates states: “I went to one of those reputed wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I could refute the oracle [elenxo¯n to manteion] and say to it, ‘This man is wiser than I, but you said I was [wiser].’”

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book vii of the Republic Plato describes the person who does not know the good itself as “the man who is unable to define in his discourse and distinguish and abstract from all other things the aspect of the idea of the good, and who cannot, as it were in battle, running the gauntlet of all tests [elencho¯n], and striving to examine [elenchein] everything by essential reality and not by opinion, hold on his way through all this without tripping in his reasoning—the man who lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the good itself” (534b, trans. Shorey).

We can, then, offer a thumbnail sketch of the meaning of elenchos and elencho¯ that, while not exhaustive, goes well beyond the “shame or refutation” dichotomy proposed by Furley. The meaning of “shame” or “disgrace” can be seen in the use of elenchos in the poems of Hesiod and Theognis, but the most common early use of the term is to designate the shame incurred through a failure of military or (semimilitary) athletic valor (in Homer, Tyrtaeus, and, for the verb elencho¯, Pindar). In Pindar we find the second declension form ho elenchos used without a suggestion of shame or disgrace to refer to an athletic competition and the testing of a poet’s works by public opinion. In Bacchylides (Fr. 14) the verb elencho¯ means “test for” or “indicate,” and the idea of the elenchos as the “acid test” of a thing’s nature or a person’s mettle is found in many fifth-century writers. Toward the end of the century we begin to see a more specialized use of elenchos, referring to an examination of a person’s words for their truth or falsity, and elenchos with the meaning “cross-examination” becomes common. Among the philosophers of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, elenchos covers a wide range of items, from “contest,” “testing,” and “cross-examination” to “refutation” and “proof.”

II. The Character of the Parmenidean Elenchos We do not know precisely when Parmenides composed his famous poem, but the evidence would not support a date later than the first third of the fifth century. The story in the opening of Plato’s Parmenides places Parmenides’ birth date around 515 –510 b.c.e. Diogenes Laertius (Lives ix.231) links Parmenides’ activity with the sixty-ninth Olympiad (504 –501 b.c.e.), perhaps following Apollodorus’s arbitrary choice of the founding of Elea (in 540 –539 b.c.e.) as the year of Parmenides’ birth. In terms of the evidence supplied by our survey of elenchos, we should reject “challenge,” “argu-

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ment,” and “question” as unsupportable translations of elenchos and regard “test” or “testing” as somewhat more likely during this earlier period than the later “refutation” or “proof.”

At the same time, no information about the general use of elenchos can suffice for determining what elenchos meant in the writings of a particularly creative thinker such as Parmenides, nor can it tell us specifically what sort of process or activity the term elenchos might designate in a particular context. It is possible, for example, that the elenchos in Fr. 7 referred to a proof or a refutation, even if that is not what elenchos meant, just as “There is some fruit in the kitchen” might be a remark about apples, even if “fruit” does not simply mean “apples.”

It is generally believed that the lengthy prooemium presented in Parmenides’ Fr. 1 foreshadows a number of features in the main account to follow. We are told, for example, that the youth /Parmenides is to undergo a two-part process of instruction in “truth” and “opinion,” that part of his education will involve becoming acquainted with the powers of Light and Night, and that the correct way of thinking and speaking about “what is” will be quite esoteric (that is, “lie far from the beaten track”). Included among the features foreshadowed in the goddess’s opening remarks is some kind of testing or examination process.

The relevant remark is not made until the very last line of Fr. 1, when, after stating that the youth must learn “all things, a steadfast heart of wellrounded [or perhaps “very persuasive”] truth, as well as mortal opinions in which there is no true trust,” she promises: But nevertheless you shall learn these things also: how the appearances Must acceptably be [dokimo¯s einai], all of them passing through all.

Many uncertainties surround this remark,11 but at least the meaning of dokimo¯s einai can be fixed with some degree of confidence. As G. E. L. Owen and A. P. D. Mourelatos explained, being in a way that is dokimo¯s involves gaining acceptance through some process of certification: “The picture as11. One manuscript of Simplicius contains pero¯nta, while three others have per onta. It is also unclear whether ta dokounta—“the appearances”—pass the test and qualify as real or fail the test and are rejected as spurious entities. The answer to this question depends on what view one holds about the status of appearances in the doxa section of the poem. I believe that the doxa assigns a degree of legitimacy and knowability to appearances, but this is not essential to the present account.

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sociated with this use appears to be that of a person who is admitted to a certain status, relationship, or group after a rigorous test or rite of admission (dokimadzein, dokimasia).” 12 We can only speculate about the kind of dokimasia Parmenides might have had in mind as his model for the testing of appearances that is to follow. Candidates for public office in ancient Athens had to undergo a dokimasia at the hands of the six junior archons (or, in the case of candidates for the boule, its outgoing members) to determine whether they met all the requirements for citizenship. The citizens of the city were also subjected to a dokimasia to determine whether they had the right to speak in the assembly or in legal proceedings. Iamblichus reports that at an earlier date Pythagoras conducted an extended dokimasia of all those who sought to affiliate themselves with him, and that he “drove off” (ape¯laune) those judged unworthy of admission as a consequence of failing the test.13 It is possible, then, that Parmenides conceived of his examination of the merits of various ways of thinking and speaking about “what is” along the lines of the examination he and others may have undergone in order to gain admission to the Pythagorean society.14 In the present circumstances Parmenides would be admitting or accepting the idea of “it is” as a genuine way of thinking and speaking, while “letting go” (ean), “driving off” (eplachthe¯san), and “thrusting out” (apo¯se) those erroneous “is not” forms of thinking and speaking, “coming to be” and “perishing” (Fr. 8.27–28). In any case, the reference to a “dokimo¯s way of being” in Fr. 1 sends a clear signal that some kind of testing or examination is about to be carried out.

In the opening sentence of Fr. 8, which follows (by some unknown distance) the goddess’s injunction in Fr. 7 to krinai the elenchos, she proclaims: 12. A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), 200. Cf. G. E. L. Owen, “Eleatic Questions,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 10 (1960): 86: “The dokimo¯s is the reliable man, not the one who measures up to some standards but fails the main test.” In Aeschylus’s Persians (87), being dokimos is having been proved in battle. In his Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Reimer, 1897), Hermann Diels emended Simplicius’s dokimo¯s to dokimo¯s’(ai), but still translated “how one must accept the appearances in a thorough examination [Durchforschung].” Diels understood the elenchos to be modeled on a legal trial or adjudication of a “multilateral dispute” among mortal doxa and to take place within the doxa portion of Parmenides’ poem.

13. Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. J. Dillon and J. Hershbell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), chaps. 17 and 20. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, viii, 10: “For five whole years they had to keep silence, merely listening to his discourses without seeing him, until they passed an examination [dokimastheien] and thenceforth were admitted to his house and allowed to see him.”

14. Parmenides is reported to have been introduced into the Pythagorean way of life (“the quiet life”) by Ameinias (DK A1; Diogenes Laertius, Lives, ix, 21). Cf. the testimonia of Proclus and Photius (DK A4).

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“and still single remains an account of a way 15—that it is”; and she alludes to the “very many signs” (se¯mata . . . polla mala) that insofar as it is, “what is” is also “ungenerated and indestructible, whole, of a single kind, steadfast, and complete” (Fr. 8.3– 4). We are given to understand, then, that the sole viable way of thinking and speaking requires saying and thinking in each of these specific ways that “it is.” Similarly, she announces at Fr. 8.15 – 18: “The decision concerning these matters rests in this: it is or it is not. But in fact it has been decided, as is necessary, to let go the one way as unthinkable and unnameable (for it is no true way), and that the other is true and genuine.” In this it seems obvious that an “is not” way of thinking (te¯n men) is being adjudged an illegitimate form of thought—no “true way” of thinking at all—while a second way (te¯n d’)—the “it is” way—is being declared both true and genuine. Krisis, kekritai, ho¯ste, pelein, and ete¯tumos all point in the same direction: a decision, a result, what has “turned out” to be, a finding of legitimacy.16 Precisely how the goddess has reached, is reaching, or is about to reach these dual findings of legitimacy and illegitimacy remains a matter of debate, in part because Parmenides failed to mark off clearly the premises of his arguments from the conclusions. As a consequence, it is often hard to tell whether a particular claim is intended to follow from what has just been said, is regarded as transparently true on its face, or is being announced in advance as the conclusion of the line of reasoning about to be given. As I understand her account, the goddess begins by identifying the “only ways of inquiry that are available for thinking.” The first of these is “that it is, and is not available for not being.” When she immediately declares this “a path of persuasion because it attends upon truth” (Fr. 2.4), it would appear that we are being alerted in advance what the ultimate outcome of her investigation will be. When, however, she turns to identify the second way, “that it is not 15. Perhaps an instance of transferred epithet, equivalent to “the account is that still there remains a single way”). Alternatively, taking muthos as “word,” we might translate (following Tarán): “still single remains the word—estin.”

16. As Mourelatos noted (Route, 186 n), the verb pelo¯ comes from an Indo-European root meaning “to turn” and conveys the idea (reinforced here through the use of the resultant ho¯ste) of “turning out to be in a certain way.” The adjective ete¯tumos—“true, real, genuine”—would be the term par excellence to use to refer to an item that has been put to the test and found to be genuine. In Olympian 10 (53–55) Pindar refers to Time as the sole testing (exelenchon) of the real (ete¯tumon) truth. Theocritus asks in 12.35 –37 that his lover “have a mouth like the gold that moneychangers discover from the Lydian stone is not false but true [ete¯tumon].” For “deciding” or “judging” an elenchos, see Aeschylus, Eumenides 433—“But examine [exelenche] him and decide [krine] justly”—and the association of elencho¯n with krisis at Philebus 52d– e.

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and necessarily [or properly] is not,” she characterizes it as a way “from which no learning will ever come” (2.6), insofar as (or “since”—gar) “you can neither know what is not, for that cannot be accomplished, nor indicate it [or “make it known”— phrasais].” That the rejection of the “is not” way of thinking as vacuous or uninformative functions as a basic premise in Parmenides’ account seems certain, given the argument the goddess deploys against the possibility of coming into being at Fr. 8.7– 8: “I will not allow you to say or think that it came from what is not, for [gar] it is not to be said or thought that it is not.” In the remainder of Fr. 8 the goddess appears to fill out and extend this line of argument by arguing that “what is” can never be truly said or thought “to not be” in any of four different respects: (a) it cannot not be at some earlier or later time; (b) it cannot not be at some particular place; (c) it cannot not be where it previously was; and (d) it cannot not be at present what it will be at some future time. One natural interpretation of these remarks (but certainly not the only possible one) is that Parmenides has tried to establish that the only way of inquiring, speaking, and thinking about “what is” that can possibly achieve truth is the one in which we think and speak of “what is” in as positive, complete, and consistent a way as possible, never thinking of it as “not being” in any respect whatsoever.

But however one conceives of the general structure of the argument, it is clear, and important to recognize, that the presentation of the argument is not concluded until line 49 of Fr. 8. Thus, the decision between “it is” and “it is not” announced in lines 15 –18 must be thought of as covering the entire process of argument through which the “is not” way is set aside. Similarly, the reference to the “elenchos spoken by me” at Fr. 7.5 – 6 must be understood to refer not to some elenchos that has already been concluded prior to Fr. 7, but rather to the entire critical review the goddess carries out on behalf of the youth, through the presentation of the entire set of arguments that begins in Fr. 2 and continues on through Fr. 8.49.17 It is also important to note that the appearance of the two forms of the 17. Smyth comments: “The participle, as a verbal adjective, is timeless. The tenses of the participle express only continuance, simple occurrence, and completion with permanent result.

Whether the action expressed by the participle is antecedent, coincident, or subsequent to that of the leading verb (in any tense) depends on the context” (H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev.

G. M. Messing [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920], sec. 1872). If we think of the elenchos as the whole critique of the available ways of speaking and thinking, then the judging that the goddess is asking to take place is coincident with her entire positive account, up to Fr. 8.49. (For the coincident use of the aorist participle, see Smyth, Greek Grammar, sec. 1872c2, and Plato’s Apology 30d: “do not commit the error of condemning me.”)

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verb krino¯ in Fr. 8 directly ties this conclusion to the injunction to krinai issued in the preceding Fr. 7. The judging or deciding of the elenchos, then, must involve making a decision relating to both the “is” and “is not” ways of thinking and speaking about what is.18 Since the first element in the conclusion at Fr. 8.16 consists in rejecting the “is not” way, the elenchos cannot be thought of as an entirely positive “proof”; and since the second element consists in proclaiming the “it is” way as a legitimate way, neither can the elenchos be considered an entirely negative “refutation.” The elenchos, in short, can only be understood as the entire process of considering the merits of each of the two available ways of thinking and speaking about “what is”—which is just what we should have expected, given the use of krinai and ete¯tumos in Fr. 7 and the reference to a dokimo¯s way of einai back in Fr. 1.

A final clue to the nature of the elenchos is supplied by the use of the adjective polude¯ris —“rich in battle, struggle, or contest.” 19 I have argued elsewhere 20 that “struggle” here denotes a clash of competing powers: roughly speaking, the “force of habit” meets “the force of logic.” The elenchos the goddess presents is naturally regarded as “contested,” “contentious,” or “controversial” because it will be stoutly resisted by conventional opinion or well-entrenched common sense (cf. Fr. 7.3– 4, where the youth is urged not to let custom or habit “force” [biastho¯] him to steer his senses along the erroneous path taken by mortals). At the same time, her elenchos can also be thought of as “strong” or “forceful” in its own right—her account is said to possess “the strength of trust” (8.12: pistios ischus), and it is backed by “strong Necessity” (8.30: kratere¯ Ananke¯). Here too the language used in the prooemium is significant: through the use of a series of polu- expressions the goddess foreshadows the highly persuasive character of the account that is to follow. The roadway along which the youth is transported is said to be “richly endowed with song” (1.2: poluphe¯mon); the (equine) powers that will guide him are described as “rich in indicating or showing” (1.4: poluphrastoi); and the Justice that controls the passage through the great gates is said to be “much avenging” (1.14: polupoinos). Each attribute contributes 18. It is often supposed that the goddess actually sets out three different ways, based on the usual construction of Fr. 6.3. But I am inclined to accept the view that there are only two ways, as proposed by Cordero and Nehamas and recently supported by Patricia Curd (see her Legacy of Parmenides, 51– 63).

19. In Ibycus 67 the Trojan war is called a “much-sung de¯ris”; book xxiv of the Odyssey features a de¯ris for arete¯ between Odysseus and Telemachus; and at Nemean xi.26, Pindar describes Aristagoras as “a better wrestler than his competitors—de¯rio¯nto¯n.”

20. In “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking”; see the unnumbered footnote on this chapter’s opening page.

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to a single message: because Parmenides has been able (with the assistance of the usual divine sources of inspiration) to craft a serial critique of the merits of each of the available ways of thinking and speaking, legitimizing one while repudiating the other, it must be regarded as highly persuasive— “hotly contested” certainly, but also quite “forceful” in its own right.

III. The Legacy of the Parmenidean Elenchos The upshot of the present analysis is that Parmenides’ polude¯ris elenchos was a “controversial but forceful testing” of the possible ways of thinking and speaking about what is. By adapting the older idea of an elenchos or dokimasia of a person’s qualifications or a thing’s true nature to consider the merits of alternative conceptions of the nature of what is, Parmenides succeeded in mounting an effective presentation of his view in the face of competing accounts and a well-entrenched common sense.

A number of later thinkers appear to have followed Parmenides in organizing their accounts in the form of a serial review or critique of the available options,21 as in the following passages from Gorgias’s Fr. 3: If anything exists, it is the existent that exists, or the nonexistent, or both the existent and the nonexistent. But neither does the existent exist, as he will establish, nor the nonexistent, as he will demonstrate, nor both the existent and the nonexistent, as he will also make plain.

Nothing therefore exists. (Section 66) If the existent exists, it is either eternal or created, or both eternal and created. . . . Therefore the existent does not exist. (Section 68) And from Philolaus’s Fr. 2: “All existing things must be said to be [composed of] limited things or unlimited things, or of both limited and unlimited things. But they cannot be unlimited only [or limited only], since it is apparent that they are out of neither wholly limited nor wholly unlimited things, so it is clear that the universe and the things in it are composed from both limited and unlimited things.” Aristotle typically begins his discussion 21. Similarities first noted by Karl Reinhardt in Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Bonn: Cohen, 1916; repr., Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1959), 65; Eduard Zeller in La filosofia dei Greci, ed. Rodolfo Mondolfo (Florence: “La nuovo Italia,” 1938), 2:378; and Walter Burkert in Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin L. Minar Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 260.

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of a philosophical topic by conducting a review of the merits of the available endoxa, or “received opinions.” In Nicomachean Ethics i, for example, he examines each of the various contenders for eudaimonia, or a truly successful human life, using as his touchstone for adequacy the attributes of selfsufficiency, ultimacy, and epistemic superiority (and concluding in the choice of virtue over honor, wealth, and pleasure). Similarly, in the central books of the Metaphysics, he reviews the merits of each of the promising contenders for “substance” in the light of a set of conditions any genuine substance must satisfy.

In a number of Plato’s dialogues we see Socrates putting various proposals and definitions to a test, using as his touchstone for acceptability their consistency with other propositions already agreed to by his interlocutors.

The elenchos here is clearly a matter of cross-examination and, typically, refutation, yet the basic idea of a testing or examination remains. At Gorgias 486d, Socrates speaks of the elenchos as a Lydian stone that he rubs against the soul of an individual to test its quality (a lithon used to basanidzein the psuche¯). In the Philebus (52dff.) Socrates will conduct an elenchos of pleasures to make a krisis and ranking of the best kind of life. The term elenchos appears here and often elsewhere, but the practice is far more common than the term. In the Theaetetus (161e7– 8), the “business of dialectic” is itself described as “investigating and setting about to test [elenchein] one another’s perceptions and opinions,” which parallels the description of dialectic given in Republic 534b – c (quoted above).

At the same time, the Socratic elenchos was not identical in all respects to the one conducted by Parmenides’ goddess. For one thing, Socrates’ investigations typically involved examining the beliefs or opinions held by others, rather than a set of theoretically distinguishable points of view on a given subject. Clearly, both Socrates’ interlocutors and their beliefs came under searching scrutiny. His conduct of the elenchos, moreover, was rarely so exhaustive as to constitute a complete review of all possible alternative points of view. But in light of the various points of similarity between the Parmenidean and Socratic elenchos, it seems clear that in its methodology as well as its view of the nature of what is, Parmenides’ poem left a rich legacy for succeeding generations of philosophers.22 22. The general idea that it is possible to discover the truth about some matter by conducting a trial, test, or examination appears to have been a part of traditional Greek common sense.

(See the discussion in James H. Lesher, “The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 [1994]: 1–34, and passages such as Homer, Iliad ii, 302; viii, 18; Odyssey viii, 213; xiii, 336; Theognis, 125 –26). Parmenides’ innovation, in my view, was to develop the elenchos as a methodology in philosophical inquiry and discussion.

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2 Forensic Characteristics of Socratic Argumentation

H AY D E N W. A U S L A N D

Socrates’ dialectic is traditionally held to have followed two complementary paths: one destructive of opinions and designed to produce in an interlocutor a state of perplexity and therefore also a willingness to learn; and a constructive one leading in principle to definite conclusions. Scholarly discussion of e[legco~ and ejpagwghv is usually pursued within a discussion of a Socratic method or, more broadly, a history of logic.1 The idea of philosophical method arises in the fifth century as an adaptation of a traditional poetic image of alternative ways, or paths, of life; but, by the mid–fourth century, a mevqodo~ has already become any one among several courses of study or disciplines— each of which, Aristotle stresses, demands only an appropriate exactness. As a rigorous discipline, logic is in key respects an Aristotelian innovation, and Socrates’ disputational way of life has since Aristotle’s time usually been presented in regard to its contribution to this or an associated discipline rather than in the light of its own proper character. The 1. Robinson, Earlier, 7–20 and 35 –50 (2d ed., 7–19 and 33– 48); Norman Gulley, The Philosophy of Socrates (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968), 13–22 and 37– 49. Cf. William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 7–9 and 36.

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actual motives underlying a historically intermediate Socratic way of life rooted in argument thus constitute a problem to be explored via two questions: (a) What kinds of aims does Socrates himself have in his discussions? and (b) To which previously existing disciplines are his procedures most germane? This essay is in the main restricted to some comparisons pertinent to the second inquiry.2

I. Elenchos “If the actual Socrates practiced elenchus, how did he come to it?” 3 The verb ejlevgcein means primarily “to impugn the honor of” a person or of his actions or words. In early poetic diction, an e[legco~ (neuter) or ejlegceivh (feminine) is accordingly a moral reproach—usually within the terms of a characteristically martial ethic.4 The more technical later use of the masculine noun e[legco~ is to be understood accordingly in forensic contexts, where it refers more narrowly to refuting the claims of an antagonist by testing them or putting them to the proof. The use of the term in Socratic literature is clearly at least shaped by this background, both generally and specially.5 For example, the Hippias Minor opens with a host named Eudicus challenging his guest Socrates either to admit what the Sophist Hippias has just said or else to refute it: EU. Su; de; dh; tiv siga`/~, w\ Swvkrate~, ÔIppivou tosau`ta ejpideixamevnou, kai; oujci; h] sunepainei`~ ti tw`n eijrhmevnwn h] kai; ejlevgcei~, ei[ tiv 2. On alternative paths, cf. Hesiod, Erga 213–17, with Parm., DK B6.3–5, B7.2, and B8.1f. See also Xen., Mem. ii.i.20ff., and Plato, Rep. 364c5 –d3. For the origins of method, see Otfried Becker, Das Bild des Weges und verwandte Vorstellungen im frühgriechischen Denken (Berlin: Weidmann, 1937), 2; and cf. Eric Voegelin, The World of the Polis, vol. 2 of Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 204 –10, esp. 209. For differing disciplines’ different demands, see Aristotle, Anal. Post. i.27, Metaph. a.3, and Eth. Eud. i.6.

For principles for reading philosophers of the past historically, see Leo Strauss, “How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 208 –10.

3. Robinson, Earlier, 17 (2d ed., 17).

4. See Adkins, Merit and Responsibility, 30 – 60 (esp. 31–34, 38 – 40, and 43).

5. “‘Elenchus’ in the wider sense means examining a person with regard to a statement he has made, by putting to him questions calling for further statements, in the hope that they will determine the meaning and the truth-value of his first statement. Most often the truth-value expected is falsehood; and so ‘elenchus’ in the narrower sense is a form of cross-examination or refutation” (Robinson, Earlier, 7 [2d ed., 7]).

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soi mh; kalw`~ dokei` eijrhkevnai… a[llw~ te ejpeidh; kai; aujtoi; leleivmmeqa, oi} mavlistæ a]n ajntipoihsaivmeqa metei`nai hJmi`n th`~ ejn filosofiva/ diatribh`~.

(363a1–5) Eudicus: Why are you silent, Socrates, after the magnificent display which Hippias has been making? Why do you not either refute his words, if he seems to you to have been wrong in any point, or join with us in commending him? There is the more reason why you should speak, because we are now alone, and the audience is confined to those who may fairly claim to take part in philosophical discussion. (Trans. Jowett) That Eudicus’s challenge is not tailored for Socrates as the inventor of philosophical refutation but is instead a traditional rhetorical topos can be seen by comparing something her nurse says to Phaedra in the Hippolytus of Euripides, which was performed shortly before Plato’s birth: ei\eJn: tiv siga`/~… oujk ejcrh`n siga`n, tevknon, ajllæ h[ mæ ejlevgcein, ei[ ti mh; kalw`~ levgw, h] toi`s in eu\ lecqei`s i sugcwrei`n lovgoi~.

(297–99) Ha, silent?—silence, my child, beseems thee not.

Or thou shouldst chide me if I speak not well, Or unto pleadings wisely uttered yield.

(Trans. Way) Many elements of Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogues normally classed under “method” or “doctrine” are of the same sort; that is, they are literary applications of relatively unspecialized principles, or even specialized techniques properly at home in a nonphilosophical discipline.6 Thus challenging a silent or evasive party in the way just illustrated is routine in the cross6. Cf. Soph. 259a2 – 4 and Laws 899c6 –9. On the assumption that they were retrieving doctrinal material, a few scholars late last century isolated so many such features common to Plato’s dialogues and Attic drama that they could hypothesize an entirely lost earlier tradition of sophistical teachings. See, most notably, Ferdinand Dümmler, Prolegomena zu Platons Staat (Basel: L. Reinhardt, 1891) [reprinted in Dümmler, Kleine Schriften i (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1901), 150 –228]. Dümmler also invented the “Thrasymachus” (i.q. Rep. i).

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examinations found represented or outlined in many forensic speeches. If a litigant can ask his opponent a question that he cannot answer with anything but silence, then the latter will stand refuted; the point is regularly drilled home by asking the silent antagonist (or the jury, or oneself rhetorically) about the reason for an opponent’s silence.7 In the passages just quoted, Plato and Euripides are both playing on this standard courtroom tactic. One may compare the properly forensic instance in Isaeus 11.3– 6. In this speech, a litigant is about to challenge his opponent to offer any evidence at all of a right to an inheritance. He explains the alternatives to the jury in advance: ”Ina dæ ajkribw`~ mavqhte peri; w|n yhfiei`sqe, tou;~ pollou;~ lovgou~ ejavsa~ ou|to~ eijpavtw o{ ti oJ pai`~ proshvkei toutwni; tw`n eijrhmevnwn tw`/ to;n klh`ron katalipovnti: ka]n fanh`Ê katav ti proshvkwn, eJkw;n ejgw; sugcwrw` to; hJmiklhvrion ei\nai tou` paidov~. Eij dev toi mhde;n touvtwn e{xei eijpei`n, pw`~ oujk ejlegcqhvsetai fanerw`~ ejme; me;n sukofantw`n, uJma`~ dæ ejxapath`sai para; tou;~ novmou~ zhtw`n… ∆Anabibasavmeno~ ou\n aujto;n ejnantivon uJmw`n ejrwthvsw. (11.3f.)

And so that you may form a distinct idea of the point you must decide, let my antagonist show, without superfluous words, in which of 7. For the aims of addressing questions to different persons, see Hermogenes, Meth. Dein.

10. Fuller commentary is found in Greg. Corinth., In Hermog. Meth. Dein. 10 (Walz vii.ii, 1202.8 –1210.19); see esp. 1207.2 – 8: ∆Anantivrrhton de; o]n to; sch`ma trei`~ e[cei morfav~. morfa;~ tou;~ schmatismou;~ noetevon: o} ga;r hJ morfh; tw`/ swvmati, tou`to tw`/ lovgw/ to; sch`ma: ejrwta`/ ou\n, fhsi;n, oJ levgwn h] tou;~ ajkouvonta~ h] tou;~ ajntilevgonta~ h] eJautovn. eJkavsth de; tw`n ejrwthvsewn diavforon e[cei to; ajpotevlesma: hJ me;n ga;r pro;~ tou;~ ajkouvonta~ ejrwvthsi~ ejlegktikhv, touvtestin ojneidistikhv, hJ de; pro;~ tou;~ ajntilevgonta~ ajnatreptikhv, tw`n paræ aujtw`n proteinomevnwn, hJ de; pro;~ eJauto;n tou` rJhvtoro~ peu`s i~ kai; tou;~ ajkouvonta~ ejpistrevfei eij~ prosoch;n ejpispwmevnh, kai; th;n pivstin prokatalambavnei: touvtesti ta; parav tinwn uJformw`nta luvei kai; pri;n ei[pwsin aujtav.

“While the figure is incontrovertible, it has three forms.” By “forms” is meant “configurations”; for, as the form is to the body, so is this to the speech. The speaker asks, he [sc. Hermogenes] says, either the listeners or his adversaries or himself. But each of the interrogations has a different result; for the one directed to the listeners is critical, that is, vituperative, while that directed to the adversaries is refutative of their premises, and the inquiry directed at the speaker himself both converts the audience by rendering it attentive and also anticipates the proof; that is, it resolves the latent suspicions of some even before they give voice to these.

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the degrees just mentioned the boy is related to the last owner of this estate; for if he can prove his relationship in any one of them, I will willingly allow that half of the inheritance belongs to him; but if nothing of this kind can be shown, will he not clearly convict himself of having calumniated me and attempted to delude you in defiance of the law? I will, therefore, bring him up to your tribunal and interrogate him.

Having asked a series of questions (his opponent’s probably evasive answers are not part of the text), he asks the jury: Aijsqavnesqe o{ti oujk e[cei th;n suggevneian eijpei`n, ajllæ ajpokrivnetai pavnta ma`llon h] o} dei` maqei`n uJma`~. Kaivtoi tovn ge pravttontav ti divkaion ouj prosh`ken ajporei`n, ajllæ eujqu;~ levgein. . . . Nu`n dæ ejfæ oi|~ ajpovkrisin ouj devdwken, . . . ou{tw scevtlio~ kai; ajnaidh;~ a[nqrwpov~ ejstin. (11.6) His answers, judges, are foreign to the purpose, and apply to every thing but that which you wish to know: yet a man, who intends to do justice, ought not to hesitate, but to speak directly. . . . but now so shameless is his impudence, that, without giving one explicit answer . . . (Trans. Jones) He thus concludes the section with a moral reproach.

Socrates is often regarded as having been up to something new in his questionings, and it will be held that what he does in his elenctic arguments is something quite specially motivated.8 This is probably partly true. While many features of Socratic dialectic that seem to set it apart are likewise common to forensic practice,9 it is also true that in advocacy of the type Isaeus practices one is not usually acting very friendly or concerned for the welfare of one’s adversaries. But this is a notable feature of Socrates’ manner toward even his most vehement dialectical opponents. One can see a forensic style, 8. See Thomas Meyer, Platons Apologie (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1962), 59 – 65 (esp. 63).

9. For Socrates’ plea for indulgence of his own marketplace, or conversational, style of speaking in response to rhetorically “clever” adversaries (Prot. 328d3–329b8; Grg. 448d1–10 and 471d3– 472c6), cf. Plato, Ap. 17a1–18a6, with Antiphon 1.1, 3.b.2, 5.1–5; Andocides 1.9; Lysias 12.3, 19.2; Isaeus 1.1, Demosthenes 19.217, 27.2, 41.2. Similar backgrounds can be located for several dialectical topoi that are at first sight seemingly philosophical in their conception.

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for example, in the way he gradually corners Thrasymachus in Republic i.

The eager Sophist is at first restrained by the others present, but later forced by these same onlookers to answer Socrates’ questions. He responds with increasing difficulty until he eventually has no choice but to capitulate by making light of the argument and continuing it, as he claims, “only to oblige the rest.” Yet later on in the dialogue, Socrates refers to Thrasymachus as his friend.10 In an argument with Callicles in the Gorgias, Socrates effects something analogous, this time for a while actually reducing his opponent to complete silence. Appropriately, the argument begins with Callicles’ directly impugning Socrates’ whole refutative way of life (486c4 –d1). As the argument proceeds, he boldly disparages Socrates’ word-hunting, dissimulation, homely examples, demagoguery, and sophistry before finally seeking his release from the argument after having continued for some time professedly only for the sake of the onlooking Gorgias. At this point, Callicles cannot be induced to continue, so Socrates prepares to do so by himself, taking up for a while the part of his interlocutor as well (505c1–506b6). But before so continuing, he invites Callicles to challenge anything he may say that seems wrong to him: ∆Alla; me;n dhv, w\ Gorgiva, kai; aujto;~ hJdevw~ me;n a]n Kalliklei` touvtw/ e[ti dielegovmhn, e{w~ aujtw`/ th;n tou` ∆Amfivono~ ajpevdwka rJh`s in ajnti; th`~ tou` Zhvqou: ejpeidh; de; suv, w\ Kallivklei~, oujk ejqevlei~ sundiapera`nai to;n lovgon, ajllæ ou\n ejmou` ge ajkouvwn ejpilambavnou, ejavn tiv soi dokw` mh; kalw`~ levgein. kaiv me eja;n ejxelevgchÊ~, oujk ajcqesqhvsomaiv soi w{sper su; ejmoiv, ajlla; mevgisto~ eujergevth~ paræ ejmoi; ajnagegravyhÊ. (506b4 – c3; cf. a1–5) I too, Gorgias, should have liked to continue the argument with Callicles, and then I might have given him an “Amphion” in return for his “Zethus”; but since you, Callicles, are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen, and interrupt me if I seem to you to be in error. And if you refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with me, but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul. (Trans. Jowett) Socrates’ invitation to Callicles is not unlike Eudicus’s invitation to Socrates at the beginning of the Hippias Minor. Callicles is eventually drawn back 10. See Rep. 336b1– 6, 344d1–5, 350c12 – e10, and 352b3– 6. For Socrates’ friendship with Thrasymachus, see 498c9f.

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into the argument, which comes back around to the comparison of their two different ways of life. Socrates challenges Callicles to name someone whom he has improved: levge moi, ejavn tiv~ se tau`ta ejxetavzhÊ, w\ Kallivklei~, tiv ejrei`~… tivna fhvsei~ beltivw pepoihkevnai a[nqrwpon th`Ê sunousiva/ th`Ê sh`Ê… ojknei`~ ajpokrivnasqai, ei[per e[stin ti e[rgon so;n e[ti ijdiwteuvonto~, pri;n dhmosieuvein ejpiceirei`n…

KAL. Filovniko~ ei\, w\ Swvkrate~.

SW. ∆Allæ ouj filonikiva/ ge ejrwtw`, ajllæ wJ~ ajlhqw`~ boulovmeno~ eijdevnai. (515b1– 8) Tell me, Callicles, if a person were to ask these questions of you, what would you answer? Whom would you say that you had improved by your conversation? There may have been good deeds of this sort which were done by you as a private person, before you came forward in public. Why will you not answer?

Cal. You are contentious, Socrates.

Soc. Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because I really want to know. (Trans. Jowett) Here, as elsewhere, Socrates’ refutative style is sensed by his interlocutor as a kind of contentiousness; in this passage too, however, Plato characteristically has him assert personal aims that are quite different from those of a litigant. Before we rush to conclude on this basis, however, we must remember two things: first, that Plato and Xenophon regularly depict Socrates in conversation with unequals, and second, that philosophers may well have interests as a class not always consistent with those of their fellow men.11 The complicated question of Socrates’ philosophical motivations extends beyond 11. See Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 56f., 72f., and 124f. For Socrates’ various ways of improving his interlocutors through reproaches, see Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socrates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972), 95: “In order to urge Euthydemus toward learning, Socrates had to convince him of his ignorance. . . . By publicly ridiculing Euthydemus for his silliness Socrates caught his attention and made an impression on him. He began to listen to Socrates” (cf. Plato, Soph. 230c3–d4). See also Strauss, Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), 90f.: “Xenophon is the only interlocutor of the Socratic Xenophon who is ever called by his urbane master ‘you wretch’ and ‘you fool.’ That is to say, the only Xenophontic character ever treated by the Xenophontic Socrates in a manner reminiscent of Strepsiades’ treatment by the Aristophanean Socrates is Xenophon.” Cf. the modes of address standard in paraenetic poetry.

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the scope of this essay. He may well have transformed a practice of the courts through his irony, just as he had modified the comic type itself of the eiro¯n.12 But in order to appreciate fully any such transformation, one must first determine with some care just what has been transformed. The Gorgias eventually ends with a judgment of lives in the afterlife that is both divine and legal in form.

That Socrates’ refutative arguments and way of life are at least formally of the same stamp as forensic practice can be seen with even greater clarity by regarding them in the light of the use he makes of the same method when he is cross-examining his accuser Meletus in open court. In Xenophon’s version, this comes just after he has adduced the testimony of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Cautioning the jury against accepting the word of even a god as simply authoritative, he invites them to scrutinize it (ejpiskopei`te, Xen., Apol. Socr. 15). He first asks the jury a series of rhetorical questions about himself designed to expose the charges as empty (16 –18). With a summary comment he turns to interrogate Meletus: ei[ ge mh;n o{sa ei[rhka peri; ejmautou` mhdei;~ duvnaitæ a]n ejxelevgxai me wJ~ yeuvdomai, pw`~ oujk a]n h[dh dikaivw~ kai; uJpo; qew`n kai; uJpæ ajnqrwvpwn ejpainoivmhn… ajllæ o{mw~ suv me fhvÊ~, w\ Mevlhte, toiau`ta ejpithdeuvonta tou;~ nevou~ diafqeivrein… (18f.)

And now, if no one can convict me of misstatement in all that I have said about myself, do I not unquestionably merit praise from both gods and men? But, in spite of all, Meletus, do you now maintain that I corrupt the young by such practices? (Trans. Marchant-Todd) He asks him a series of questions, the final one of which completes a reduction to paradox and hence receives no answer (19 –21).13 Plato varies the same basic materials in his Apology of Socrates. As a premise for his defense, Socrates presents his entire refutative way of life, significantly, as beginning with an attempt to refute the oracle’s claim that no one is wiser than he.14 A proper courtroom refutation comes later, as the defendant interrogates his accuser (24c4 –28a1). In a first stage Socrates makes explicit what we have seen, in one way or another, present in several 12. See Francis M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 130f.

13. For the reductive conclusion, cf. Isaeus 2.23 and Demosthenes 20.3.

14. Plato, Ap. 21b2 – c2.

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contexts already quoted, namely, that Meletus will stand refuted by his own silence unless he can answer certain questions: “Iqi dhv nun eijpe; touvtoi~, tiv~ aujtou;~ beltivou~ poiei`… dh`lon ga;r o{ti oi\sqa, mevlon gev soi. to;n me;n ga;r diafqeivronta ejxeurwvn, wJ~ fhvÊ~, ejmev, eijsavgei~ toutoisi; kai; kathgorei`~: to;n de; dh; beltivou~ poiou`nta i[qi eijpe; kai; mhvnuson aujtoi`~ tiv~ ejstin.—ÔOra`/~, w\ Mevlhte, o{ti siga`/~ kai; oujk e[cei~ eijpei`n… kaivtoi oujk aijscrovn soi dokei` ei\nai kai; iJkano;n tekmhvrion ou| dh; ejgw; levgw, o{ti soi oujde;n memevlhken… ajllæ eijpev, wjgaqev, tiv~ aujtou;~ ajmeivnou~ poiei`…

OiJ novmoi. (24d3–11) Come, inform the jury and tell them who it is who improves them.

You obviously know, in view of your concern. You may say you have discovered the one who corrupts them, namely me, and you bring me here and accuse me to the jury. Come, inform the jury and tell them who it is who improves them. You see, Meletus, that you are silent and know not what to say. Does this not seem shameful to you and a sufficient proof of what I say, that you have not been concerned with any of this? Tell me, my good sir, who improves our young men?

— The laws. (Trans. Grube) In a recent commentary on Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Simon Slings argues that the entire section including interrogation departs substantially from normal instances of such ejrwthvsei~.15 But this can be questioned not only on the basis of the comparisons above but also in the light of Aristotle’s citation of precisely this passage in general illustration of forensic practice in his Ars Rhetorica.16 And at least a fundamental affinity should be clear.17 One difference may be significant. The interrogations preserved in speeches of the Attic orators seem to have been preserved as they were doubtless planned, that is, so as to work with expected answers, or whatever an15. Eric de Strycker and Simon R. Slings, Plato’s Apology of Socrates (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 103.

16. G.18, 1418b40 –1419a19; cf. Peri; ejrwthvsew~ kai; ajpokrivsew~ (Leonhard von Spengel, ed., Rhetores Graeci [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1853–56], i:163– 68).

17. Something analogous is observable in Greek historical writing; although Thucydides is normally held to have set a new standard of scientific accuracy, his techniques owe a great deal to the same tradition. See I. M. Plant, “The Influence of Forensic Oratory on Thucydides’ Principles of Method,” Classical Quarterly 49 (1999): 62 –73 (esp. 67–71, on testing evidence and witnesses).

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swers might be offered (a competent cross-examiner tries never to ask a question whose answer he does not know in advance). By contrast, Xenophon and Plato have written retrospective fictions, complete with hypothetical responses.18 If there is a noteworthy difference between Socrates’ use of regular forensic forms of argumentation and their use in actual court, then, it consists to no small extent in the fact that Socratic argumentation as it has been preserved for us is always embedded in a literary fiction.19 A further consequence of this attribute of the dialogues is that no Socratic refutation we witness is ever “personal” in the sense that it is directed wholly toward convincing a single interlocutor, as it might fictionally appear, since there is always at least the reader to consider as an audience standing in judgment.20 Plato poetically depicts this rhetorical situation through several insets, like Socrates’ fictional interrogation by the laws themselves in the Crito (50a6ff.).21 The laws ask Socrates how he can justify his ignoring them. Crito agrees to respond by alleging the injustice of the city in condemning Socrates. The laws then counter by asking Socrates whether he has not previously agreed with them to abide by the decisions of Athenian courts: SW. Tiv ou\n a]n ei[pwsin oiJ novmoi: “«W Swvkrate~, h\ kai; tau`ta wJmolovghto hJmi`n te kai; soiv, h] ejmmenei`n tai`~ divkai~ ai|~ a]n hJ povli~ dikavzhÛ…” eij ou\n aujtw`n qaumavzoimen legovntwn, i[sw~ a]n ei[poien o{ti “«W Swvkrate~, mh; qauvmaze ta; legovmena ajllæ ajpokrivnou, ejpeidh; kai; ei[wqa~ crh`sqai tw`/ ejrwta`n te kai; ajpokrivnesqai. fevre gavr, tiv ejgkalw`n hJmi`n kai; th`Ê povlei ejpiceirei`~ hJma`~ ajpolluvnai… ouj prw`ton mevn se ejgennhvsamen hJmei`~…” (50c4 –d2) Soc.: And suppose the laws were to reply, “Was that our agreement?

Or was it that you would abide by whatever judgments the state should pronounce?” And if we were surprised by their words, perhaps they would say, “Socrates, don’t be surprised by our words, but 18. Meyer (Apologie, 60 n. 155) cites Andocides 1.101 and Isaeus fr. 3.2.2 as similarly fictional contexts.

19. “Plato . . . presents the most notable example of effective interrogation of an opponent in court” (Robert J. Bonner, “The Legal Setting of Plato’s Apology,” Classical Philology 3 [1908]: 175 [quoted by Meyer, Apologie, 57 n. 146]; cf. Bonner, Lawyers and Litigants in Ancient Athens: The Genesis of the Legal Profession [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927], 257).

20. Robinson seems to overlook this dimension (Earlier, 15f. [2d ed., 15f.]).

21. Cf. Homer’s use of the poet Demodocus in the Odyssey.

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answer us; you yourself are accustomed to ask questions and answer them. What complaint have you against us and the state, that you are trying to destroy us? Are we not, first of all, your parents?” (Trans.

Jowett) Socrates dramatizes the scene effectively. When Crito is likely to be at a loss and Socrates makes himself pause while wondering what to say, the laws demand an answer, chiding him and challenging his disrespect toward elders who have reared him—a fairly standard move in itself (50c9 –51c4).22 Their taunting reproach is quite personal in the ordinary sense, calling into question precisely Socrates’ dialectical ability. This fanciful exchange is only hypothetically for the sake of Crito, with whom Plato depicts Socrates as speaking in private; but the fictional dialogue between Socrates and Crito is in turn itself for the sake of Plato’s living readers.

II. Epagoge In book M of the Metaphysics, Aristotle grants to Socrates credit for two positive contributions to first philosophy: inductive arguments and general definition (duvo gavr ejstin a{ ti~ a]n ajpodoivh Swkravtei dikaivw~, touv~ tæ ejpaktikou;~ lovgou~ kai; to; oJrivzesqai kaqovlou). More particularly, he holds that Socrates, in the course of his characteristic inquiries aimed at moral definition, discovered or crucially refined these methods for metaphysical purposes as well, but that he did so without going so far as to conclude the “separability” of the general items thereby brought into focus. Aristotle here treats Socrates much in the way that he treats pre-Socratic philosophers, namely, as his own “lisping” precursors (the English expression is Harold Cherniss’s).23 Embroidering on Aristotle’s estimate, the most prominent strain of nineteenth-century interpretation regarded Socrates as the founder of the logic of the formation of abstract concepts. According to this estimate, Socrates’ inductions serve the goals of nonrealist definition by seeking the logical inference of a general claim based upon a (preferably exhaustive) series of instances of the same claim made of real, particular things.24 22. For the topos, cf. the related justification for repaying one’s parents by looking after them in their old age, adapted at Rep. 520a6 – e1.

23. Metaph. M 4, 1078b17–32. See Harold F. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935), xiv.

24. Beginning with Friedrich E. Schleiermacher, “Über den Werth des Sokrates als Philosophen,” Berliner Abhandlungen (philosophisch-historische Klasse) (1818), 50 – 68 [reprinted in

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But the epagogic method practiced by at least the literary Socrates—and it has not been shown that Aristotle means any other—fails to correspond with this picture. A typical Socratic ejpagwghv considers perhaps two or three examples adduced for the sake of seeing an analogous point about an additional thing, which is itself usually equally particular in character. The penultimate step in such an argument may involve a generalization, but Socrates’ inductions do not as a rule pose as anything even close to complete in the sense sometimes expected by philosophical critics.25 They seem instead more akin to limited series of the paradeivgmata common to Greek poetry and rhetoric.26 As in the case of his refutative approach, Socrates’ use of such exempla may be both something he inherited from the earlier tradition and something he transformed in some way for the future.27 If indeed he is responsible for a fundamental reorientation, however, it is again useful to establish which elements he may have inherited. Groupings of such exempla appear in ancient poetry as well, but have there been treated mainly under a derivative rubric coined first for the study of German literature, namely, the “Priamel” (formed from praeambulum). Though many occurrences resemble Socratic arguments, notice of the poetic phenomenon’s logical structure

Schleiermacher, Werke, II, Abteilung 3; or Sämtliche Werke III.2, 287–308; also reprinted in Der historische Sokrates, ed. Andreas Patzer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987 [WDF 585]), 41–58; an English translation by C. Thirlwall, which appeared originally in the Philological Museum, was reprinted in G. Wiggers, A Life of Socrates, translated from the German, with notes (London: n.p., 1840), cxxix– clv, and again in Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates, ed. Charles Anthon (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853), 441–58]. For Schleiermacher’s influence, see C. A. Brandis, “Grundlinien der Lehre des Sokrates,” Rheinisches Museum 1 (1827): 118 –50; also idem, Handbuch der Geschichte der griechisch-römischen Philosophie (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1844), ii.i:49 –53; and P. Bokenew, “Sokrates’ Philosophie in der Darstellung des Aristoteles,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 27 (1914): 295 –304 (esp.

298 –300). For a relatively early, if otherwise curious, criticism, see Hubert Röck, Der unverfälschte Sokrates, der Atheist und “Sophist” und das Wesen aller Philosophie und Religion (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1903), 341– 409.

25. See, for example, Gerasimos Santas’s assessments in Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 140, 146, 149, and 151. Criticism of inductions as incomplete enumerations surfaces in ancient skepticism (see Sextus Empiricus, PH 2.204) and takes on a positive significance in medieval philosophy (see Al-Farabi’s Short Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, trans. Nicholas Rescher [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963], 89f.). For the flexibility with which the Socrates of Plato’s lesser dialogues uses the form, see Robinson, Earlier, 35 –37 (2d ed., 33–35).

26. See M. Guggenheim, “Zur Geschichte des Induktionsbegriffs,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie 17 (1887): 52 – 61.

27. See Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), i, xliii, and ii, 422; cf. W. K. C. Guthrie, Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 108f.

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has been virtually absent.28 Yet, under certain rhetorical conditions, they can approximate quite closely to a Socratic ejpagwghv. A locus classicus is found in Nestor’s words of advice to his son Antilochus just before the chariot race in book 23 of the Iliad: ajllæ a[ge dh; su; fivlo~ mh`tin ejmbavlleo qumw`/ pantoivhn, i{na mhv se parekprofuvghÊisin a[eqla. mhvti toi drutovmo~ mevgæ ajmeivnwn hje; bivhfi: mhvti dæ au\te kubernhvth~ ejni; oi[nopi povntw/ nh`a qoh;n ijquvnei ejrecqomevnhn ajnevmoisi: mhvti dæ hJnivoco~ perigivgnetai hJniovcoio. ajllæ o}~ mevn qæ i{ppoisi kai; a{rmasin oi|s i pepoiqw;~ ajfradevw~ ejpi; pollo;n eJlivssetai e[nqa kai; e[nqa, i{ppoi de; planovwntai ajna; drovmon, oujde; kativscei: o}~ dev ke kevrdea eijdh`Ê ejlauvnwn h{ssona~ i{ppou~, aijei; tevrmæ oJrovwn strevfei ejgguvqen, oujdev eJ lhvqei o{ppw~ to; prw`ton tanuvshÊ boevoisin iJma`s in, ajllæ e[cei ajsfalevw~ kai; to;n prou[conta dokeuvei.

(313–25) Remember then, dear son, to have your mind full of every resource of skill, so that the prizes may not elude you.

The woodcutter is far better for skill than he is for brute strength.

It is by skill that the sea captain holds his rapid ship on its course, though torn by winds, over the wine-blue water.

By skill charioteer outpasses charioteer. He who has put all his confidence in his horses and chariot 28. The term “Priamel” was first used systematically in reference to classical literature by Franz Dornseiff in Pindars Stil (Berlin: Weidmann, 1921), 97–102 (cf. William H. Race, The Classical Priamel from Homer to Boethius [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982], 1–7). For the similarity with induction, see Tilman Krischer, “Die logischen Formen der Priamel,” GB 2 (1974), 79 – 91. The phenomenon is not unlike what has been recognized as “analogy”; see Robinson, Earlier, 47 and 219 (2d ed., 53, 45 and 207), and cf. G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 172 –76. Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 267– 69, holds that this means that Socratic epagoge should not be called induction; but in fact not only the poetic priamel and the Socratic epagoge but all such reasoning (and therefore induction too) is arguably of this character. See John Stuart Mill, System of Logic (New York: Harper & Row, 1860), ii.iii.3.

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and recklessly makes a turn that is loose one way or another finds his horses drifting out of the course and does not control them.

But the man, though he drive the slower horses, who takes his advantage, keeps his eye always on the post and turns tight, ever watchful, pulled with the ox-hide reins on the course, as in the beginning, and holds his horses steady in hand, and watches the leader.

(Trans. Lattimore) In commenting on this passage, Eustathius reports a claim that Homer was thus the first to use what the philosophers call ejpagwghv, understood in the Aristotelian sense of a movement from particular to universal.29 By contrast, 29. Ei\ta pistouvmeno~ ejpagwgikw`~ dia; drutovmou kai; kubernhvtou kai; hJniovcou to; pavnta boulh`Ê kai; tevcnhÊ ojrqou`sqai—prw`to~ gavr, fasivn, ”Omhro~ th`Ê kata; filosovfou~ ejpagwgh`Ê ejntau`qa cra`tai, h[goun th`Ê tou` kaqovlou pistwvsei ejk merikw`n (Then, arguing inductively via a woodcutter and a pilot and a charioteer that all things are achieved rightly by means of counsel and art—for here first, they say, Homer uses the induction of the philosophers, namely, the argument establishing the universal from particulars) (In Iliadem 4:736.8 –11).

Cf. Aristotle, Top. A.12, 105a13–16: ejpagwgh; de; hJ ajpo; tw`n kaqæ e{kasta ejpi; to; kaqovlou e[fodo~: oi|on eij e[sti kubernhvth~ oJ ejpistavmeno~ kravtisto~, kai; hJnivoco~, kai; o{lw~ ejsti;n oJ ejpistavmeno~ peri; e{kaston a[risto~. (Induction is the passage from things particular to the universal; for example, if the knowledgeable pilot is best and likewise the charioteer, so generally one knowledgeable is best about each thing.)

In a Roman imitation, Ovid stays with particulars, even citing individual paradigmatic persons as well as the arts themselves (cf. Plato, Prot. 318b1–d4, Grg. 448b4 – c9, al.): Siquis in hoc artem populo non novit amandi, Hoc legat et lecto carmine doctus amet.

Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur, Arte leves currus: arte regendus amor.

Curribus Automedon lentisque erat aptus habenis, Tiphys in Haemonia puppe magister erat: Me Venus artificem tenero praefecit Amori; Tiphys et Automedon dicar Amoris ego.

If anyone in this people is ignorant of the art of love, let him read and, having read the poem, then instructed love.

By craft are the swift ships moved, whether by wind or by oar; by craft the smooth chariots: by craft is love directed.

For chariots and the mild reins was Automedon fit, Tiphys master on the Argo’s stern: Venus has set me as craftsman over delicate love; I am to be called the Tiphys and Automedon of love.

(Ars Amatoria, incip.)

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the rhetorical writer Polybius of Sardis sees an ejpagwghv, but views it as designed to highlight a particular case.30 Whatever the inferential structure of such series may be, however, they remain complexes of individual exempla.

So when Socrates uses such examples, whether singly or in series, we may understand his usage in terms he uses in Xenophon, when he speaks of “adducing images well” (to; eu\ ta;~ eijkovna~ ejpavgesqai, Xen., Oec. 17.15).

The history of logic usually understands ejpagwghv as a process that “induces” the universal claim from some particular cases. In this view, the name comes from the verb used with the universal result as its implied grammatical object. But other interpretations are available.31 ejpagwghv can also denote “enchantment”; that is, it can refer to “leading on” a listener or interlocutor by magical means of some kind. And this is another way in which Socrates’ style of argument can plausibly be viewed.32 But the term has, as in the Xenophon passage just cited, a further application transitive to exemplary cases themselves, which are “adduced,” so to speak, as evidence.33 30.

ejpagwgh; dev ejstin, o{tan ti tw`n oJmoivwn proqevnte~ ejpavgwmen, eij~ o} sumpeivqomen, oi|on mhvti toi drutovmo~ mevgæ ajmeivnwn, hje; bivhÊfi, mhvti dæ au\te kubernhvth~ ejni; oi[nopi povntw/, nh`a qoh;n ijquvnei ejrecqomevnhn ajnevmoisin: ei\tæ ejpavgei, mhvti dæ hJnivoco~ perigivnetai hJniovcoio.

Induction occurs when, having set something out of things similar, we adduce the point for which we will win persuasion. For example: “The woodcutter is far better for skill than he is for brute strength. It is by skill that the sea captain holds his rapid ship on its course, though torn by winds, over the wine blue water.” Then he [sc. Nestor] adds, “By skill charioteer outpasses charioteer.” (De Figuris, 614.4 –10 Walz)

Cf. Diogenes Laertius 3.53: e[sti me;n ga;r ejpagwgh; lovgo~ diav tinwn ajlhqw`n to; o{moion eJautw`/ ajlhqe;~ oijkeivw~ ejpifevrwn (For induction is a speech that, through some things that are true, properly infers something that is itself similarly true) (on which, see F. V. Reinhard, De Veterum Inductione [Programm Vitembergae, 1780] [reprinted in F. V. Reinhard, Opuscula Academica i (Leipzig: C. Hinriche, 1808), 210 –33]). Socrates himself seems to have been interested in this particular Homeric context; cf. Plato, Ion 537a5 –b5, with Xen., Symp. 4.6.

31. On the general problem of the corresponding verb’s implied construction, see W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 481– 83. For a more recent review, cf. Guthrie, Socrates, 106 n. 2. For views in the nineteenth century, see Gustav Teichmüller, Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe (Berlin: Weidmann, 1874), 423f.

32. See Ph. W. Van Heusde, Characterismi Principum Philosophorum Veterum Socratis Platonis Aristotelis (Amsterdam: Mueller, 1839), 25f. Cf. Gulley, Philosophy of Socrates, 13.

33. See C. L. W. Heyder, Kritische Darstellung und Vergleichung der aristotelischen und hegel’schen Dialektik, mit Berücksichtigung der Dialektik der vorangegangenen Systeme (Erlangen: C. Heyder, 1845), i:219 n. Cf. A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica (Oxford: J. Parker, 1911), 105.

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In the time of Socrates, this was a common use for the verb in forensic speech. A litigant could introduce evidence in support of his case, often in the form of testimony given by witnesses appearing on his behalf. But he might also adduce such support in the form of authoritative utterances of wise men or poets. The practice and terminology surface early on in the sophistical dialectic of the Dissoi Logoi, where poetry is invoked to show poets in the abstract as technicians whose activities are made exemplary for inferences about moral activities.34 This is extended to the point where an argument can adduce the arts themselves as witnesses for a point: ejpi; de; ta;~ tevcna~ trevyomai kai; ta; tw`n poihtw`n. ejn ga;r tragw/dopoiiva/ kai; zwgrafiva/ o{sti~ <ka> plei`sta ejxapath`Ê o{moia toi`~ ajlhqinoi`~ poievwn, ou|to~ a[risto~. qevlw de; kai; poihmavtwn palaiotevrwn martuvrion ejpagagevsqai. Kleoboulivnh~ a[ndræ ei\don klevptonta kai; ejxapatw`nta biaivw~, kaiv to; biva/ rJevxai tou`to dikaiovtaton. h\n pavlai tau`ta: Aijscuvlou de; tau`ta ajpavth~ dikaiva~ oujk ajpostatei` qeov~, <kaiv:> yeudw`n de; kairo;n e[sqæ o{pou tima`/ qeov~. (3.10 –12) I shall turn to the arts and to the writings of the poets. In the writing of tragedies and painting, whoever deceives the most in creating things similar to the true, this man is the best. I want also to present the testimony of older poetry, of Cleobulina, for instance: I saw a man stealing and deceiving by force And to do this by force was an action most just.

34. parexou`mai de; kai; poivhmav ti (I will offer a poem too, 2.19); poihta;~ de; mavrtura~ ejpavgontai, <oi}> poti; aJdonavn, ouj poti; ajlavqeian poieu`nti (They adduce as witnesses poets, who compose with a view to pleasure, not to truth, 2.28). (Cf. Plato, Rep. 364c5f., and Aristotle, Metaph. 995a6 – 8.) For lists of Socratic exempla, see especially the first section (peri; ajgaqw` kai; kakw`). Cf. Gulley, Philosophy of Socrates, 41 and 47– 49. The inductions attributed to the Hippocratics by W. A. Heidel, Hippocratic Medicine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 71–73, are by contrast modern; cf. Heinrich Maier, Sokrates (Tübingen: C. B. Mohr, 1913), 180 – 82. In a recent article, James S. Murray argues that no pre-Socratic Socratic method can be located in Sophists’ boasts about questions and answers (“Interpreting Plato on Sophistic Claims and the Provenance of the ‘Socratic Method,’” Phoenix 48 [1994], 115 –34). But Murray fails to look into areas common to forensic styles more generally.

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These lines were written a long time ago. The next passages are from Aeschylus: God does not stand aloof from just deceit and There are times when god respects an opportunity for lies. tevcna~ de; ejpavgontai, ejn ai|~ oujk e[sti to; divkaion kai; to; a[dikon. kai; toi; poihtai; ouj [to] poti; ajlavqeian, ajlla; poti; ta;~ aJdona;~ tw`n ajnqrwvpwn ta; poihvmata poievonti. (3.17) And they bring in the arts, to which just and unjust do not apply. As for the poets, they write their poems to give men pleasure and not for the sake of truth. (Trans. Sprague) This brings us to exactly where the phenomenon surfaces in Socratic discourse.35 A correspondingly developed parallel to Nestor’s argument is found in the Platonic Theages: SW. ∆Alla; ta; me;n e[mprosqevn soi h\n pro;~ tou`ton rJhqevnta w{sper a[neu martuvrwn legovmena: nuni; de; ejme; poivhsai mavrtura, kai; ejnantivon ejmou` kavteipe tiv~ ejstin au{th hJ sofiva h|~ ejpiqumei`~. fevre gavr, eij ejpequvmei~ tauvth~ hÊ| oiJ a[nqrwpoi ta; ploi`a kubernw`s in, kai; ejgwv se ejtuvgcanon ajnerwtw`n: “«W Qevage~, tivno~ ejndeh;~ w]n sofiva~ mevmfhÊ tw`/ patri; o{ti oujk ejqevlei se sunistavnai paræ w|n a]n su; sofo;~ gevnoio…” tiv a[n moi ajpekrivnw… tivna aujth;n ei\nai… a\ra ouj kubernhtikhvn…

QE. Naiv. (123a9 –b9) Soc.: But all that you have hitherto said to him has been said without witnesses: now therefore make me a witness, and before me say what the wisdom is which you desire: for come now, if you should 35. The doubtful dating of the Dissoi Logoi is of slight concern in this connection, since evidence of affinities with derivative later rhetorical treatises places the work firmly within the tradition. See T. M. Conley, “Dating the Dissoi Logoi: A Cautionary Note,” Ancient Philosophy 5 (1985), 59 – 65. For an analogous use of ejpavgein in fifth-century medical literature, see A. E. Taylor, Socrates (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1933), 72 –74.

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desire that wisdom by which men steer ships, and I should ask you, O Theages, what is the wisdom, of which being in want, you blame your father as unwilling to place you with a man through whom you might become wise? What answer would you give me? What would you say this wisdom is? Is it not that of piloting?

Thea.: Yes. (Trans. Taylor) Socrates cites as a second example charioteering (hJniocikhv) before asking Theages what name might be given the wisdom he seeks. Theages answers that it must be simply wisdom, and an argument follows rather like Socrates’ refutation of Polemarchus in Republic i. Socrates metaphorically frames his argument as intended to summon him as a witness (just as he, at Gorgias 471e2 – 472c4, speaks playfully of his interlocutor Polus as being the only witness who matters for him). In fact it is the collective force of his exemplary arts that is adduced as a kind of testimony.36 A rather more involved and hence less obvious case occurs in the Euthyphro. As the self-styled religious authority and would-be litigant first cites what he himself is doing as what constitutes piety, he cites the mythical behavior of Zeus as a supportive proof—his term is tekmhvrion—for his contemplated prosecution of his own father. Euthyphro is evidently not using tekmhvrion in the Aristotelian sense common to much of the later rhetorical tradition,37 but means rather an appeal to something his critics will admit 36. Pace Robinson, Earlier, 16 (2d ed., 16). Cf. the induction at Plato, Prot. 318b1–d4, followed immediately by Protagoras’s compliment to Socrates on his manner of interrogation (d5 – 8).

37. For Aristotle, a tekmhvrion is distinct from or, alternatively, a special kind of shmei`on, namely, one that, if true, establishes something else incontrovertibly via an implicit syllogism in the first figure (cf. Ars Rhet. A.2. 1357b3–10 with Anal. Pr. B.27. 70a29 –30 and b1– 6). For influence on the later rhetorical tradition, see Leonhard von Spengel, ed., Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1867), ii:65f. (ad 1357b10), and Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, trans. Matthew T. Bliss et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), secs. 361– 62. Euthyphro’s appeal to the conduct of Zeus comes closer to a fallible use of shmei`a in the third figure (cf. Anal. Pr. 70a24 –37 with Ars Rhet. 1357b10 –21), since it employs a sign wJ~ to; kaqæ e{kaston pro;~ to; kaqovlou (for example, “the wise are good, since Pittacus is good”). But Euthyphro does not explicitly infer anything universal— except perhaps insofar as it is suggested by his description of his own action in terms likewise applicable to Zeus’s action (o{per ejgw; nu`n poiw`, tw`/ ajdikou`nti ktl. 5d8 – e2). On this question, see the following note. But even if we understand him as meaning to use the case of Zeus as an example from which to infer a universal, from which in turn to conclude about his own particular case, this would conform better to an argument dia; paradeivgmato~ than to one dia; tekmhrivou in Aristotle’s sense (see Ars Rhet. B.25. 1402b16 –19). That such a universal may in some sense be logically necessary is naturally another matter.

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and that speaks against their stated position.38 His argument runs as follows. They argue that he is impious to prosecute his father (cf. 4d5 – e1 with 6a3f.); in response, he confronts them with the example of similar treatment of a father by his son, Zeus, whom they regard as supremely just and admit as having so acted (5e5 – 6a3). Their position is accordingly inconsistent, since they contradict themselves in speaking one way about the gods and an38. A key source for an alternative rhetorical tradition understands tekmhvria as o{sæ a]n ejnantivw~ hÊ\ pepragmevna tw`/ peri; ou| oJ lovgo~ kai; o{sa oJ lovgo~ aujto;~ eJautw`/ ejnantiou`tai ([Aristotle], Ad Alex. 9.1). The author goes on to explain: tw`n ga;r ajkouovntwn oiJ plei`stoi toi`~ sumbaivnousi peri; to;n lovgon h] th;n pra`xin ejnantiwvmasi tekmaivrontai mhde;n uJgie;~ ei\nai mhvte tw`n legomevnwn mhvte tw`n prattomevnwn. polla; de; lhvyhÊ tekmhvria skopw`n, ei[te oJ lovgo~ tou` ejnantivou aujto;~ auJtw`/ ejnantiou`tai, ei[te hJ pra`xi~ aujtou` ejnantiva tw`/ lovgw/ ejstiv. ta; me;n ou\n tekmhvria toiau`tav ejsti, kai; ou{tw~ aujta; plei`sta poihvsei~. [shmei`a receive a separate treatment in chap. 12.]

Evidences exist where the direct contrary of that with which the speech is concerned has occurred, and where the speech is self-contradictory. For most listeners conclude from the contraries which occur in connection with a speech or action that there is nothing sound in what is being said or done. You will often discover evidences by considering whether your adversary’s speech is self-contradictory or whether his action itself contradicts his words. Such is the nature of evidences and the method by which you will obtain the greatest number of them. (Trans. Forster) While later technical writers tend to follow Aristotle’s usage, Attic orators themselves adhere to this alternative, regularly offering as a tekmhvrion an opponent’s unwillingness to undergo e[legco~ in some form. See Antiphon 6.27 and 31 (cf. 5.84); Lysias 4.12, 7.37; Demosthenes 49.57f., 54.9; al. More generally stated, the effective use of this device allows one to turn the tables on one’s opponent. See, for example, Andocides 1.24: ”Wsper ou\n, eij ajlhqh` h\n tau`ta a{ mou kathgovrhsan, ejmoi; a]n wjrgivzesqe kai; hjxiou`te divkhn th;n megivsthn ejpitiqevnai, ou{tw~ ajxiw` uJma`~, gignwvskonta~ o{ti yeuvdontai, ponhrouv~ te aujtou;~ nomivzein, crh`sqaiv te tekmhrivw/ o{ti eij ta; deinovtata tw`n kathgorhqevntwn perifanw`~ ejlevgcontai yeudovmenoi, h\ pou tav ge pollw`/ faulovtera rJa/divw~ uJmi`n ajpodeivxw yeudomevnou~ aujtouv~.

Be consistent, then. Had this accusation of theirs been true, your anger would have fallen upon me, and you would have considered the severest penalty justified. So now that you see them to be lying, I demand that you look upon them instead as scoundrels—and with good reason too: for if the worst of their charges are shown to be conspicuously false, I shall hardly find it difficult to prove the same of those which are less serious. (Trans. Maidment) Socrates’ own use of the term in the Apology, in the passage quoted earlier (24d8f.), is of the same sort. Needless to say, the use of tekmhvria in this sense too presupposes syllogistic reasoning of a kind—in this instance, what was later called modus ponendo tollens; see Cicero, Top. 13 (55)–14 (56).

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other about Euthyphro (6a4f.).39 Therefore, his account of law is sound and theirs unsound (cf. 4e1–3 with 5e2 –5).

After Socrates expresses his doubts about such mythical tales and says that in asking Euthyphro to tell him what the pious is, he was not looking for one or two things that might be pious,40 Socrates explains that he is seeking rather the form or look itself (aujto; to; ei\do~), in order that he may use it, rather than Euthyphro’s conventional mythical exemplum, as his paravdeigma.41 Euthyphro now formulates a more comprehensive definition to

39. The appeal to Zeus’s treatment of Cronos was a commonplace among such tekmhvria.

See Aeschylus, Eum. 640 – 44; Euripides, H.F. 1317–19; Aristophanes, Clouds 904 – 8 (cf.

1079 – 82); Plato, Rep. 378b2 –7, Laws 941b2 – c2 (cf. 901a7–10); Terence, Eun. 590. See also Plato, Laws 886b10 – c3, where the Stranger’s use of tekmhvrion at d4f. might at first sight seem closer to Aristotle’s (cf. Isocrates, Bus. 38 – 43, and Lucian, Men. 3). In such cases, the charge is regularly of an inconsistency implicit in two particular claims or facts.

40. Alexander Nehamas has argued that initial answers to Socrates’ “What is so and so?” questions are not cases of an interlocutor’s offering particulars for universals, as tradition holds, but rather insufficiently broad universals (“Confusing Universals and Particulars in Plato’s Early Dialogues,” Review of Metaphysics 29, no. 2 [1975]: 287–306; also in Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999], 159 –75). Strictly speaking, since universals and particulars are not absolute categories, an insufficiently universal universal is in fact particular relative to the more universal universal being sought (see Porphyry, Isagoge 4.15 –20). But Nehamas has done a service, although something resembling the point has not gone entirely unnoticed in the past. See F. Susemihl, Die genetische Entwicklung der platonischen Philosophie (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1855) [reprint, Osnabruck: O. Zeller, 1967], i:121f.

The traditional account of this phenomenon continued to speak imprecisely of interlocutors’ normally first offering something individual in place of what is more general. See Gottfried Stallbaum, ed., Platonis Meno et Euthyphro etc., vol. vi.ii of Opera Omnia (Gothae et Erfordiae: Hennings, 1836), 135, and cf. George Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates (London: John Murray, 1875), i:317f. What they in fact regularly do is offer formulations in one way or another ambiguous in the sense just mentioned; thus in Rep. 1 Polemarchus is led to define a friends-versus-enemies kind of justice in terms that will reappear in accordance with a superior understanding in the constructive part of the dialogue (cf. 332c1– 4 with 420d4f.).

This is not because he is being characterized as particularly providential, but is rather part of the dialogue’s art. On the other hand, John Burnet is probably right to say that “Euthyphro is really trying to find a universal. . . . He does not see that even a complete enumeration, if that were possible, would not yield a universal” (Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924], ad 5d9). That a particular use of the topos illustrated in the last note might in its context in the Euthyphro suggest to a more philosophical soul some realization of the underlying logic is therefore most likely a consequence of Plato’s dramatic irony. For Euthyphro himself (if one may speak so of a plastic character), Augustine’s acid remark would likely hold: “Omnes enim cultores talium deorum, mox ut eos libido perpuerit feruenti, ut ait Persius, tincta veneno, magis intuentur quid Iuppiter fecerit quam quid docuerit Plato vel censuerit Cato” (Civ. Dei 2.7).

41. Cf. Euthyp. 5d8 – 6a5 with 6d9 – e6. Note the emphatic position of aujth`Ê at 6e4. For the meaning of paravdeigma in the non-Aristotelian rhetorical tradition, see [Aristotle], Ad Alex.

1429a21f.: Paradeivgmata dæ ejsti; pravxei~ o{moiai gegenhmevnai kai; ejnantivai tai`~ nu`n uJfæ hJmw`n legomevnai~ (Examples are actions which have taken place in the past and are similar to,

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the effect that the pious is what the gods, or rather all the gods, love. But Socrates again proceeds to criticize this definition, and the issue exposed in this central argument of the dialogue turns out to have been already implicit in the difference between the two points of reference just mentioned.

Socrates articulates the issue by adducing a series of exemplary cases leading to a conclusion that is incompatible with Euthyphro’s initial sense that the gods arbitrarily determine what they will and will not love as being pious. In a passage by now perhaps too much puzzled over by philosophical analysts, being a thing that is loved is compared with being a thing that is carried, led, or seen. The common general idea, which does here figure explicitly in the argumentation, is termed “coming to be or undergoing something at the hands of something else” (10c1– 8). Although it employs relatively conceptual examples, this induction remains quite characteristic of Socrates’ apparently cooperative inquiries in that it tests an interlocutor’s hypothesis for inherent flaws. Viewed in forensic terms, however, it gathers and adduces a series of testimonies pointing to an inconsistency within the overall position of an opposing litigant.

In this argument the inference depends on the way Socrates presents the exempla not only as cases of undergoing something but as being such as they are in virtue of their undergoing what they do, rather than the other way around. This allows him to expose Euthyphro as having specified a pathos, or attribute, rather than the ousia, or essence, of what is pious. A definition of the pious as what all the gods love has been essentially refuted when Socrates states his reductive conclusion: ∆Allæ ei[ ge taujto;n h\n, w\ fivle Eujquvfrwn, to; qeofile;~ kai; to; o{s ion, eij me;n dia; to; o{s ion ei\nai ejfilei`to to; o{s ion, kai; dia; to; qeofile;~ ei\nai ejfilei`to a]n to; qeofilev~, eij de; dia; to; filei`sqai uJpo; qew`n to; qeofile;~ qeofile;~ h\n, kai; to; o{s ion a]n dia; to; filei`sqai o{s ion h\n: nu`n de; oJra`/~ o{ti ejnantivw~ e[ceton, wJ~ pantavpasin eJtevrw o[nte ajllhvlwn. to; me;n gavr, o{ti filei`tai, ejsti;n oi|on filei`sqai: to; dæ o{ti ejsti;n oi|on filei`sqai, dia; tou`to filei`tai. (10e9 –11a6)

or the contrary of, those about which we are speaking [trans. Forster]). There may be some irony in Socrates’ substituting it for Euthyphro’s term: the same tradition explains a tekmhvrion as negative only in force (see note 38 above), so that if Euthyphro is citing his mythical exemplum primarily in opposition to his father’s and other critics’ objections, Socrates is taking care to characterize it further as an inadequate comparandum for his own. It should go without saying that to speak of any supposed metaphysical “paradeigmatism” of “Plato’s forms” in reference to this passage is at best to venture far out ahead of an elementary understanding of the passage on its face.

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Now, my good friend Euthyphro, if that which is loved by the gods and that which is pious were one and the same, and if that which is pious were loved by reason of its being pious, then, also, that which is loved by the gods would be loved owing to its being loved by them; and conversely, if that which is loved by the gods were loved by them owing to their loving it, then, also, that which is pious would be pious owing to its being loved by them. But now you see that the two things are opposed as being entirely different from each other. For in the one case a thing is lovable because it is loved, and in the other it is loved because it is lovable. (Trans. Gibson) The conclusion that follows in reference to Euthyphro himself is a politely Socratic reproach. But the reductive form of the argumentation proper is also commonly found in forensic literature. Isocrates offers a parallel especially interesting for the case of Socrates: Touvtwn ga;r grafevntwn kai; diadoqevntwn kai; dovxan e[scon para; polloi`~ kai; maqhta;~ pollou;~ e[labon, w|n oujdei;~ a]n parevmeinen, eij mh; toiou`ton o[nta me katevlabon oi|ovn per prosedovkhsan: nu`n de; tosouvtwn gegenhmevnwn, kai; tw`n me;n e[th triva, tw`n de; tevttara sundiaithqevntwn, oujdei;~ oujde;n fanhvsetai tw`n paræ ejmoi; memyavmeno~, ajllæ ejpi; teleuth`~, o{tæ h[dh mevlloien ajpoplei`n wJ~ tou;~ goneva~ kai; tou;~ fivlou~ tou;~ eJautw`n, ou{tw~ hjgavpwn th;n diatribh;n w{ste meta; povqou kai; dakruvwn poiei`sqai th;n ajpallaghvn. (Antidosis 87– 88) For the writing and publication of [my works] has won me distinction in many parts of the world and brought me many disciples, no one of whom would have remained with me had they not found the very man they expected to find. In fact, although I have had so many pupils, and they have studied with me in some cases three, and in some cases four years, yet not one of them will be found to have uttered a word of complaint about this sojourn with me; on the contrary, when at last the time would come for them to sail away to their parents or their friends at home, so happy did they feel in their life with me, that they would always take their leave with regret and tears. (Trans. Norlin) Isocrates in this speech hypothesizes the fiction that he is on trial for impiety and corrupting the youth. The rhetorical form given the topical argument incorporates a pre-Socratic “one versus many” modus tollens. “I have had

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many good students; none would have stayed with me if I were no good: if I really corrupted my pupils, as my accusers allege, some among my many former pupils would by now have mentioned this fact. But there is not one to be found; therefore I must not have corrupted my pupils.” 42 The minor premise is supported by a hypothetically complete induction of the particular cases (“not one of them will be found”), corresponding quite closely to the way the Platonic Socrates seeks to refute Meletus by inviting the jury to interrogate any of his associates or their family members who are present, so as to learn whether he has in fact corrupted them.43 In the Euthyphro, the testimonies that have been metaphorically adduced are the cases of being carried, led, and so forth. In the conclusion quoted above, Socrates compounds the basic form nicely with a variant specifically considering the issue of responsibility. In one Isocratean parallel, the defense argues, in anticipation of having to propose a penalty in an action for damages: Peri; de; th`~ ejpwbeliva~, eij me;n ejgw; touvtwn tw`n pragmavtwn ai[tio~ h\n, eijkovtw~ a]n aujtw`/ mevllonti zhmiwvsesqai sunhvcqesqe: nu`n dæ ou|tov~ ejstin oJ sukofantw`n, w{stæ oujde;n a]n dikaivw~ aujtou` levgonto~ ajpodevcoisqe. (Isocrates, In Callim. 37) And in regard to the penalty assessed against the loser, if I were responsible for this action, you might reasonably sympathize with him as about to be penalized; but the truth is, it is he who brings a calumnious accusation and therefore you cannot in justice accept anything he says. (Trans. Van Hook) As often occurs, the reductive logical form is, in this actually forensic case, reconfigured as that of an ordinary contrafactual inference, which at first sight appears to be logically problematic, if not downright fallacious (P l Q; but P; therefore Q). This is a problem for a different analysis.

One interesting thing about the more rigorous context in the Euthyphro—also from a dramatic standpoint—is the way Plato by contrast characteristically embeds a treatment of causality within the material of the reductive inference: 44 if Euthyphro’s definition were good, his implied account 42. Cf. Plato, Prot. 328b1– c2, with Plato, Parm. passim.

43. Ap. 33b7–34b5. For the questioning of witnesses, see Bonner, “Legal Setting,” 173 n. 2.

44. Similar complication is found in several other dialogues and is deserving of careful investigation per se. Cf., for example, Rep. 328c7–d6 with 329b3–7.

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of causation would also be sound; but the latter is not, so his definition is deficient.45 Put another way, Euthyphro’s definition is shown by Socrates to fail because it fails to account for a phenomenon in a way compatible with what its author admits to be a proper causal relationship. More pertinent here, perhaps, is how it illustrates the characteristic role of epagoge in elenchos. Thus, Socrates’ refutation of Euthyphro’s definition of the pious as what all the gods love first adduces the testimony of witnesses in the form of inductive cases, which are marshaled on behalf of a parallel observation that Euthyphro himself is led to concede, namely, that the gods love the pious for some reason already intrinsic to it. But this result Socrates now employs as a tekmhvrion, that is, as an admission Euthyphro makes but cannot make consistent with his thesis. This concludes the elenchos.46 Along the way, various interesting philosophical ideas emerge, but on the surface of the dialogue, from a forensic or pedagogical standpoint, Socrates’ argument is designed to confute or confuse Euthyphro sufficiently that he will give up either disgusted or ready to listen to Socrates. And it succeeds with him at least as well as it has with many scholars (10b6 – 8).

As we read Socratic dialogues at our academic leisure, and at the currently opposite extreme of what is called the history of philosophy, we are liable to forget the intensely competitive character of the political life of his times, and the ways in which it, perhaps far more than ambient theoretical controver45. The underlying form of the argument at 10e9 –b11 is (P l Q; but Q; therefore P), that is, modus tollendo tollens.

46. The same form of reasoning is attributed specially to Socrates in Vlastos’s introduction to Protagoras, xxvif. Cf. Robinson, Earlier, 15. For clear forensic instances, see Antiphon 1.11– 13 (where the case concerns prosecuting the murderer of one’s father) and 5.38. For the interplay of mavrture~, tekmhvria, and e[legco~, see Antiphon 6.31: ∆Egw; toivnun touv~ te lovgou~ uJmi`n eijkovta~ ajpofaivnw, kai; toi`~ lovgoi~ tou;~ mavrtura~ oJmologou`nta~ kai; toi`~ mavrtusi ta; e[rga, kai; tekmhvria ejx aujtw`n tw`n e[rgwn, kai; e[ti pro;~ touvtoi~ duvo tw; megivstw kai; ijscurotavtw, touvtou~ me;n aujtouv~ te uJpo; sfw`n aujtw`n ejxelegcomevnou~ kai; uJpæ ejmou`, ejme; de; uJpov te touvtwn kai; uJpo; ejmautou` ajpoluovmenon.

Now in my own case, you are being presented with an account which is reasonable, with evidence which is consistent with that account, with facts which are consistent with that evidence, with presumptions drawn immediately from those facts, and with two arguments of the greatest significance and weight in addition: the first, the circumstance that the prosecution have been proved imposters both by themselves and me: and the second, the circumstance that I have been proved innocent both by the prosecution and by myself. (Trans. Maidment) The thought that Euthyphro might maintain a consistent stand by taking a position like Tertullian’s does not arise within the universe of the dialogue.

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sies, will have shaped Socrates’ discourses. That even his philosophically constructive arguments could and still can be taken as personally antagonistic is, of course, one reason that Socrates eventually had to defend himself against real accusers who charged him with capital crimes in a real court of law.47 47. Cf. Plato, Ap. 22e6 –23a5, with Xen., Mem. i.ii.36f., and Plato, Meno 94e3–95a1.

I should like to thank Charles Young for some very helpful criticism during two earlier rounds. Any remaining errors he will identify in his comments following.

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3 Elenchos and Exetasis: Capturing the Purpose of Socratic Interrogation

H A RO L D TA R R A N T

In this chapter I argue (1) that it is important either to use terms that Plato would have approved of in describing Socratic interrogation processes or to recognize that we are not doing so; (2) that elenchos is for Plato a description of competitive dialectical activity between intellectual rivals, not a description of a friendly educative process; (3) that a more accurate description of Socratic interrogation in general is exetasis; (4) that either term is primarily applied to persons rather than propositions; (5) that exetasis only contributes to an empirically based “human” knowledge by its being a test of knowledge-claims, not by its being a test of true and false theories—the connection is indirect, for failure to know that P does not imply that P is false; (6) that this explains why Socratic interrogation processes require an interlocutor; (7) that insofar as the arguments with Callicles imply something different and speak of a binding process for propositions that can apparently be valid without an interlocutor’s nod, Plato has already moved away from his Socratic heritage into a dialectical world that brings us logically to Aristotle. I do not feel that the preceding entails a belief that Plato anywhere portrays Socrates with historical accuracy, only that in some works he is committed to exploring the full implications of the Socratic activities he had 61

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known, and that the latter pages of the Gorgias already display other significant influences on Plato’s thinking—notably Western Greek influences associated with the Pythagoreans in ancient times.

I. Terminology and Purpose In the early twentieth century Australian houses were regularly equipped with a toilet in a small building at the bottom of the garden. This building is known as the “dunny.” In wet weather a visit to the dunny required a long walk in a garden full of snails. If Shelagh asks after Bruce, and Bruce is visiting the dunny, then she might be told that Bruce has gone to relieve himself, and she might be told that he is trampling snails. Either would be equally true, but only the former would accurately describe the nature of Bruce’s mission. The trampling of snails is simply a side effect of a visit to the dunny in wet weather.

Now, within the family it might be that “trampling snails” is a favorite circumlocution for visiting the dunny, but an outsider, told that Bruce is indulging in this activity, would assume that he has a considerable grudge against such creatures and has gone out in inclement weather to take his revenge upon them. Bruce is likely to be dismissed as either crazy or sadistic.

This is because it would be assumed that the description of the activity accurately reflects its purpose. A description that fails to pay attention to the purpose of an activity will be misleading. For these reasons we should examine our description of Socrates’ interrogative activity. Elenchos has become the accepted name for Socratic interrogation and is similarly applied to the educational process by which Socrates questions young men and to the competitive badgering of rivals. However, it is my contention that this term fails to capture the purpose of at least some of these interrogations. If I am correct, the term may be leading us to mistake their real purpose, at least some and perhaps all of the time.

II. The Background Interest in Socratic interrogation processes has flourished in the last two decades principally because of Vlastos’s seminal article of 1983, “The Socratic Elenchus,” although a chapter in Richard Robinson’s influential book Plato’s Earlier Dialectic had previously used this term, and Vlastos himself traced his subject back to George Grote in the middle of the nineteenth cen-

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tury. Vlastos had to contend with the conflict between the usual understanding of the Greek term and what he (in his later period at least) conceived as the purpose of the elenchos. During the classical period the Greek verb elenchein usually meant either to test for weaknesses or to refute. Yet passages in the Gorgias, in which the phrase “the truth is never refuted” 1 strongly suggests that the latter sense must dominate, seemed to point toward a positive role for elenchos (as Socrates used it) in the discovery of truth. Vlastos solved this problem in a somewhat cavalier fashion, maintaining that the Greek term can indicate an inquiry or investigation just as well as a refutation. He lists a number of verbs of inquiry that Plato uses for Socratic investigation. He does not, however, explain why the Gorgias should prefer to refer to this inquiry by a potentially misleading term while having a number of unambiguous ones available. It is my contention that the real solution is that elenchos was never a term, either in Plato or in his later interpreters, for all Socrates’ investigations through question and answer but that this noun and its corresponding verbs were applied only to those examples of interrogation whose purpose was refutation. Ordinarily such a process will refute, or attempt to refute, the interlocutor; occasionally it involves the refutation of a thesis, though these uses are somewhat metaphorical. If we find Plato suggesting that elenchos proves something or secures a thesis, then we should recognize that it does so as an accidental by-product of this process of refutation.

III. Verb Usage We learn a considerable amount about Plato’s use of elenchos terminology by examining use of the principal verb elenchein and its compounds exelenchein and (once) dielenchein. Here I have confined myself to those works that are generally agreed to be prior to the Republic and either are or could be authentic.2 What one needs to know is whether Plato himself thought that in using such terminology he was giving a specially appropriate description of Socrates’ philosophical examination of an interlocutor’s thesis. If so, we should expect the majority of uses to refer to Socrates’ activities and that this should be philosophical, rather than rhetorical or eristic, activity. We also need to know whether it is the interlocutor or the thesis that is thought of as 1. Not, surely, “the truth is never tested for weaknesses.”

2. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Symposium, Alcibiades i, Charmides, Laches, Euthydemus, Lysis, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion.

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Table 3.1 Use of the Verb Elenchein Reference

Subject

Mode a Object

Ap. 18d5 Ap. 18d7 Ap. 21c1 Ap. 29e5

Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

neg obl obl pos

Ap. 39d1 Phd. 85c5 Charm. 166c5 Charm. 166c8 Charm. 166e1

many — Socrates Socrates —

pos imper obl obl obl

Charm. 166e2 La. 189b2 Euthyd. 286e1 Lys. 211b7 Prot. 331c6 Prot. 331d1 Prot. 331e1 Grg. 458a3 Grg. 458a4 Grg. 458a5 Grg. 458a5 Grg. 461a3 Grg. 462a4 Grg. 462a5 Grg. 464a1 Grg. 467b2 Grg. 470c4 Grg. 470c5

— Socrates Socrates Menex.

— Socrates Socrates — Socrates — Socrates Socrates Polus Socrates Polus Polus Polus child

obl imper imper obl obl obl obl obl obl obl obl obl imper imper obl imper obl obl

old accusers no opponent Delphic oracle those claiming to care for their souls Athenians hard doctrine Critias Critias Socrates or Critias the logos Laches Dionysodorus Socrates me/you the logos parts of the face Socrates somebody Socrates somebody Gorgias Socrates Polus Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

Speaker

Categoryb rhetorical rhetorical ambiguous-r ambiguous-s

Simmias Critias

ambiguous-s neither ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous-r

neither Laches ambiguous Dionysodorus ambiguous ambiguous-r ambiguous neither Protagoras neither ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous Polus ambiguous-r Polus ambiguous-r

being examined. Hence I have noted (i) whether terms are used by “Socrates” (thus perhaps implying Plato’s approval for the term) or by an interlocutor; (ii) whether he is himself seen as the subject of the verb; (iii) who or what is put to the test; (iv) whether a particular instance of the verb states that the process has been or will be accomplished, denies it outright, or merely introduces the possibility (for clearly it is more helpful to be told that Socrates does use the process at some point than that he might or does not use it); and finally (v) whether the verb is used in a rhetorical context and in a way consistent with common courtroom usage of these verbs, or whether there is anything typically “Socratic” about the process here being suggested.

So that the reader may quickly form an independent judgment, I have

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Table 3.1 (continued) Reference

Subject

Mode a Object

Grg. 470c7 Grg. 470c8 Grg. 470d1 Grg. 471e2 Grg. 471e3

Polus Polus Polus Polus rhetors

obl imper pos obl obl

Grg. 471e4

rhetors

obl

Grg. 473b7 Grg. 473b11 Grg. 473d3 Grg. 473e3 Grg. 486c4 Grg. 486c8 Grg. 504c6 Grg. 506a3 Grg. 527b3 Meno 75d2 Hi. Ma. 287e3 Hi. Ma. 288a2 Hi. Ma. 288a3 Hi. Ma. 288b1 Hi. Ma. 289e4 Hi. Ma. 304d2 Hi. Mi. 363a3

Polus Polus Polus any Socrates wimps Callicles Callicles — Meno any any any alter ego alter ego alter ego Socrates

obl neg neg neg obl pos imper imper pos imper neg neg obl obl obl pos imper

Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates opponents in court opponents in court Socrates truth Socrates somebody ? ?

Socrates Socrates other logoi Socrates Hippias Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Hippias

Speaker

Categoryb

Polus

ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous-r ambiguous-r

Callicles Callicles

Hippias Hippias Hippias Hippias Eudicus

ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous neither ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous-r ambiguous ambiguous-r

a

Positive indicative (or equivalent), negative indicative (or equivalent), oblique, or imperative.

Rhetorical, Socratic, or ambiguous; if the latter, whether inclining toward rhetorical or toward Socratic. The categories of eristic and “neither” have also been used, and in some cases the meaning “find wanting” or “catch out” has been suggested.

b

chosen to tabulate the results (see Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Under “Subject” I list the person whose use of the process is asserted, denied, or considered. Under “Mode” I note whether this use involves an assertion, a denial, an invitation, or none of these. Under “Object” I indicate the person or thing being exposed or refuted. Under “Speaker” I note the name of the interlocutor using the term if it is not Socrates himself who uses it. Under “Category” I indicate whether the context and manner is rhetorical (or eristic) rather than distinctively Socratic, and in ambiguous cases I have given a rather subjective opinion about whether the usage seems more rhetorical or more Socratic. In difficult cases I have preferred to give a tentative translation.

The situation regarding the compound verbs is the more striking. Of the

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Table 3.2 Compounds of Elenchein Reference

Subject

Mode

Object

Ap. 17b2 Ap. 23a5

Socrates Socrates

pos pos

Symp. 217b3 Charm. 162d1 Euthyd. 272a8 Euthyd. 275e6 Euthyd. 286e2

Socrates — D/E D/E —

imper pos pos pos obl

Euthyd. 286e6 Socrates

imper

Euthyd. 287c1 Euthyd. 287e5 Euthyd. 288e5 Euthyd. 293e1 Euthyd. 295a6 Euthyd. 303d4 Euthyd. 303d5 Euthyd. 304d1 Euthyd. 304d2 Lys. 222d7 Prot. 347e7

Socrates Dionys.

Socrates Socrates [D/E] most — — Crito Soc. /Lys. most

obl obl pos pos pos obl obl obl obl pos neg

Grg. 457e4 Grg. 467a1 Grg. 467a9 Grg. 470d2 Grg. 471d6 Grg. 471d7 Grg. 473a10 Grg. 473b9 Grg. 473d2 Grg. 473e4 Grg. 482b2

Socrates Polus Polus event child Polus Polus — — — Callicles

obl pos obl obl obl pos pos neg neg neg imper

Grg. 497b7 Grg. 497b9 Grg. 506c1 Grg. 522d5 Grg. 522d5 Hi. Ma. 286e2 Hi. Ma. 286e7 Hi. Ma. 287b3 Hi. Ma. 304d7

Socrates Socrates Callicles any any alter ego any any alter ego

pos imper obl obl obl obl neg neg pos

accusers those who claim expertise Alcibiades Charmides anybody Cleinias theory that nobody lies theory that nobody lies Euthydemus Socrates theory himself Socrates others most Crito others selves meaning of poet Gorgias Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates a logos a logos Socrates philosophy’s logos little things Callicles Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

Speaker

Categoryb rhetorical ambiguous-s

Alcibiades

ambiguous-r catch out eristic Dionysodorus eristic ambiguous-s eristic

Euthydemus

Crito Crito

Polus

Polus Polus Polus

Callicles Gorgias

Hippias

eristic eristic neither eristic eristic eristic eristic eristic eristic ambiguous-s neither ambiguous ambiguous-r ambiguous-r rhetorical rhetorical rhetorical rhetorical ambiguous-r ambiguous-r rhetorical ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous find wanting? find wanting? find wanting? find wanting? find wanting? find wanting?

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thirty-nine occurrences only six appear in works other than the Euthydemus, Hippias Major, and Gorgias. In the Euthydemus the compound verb totally predominates, and it is easy to see why: the opponents set themselves up as experts in the art of refutation (272a), using the stronger verb to indicate a completed process. On the one occasion when the simple verb is used, Dionysodorus is inviting Socrates to test a theory, which, as Socrates points out, cannot on his account be refuted. Admittedly, Socrates seems to interpret the simple verb as if it had been meant in the sense of the compound, but this merely serves to show how readily Socrates responds to the game that the brothers are playing. Only once in the work, at 288e5, do we find a use of the compound verb that does not relate to the brothers’ activity. Here the verb seems to mean something like “discover by testing,” and this usage is so anomalous that one feels it is parodying the utterly different (and totally negative) activity of the brothers. If the choice of verb in the Euthydemus owes much to the practices of the interlocutors, then this could also be the case in the Gorgias, where I have italicized those cases that occur while Polus is interlocutor. Polus at least is strongly inclined to see the debate in terms of the refutation or attempted refutation of opponents, something avoided in the case of the argument with Gorgias, where exelenchein is not found.

As for the Hippias Major, all uses seem to mean little more than “find wanting.” When the verb first occurs, Socrates has not been able to give any answer to his alter ego. His ignorance may be exposed, but he has hardly been refuted. This use colors that of the next two. His ignorance is again what is revealed in the final case, and there is no suggestion that any statement has been proved false. This use, which I have also detected at the end of the Gorgias, never describes a dialectical procedure. It never has Socrates as subject, and in fact seems to describe a peculiarly Socratic state of embarrassment: the realization of some reprehensible ignorance. That it should appear chiefly in a work in which one “Socrates” causes embarrassment for another seems specially appropriate.

The simple verb is used in a greater range of works but is never used to describe the effect of Socratic dialectical procedures on his young friends.

Laches invites Socrates to refute himself, but otherwise the only friend to function as object of the verb is the argumentative and sophistic Critias. It is even clearer in the case of the simple verb that it names a somewhat hostile process as a result of which a competitor is exposed. This was not lost on ancient interpreters. The introduction to the reading of Plato followed by Diogenes Laertius at 3.52, having announced that the master “refutes” (dielenchei) falsehoods, says that “in the case of falsehoods he introduces char-

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acters being refuted [elenchomenous], like Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polus, Gorgias, and Protagoras, and likewise Hippias and Euthydemus and those like them.” There is no suggestion that any of Socrates’ companions undergo the same process. This is partly, I believe, because the Greek verb was still correctly understood as involving the exposure of an opponent. In forensic speeches, where it was extremely common,3 it might involve the exposure of the faults (and hence the guilt) of the defendant, or the accuracy (and hence the reliability) of a witness. It was never a friendly process. Consequently, Xenophon well understood that elenchos was Socrates’ aim in tackling rivals, while instruction was his aim when correcting his friends.4 Among the problems with our habit of using the term elenchos for a distinctively Socratic dialectical process is that interlocutors are just as likely to use the term as Socrates is; 5 another is the fact that Socrates is usually not the subject of the verb. In fact, only twenty-seven cases out of ninety involve Socrates as subject, with a large majority of cases involving oblique moods, a command, or a negative. Seven cases only imply that Socrates actually exposes somebody. Clearly, if elenchos had been the term for Socrates’ activity, then both Socrates and Plato seem to have been curiously unaware of it.

This does not mean that we cannot apply that term if it is helpful. However, when we discuss the purpose of Socratic questioning, it seems natural to consider what terminology best describes it.

IV. Exetasis Two dialogues offer natural starting places for an examination of Plato’s terminology for Socratic interrogation, the Gorgias and the Apology. Of these, Vlastos began from the Gorgias, but he was perhaps taking terminology for granted. If one assumes that elenchos is the best term, then the Gorgias is particularly rich in the relevant terminology, and it offers a considerable amount of theory too, contrasting what the term means for the orators with what it may involve for Socrates. The difficulties of this approach are 3. I count 181 uses of elenchos terminology in the speeches attributed to Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isaeus, and Isocrates.

4. Memorabilia 1.4.1 contrasts punitive use of elenchos on experts with everyday conversation with companions; 4.8.11 speaks of Socrates’ trying out people in other ways and refuting them (elenchein) when they have erred.

5. Simple verb used 37 times by Socrates, 14 times by others; compound verb 27 times by Socrates, 12 times by others. Socrates, of course, does a far greater share of the speaking.

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(i) that the Gorgias, on Vlastos’s own chronology, stands at the very end of the period to which the elenchos relates and (ii) that the term itself is adopted because it constitutes the objective of the orator in all opponent-directed oratory. Elenchos must have been a key term in Polus’s rhetorical handbook, mentioned at 462b – c, for there is much discussion of what constitutes elenchos for Polus. In his view it can be brought about by examples from history (470c–d), by received opinion (471e), by grotesque exaggeration designed to terrify (473b –d), and perhaps by well-timed mocking laughter (473e). Although Plato’s Socrates takes a rhetorical term and redefines it in a way that gives it meaning for himself, this has no necessary implication for his preferred way of thinking of his own activity.

Thus I prefer to turn to the Apology. One might legitimately ask how this dialogue, with a moderately high rate of elenchos terms, conforms with the rule that the word is used mainly when dealing with rivals. But there is no doubt that Socrates is confronted with opponents, if not interlocutors (as he is where Meletus is cross-examined). More relevant is that the court is expecting Socrates to act like an orator, probing and ideally refuting the accusations against him, which accounts for at least three out of the eight occurrences (17b and 18d twice). His desired “refutations” of the Delphic oracle (21c) and the various “experts” (23a) perhaps involve an extension of law-court usage and have a special irony in this courtroom context. Later uses of the term elenchos, however, do suggest something rather different: those who condemn Socrates are thought of as wishing to avoid “submitting to an elenchos of their lives” (39c, cf. 39d), and one may suspect here a special Socratic type of elenchos. While one could argue that plenty of legal procedures at Athens did require an individual to submit to an exposure of their lives, 39c–d must be seen in relation to Socrates’ description at 29e of an elenctic activity that sounds distinctly nonlegal: the testing of Athenians to see whether they care for their souls. This is a distinctively Socratic process that involves interrogation.

However, the Apology offers a more distinctive term that Socrates applies to his own interrogative activity. That term is exetasis.6 The verb exetazein and its cognates are used thirteen times, all of which seem relevant to Socratic inquiry, whereas perhaps half the uses of elenchein and its cognates are 6. I should like to be able to offer an etymology of this verb, but the authorities are not helpful, and no etymology is of much assistance unless Plato was aware of it. The simple verb etazein is involved in the etymology of etos at Cratylus 410d– e, but its own meaning there is open to doubt.

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Table 3.3 All Platonic Uses of Exetazein and Its Cognates Who does it?

What undergoes it?

Elenchos context?

NEGATIVE ADJ. Ap. 38a5

Socrates?

lives

not obvious

NOUN Ap. 22e6 Tht. 210c2 Phil. 55c4

Socrates Socrates Socrates/Protarchus

persons Theaetetus pleasure

yes, 23a5 not obvious no

VERB Ap. 23c4 Ap. 23c5 Ap. 23c8 Ap. 24c3 Ap. 28e5 Ap. 29e5 Ap. 33c3 Ap. 38a5 Ap. 41b5 Ap. 41b8 Ap. 41c3

Socrates youth youth Socrates/jury Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

persons persons persons the charge Socrates/others persons persons Socrates/others the dead Agamemnon the dead

yes, 23a5 yes, 23a5 yes, 23a5 no not obvious yes, 29e5!! not obvious not obvious not obvious not obvious not obvious

the so¯phro¯n the so¯phro¯n knowers nonknowers [neg.]

Socrates type Socrates/others Socrates Socrates Callicles with Soc. [neg.]

himself/others himself/others others others Laches themselves the logos Socrates interlocutor the facts

not obvious not obvious not obvious not obvious yes, 189b2 not obvious not obvious not obvious not obvious

“Early” Charm. 167a2 Charm. 170d5 Charm. 172b6 Charm. 172b7 La. 189a3 La. 189e1 Prot. 333c8 Prot. 333c9 Grg. 495a8

relevant.7 The life that is not yet laid bare by Socratic interrogation is anexetastos.8 We are therefore obliged to offer a list of occurrences of this alternative terminology (Table 3).

While there are only 47 occurrences of this terminology, 13 belong to the Apology, 11 to other “early” works, 15 to others works where Socrates 7. Significantly, two of the relevant uses of elenchein terms, at 25a and 29e, occur where exetazein also occurs.

8. The “unexamined life” of Ap. 38a.

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Table 3.3 (continued) Who does it?

What undergoes it?

Elenchos context?

Socrates/Callicles somebody

themselves Callicles

not obvious not obvious

Other works with Socrates leading Crat. 410d3 the year Crat. 436d6 people Rep. 489a4 unclear Rep. 598d5 simpleton Rep. 599a5 Socrates/others Phdr. 258d7 Socrates/Phaedrus Phdr. 261a2 Socrates Phdr. 270c7 Socrates/Phaedrus Phdr. 277a10 Socrates/Phaedrus Tht. 154d9 Socrates/ Theaetetus Tht. 155a1 Socrates/ Theaetetus Tht. 184c2 ?

its contents the beginning the image knowledge/imitation poet’s knowledge Lysias logoi the logos a reproach & logoi their own minds themselves way of speaking?

no no no no no no no no no no no no

Beyond Socrates Soph. 230b5

opinions

yes, 230d1

heavy and light? drawings logoi descriptions people’s crimes this thing diseases those judging your law the whole logos

no yes, 107c7! yes, 107c7 no no no no no no

Grg. 514b1 Grg. 515b1

Tim. 62c4 Crit. 107c7 Crit. 107d8 Crit. 119d5 Laws 685a7 Laws 720d3 Laws 764a5 Laws 837e4 Laws 891c9

“Sophists” [of Soc. type] ? people people Atlanteans Ath. Stranger/others free doctor absentees Ath. Stranger [neg.]

Cleinias

SIMPLE VERB Only Crat. 410d6/d7 context as for 410d3 above

leads the conversation, and a mere 10 dialogues in which “Socrates” is no longer chief speaker.9 This is not surprising when one discovers that Socrates, either alone or with others, is the perpetrator of the exetasis twentyfive times; the young people who imitate him, twice; the so¯phro¯n (prudent person), twice; and the Socratic type, twice more. Here then we have a process of examination that has a very strong tendency to be associated with 9. Though this involves only a few works, we are dealing with all genuine material in OCT vol. v, a quarter of vol. iv, a third of vol. i, and a little of vol. ii.

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Socratic interrogation— exactly what was lacking in the case of elenchos.

The term is from time to time coupled with elenchos, but it does not imply the hostility or rivalry that is there implied. Exetasis is the preferred term for the examination process in the Apology for two principal reasons. First, Socrates represents himself as the friend and benefactor of those being examined, not as their opponent. This makes elenchos terminology less appropriate, even though the exposure of culpable ignorance is still very much part of the process. Second, exetasis is specially associated with the examination of the extent of somebody’s knowledge.

V. Exetasis and the Examination of Knowledge I will dwell on this second claim, since it is likely to be somewhat controversial. It will be observed that the “early” dialogue (other than the Apology) in which the term exetasis occurs most is the Charmides. All cases occur during consideration of the possibility that a knowledge of what people do and do not know may constitute prudence (so¯phrosyne¯). This would make the prudent person the one able to investigate the knowledge-claims of others in a Socratic fashion: “So the prudent person alone will recognize himself, and will be able to examine [exetazein] what he happens to know and what he doesn’t, and he will be able to take a look at others likewise, seeing what somebody knows . . . and again what he thinks he knows, but does not know” (167a). The context is just as clear at 170d and 172b, and likewise at Laches 189e, Gorgias 514b and 515b, and Republic 598d–599a.

Moreover, Sophist 230b appears to reflect on Socratic interrogation when it makes “the opinions of people who go astray” the object of the verb. In the Theaetetus (154d–155a) it is the conceptions in the mind that are being examined. So exetasis is not only a peculiarly Socratic process, it is also closely connected with the testing of the intellectual soundness of the person being questioned.

Now, there are very few cases in the “early” dialogues where it is not some person that is being examined. The exceptions are Apology 24c, where it is the charge (but by implication Meletus’s claims); 38a, where it is lives (but by implication the beliefs that underlie them); Protagoras 333c, where it is the logos (though this is then qualified); and Gorgias 495a, where it is the actual facts. In this last case it is noteworthy that Socrates explicitly claims that the facts cannot be adequately examined without Callicles’ an-

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swering in accordance with his beliefs, so we are talking of the examination of facts via beliefs. Clearly the primary use of the term in the “early” dialogues involves the testing of the content of a human mind, and only secondarily can we speak of the examination of a disembodied argument or proposition. Such usage does not appear to be normal until the Phaedrus. I do not believe that elenchos terminology is radically different in this regard.

It is primarily people that are its victims, and only secondarily propositions or accounts (logoi). In fact, Socrates speaks at Apology 18d as if it were a paradoxical notion to attempt an elenchos without the presence of some person who might be interrogated! Either term applies primarily to persons.

The term exetasis tells us a little more because Plato thought it fitted Socratic interrogation better.

VI. Exetasis and the Discovery of Truth We have now arrived at a point where we can take a fresh look upon the vexed question whether the Socratic elenchos yields truth. The more specific term for Socratic interrogation has helped us to realize that Socrates’ methodology is distinctly personal and that the discoveries that will be made are discoveries about people and their degree of expertise. Revelation of somebody’s lack of expertise, however, does not entail revelation of false or inconsistent beliefs. Indeed, lack of expertise does not imply the absence of true belief, only the absence of adequately justified true belief. Lack of expertise can be seen in the inability to offer an answer or in the lack of conviction about an answer, just as much as in the offering of a false answer.

Hence there is no reason why Socratic interrogation should be a test of truth and falsehoods in propositions, or even truth and falsehood in the human soul. Rather, it tests for knowledge and lack of knowledge.

What, then, is the great benefit of Socratic interrogation if it cannot bring us closer to the truth? Surely it is the recognition of those we may trust on any particular issue. The recognition of the expert is a significant theme in the Protagoras (319b – e) and Laches (186 – 87) and an ideal in the Charmides (171–72). If experts were recognized and put in control, then our lives (if not our minds) would be free from their present error. However, the implication of the Euthydemus is that such superarts would not in fact be benefiting us at all by teaching us anything (292b – e). If our thirst is for knowledge, then there is no guarantee that the recognition of expertise will

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lead us to it. Socratic exetasis does not appear to lead to the discovery of truth and falsehood; at best it gives us an indication of those whose leadership might ultimately help us to distinguish the one from the other.

VII. Dialogue and Exetasis There is no doubt that Socrates believed philosophical progress was made through dialogue or that his followers likewise thought that dialogue was the vehicle by which we were led to a greater understanding of those issues that mattered to philosophy. They bequeathed dialogues to us, dialogues that constantly invite us to compare an interlocutor’s expertise with that of the Socratic questioner. Seldom are they interested in teaching us true propositions; rather, they promote an understanding of a subject through the consideration of relevant issues from a variety of perspectives.

Socrates, as pictured in the more believable dialogues of Plato (and Xenophon), does not ordinarily soliloquize when he is engaged with argument. He may speak continuously when expounding a myth, giving some other simple exposition of belief, or throwing out a challenge. But for argument, he requires a voice to respond, even when the voice that responds refuses to commit itself to the view under investigation (Prot. 333c, 352e).

When that voice fails, he has to mimic an interlocutor’s role himself (Grg. 506 –7). All this harmonizes well with the view that Socratic interrogation tests a person’s intellectual credentials, not the propositions, or even the groups of propositions, to which anybody may assent. What is revealed when a person’s beliefs are demonstrated to be inconsistent is a personal lack of credibility, not the presence of a false proposition.

VIII. Beyond Dialogue The point of the Gorgias where Socrates fulfills the role of interlocutor as well as questioner is particularly interesting because it occurs shortly before the strongest proof-claim that scholars still associate with Plato in Socratic mode: the claim, at 508e–509a, that certain conclusions “are held and bound fast (even if it’s a bit coarse to say so) by iron and adamantine arguments.” In a passage that may already have marked the transition to the arguments with Callicles (479e8), there is another striking proof-claim: “Has

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it not been proved that the claim was true?” Evidence such as this persuaded Vlastos that the elenchos was for Socrates a vehicle for the discovery of truth and for yielding that brand of knowledge of which mortals are capable. I do not think it fortuitous that what look like objective truth-claims are accompanied by Socrates’ willingness to take a more didactic role, to attempt to convey lessons through myths, and to assume the role of his own interlocutor. The defeat of Callicles is here insufficient; claims are made for Socrates’ theory itself, and it is noted that the theory has survived separate challenges from three exceptional brains (527b). Furthermore, Socrates’ own theory really has been under attack, put to the test by the most effective of opponents, so that its survival of the criticism actually demonstrates its truth (486e).

Socrates has been inviting his own elenchos and has been forced to defend himself in a manner that will lay his own beliefs bare and show the foundations upon which they rest.

Nothing convinces me that the arguments with Callicles have Socratic exetasis as an aim. If they did, it would be the intellectual credentials of Callicles that are under close scrutiny,10 but it is rather those of Socrates that are being tested. The passage at 495a actually speaks of the two of them examining the facts, and in doing so uses the key verb exetazein in a way that might then have seemed significantly paradoxical—inviting the reader (or listener) to note that the goal of the procedure is not the personal chastisement of an individual but an understanding of the real position. We have in fact moved on to a dialectical investigation, in which the truth is the goal and the questioner and respondent are required to cooperate. I have fewer problems with the “Socraticity” of the arguments with Gorgias and Polus, but the arguments with Callicles have very little bearing on Socratic interrogation processes as originally conceived.

Vlastos arbitrarily draws the line ending Plato’s “elenctic” period after the Gorgias,11 though admittedly he would have found no theory of elenchos at all if he had excluded this work. I prefer to draw it after the surrender of Polus, at 480e3. At least it should not be controversial that the arguments with Callicles are later than those with Polus, though I do in fact postulate 10. This does explicitly happen at 515a–b, but that is an exception.

11. Vlastos, in Socrates: Ironist, 46 (with n. 4), and Socratic Studies, 135, seems to be placing Gorgias last in those early dialogues that are seen as “elenctic,” close to a second group that are transitional. Seeing that modern studies of elenchos began with his “Socratic Elenchus,” which built its theory upon the arguments with Polus and with Callicles, the assumption that the work is significant for the understanding of Socratic interrogation (as it appears in the earliest dialogues) cannot be allowed to pass without challenge.

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a hiatus in the dialogue’s composition at that point, noting that a significant stylistic change is made with the transition to Callicles at 480e.12 The arguments with Gorgias employ an exetasis, which Socrates refers to as an elenchos because that is how Gorgias and Polus will understand it. The arguments with Polus move into a theoretical discussion because Polus’s approach to elenchos is anathema to Socrates. It is here that a quarter of our listed cases of the relevant verbs are found, plus eight out of eleven cases of the uncommon noun elenchos itself.13 The section begins with a challenge of Polus to Socrates, and both repeatedly offer challenges, so that it is indeed the kind of confrontation that might be expected to lead to elenchos in the Greek sense: the exposure of each other’s weaknesses. On my reading, Socrates’ claim that it has been proved that he spoke the truth (479e8) is not a claim about demonstrating the truth of propositions but an announcement that his evidence has stood up to the attempted exposure; it is a claim that one might expect in any rhetorical forum.

Polus admits (at 480e1–2), with no evident conviction, that Socrates’ position is coherent, and Socrates then switches from how one should behave regarding punishment to what must be done in the argument: He shows a new concern with what argument is achieving, irrespective of its effect on the individual: “So we either have to find a way out of those [earlier conclusions] too, or it’s necessary that this should follow?” (480e3). Even more paradoxical conclusions are drawn, but Polus remains silent, for their function in the dialogue is to provoke the astonished reaction of Callicles. So 480e3, which this late in the dialogue contains the first example of a verb form that now becomes common in the Gorgias,14 heralds a new style and new methods. Plato is now concerned about how the paradoxical conclusions can be tested and defended. In this section it would seem that a significant use of elenchos terminology continues, but these are the examples: 12. See Harold Tarrant, “The Hippias Major and Socratic Views on Pleasure,” in The Socratic Movement, ed. Paul A. Vander Waerdt (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 118 n. 28.

13. 471e7, 472c7, 473e2, 474a3, a4, b2, 475e7 2; other cases at Ap. 39c7, Symp. 220a6, Prot. 344b4.

14. Verbals in -teon and so forth, usually sparsely distributed in putatively early dialogues, begin to occur at about 0.8 per Stephanus page, a rate matched chiefly in parts of the Republic and most “late” dialogues. However, they do also occur frequently in the Crito, which I should put down to some late reworking. Subject matter does of course affect the rate, which can never be purely a chronological indicator, but alternative modes of expression were open to Plato, so that the ratio of dei and chre¯ to verbals does have stylistic significance. Verbals are also rarer in fifth-century Greek prose than in prose written after the establishment of Isocrates’ school.

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Reference

Subject

Mode

Object

Speaker

Type

1. 486c4 2. 486c8 3. 504c6 4. 506a3 5. 527b3 6. 482b2 7. 497b7 8. 497b9 9. 506c1 10/11. 522d5 2

Socrates wimps Callicles Callicles — Callicles Socrates Socrates Callicles any

oblique positive imperative imperative positive imperative positive imperative oblique oblique

? little things Socrates Socrates other logoi philosophy little things Callicles Socrates Socrates

Callicles Callicles

ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous neither ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous ambiguous find wanting?

Callicles Gorgias

Now, 1 and 2 concern what Socrates had been doing with Polus, while 3, 4, 6, and 9 are all linked with invitations to Callicles to expose the weaknesses of Socrates or his (personified!) philosophy. In fact, only 7 and 8 have any bearing on what Socrates is doing within the section, and they accurately describe a formal elenchos that Socrates is conducting at that point. Nevertheless such an elenchos is merely one of Socrates’ weapons in a task that cannot stop with the shaming of Callicles but has to continue until Socrates is fully vindicated and all objections to his beliefs are dispelled. This is no exetasis, but a full-scale assault on the problem of how all of us should live our lives.

Conclusion I have argued that elenchos is not the best term for Socrates’ activities and that exetasis is usually preferable. Furthermore, the study of Plato’s use of elenchos terminology proves beyond doubt that both exetasis and elenchos were conceived first and foremost as processes used by Socrates (where he is subject) on people. Just as orators attempt to expose people, so do those Socratic interrogations that are cases of elenchos. Both terms can be applied secondarily to what people say, because our words can be thought of as having the same moral deficiencies and the same lack of expertise as we do. The very fact that Plato’s Socrates must state that the truth is never refuted (Gorgias 473b) demonstrates that falsehood’s link with elenchos is more tenuous than its link with the modern notion of refutation.

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4 Comments on Lesher, Ausland, and Tarrant

CHARLES M. YOUNG

James H. Lesher deals with elenchos in Parmenides, Hayden W. Ausland with elenchos (and epago¯ge¯) in forensic oratory, and Harold Tarrant with elenchos (and exetasis) in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. I found no unified way of dealing with all three papers, so I take up the papers in turn, summarizing the main points of each and then appending questions, comments, observations, and complaints as appropriate.

I Lesher’s paper on Parmenides has three parts. He gives us, first, a helpful survey of the changes in the range of meaning of elenchos and its cognates from Homer through the late fifth and early fourth centuries c.e. He then argues that in Parmenides’ Fragment 7.5 – 6 the goddess, in stressing the importance of the youth’s making up his mind, about how and what to think, on the basis of an elenchos that she will deliver, means by an elenchos a serial review of the merits of two different ways of thinking that legitimates one and re-

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pudiates the other. Finally, he briefly notes recognizably similar reviews in later thinkers and suggests that this way of doing philosophical business has its source in Parmenides’ poem.

Here is Lesher’s story about the meaning of elenchos. The word begins life with the meaning of shame or disgrace, typically of the sort that arises from a failure in a martial or athletic test. Then the focus shifts from the idea of shame or disgrace to the tests in which shame or disgrace is incurred or avoided and expands to include tests or contests other than martial or quasimartial ones: for example, the test of a poem’s merits by public opinion. By the mid–fifth century, the term and its cognates began very commonly to designate the examination of the true nature of some person or thing. In philosophical contexts after that, they came to focus more narrowly on a specific sort of examination, that of a person’s words for truth or falsity.

When so focused, the terms might refer to the examination itself (crossexamination) or to its negative or even positive result (refutation and proof ).

In coming to his interpretation of what Parmenides means by elenchos in Fr. 7.6, Lesher first notes that there is an allusion with the words dokimo¯s einai in the last line of Fr. 1 to some sort of testing-and-certification procedure and then appeals to the language and structure of Fr. 8 to argue that this is exactly what we find there. Thus we are told in Fr. 8.15 –18 that we are in the course of reaching a judgment about two different ways of thinking, one of which will be established as illegitimate (“unthinkable and unnameable”), the other as legitimate (“true and genuine”). The elenchos mentioned in Fr. 7.6 thus extends through to the end of Fr. 8 and consists in the serial review of the merits and demerits of the two ways of thinking, resulting in the rejection of the one and the certification of the other.

Lesher concludes by drawing our attention to a variety of passages from later philosophers— one each from Gorgias (Fr. 3.66 – 68) and Philolaus (Fr. 2), and several from Plato and Aristotle—that are strikingly similar to Parmenides’ elenchos. These similarities, Lesher thinks, give us reason to think that they are modeled on Parmenides’ elenchos and, hence, that this method of serial review of available options—what Lesher calls the “philosophical elenchos”—is another part of Parmenides’ legacy.

One preliminary note: One might wonder why Parmenides thinks it is appropriate to describe the entire process of serial review as an elenchos.

Lesher’s survey of the development of the range of meaning of elenchos and its cognates in the first part of his paper helps here. The serial review of the it is and it is not ways of thinking consists in an examination or testing of the

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it is not way of thinking that results in its refutation and an examination or testing of the it is way of thinking that results in its certification or proof.

Lesher’s survey shows that each of the two examinations and their two different results can appropriately be described as an elenchos. Thus it is entirely natural for Parmenides to describe as an elenchos a review of which any part, process or product, is an elenchos.

Two qualifications, neither of which do I think Lesher would resist, are in order regarding his appealing suggestion that at least some of Parmenides’ successors consciously took up his method of serial review. First, in none of the passages that Lesher cites as resembling the philosophical elenchos does its author actually call the serial review an elenchos. Philebus 52d10 – e1 comes closest. But the elenchos of pleasure mentioned there is, with the elenchos of knowledge also mentioned there, a part of the serial review of the claims of pleasure and knowledge to be the good, and not the serial review itself.

Second, if Parmenides’ successors do in fact take over from him the method of serial review, they do not do so without altering it or otherwise adapting it to their own purposes. Aristotelian dialectic is one striking example. Parmenides’ serial review of the available ways of thinking results in the rejection of one and the certification of the other. Aristotle’s serial review of the accounts of the object of wish in Nicomachean Ethics iii.4, for example, begins with the rejection of both and ends with the formulation of a third account, one incorporating the strengths but without the weaknesses of its parents. This is importantly different.

I note in conclusion that Parmenides’ methodological legacy is arguably richer even than Lesher has it. Remember that the choice between the two ways of thinking is not the only choice the youth must make. As Lesher notes at the outset of his paper, the goddess in Fr. 7, aware that the youth might make up his mind by custom or convention and as a result get the wrong answer, urges him to decide instead by reason (to¯i logo¯i). Thus Parmenides’ poem contains the idea that different ways of approaching philosophical questions can yield different answers and that some ways of approaching such questions are better than others. So, too, for one extreme later example, Republic ix, 580d–583a, where the serial review that judges the pleasantness of the lives of the philosopher, the lover of victory, and the lover of gain is all but over once it is settled that the philosopher, and not the lover of victory or gain, is the right one to decide. Thus, seeing the importance of methodological reflection seems to be yet another area in which Parmenides at least anticipates those who came after him.

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II Ausland’s paper has two parts, one on Socratic elenchos and one on epago¯ge¯. In both parts he is interested in distinguishing what is original in Socrates from what Socrates takes over from forensic oratory. Regarding the elenchos, Ausland tells us that many of the dialectical topoi we find in Socratic interrogation have their source in forensic practice. Socrates’ confrontational stance toward Meletus at Apology 24d and toward Callicles at Gorgias 515b, for example, is a standard courtroom tactic, as is his common plea for indulgence of his commonplace mode of speaking (for example, at Apology 17a–18a).1 In contrast to standard forensic practice, Socrates is generally friendly toward his dialectical opponents, perhaps even concerned with their welfare, and he has personal aims, notably knowledge, that go beyond those of a professional orator. And, as Ausland suggests, it “may be significant” that forensic topoi in forensic practice were (intended to be) made use of in actual courts against real opponents, whereas Socratic argumentation is always imbedded in a literary fiction. As a result, Ausland says, no Socratic refutation is directed at a single opponent: there is always the reader to consider as an audience.

A view of Socratic epago¯ge¯ as old as Aristotle has it that epago¯ge¯ involves an ascent from particular claims to a universal claim. Ausland draws our attention to the similarity of Socratic epago¯ge¯ to poetical and rhetorical paradeigmata, in which there is an appeal to a series of examples or testimonies, with the aim of establishing some further particular point. Even in instances where Socrates does extract a general claim from a set of examples, as at Euthyphro 10c, the ultimate focus, Ausland argues, is on a particular case.

Ausland’s remarks on elenchos and epago¯ge¯ in nonphilosophical writings provide a useful corrective to the occasional tendency of philosophical analysts to read Plato’s dialogues more or less in isolation. I would go further: Ausland’s remarks imply a couple of research projects whose results would be most interesting. Thus a catalogue of dialectical topoi in forensic oratory would be well worth having, both for its own sake and for the sake of seeing which of them, in which forms and with what variations, appear in the Socratic dialogues. And it is clear even from the small sampling that Ausland 1. Here one is reminded of the classic remarks on the exordium of the Apology in James Riddell, ed., The Apology of Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1877), xxi, quoted in Burnet, Plato’s Euthyphro, 66 – 67.

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gives us here that poetical and rhetorical paradeigmata deserve more attention from philosophers than they have received so far.

As I noted, Ausland downplays the ascent to the universal in Socratic epago¯ge¯, stressing instead the subsequent focus on a particular case. It is important, though, to appreciate the purpose of the ascent. Here Ausland’s own example of Euthyphro 10 is a good one for the point. At 10b1–11, Socrates secures Euthyphro’s agreement that a thing is carried (pheromenon) because it is carried (pheretai), led (agomenon) because it is led (aegetai), and seen (oro¯menon) because it is seen (oratai), and never the other way round. He is interested in establishing that a thing is loved (philoumenon) because it is loved (philetai), and not the other way round, and he might have gone straight to that point. Had he done so, however, he would have been open to any number of objections. Unlike carrying, leading, and seeing, loving involves an emotion. So why should we suppose that what is true of the other examples is also true of loving? Socrates avoids this and similar objections by claiming that his examples establish a point that holds in the case of any coming to be or undergoing (10c1– 4) and thus amounts to a general truth about action and passion. Then and only then does he draw the inference—from that general claim 2 —to the particular case he is interested in.

This is something that Euthyphro himself understands. He ventures his first definition of piety with these remarks: “I say that the pious is what I am now doing, prosecuting a wrongdoer whether about murder or stealing from temples or any other such thing, and whether he is one’s father or mother or anyone else, and not to prosecute is impious” (5d8 – e2). Euthyphro is often accused—partly on the strength of “the pious is what I am now doing” in 5d8 –9 (see also 6d3– 4 and perhaps also d9 –10)— of giving an example of a pious action as a definition. But it is evident from the quotation that this cannot be right. True, he does say that “the pious is what I am now doing.” But, as he goes on to say, “what [he is] now doing” is prosecuting a wrongdoer, and Euthyphro makes it very plain that his definition is general both with respect to the wrong done—“whether about murder or stealing from temples or any other such thing”—and general with respect to one’s relation to the wrongdoer—“whether he is one’s father or mother or anyone else.” And he goes on to offer as a “great proof” (mega . . . tekme¯rion, 5e2 –3) of the correctness of his definition the fact that Zeus did the very same thing.

Thus I cannot agree with Ausland when he says that Euthyphro offers 2. Thus 10c6 – 8 brings philoumenon under the general rule of 10c1– 4, and 10c9 –12 draws the desired conclusion (n.b. ara in 10c9).

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Zeus’s behavior “as a supportive proof [tekme¯rion] for his contemplated prosecution of his own father” (53), or with the contrast he sees between Socrates’ use of the form itself (auto to eidos, 6d10 –11) and Euthyphro’s use of the Zeus exemplum. Euthyphro does offer Zeus as a proof, but not of the rightness of his proposed action against his father. The example is, rather, as we have just seen, intended as a proof of the correctness of his own definition of piety as prosecuting the wrongdoer. It is also, as Ausland notes (53–55), a proof of the inconsistency of some of his opponents in criticizing Euthyphro and praising Zeus, given that the two of them have done exactly the same thing (5e5 – 6a5). But Euthyphro does not use Zeus as a proof of the correctness of his prosecuting his father. He sees that as following directly from the correctness of his definition of piety.

Nor can I agree with Ausland’s implicit account of Socrates’ diagnosis of the flaw he claims to find in Euthyphro’s third definition of piety, piety as what all the gods love. Ausland writes, One interesting thing about the more rigorous context in the Euthyphro—also from a dramatic standpoint—is the way Plato by contrast characteristically embeds a treatment of causality within the material of the reductive inference: if Euthyphro’s definition were good, his implied account of causation would also be sound; but the latter is not, so his definition is deficient. Put another way, Euthyphro’s definition is shown by Socrates to fail because it fails to account for a phenomenon in a way compatible with what its author admits to be a proper causal relationship. (58 –59) I have to say I’m not sure of the bit about “a dramatic standpoint.” I might be willing to accept the last sentence at least as an account of why Socrates thinks Euthyphro’s definition fails. But I don’t see that it paraphrases what Ausland claims it paraphrases. More important: Ausland is right in thinking a definition implies a causal dependency of definiendum on definiens. Since unmarried man is the correct definition of bachelor, it follows that being an unmarried man makes one a bachelor, not the other way around. Having defined piety as what all the gods love, Euthyphro should have said at 10a4 that the fact that all the gods love a certain action is what makes that action pious. Had he done so, nothing Socrates goes on to say would have forced him to change his mind. So the problem with Euthyphro is not that “his implied account of causation” is not sound. It is rather that he does not— for whatever reason—accept the “account of causation” his own definition implies.

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Finally, an observation on Ausland’s comment that “Socratic argumentation as it has been preserved for us is always embedded in a literary fiction.

A . . . consequence of this attribute of the dialogues is that no Socratic refutation we witness is ever ‘personal’ in the sense that it is directed wholly toward a single interlocutor, as it might fictionally appear, since there is always at least the reader to consider as an audience standing in judgment” (45). Of course, forensic oratory itself is not personal in this sense either; one interrogates one’s opponent with a view to convincing a jury. Also, one’s success in convincing may be limited by one’s opponent’s skills. Plato’s intentions with respect to his audience may be likewise limited, this time by considerations of literary verisimilitude. But in the dialogues Plato does in fact represent Socratic refutation, at least some of the time, as “directed wholly toward a single interlocutor.” Indeed, Plato’s representation of Socratic interrogation as so directed is important in his achieving the effects on his audience that he intends.

III Tarrant’s paper appeals to (what I assume are) computer-generated counts of the occurrences of forms and cognates first of elenchos and then of exetasis in a collection of dialogues generally thought to predate the Republic and at least possibly by Plato. He supplements these counts with contextual information along a number of dimensions. He then deploys the supplemented accounts and other, rather more standard considerations to argue for several theses about elenchos and exetasis in the dialogues under discussion. Of these claims, the most significant to my mind are (a) that both elenchos and exetasis are practiced on persons, not on theories; (b) that for Plato, at least, elenchos describes a competitive dialectical activity between intellectual rivals, not a friendly educative process, and that we are wrong to label that friendly process elenchos; and (c) that Plato’s term for Socratic interrogative activity generally is exetasis, not elenchos. In my comments I set (a) aside. It raises issues too complex for treatment in short compass, though I can say that I would have been rather more inclined to be persuaded by Tarrant before I read Lesher’s account of the range of meaning of elenchos and its cognates.3 3. Note that on Lesher’s and Ausland’s accounts of elenchos prior to Plato it is theories, not persons, that are the primary focus. A focus on persons may therefore be new with (Plato’s representation of) Socrates.

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Truth in advertising requires that I declare an interest before going on. I am very skeptical of conclusions drawn from counts of words or other stylistic features. In the first place, for reasons that I have explained in another paper,4 I am not convinced that satisfactory sense can be made of the notion of a stylistic feature. Further, as I note in a few instances in that paper, counts are too often used as if they gave added weight to claims arrived at on independent grounds. So, for example, in the present paper, Tarrant (76n.14) asks us to believe that the increased use of verbals in -teon after Gorgias 480e3 5 gives us reason to end the “early” dialogues there rather than at the end of the dialogue.6 But he writes off the high use of such verbals in the Crito as “late reworking” (note 14 to Chapter 3). This looks like a man who has made up his mind about what is “early” and what is “middle,” on other grounds, and wants to use counts to buttress that opinion. But it is on those other grounds that these judgments will stand or fall. The counts themselves are neutral as between “middle” and “later reworking” of “early” material.

That said, two minor notes about Tarrant’s idea that elenchos is for rivals, exetasis for friends and foes alike. First, as Lesher’s survey shows, elenchos and its cognates have uses, especially in philosophical contexts, that are nonconfrontational. Second, as Ausland observes, Socrates arguably retains a friendly attitude toward even the most contentious of his rivals, Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in the Republic. These points may go some ways toward blurring the division Tarrant wants us to see between elenchos and exetasis.

What about the division itself? Tarrant thinks that exetasis is the correct general term for Socratic interrogative activity. Elenchos is a species of exetasis, marked off from other forms of exetasis by the fact that Socrates practices it on dialectical opponents with a view to refuting them. Whether he also believes that there are other—in particular, formal— differences marking elenchos off from other species of exetasis is not clear to me. Since Tarrant makes no effort to articulate any such differences, I assume that there are not.

If that’s right, then Tarrant is telling us that Plato represents Socrates in 4. See Charles M. Young, “Plato and Computer Dating,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12 (1994): 227–50, esp. sec. viii.

5. Why after 480e3 rather than after Socrates’ speech at 480e5 – 481b4, which seems to complete the summing-up begun at 480a1? Perhaps because there are verbals in -teon at 480e3, e7, e8, and 481a2 (then none till 487c5, though). (For searches here and elsewhere I have used Musaios 1.0d–32 and the TLG “D” disk.)

6. As in, e.g., Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist, 46.

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the Socratic dialogues as engaging in a single mode of interrogative activity, exetasis, and that that activity is correctly called elenchos when it is practiced on his intellectual rivals with a view to their refutation but not when it is practiced on his friends with a view to their refutation. Should we believe him? Let us set aside worries about stylistic features and agree that Plato’s use of the relevant terminology is as Tarrant describes it. Then the interesting question is why Socrates avoids using the term elenchos when he is talking to his friends. Is it because he recognizes that interrogative activity counts as elenchos only when it is directed toward rivals with a view to their refutation? Or is it a matter of politeness, say? Does he recognize that what he is doing even when he is examining his friends is elenchos but refrain from calling it that because he wants to minimize the chances of being misunderstood as confrontational?

One famous passage in the Sophist shows that the politeness option, or some equivalent of it, must be right. Consider the Eleatic Stranger’s “Sophist of noble descent” (231b7– 8), who makes use of the elenchos to purge its victim of the false conceit of wisdom as a propaedeutic to knowledge (230b – 231a). Opinions differ on whether Plato means us to understand the Socrates of the early dialogues as an instance of this sort of Sophist, but we need not settle this question here. All that is relevant for our purposes is the fact that in describing the Sophist of noble descent and his nonconfrontational interrogative activities, Plato uses elenchos and its cognates no fewer than 5 times in 28 lines (twice in 230d1, once each in 230d7, 230d8, and 231b6), 4 of them within 8 lines. He feels no terminological qualms whatever in describing nonconfrontational exetasis as elenchos. If he doesn’t, neither should we.

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P A R T

T W O

Reexamining Vlastos’s Analysis of “the Elenchus”

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5 Variety of Socratic Elenchi

MICHELLE CARPENTER and RONALD M. POLANSKY

Socratic cross-examinations seem to have many purposes. By means of his questions and the arguments that these generate, Socrates manages to investigate claims to expertise, to examine the life of his interlocutor, to puncture conceit of wisdom, to establish certain views, to begin to reorient the life of the interlocutor, to seek suitable friends, and so on.1 Refutation is merely one of the functions, though a most crucial one, since all of the other purposes may be accomplished through refutation. In recent years much consideration has been extended to the possibility of method in the employment of refutative elenchus. Commentators disagree both on the possibility of formulating a method of elenchus and on the extent to which Socrates is conscious of a method.2 We believe that Socrates does to some extent reflect 1. Since Plato’s dialogues are literary works enacting dialogues to which the reader may somehow become a participant, many of these functions might be accomplished for the reader as well.

2. Vlastos (“The Socratic Elenchus”) suggests that Socrates has a method, which Vlastos dubs “standard elenchus.” He doubts that this method is much reflected upon by Socrates, however, since Socrates is “a moral philosopher pure and simple.” Brickhouse and Smith differ

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upon method, yet this reflection tends to be restricted to the immediate context of the present argument with a particular interlocutor. An embracing reflection upon all elenctic discussion does not appear, because Socrates has no single method of refutation or cross-examination. He uses a variety of approaches based upon the needs of the particular interlocutor and conversational setting. We also suggest that far more of Socratic conversation is refutative than is generally appreciated. Recognition of how widespread this refutation is enhances appreciation of the unlikelihood of a general method of elenchus.

Discussion of a possible method of the elenchus has tended to focus upon the logic of the elenchus, that is, how effective the refutations are taken to be

by Socrates (and hence also perhaps Plato and the ideal reader). Socrates may hold the refutation to be decisive, proving the refuted view simply untrue, or he may instead conceive it to work just against the interlocutor, proving the refuted view untrue based upon the premises that the interlocutor has accepted. Commentators have made cases for each of these positions and for what Socrates must be assuming about his method.3 We do not intend to deal directly with such discussions of the logic of the elenchus. Our project is rather to indicate much variety in the sorts of things Socrates sets out to refute and some variety in the ways he sets out to refute them. Awareness of such variety should influence consideration of what Socrates supposes himself to accomplish in the refutation. Given the variety we disclose, it is perhaps quite unlikely that there is a single way to conceive each and every elenctic refutation. Some may merely work upon premises acceded to by the interlocutor, whereas others seem to Socrates quite decisive. In addition, it is not even clear, as we shall see, that every refutation aims to establish the falsity of the targeted view.

What can be said universally about refutation is this: Given that someone has stated a belief, that is, a statement to which he or she adheres, or some belief can be taken as an implication of or be construed from what the person has said, refutation occurs when one or more statements are made or a

to some extent with this view, since they say that Socrates “does not do what he does—in his eyes, at least—methodically” (Plato’s Socrates, v). They offer evidence that Socrates does not reflect upon a general method and does not have one (see Plato’s Socrates, chap. 1).

3. See Adams, “Elenchos and Evidence,” for discussion of some of the proposals about the logic of refutation and his own suggestions. To those he mentions may be added Richard Robinson’s assertion: “Elenchus is essentially argument ad hominem” (“Plato’s Consciousness of Fallacy,” in Essays in Greek Philosophy [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969], 22).

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series of questions asked that raise a difficulty for holding that belief in the way in which the interlocutor does, a difficulty that would, if appreciated, require some significant modification of the belief.4 The refutation may be recognized by the person making the argument or raising the questions, by the interlocutor, by the listeners, by some combination of these, or by none of them.5 In other words, a refutation need not be acknowledged by the person refuted or even any of the participants in the conversation. This may seem rather strange because we often suppose that only an argument that is recognized and cannot be answered or countered is a refutation, and when the interlocutor appears to get around the argument, even if illogically or rhetorically, the refutation is avoided. We suggest, nonetheless, that this latter way of understanding refutation amounts to an account of apparent refutation, while we have managed to describe genuine refutation. Let us trace how pervasive refutation is in many Platonic dialogues and then how various are the approaches taken toward it. This will support the claim that there is unlikely to be a single general method of elenchus.

Surely Socrates must not be credited with originating refutative argumentation, and he is not even the only one to practice elenchus in the dialogues.

The earliest philosophers formed a critical tradition, with thinkers subjecting their predecessors’ and contemporaries’ positions to criticism.6 In Plato’s dialogues Socrates often links with this critical tradition, only we observe him refuting exclusively nonphilosophers, in conversations, and typically regarding ethical matters. Even those credited with expertise, such as rhetoricians, Sophists, poets, and so on, are dubious philosophers. Rather than challenge the view of the interlocutor with a monological argument, Socrates most often develops refutative argument through questions to the person being refuted, so that the interlocutor generally seems forced by Socrates’ 4. A refutation could also occur through some action, such as pointing to something contradicting or acting out a conflict with what is said or held to be so. We have suggested that the refutation is of the way in which the interlocutor holds the belief, inasmuch as statements of the form “X is Y” lend themselves to many interpretations. A refutation could apply merely to one or another of these interpretations, while not to others. Thus Socrates might only be refuting the interlocutor’s faulty understanding of his own assertion, which would then require modification not necessarily of the statement but of the way it is understood. A referee also suggests that “refutation might include pointing out that an interlocutor’s behavior is inconsistent with the beliefs he holds, not simply that beliefs are inconsistent with other beliefs.” Someone acknowledging the refutation should then make “significant modification of behavior.” We provide an example below in the cross-examination of Meletus in the Apology.

5. Even the author of a literary work containing a refutation may or may not appreciate it.

6. The word elenchos (e[legcon) appears explicitly in Parmenides DK 28B7.

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line of questions to agree to his own refutation.7 Since knowledge in whatever field is some sort of excellence or virtue of its possessor in that field, calling into question an interlocutor’s knowledge threatens that person’s claim to excellence. Socrates’ refutations primarily attack the interlocutor’s pretension to knowledge of virtue, that is, the fundamental understanding sustaining the life-practices of the interlocutor.8 Even in these dialogues, we hardly find refutation limited to Socrates. The term elenchos and its derivatives appear fairly commonly in the Euthydemus, and many of the refutations called by this name are performed by the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus (see, for example, 272a, 275e, 295a). Antagonistic interlocutors such as Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in Republic i attempt repeatedly to refute Socrates.9 Fairly regularly it can be observed that those engaging in conversation with him learn from Socrates how to employ refutation and then practice this on their own.

This is mentioned prominently in Apology 23c; we find Laches in Laches 194e–196d trying to refute Nicias along the lines Socrates had used against Laches himself, and in the Lysis Socrates illustrates for Hippothales how he should cross-examine his beloved Lysis.

We may also consider Protagoras’s initial discussion with Socrates an attempt at a complicated refutation of Socrates’ denial that virtue can be taught. Protagoras says that he will answer Socrates either with a story or an argument (320c). His story is the elaborate tale of the origins of various animals’ and humans’ ability to survive. The humans eventually attain shame and justice, which all persons within the community must share. It is so much expected that everyone shares in justice that all must claim to be just.

This tale accounts for the fact that all are allowed to give advice on political subjects in the Athenian assembly, since all participate in justice. The tale continues by observing that punishment for wrongdoing indicates that all suppose virtue can and should be acquired by teaching and practice. Thus virtue is teachable, and yet all can be advisors in the assembly. Turning to argument, Protagoras contends that it only seems that virtue is unteachable, 7. In Alcibiades i 112d–113c Socrates argues that the answerer, rather than the questioner, is the one who asserts what is said.

8. If, as suggested in Euthyphro 7b –d, humans often disagree about just and unjust, beautiful and ugly, and good and bad, with hatred and anger arising over these differences, there need be little surprise that Socrates’ elenctic activities provoke strong reactions.

9. We make no claim that Republic i is an early dialogue. It has been well argued (e.g., by Bruce Aune, “The Unity of Plato’s Republic,” Ancient Philosophy 17 [1997], 291–308) that this part of the Republic fits perfectly with the rest of the dialogue. Many of those who discuss the dialogues, however, treat the first book of the Republic as early.

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because teaching and learning are really going on everywhere in view of the importance of sharing in justice. Some make a little more progress than others due to their better ability to learn. Everyone imparts virtue, much as everyone is a teacher of Greek. Thus it appears that Protagoras has two different sorts of challenges or apparent refutations of Socrates’ proposal that virtue is not teachable.

We have to some extent called into question the aptness of speaking of Socratic elenchus, since refutation precedes Socrates and is undertaken by others within the dialogues. Yet Socrates takes the lead in the dialogues in most refutations, and he succeeds much more than the others in gaining acknowledgment of the refutation. Clearly, as well, he keeps pressing the ethical themes. We now wish to show that the refutations extend more widely and with more methodological reflection than is often appreciated—so much so that our demonstration may raise difficulties with the supposition that Socrates is merely a moral philosopher.

In those dialogues dominated by the search for a definition of some moral notion, the interlocutor often begins with an attempted definition that seems to fail as a definition. Commentators have often spoken of these attempts as the mere citing of instances of the notion rather than the formulating of a proper definition.10 Socrates nevertheless subjects these to refutation and is quite conscious that their shortcoming is an insufficient width to cover all cases. Consider Laches’ first definition of courage: “[I]f a man is willing to remain at his post and to defend himself against the enemy without running away, then you may rest assured that he is a man of courage” (Laches 190e, Sprague trans.). This should be seen in fact to offer a universal account, only the universal is way too narrow for courage. Though Socrates complains to Laches about improper definition, he in fact proceeds to refute this account.

He argues that chariot, cavalry, and even hoplite warfare give scope for courageous battle through retreating tactics. Of course, he also goes on to suggest that courage shows itself in cases outside warfare. In the Euthyphro Euthyphro first defines the pious and the impious thus: “I say that the pious is to do what I am doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or anything else, whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else; not to prosecute is impious” (5d– e, Grube trans.). This account can be seen to be universal rather than merely naming instances, though again it is way too narrow as an account of the 10. Nehamas (“Confusing Universals”) has rightly called into question the proposition that the interlocutor merely gives instances rather than a universal definition.

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pious and the impious. Socrates once again subjects this account to refutation even while considering it an improper definition. When Socrates asks in 6d if there are not many other pious actions besides prosecuting one’s father for murder, Euthyphro has to answer that there are. But this is a refutation because in 5d Euthyphro agreed that he should be able to disclose the pious as “the same and alike in every action, and the impious the opposite of all that is pious and like itself, and everything that is to be impious presents us with one form or appearance in so far as it is impious” (cf. 6d– e). Socrates catches Euthyphro failing to give an account pertaining to any possible case of piety and impiety. Our clinching example of Socrates’ subjecting even possibly faulty definitions to refutation is the Hippias Major. Here it may seem that Hippias never quite manages to develop a proper definition, offering as definitions of the beautiful a beautiful girl, gold, and a life in which one is rich, healthy, and honored and, reaching old age, buries one’s parents and is buried by one’s children, yet Socrates refutes him repeatedly nonetheless.

In fact, we believe that his accounts may be viewed as universal accounts, though not of the sort Socrates seeks. Refuted he is, however.

We can now show that Socrates may engage in elenctic refutations even prior to the refutations of attempted definitions and other such sorts of ethical cross-examinations. In the Laches, prior to raising the question about what courage is, Nicias, Laches, and Socrates are asked to comment upon fighting in armor. The two generals disagree about the value for the young of studying this, and Lysimachus asks Socrates to cast the deciding vote (see Laches 184c–d). Immediately Socrates targets this procedure for deciding such questions. He actually refutes Lysimachus and Melesius’s suggested method of deciding. Socrates argues that we do not listen to the many, but to the expert, about practicing gymnastic exercise. Matters, especially crucial matters such as the welfare of our children, ought to be decided by knowledge where it is available rather than by voting of just anyone. Similarly, in the Crito Socrates refutes Crito’s proposal that they decide to escape prison without giving the matter adequate deliberation. Crito insists that the time for deliberation is past and the escape must be implemented immediately (46a). Socrates comments that “not only now but at all times I am the kind of man who listens only to the argument that on reflection seems best to me” (46b, Grube trans.), and he goes on to argue for this decision procedure while refuting Crito’s suggestion that there could be any other way to decide.11 We thus find at least two cases in which Socrates refutes proposed 11. For extended treatment of this argument in the Crito, see Ronald M. Polansky, “The Unity of Plato’s Crito,” Scholia 6 (1997), esp. 52 – 60.

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procedures for deliberation even before the interlocutor presents any definition or the argument begins to consider whether some specific action is appropriate. Such argumentation about decision procedures seems rather unlike what is often supposed the usual practice of Socrates, to refute proposals of substantive beliefs. In considering decision procedures through his elenctic argument, Socrates seems evidently to reflect upon method and perhaps to tread outside the narrow domain of moral philosophy.12 We have been showing how widespread the practice of refutation is in many dialogues. Others besides Socrates engage in it. And Socrates employs it in circumstances some have not recognized. He subjects any sort of substantive proposal to refutation, even when it may appear to be an improper definition or proposal for action. Moreover, he refutes proposed procedures for the conversation. We are already, therefore, by consideration of the variety of settings in which refutations occur, displaying how various the refutations are and how they suggest reflection upon method by Socrates. We now turn to more direct review of the variety of approaches to refutation.

In our previous mention of Protagoras’s effort to refute Socrates with a story and then an argument, we have already hinted at strange possibilities for refutations. We find a rather parallel case in the Alcibiades i.13 Socrates, by his refutations, has been deflating Alcibiades’ confidence in his knowledge of the just, unjust, advantageous, and disadvantageous, but has begun to restore some confidence by disputing the knowledge of most political leaders (118b – c). Yet Socrates, seeking to prepare Alcibiades for the lengthy and difficult task of caring for himself, has also suggested that Alcibiades’ real competitors for political dominance are the kings of Sparta and Persia rather than the ordinary politicians. But Alcibiades says, “I don’t think the Spartan generals or the Persian king are any different from anybody else” (120c, Hutchinson trans.). Socrates tries to refute this view by two sorts of arguments. First he offers a pragmatic argument that Alcibiades’ view has bad consequences, and only subsequently argues that Alcibiades’ view is likely to be false. Socrates and Alcibiades have this exchange: A: . . . I don’t think the Spartan generals or the Persian king are any different [oujde;n diafevrein] from anybody else.

12. The interplay in the Protagoras (and elsewhere) over the use of long speeches versus short exchanges may also be conceived as a refutation of a proposed procedure. Socrates gives reasons why short exchanges ought to be used, but he illustrates how he will defeat Protagoras even if he opts for long speeches.

13. We ignore doubts about the authenticity of this dialogue both because we find them unconvincing and because there seems nothing non-Socratic in the sections we refer to.

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S: But what sort of a notion [th;n oi“hsin] is that? Think about it.

A: About what?

S: In the first place, when do you think you’d cultivate [ejpimelhqh`nai] yourself: if you feared them and thought they were formidable [deinou;~], or if you didn’t?

A: Obviously if I thought they were formidable.

S: Surely you don’t think that cultivating yourself will do you any harm [oi[ei ti blabhvseoqai ejpimelhqei;~ sautou`], do you?

A: Not at all. In fact, it would be a big help.

S: So that’s one flaw [kako;n] in this notion of yours, a big flaw, isn’t it?

A: You’re right.

S: Now the second flaw is that it’s also false, judging by the probabilities [ejk tw`n eijkovtwn]. (120c–d) Socrates takes Alcibiades’ belief that his competitors are not superior to others as needing refutation. This refutation will break down the final resistance to being led by Socrates. So long as Alcibiades supposes that his competitors are merely ordinary humans, from whom he has little to fear, he has little reason to care about his own development and to have Socrates guide him.

It would benefit him to care more for himself. Hence it is pragmatically bad not to believe the competitors are scary, that is, formidable and different from ordinary people.

We can formalize the “pragmatic” argument something like this: Alcibiades believes— p: his competitors don’t differ from other humans q: if he fears his competitors and considers them formidable, then he will care for himself r: if he does not fear his competitors and consider them formidable, then he will not care for himself s (implied, but acknowledged by Alcibiades in 119b – c): he does not fear and consider formidable those that he thinks don’t differ from other humans t: caring for ourselves is not harmful but a great benefit u (implied): he desires to benefit himself therefore, v: he should fear his competitors and find them formidable (from q, r, t, and u) w: he should not believe p (from s and v)

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If Alcibiades’ belief has bad consequences, it is to be rejected just for such pragmatic reasons. We ought to notice that Socrates refutes the view not by showing it is false but only by showing that it has bad results. He points this out himself when he goes on to argue that the view is also likely to be false.

Thus not all refutations need establish the falsity of the refuted view.14 Socrates further argues that Alcibiades’ view is in fact a false view (as well as pragmatically bad). The whole story to be told about the Spartan and Persian rulers is part of an argument that it is likely that Alcibiades’ claim that these are no different from others is false. Surely there are poor leaders, and hence Socrates is only arguing that it is likely that the leaders Alcibiades will have to face are quite beyond ordinary persons. Socrates goes on to contend that it is likely that the Spartan and Persian kings are better born, better brought up, better educated, and more wealthy than Alcibiades and the run of Athenians. If the refutation succeeds, Socrates’ business with Alcibiades may proceed, since the young man will be forced to concede that he must take special care of himself in order to have the chance of making a name for himself in politics. If we correctly see Socrates here presenting two sorts of refutations of Alcibiades, then we have most remarkable elenchi with considerable Socratic reflection upon the local methods that he is employing.

In the Apology Meletus is subjected to refutation as a living demonstration to the court of the sorts of elenctic encounters for which Socrates supposes that he is being brought to trial. What Socrates tests Meletus about is his presumed care for the youth of Athens (see 24c–d).15 In this most exemplary refutation, Meletus’s very consistency of practice, rather than substantive doctrine, is queried. Socrates asks Meletus who makes the young better.

When he ends up saying that all the Athenians except Socrates improve the youth, Socrates shows how unlikely this is by comparing it to the case with horses and other animals. Again we have a case in which Socrates can only be arguing based upon likelihood. Socrates concludes this argument by claiming that Meletus has not really cared at all about the education of the young (25c, cf. 26b). The subsequent argumentation about whether Socrates deliberately corrupts the youth and whether he introduces new gods is designed to illustrate how unthoughtful Meletus has been in prosecuting Socrates and also possibly to provoke annoyance in the judges so that they can experience in themselves how Socrates’ efforts give rise to resentment and slander.

14. The procedural refutations considered above also doubtfully pertain simply to truth and falsity.

15. Meletus’s name derives from melevth, the Greek word for care.

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The last three refutative arguments directed against Thrasymachus in Republic i are more profound and interesting than often recognized—they captivatingly seem to be both genuine and apparent refutations. Thrasymachus has asserted that injustice is profitable, fine, and strong and that it is virtue and wisdom, while justice is all the opposite. Observe how, right at the start of his arguments, Socrates comments upon the methodology he must use: he cannot merely resort to conventional beliefs, since Thrasymachus has embraced such an unconventional view (see 348e–349a). In the first refutation, of the view that injustice is wisdom and virtue, Socrates contends that the just seek only to outdo the unlike rather than also the like, whereas the unjust seek to outdo both like and unlike, and that in so doing the just resemble the knowledgeable and good, who seek only to outdo the unlike, while the unjust are like the unknowledgeable and bad, who seek to outdo everyone (348e–350d). This argument effectively establishes that doing one’s own business is viable as a social prescription. Those doing their own business can have the standard of their art or knowledge limiting their competition.16 The second refutation, which is directed at the view that injustice is stronger and more powerful than justice, begins again with some methodological reflection (see 351a–b). Socrates then argues that power on any level depends upon some justice, that is, some proper organization (350d–352c).

Thieves who are completely unjust to each other cannot cooperate in a common task, so any joint effort requires some justice and organization. This should be especially bothersome to Thrasymachus, who has suggested right before that the unjust try to outdo, that is, are unjust to, everyone. Injustice is destructive on the level of the cosmos, the city, groups of individuals, and within the individual soul. Thus injustice as such cannot be powerful. Obviously this argument sets the stage for Socrates’ eventual treatment in the Republic of the several levels on which justice enters. The third refutation (352d–354a), directed at the supposed greater profitability and happiness of injustice, gets into the issue of functions, since virtue or excellence is in relation to function.17 The soul must have its own function, which in its case appears to be two functions, ruling things and bestowing life (353d). The virtue or excellence of the soul should be in relation to these functions, and since there seem to be two functions, there should be two sorts of virtue, but 16. We suspect that “to outdo” is used equivocally in the argument, since the just are not outdoing the unjust in the way that the unjust try to outdo everyone.

17. Since Socrates speaks of functions of horses, tools, parts of the body, and so forth, and what it means to have a special function, this argument seems to go well beyond purely moral reflection.

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Socrates and Thrasymachus agree upon but one virtue, justice. Hence the soul will perform its function well only with its own peculiar virtue; that is, it will live well and be happy only with justice leading the way. Socrates cuts corners here to establish a result central to his eudaemonism, that virtue is most vital for happiness.18 He thereby also refutes Thrasymachus’s claim that injustice is more profitable than justice.

The argument with Polus in Gorgias 474c– 475e, in which Socrates contends that it is worse to do than to suffer injustice, has often been criticized as logically flawed. Clearly Socrates, through his apparent refutation, accomplishes his main purpose of forcing the interlocutor Polus to accept Socrates’ position, which counters his own. But we may find a further purpose in achieving this with a flawed argument, namely, to illustrate the very case that he is making. Socrates does injustice through arguing unfairly, and Polus is made to suffer injustice. Polus, the other listeners, and we readers may well see Socrates’ cheating as offensive, but this should lead us to acknowledge that doing injustice is what is most objectionable. What Polus thereby suffers does not harm him, however, but benefits him. This is a quite fascinating way in which to argue, inasmuch as the possible failure of the argument somehow contributes to its success.

We believe that we have given considerable evidence that elenctic refutations in Plato’s Socratic dialogues take many forms and exhibit much Socratic reflection upon what he is doing in the immediate context. When we combine this with our previous exposition of the variety of contexts in which elenchus appears, we think that we have, with the variety of refutations, made a case against the project of establishing a general method or logic for elenchus, though Socrates does often comment upon his immediate approach to refutation. Thus he is not merely antagonistic toward methodological reflection. We have shown that refutations may confront well-formed definitions and possibly faultily formulated definitions as well. Refutations deal with proposed procedures and behaviors as well as substantive doctrines.

Refutations are sometimes deemed conclusive by the interlocutor and often thought to be quite suspect (see, for example, Rep. 350d– e, La. 200a– c, Grg. 505c and 513c). Socrates sometimes suggests, as we have seen, that he only establishes likelihood or what is simply more profitable to believe.

Refutations can be brought about with a series of declarative statements and with stories, which presumably involve hypothetical statements or counterfactuals, as do those cases in which Socrates refutes a position with premises 18. On Socratic eudaemonism, see Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist, chap. 8.

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merely adhered to by the interlocutor. With such variety as this, should we not perhaps sensibly despair about any general account of the logic of the elenchus?

This investigation suggests the unlikelihood of developing any straightforward general account of Socratic elenchus. This hardly denies, however, that the elenchus that constitutes nearly all of Socratic conversation is his principal procedure for philosophical investigation. It suggests the value of expanding reďŹ&#x201A;ection upon Socratesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; methods beyond too narrow a view of the logic of elenctic refutation.

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6 Problems with Socratic Method

HUGH H. BENSON

Ever since Vlastos’s seminal paper “The Socratic Elenchus,” some of the very best work devoted to the Socratic method has been focused on what Vlastos labeled there “the problem with the Socratic elenchus.” Most scholars have devoted their energies to attempting to solve the problem (or refuting others’ attempts to solve it), while others (primarily myself) have attempted to dissolve it. In this essay I endeavor to turn our attention away from this problem once and for all. I want instead to focus our attention on two other problems with the Socratic method that Socrates explicitly discusses in the early dialogues and that I suggest are more fundamental to Socrates’ philosophical enterprise. The first is the problem of recognizing the expert or the one who knows without being an expert oneself, which I call the Charmides problem, and the second is the problem of coming to know what one does not, which I call the Meno problem. While these two problems may plausibly be confused with Vlastos’s “problem of the elenchus,” I argue that they are importantly different. Seeing this will, I believe, provide a better understanding of Socrates’ method in its entirety.

Let us turn first to “the problem of the Socratic elenchus” as it was ini-

101

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tially proposed by Vlastos in his classic essay. The problem, as Vlastos introduces it, is “how Socrates can claim . . . to have proved that the refutand is false, when all he has established is the inconsistency of p with premises whose truth he has not undertaken to establish in that argument: they have entered the argument simply as propositions on which he and his interlocutor are agreed.” 1 The problem is redescribed a bit later as follows: “how is it that Socrates claims to have proved a thesis false when, in point of logic, all he has proved in any given argument is that the thesis is inconsistent with the conjunction of agreed-upon premises for which no reason has been given in that argument?” 2 Notice that the problem rests on two independent and prima facie plausible theses.

[1] Socrates claims to have proved that the apparent refutand is false, and [2] “in point of logic” the elenchos can only establish inconsistency.

Vlastos takes the first of these theses to be his “most novel” proposal. Indeed, as he describes it, his “discovery” of the texts that establish [1] forced him to face the problem head on and hence to better understand those texts that provided the solution. Consequently, it is this side of the problem that receives the bulk of Vlastos’s attention in his essay and of the attention of those scholars who, following Vlastos, have been concerned with this problem. Nevertheless, Vlastos spends some time addressing the second thesis.

His focus is on establishing that the premises of the elenchos enter the argument unsecured. They are given no reason or justification. They do not have the status of first principles, axioms, endoxa, or even common opinion.

Their status within the argument is simply a function of their being agreed to by Socrates and his interlocutor. It is this feature of the premises of the elenchos that leads to the second thesis—that “in point of logic” the elenchos can only establish inconsistency.

1. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 30. This is repeated verbatim in Vlastos’s revision of the 1983 essay, “The Socratic Elenchus: Method Is All,” in Socratic Studies, 3.

2. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 49; again, repeated verbatim in Vlastos, “Method Is All,” 21. The general form of an individual elenctic episode is reasonably clear. First (1), Socrates gets the interlocutor to express some belief, p, which I will call the apparent refutand. Next (2), Socrates gets the interlocutor to express some other beliefs, q, r, and s, which I will call the premises of the elenchos. Third (3), Socrates goes on to show that these premises entail the negation of the original belief, that is, the apparent refutand, p. Thus (4), the conjunction p and q and r and s is false. For those who believe that Socrates claims to have proved as a result that the refutand is false, I will call p the apparent conclusion.

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Richard Kraut, in the first published response to Vlastos’s classic piece, focuses on this second thesis.3 Kraut correctly points out, I think, that if Socrates’ failure to secure the premises of an elenchos within the context of a single elenctic episode were thought sufficient to show that the elenchos could establish only inconsistency, then Vlastos’s problem would not just be a problem for the Socratic elenchos but a problem for every noncircular argumentative method. Kraut cites Aristotle for realizing that “if arguments contain a finite number of steps and if circularity is to be avoided, then every demonstration 4 will contain statements for which no argument is given.”

Socrates cannot be at fault if in arguing elenctically he fails to give or even have reasons for the premises he employs. For that would be to find Socrates at fault for failing to do the impossible. “So, if we want to know why Socrates thinks he has proofs, the answer is simple: he thinks that his premisses are true, and he thinks that those premisses force us to a certain conclusion.

If we want to know why Socrates thinks those premisses true, he may have no answer to our question, but that is no fault of his. One can’t always give a reason for everything one believes, and this fact does not deprive one of proof.” 5 Kraut realizes, however, that this cannot quite be the end of the story. Up to this point he has focused on the formal and material features of a proof or argument, but the pragmatic features may require that Socrates do more.6 This can be seen by looking at Kraut’s example of a question-begging argument. Formally, a question-begging argument can be sound. It can be valid and have true premises. But if an argument is intended to persuade, teach, lead to new knowledge, provide reasons to believe something one did not be3. Kraut, “Comments.” He does briefly address the first, but only to point out that nothing hangs on the passages Vlastos cites on its behalf. According to Kraut (61), numerous passages besides those that contain the word apodedeiktai show that Socrates takes his elenchos to establish the falsehood of the apparent refutand.

4. I do not think anything important hangs on the technical meaning of demonstration, or proof, here.

5. Kraut, “Comments,” 62.

6. By “the formal features of an argument” I mean whether the premises are appropriately related to the conclusion. Do the premises lend sufficient support to the conclusion? In the deductive case this feature is validity. By “the material features” I mean whether the premises are true. Again, in the deductive case this feature, together with validity, entails soundness. By “the pragmatic features” I have in mind a number of different considerations, but one example in a typical case is whether the premises provide evidence for the conclusion; that is, are they more evident (in some way) than the conclusion? For an evidentialist approach to the elenchos, see Adams, “Elenchos and Evidence.”

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lieve before, or even (perhaps) display the structure of a discipline,7 a question-begging argument will be useless. By hypothesis, its premises are at least as much in need of argument, explanation, or evidence as its conclusion. If an argument is successfully to fulfill one of its pragmatic functions, its premises must have some truth-salient, or alethic, feature that its conclusion or its negation lacks.8 The point of the argument is to provide the conclusion with the relevant alethic feature in virtue of the alethic features of the premises.

For example, if you want me to come to believe that p (nonfallaciously), it is essential that the argument by which you attempt to persuade me that p employ only premises that I believe, and that I do not already believe p. If I do believe p, then the premises you employ on behalf of p will need to be in some way more believable to me than p. If you want more than this, perhaps that I learn that p or that I know that p, more will likely be required of the premises. But in every case, if the argument is to be (nonfallaciously) successful, the premises will need to have some feature that the conclusion or its negation lacks. Thus, Kraut defends the elenchos’s ability to prove (where this is not merely the formal and material notion of sound argument) that the apparent refutand is false by arguing that all of Socrates’ arguments contain premises “so eminently reasonable that they are as yet in no need of justification,” 9 apparently unlike the apparent refutand.

I do not mean here to endorse Kraut’s defense of Socrates’ elenctic method. My point here is a more general one. Kraut’s discussion underscores the fact that, formally speaking, no argument can do more than establish inconsistency. As we all know, a valid argument, for example, p, q, so r, is equivalent to the proposition that it is not the case that the conjunction of the premises and the negation of the conclusion is true, for example, (p & q & r). Moreover, the argument is sound just in case the premises are true, whether or not we give or have reasons for thinking they are true. Thus, if the Socratic elenchos is to pose some special problem in this regard, the premises of an elenchos must be pragmatically nearly indistinguishable from its apparent refutand. Something like this is what Vlastos was trying to get at when he suggested that the premises were introduced without argument, just as was the apparent refutand. But we must be careful here. If the premises are not at all pragmatically distinguishable from the apparent refutand, 7. I am thinking here of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics.

8. If the negation of the conclusion has the same alethic features as the premises, one will have been given no reason to accept the conclusion rather than reject one of the premises.

9. Kraut, “Comments,” 65; his emphasis.

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the problem will be insoluble. Socrates will not have given the interlocutor any reason to reject the apparent refutand rather than one of the premises.10 Kraut’s discussion forces us to recognize the Scylla and Charybdis of the problem of the elenchos. Vlastos and others must understand the elenchos as sufficiently unique to be specifically susceptible to this problem, and yet allow room for the problem’s solution.

I believe that the Socratic elenchos is a unique form of argument and that part of what makes it unique also makes it susceptible to this particular problem, unfortunately not in a way that allows room for its solution. One of the unique features of a Socratic elenchos is the constraint Socrates places on its premises—what I have called elsewhere the doxastic constraint. In short, Socrates believes that any proposition is an acceptable premise in an elenctic encounter just in case it is believed by his interlocutor. It is not just that being believed by the interlocutor is a necessary condition for being an acceptable premise. It is a sufficient condition as well. No other property is thought necessary for premise acceptability. The premise needn’t be selfevident, endoxic, or even believed by Socrates himself. All that is necessary is that the interlocutor believe it. But being believed by the interlocutor is a property of the apparent refutand as well. Consequently, there are no features that distinguish the premises of an individual elenctic encounter from the apparent refutand (or at least no features that Socrates takes to be relevant to the success of the encounter), and so an individual elenctic encounter can only establish the inconsistency of the premises and the apparent refutand. It can only establish an inconsistency among the beliefs of Socrates’ interlocutor.11 Such a view of the elenchos has avoided Scylla only to crash headlong into Charybdis. The problem is real enough; but it cannot be solved.12 This should lead one to reexamine Vlastos’s argument on behalf of his first thesis—that Socrates claims to have proved his apparent refutand false.

10. Hence Vlastos thinks that Socrates believes only the premises, while the premises and the apparent refutand are all introduced without argument.

11. See Hugh H. Benson, “The Problem of the Elenchus Reconsidered,” Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987): 67– 85, and revision in Hugh H. Benson, Socratic Wisdom: The Model of Knowledge in Plato’s Early Dialogues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 32 –56. I offer three basic arguments for this sufficiency claim: an argument from Socrates’ methodological remarks, an argument from Socrates’ aim of eliminating the interlocutor’s conceit of knowledge, and an argument from the premises Socrates actually employs in some of his elenchoi.

12. Actually, I should say that it cannot be solved without attributing to Socrates implausible views.

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If Socrates does indeed claim to have proved his apparent refutand false, he should not. Fortunately, we need not think that he does. The conclusions following some of Socrates’ most typical elenctic encounters do not require that he takes himself to have proved his apparent refutand false. Instead, these encounters conclude in a way that only requires that Socrates take his encounters to show that his interlocutor fails to have the knowledge he thought he had.13 If this is correct, then the problem of the elenchos dissolves. It is true that “in point of logic” the elenchos can only establish inconsistency, but Socrates nowhere claims to have established anything else.14 Of course, numerous scholars have rejected such a response to the problem of the elenchos. They believe that the evidence that Socrates is aiming to establish truth (as opposed to mere inconsistency) is overwhelming, and not simply confined to the conclusions of individual elenctic episodes. This evidence falls into three broadly defined categories. First, there are passages at the end of specific elenctic episodes in which Socrates purportedly concludes that the refutand has been shown to be false, which we have already discussed. Second, there are passages in which Socrates purportedly continues his elenchos even after an interlocutor has conceded his ignorance. This indicates that Socrates must be aiming to establish more than merely the elimination of the interlocutor’s false conceit of knowledge, since he continues his elenctic encounter even after this goal has been achieved. He must in addition be aiming to lead the interlocutor to the truth or the knowledge that he lacks.15 Finally, there are various passages in which Socrates appears simply to be aiming at truth. Consider, for example, the following passage from the Gorgias: “[Socrates:] . . . I suppose that all of us ought to be con13. See Benson, “Dissolution,” and idem, Socratic Wisdom, 57–95.

14. Or at least anything else that cannot plausibly be seen (i.e., given certain fairly plausible or corroborated assumptions) to follow from establishing mere inconsistency, like the interlocutor’s ignorance.

15. See Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 22; Jyl Gentzler, “Recollection and ‘the Problem of the Socratic Elenchus,’” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 12, ed. John J. Cleary and William Wians (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1996), 257–95; and probably Terence H. Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). The passage most often cited in this regard is Euthyphro 11b, but Gentzler also cites Charmides 161b – c, Hippias Major 293d, and Lysis 214 –16. I have responded to the Euthyphro passage in Hugh H. Benson, “A Note on Eristic and the Socratic Elenchus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 27 (1989): 591–99, and idem, Socratic Wisdom, 86 –90. I would respond to the other passages in a similar way. For example, I see no reason to suppose that Charmides’ conceit has been eliminated already at 161b; it is not until 162b9 –10 that Charmides appears to recognize his ignorance.

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tentiously eager to know what’s true and what’s false about the things that we are talking about. That it should become clear is a common good to all” (505e4 – 6; Zeyl trans.).16 Here and elsewhere Socrates explicitly testifies to his desire that he come to know various—most important—truths and that his interlocutors do as well. Don’t these passages suffice to establish thesis [1] and hence raise the ugly specter of the problem of elenchos?

I do not deny that these passages indicate that Socrates aims to uncover truths and acquire knowledge and to encourage his interlocutors to do the same as well. (How could one?) I do deny, however, that Socrates (directly) employs his elenchos in an attempt to achieve these goals. We should not suppose that whenever Socrates behaves philosophically—whenever he engages in philosophical discourse—he must be behaving elenctically. Remember that the problem of the elenchos requires that we understand the elenchos as a unique form of argument with unique features. In particular, I maintain that it has a very unique constraint on premise acceptability. It can only employ premises believed by the interlocutor, but it can employ any such premise.17 But if this feature is required for elenctic discourse, then Socrates does not always employ his elenchos when engaging in philosophical discourse. Consider the speech of the laws in the Crito, most of the argument of the Apology,18 or the prologue of the Laches.19 In the Crito, for example, once the speech of the laws begins, Crito’s agreement is requested only three times during the nearly two hundred lines of argument. Numerous premises are introduced without even the hint of securing Crito’s assent.

Thus, here in the Crito, Socrates does indeed aim at truth,20 but he does not employ an elenchos, and so the problem of the elenchos does not arise. In fact, the reason for denying that Socrates employs an elenchos at this point 16. Numerous other passages could be cited: for example, one of Socrates’ final exhortations in the Laches, at 201a2 –7, and his statement of his divine mission at Apology 29d–30b.

See also Charmides 166d4 – 6.

17. There are other features as well—for example, it is always ad hominem, in the sense that it is always directed specifically at an individual, even when the individual is oneself. In addition, it must consist of reasonably brief responses to brief questions, and its immediate aim is to test the knowledge of someone who claims to have it.

18. Only the exchange with Meletus (Apology 24d–28a) is elenctic.

19. Laches 184c9 –190c7 (where the “What is courage?” question is introduced). The passage that most closely resembles an elenchos is at 185b1–186a2. But Socrates here engages in a continuous argument with four distinct interlocutors and concludes with a long speech— clearly violating the doxastic constraint.

20. Aiming at truth is ambiguous, depending on the various pragmatic ends one might have.

See immediately below.

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in the Crito is that Socrates is not committed here to the constraint of premise acceptability that raises the problem of the elenchos in the first place. In general, Socrates is not arguing elenctically if his argument requires premises with some feature other than being believed by his interlocutor, but if his arguments do require such premises, then there is nothing about Vlastos’s problem of the elenchos that stands in the way of their aiming at truth.

But doesn’t this put too fine a point on it? Do we really want to undertake to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a Socratic elenchos? As Vlastos has noted, Socrates “never discusses his method of investigation” in the early dialogues,21 and he has no name for it. Brickhouse and Smith have denied that a method or techne¯ of any sort can properly be attributed to Socrates,22 while Harold Tarrant has recently argued that his method should not even be called elenctic.23 In light of such indefiniteness, how can one hope to specify anything like necessary and sufficient conditions? I have tried to suggest that the issues surrounding the problem of the elenchos lead us in this direction whether we like it or not. But I will not pursue that line of argument any further here, in part because I think these questions point to a deeper worry. I have argued that one can escape the problem of the elenchos by denying that Socrates aims at truth when he employs the elenchos (putting, as some might think, a rather narrow construal on the nature of the Socratic elenchos). But if one concedes, as I do, that Socrates does aim at truth (but not when he is employing the elenchos), doesn’t Vlastos’s problem arise in any case—whether we want to call it the problem of the elenchos or the problem of Socrates’ method of aiming at truth?

Before responding to this question we need to be clear about what is meant by aiming at truth. One might mean that Socrates desired to lead others to the truths he believed or knew. Alternatively, one might mean that Socrates desired to uncover various truths that neither he nor his interlocutor yet believed or knew. One might also mean that Socrates desired to do this on his own or in conjunction with an interlocutor. And, no doubt, there are numerous other things one might mean. But I concede that Socrates aims at truth in at least all of these ways.

21. Actually, I think that this is mistaken. Socrates does discuss his method of investigation at length in the Apology and more briefly in passages scattered throughout the early dialogues.

See, for example, Gorgias 471e– 472d.

22. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 3–10.

23. Harold Tarrant, “Naming Socratic Interrogation in the Charmides,” in L. Brisson and T. M. Robinson, eds., Plato: Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides, Proceedings of the V Symposium Platonicum (Selected Papers), Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2000.

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First, that Socrates desired to lead others to truths he believed or knew 24 is clear from the Apology. Socrates wants to persuade the jurors that he is innocent of the charges leveled against him—a truth he passionately believes.25 But there is no problem associated with this. Socrates can aim at truth in this way as long as the premises (or evidence) that Socrates offers on behalf of this truth are acceptable to the jurors. Of course, if Socrates is to present a nonfallacious argument to the jurors, he must accept the premises (or evidence) as well. Thus, for example, while the jurors may find the tears of Socrates’ wife and children relevant evidence, Socrates does not, and consequently he refuses to parade his family before them. No obstacle stands in the way of Socrates’ attempt to aim at truth in this way. Socrates can nonfallaciously attempt to persuade another of a truth he himself believes as long as he himself believes the premises he offers on behalf of this truth— just as anyone else can. The argument will be more or less successful depending on whether the jurors find the premises acceptable as well and whether they take them to be more or less in need of defense than the conclusion. But these are considerations salient to any argument whatsoever.

No part of this is peculiar to Socratic method.26 Second, and more interesting, Socrates also desires to discover truth that he lacks both on his own and in concert with others. Indeed, it is this pursuit that constitutes most of the early dialogues. Moreover, it is this pursuit that employs the elenchos—at least in part—and it is this pursuit that generates problems. In the Apology, Socrates testifies to a structured variety of aims of his peculiar practice—his elenctic method. At the top of this structure is the discovery of (important) truths or the acquisition of knowledge.

He indicates that he attempts to do this by examining those individuals who claim to have the knowledge he wants to acquire. He does this, he maintains, for two reasons. First, if Socrates discovers they have the knowledge that they claim to have, he may attempt to learn from them what they know. Second, if they turn out not to have the knowledge that they claim to have— as of course none do—he will attempt to persuade them to join him in the 24. I take Socrates’ professions of ignorance to be sincere, so that as a result I take all these to be cases in which Socrates is attempting to lead another to a truth that Socrates believes but would not claim to know. I do not believe, however, that anything in my present argument depends on this.

25. Other passages would include the speech of the laws in the Crito and the prologue of the Laches.

26. The obstacle that renders the elenchos unable to aim at truth in this way is that its premises do not need to be believed by Socrates, nor do they need to be more defensible than the conclusion—at least as I understand the elenchos.

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search.27 But both of these undertakings present problems—at least so Socrates and/or Plato would maintain.28 In the second half of the Charmides, Socrates tests Critias’s claim to know the nature of sound-mindedness. In the course of this examination Socrates presents an argument that—if Socrates were to believe all of its premises— would indicate Socrates believed an individual who lacked knowledge concerning a particular subject matter could not successfully determine whether someone else did. As the argument is presented in the Charmides, an individual who possesses only knowledge of knowledge but not knowledge of any specific subject matter can only know that another individual knows or fails to know something, but cannot know what another individual knows or fails to know. I have discussed this argument elsewhere, and now is not the time to examine its details.29 But we should take note of the following.

First, insofar as we think that Socrates would endorse this argument, it only raises a problem for recognizing the one who knows, the expert, not for recognizing the one who does not. No part of the argument in the Charmides even addresses a difficulty for an ignorant individual’s successfully recognizing the one who fails to know.30 Second, the argument does nevertheless raise a problem for pursuing truth or acquiring knowledge in the first of the two ways that Socrates endorses in the early dialogues. It raises a problem for pursuing truth by means of seeking out the expert and learning from him or her. The problem it raises, however, has nothing to do with Vlastos’s problem of the elenchos. It has nothing to do with the concern that “in point of logic” and in virtue of various constraints Socrates places on his elenchos, in particular the doxastic constraint, the elenchos can only establish inconsistency. Rather, the prob27. For the argument on behalf of this structured variety of aims of Socrates’ customary method, see Hugh H. Benson, “The Aims of the Socratic Elenchos,” in Knowledge, Teaching, and Wisdom, ed. Keith Lehrer et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 21–34, and idem, Socratic Wisdom, 17–31.

28. I mention Plato here because I am not sure that Socrates was aware of the Meno problem in dialogues that predate the Meno. The discussion of a similar problem in the Euthydemus 275d–277c cuts both ways. It is interesting that in his “Afterthoughts” Vlastos indicates that Socrates was never bothered by the problems associated with his method. It is only Plato, in the Gorgias, who becomes troubled enough to suggest a solution. Socrates, however, appears to be aware of at least some of the problems as early as the Charmides, on my account.

29. Hugh H. Benson, “Socratic Self-Knowledge in the Charmides” (paper presented at the International Plato Society Symposium Platonicum iv, Toronto, 1998, and the Arizona Plato Colloquium, 1998, typescript).

30. The single exception to this may be 175c3– 8, but I believe this passage must rest on an equivocation that Socrates recognizes.

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lem arises as a result of certain epistemological commitments on Socrates’ behalf. Socrates indicates that in order to determine that an individual is a doctor, medical expert, or someone who knows health, one must know health oneself. The idea seems to be—although the details, I confess, are far from clear—that to determine that an individual has knowledge of health one must be able to determine that his or her words and deeds concerning health are true and correct. But lacking knowledge of health oneself, one is in no position to do so.31 Socrates does not explain why this is so, but one might conjecture that his conviction is related to his commitment to the priority of definitional knowledge—according to which, one who fails to know what F-ness is fails to know anything else about F-ness.32 Lacking knowledge of health, for example, I will be unable to know that the doctors’ words about health are true or that the deeds by which they try to restore it are correct. Of course, this is, as I say, a mere conjecture. Socrates tells us nothing in this passage about why he believes that an individual who lacks knowledge of health cannot recognize the truth or correctness of another’s words and deeds concerning health. But what is clear is that the issue has nothing to do with Socratic constraints on his elenchos. Instead, it has everything to do with Socratic epistemological presuppositions—with what Socrates thinks one who lacks knowledge of health can know or recognize about health.

Finally, we can take some solace in the fact that nowhere in the early dialogues does Socrates claim to have recognized someone who knows what he himself does not.33 And so, a problem similar to the one proposed for the elenchos by Vlastos need not arise. While Socrates, “given certain epistemological presuppositions,” cannot ascertain the one who knows, Socrates does not claim to have done so. But it is not clear—at least until the Charmides —that he recognizes that he cannot. This would appear to put considerable pressure on Socrates’ other method of pursuing truth—the pursuit in concert with another who is ignorant as well.

This leads directly to the problem in the Meno. Recall that at Meno 80d 31. See Charmides 171a– c, and esp. 171b7–12.

32. For the debate surrounding Socrates’ commitment to this principle, see Hugh H. Benson, “The Priority of Definition and the Socratic Elenchos,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1990): 19 – 65; Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 45 – 60; and Benson, Socratic Wisdom, 112 – 41.

33. The single exception to this— of which I am aware—is Apology 22d– e, where Socrates suggests that he was able to recognize that the craftsmen knew various things that he did not. I am inclined not to rest a great deal of weight on this passage, but insofar as we do, a resolution to the Charmides problem is called for.

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Socrates and Meno have just reached the point in their discussion where they can begin to look in concert for the knowledge they both now recognize they lack. Up to this point Meno believed that he knew what virtue was. But at 80a–b, Meno confesses to being at a loss and to being numbed in both his mind and tongue. Socrates responds to this by encouraging Meno to seek the knowledge they lack. This leads to Meno’s famous questions: “How will you look for it when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?” (Meno 80d5 – 8; Grube trans.).34 Once again neither Socrates nor Meno provides much of an explanation why lacking knowledge of something makes it impossible to search for it.35 But again, we might conjecture that such an explanation is related to Socrates’ commitment to the priority of definitional knowledge.

Lacking knowledge of the nature of virtue, I won’t know anything else about virtue. But lacking knowledge of anything about virtue, I won’t know the criteria that must be met for something to serve as an acceptable answer to the “What is virtue?” question. In fact, appealing to the priority of definitional knowledge here is somewhat less of a conjecture than it was in the Charmides. Meno 71a5 –b7 is perhaps the clearest endorsement of this doctrine found anywhere in the early dialogues. Moreover, as a variety of scholars have pointed out, Meno’s question appears to rely on the notion that neither he nor Socrates knows anything at all about virtue, when they have only admitted to failing to know what it is. But whether or not Meno, Socrates, or Plato relies on the priority of definitional knowledge here, the important point is that none of them relies on anything that has to do with Vlastos’s problem of the elenchos. The problem that arises here in the Meno has nothing to do with the peculiar method Socrates employs in the early dialogues. The problem is more general than that. It is a problem about the building blocks of knowledge, and insofar as Socrates is committed to the priority of definitional knowledge, the problem may appear to be insur34. Socrates turns this into a paradox in the next passage (80e1–5) by appending to Meno’s concern the concern that one cannot look for what one knows either. This part of the paradox, however, need not concern us here.

35. Not that a variety of very good scholars have not tried to make up for this oversight.

See, for example, Jon Moline, “Meno’s Paradox,” Phronesis (1969): 153– 61; Nicholas P. White, “Inquiry,” Review of Metaphysics 28 (1974): 289 –310; Alexander Nehamas, “Meno’s Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985): 1–30; Gail Fine, “Inquiry in the Meno,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 200 –226; and Panagiotis Dimas, “True Belief in the Meno,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14 (1996): 1–32.

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mountable. Once one recognizes one’s ignorance, one is completely at sea, with no knowledge to use to initiate and build upon in one’s search for truth.

But this problem cannot be so easily set aside, as was the problem in the Charmides. For the ability to search for the knowledge that one lacks is fundamental to Socrates’ philosophical mission. Socrates and/or Plato need to solve this problem even if it requires something as radical as the theory of recollection.

In conclusion, Socrates’ philosophical enterprise of gaining the knowledge that one lacks faces a serious challenge. This challenge, however, does not arise from his peculiar use of the elenchos. The challenge is instead more general. The problem is not to explain how Socrates can claim to have proved that the refutand is false given that in point of logic his method can only establish inconsistency. The problem is instead to explain how Socrates and his interlocutors are to acquire the knowledge that they lack. Lacking knowledge about something, one needs some source for the premises, the evidence, the data to be employed in any method used to attempt to discover new knowledge or recognize it in others. The history of epistemology indicates that a variety of sources might be suggested—sense experience, common sense, innate ideas, and more. The problem may of course be more profound for Socrates given some of his epistemological presuppositions, but it does not derive from his use of the elenchos. To resolve it, Socrates and/or Plato must reveal a reliable source of truth to be used in one’s pursuit of the knowledge one lacks. To do this, Plato turns to the theory of priests and priestesses and to recollection.

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7 Elenctic Interpretation and the Delphic Oracle

MARK MCPHERRAN

Plato’s Apology portrays a Socrates who, for more than thirty years, has been on a dangerous, self-sacrificing, and beneficial philosophical mission.1 Both the goal and method of this labor are spelled out in deceptively simple terms: Socrates intends to care for and improve both himself and his fellow 1. Apology 20c–23c is usually read as showing that it was primarily Chaerephon’s report that led Socrates to begin to philosophize without regard to common prudential considerations (30d–31c; cf. 33c). Various dates for Chaerephon’s purported visit to Delphi have been proposed (see Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, “The Origin of Socrates’ Mission,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 [1983]: 660 n. 11), but most scholars now date it ca. 430 (while acknowledging the paucity of good evidence); see John Ferguson, “On the Date of Socrates’ Conversion,” Eranos 62 (1964): 70 –73; Guthrie, Socrates, 85 – 86; H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 1:401–3; Eric de Strycker, “The Oracle Given to Chaerephon About Socrates (Plato, Apology 20e–21a),” in Kephalaion: Studies in Greek Philosophy and Its Continuation Offered to Professor C. J. DeVogel, ed. J. Mansfeld and L. M. de Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975), 40 – 41; and esp. Michael C. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” in Socratic Questions, ed. Barry S. Gower and Michael C. Stokes (London: Oxford University Press, 1992), 48, 52 –54. The text of Apology 28d– e, at any rate, gives good indication that the visit occurred after the battle of Potidaea (430).

For a number of reasons (esp. limitations of space), I will avoid addressing issues of historical verisimilitude in the following—in particular, the issue of whether the story of Chaerephon’s visit to Delphi is pure literary invention on Plato’s part (but on this, see Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin”; Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission”; and Mark McPherran, The Religion of Socrates

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Athenians 2 through a process of cross-examination that we now commonly term “the elenchos.” 3 Socrates also makes clear that his attachment to this task is neither whimsical nor merely choice-worthy, but categorical: he will accept death rather than qualify or abandon his mission (28e, 29c–d, 30a–b, 37e–38a). He rests his explanation of how he received this “assignment,” however, on a strange (and jury-provoking) “conversion experience,” one that fuses rational examination to the religious “revelation” of an oracle.4 Early in his defense speech, Socrates endeavors to explain how the slanders of the “first accusers” developed out of and were aggravated by his having a reputation for possessing and teaching a certain kind of wisdom (20d– e). This reputation, he explains, and his entire career, as it turns out, can best be understood and justified by putting the god who speaks through the Delphic oracle on the witness stand, so to speak (namely, Apollo Delphinios; 20e).5 Socrates then recounts how his enthusiastic friend Chaere-

[University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996], sec. 4.2). Rather, in what follows, I shall treat the dialogues of Plato (primarily the Apology) and the works of Xenophon as constituting a mosaic of the characteristics, methods, views, and activities of a transdialogical, fictional Socrates. This approach, whether or not it manages to refer accurately to the flesh-andblood individual teacher of Plato, still allows us to confront many of the most interesting questions Plato’s and Xenophon’s work provoke.

2. According to Socrates, the philosophical activity he engages in has as its primary goal the care and tendance of the yuchv, the soul (th`~ yuch`~ ejpimelei`sqai [Ap. 29e1– e3; Xen., Mem. 1.2.4 –5]; qerapeiva yuch`~ [Prot. 312b8 – c1; La. 185e4]), that is, his mind (nou`~); see, e.g., Ap. 29d7– e2, 30a7–b2; Charm. 157a–d, 160a–b; Prot. 313c–314b; Hi. Mi. 372e–373a; and Xen., Mem. 1.2.53, 1.4.8 –9, and esp. 1.4.13–14, where the soul is described as engaging in various cognitive activities (e.g., remembering, reasoning).

3. Socrates himself never uses this term as a name for what he does, preferring instead to say that he “inquires” and “investigates”; Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, chap. 1; Adams, “Elenchos and Evidence,” 1 n. 1.

4. During Socrates’ lifetime, divination (mantikhv) was widely employed by both states and individuals and appeared in roughly three forms (in order of prestige): (1) divination by lots (klh`roi) (cleromancy); (2) interpretation of signs (shmei`a), such as thunder, the direction of flights of birds, and sacrificial entrails; (3) the production and interpretation of oral oracles by a seer (mavnti~) (with these being recorded, collected, and interpreted by “oracle-mongers” [crhsmolovgai]). See, e.g., L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel, Religion in the Ancient Greek City, trans. P. Cartledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 121–28.

5. Ap. 20e7, 23b –28d, 29a3, 30a–b, 37e–38a; cf. C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 1989), 25 n. 26. To say “as God is my witness” is one thing, but actually to attempt to employ a god in Socrates’ fashion is virtually unprecedented in Greek forensic literature.

On the oracle and its functions, see Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), esp. 34 –35; Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, esp. 1:17– 45. For an effective criticism of Fontenrose, however, see Peter Green, Classical Bearings (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1989), chap. 6. Strycker, “The Oracle,” doubts that the oracle was of paramount importance in Socrates’ life, but his arguments are unpersua-

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phon traveled to Delphi to ask the oracle—the Pythia—if anyone was wiser than Socrates(20c–23c), and the response was, “No one is wiser [sofwvteron]” (21a5 –7). This report, however, was at odds with Socrates’ own conviction that he possessed no wisdom, and so he was provoked to conduct a long interpretive effort that would somehow preserve Apollo’s veracity. The result is the thesis that the god actually meant that Socrates is wisest by best grasping his own lack of real wisdom. This, in turn, is taken to mean that Apollo has stationed Socrates in Athens—as though he was a warrior or gadfly (28d10 –29a2, 30e1–31a2)—in order for him to philosophize and examine himself and others (28d10 –29a2).6 Thus, even now, he “comes to the god’s aid” (23b7; cf. 23c1) “in accordance with the god” (kata to;n qeovn) (22a4, 23b5) by relentlessly interrogating others. After all, since one ought always to obey the command of a god at all costs (it is always impious [and so unjust] to refuse),7 Socrates is obliged to philosophize regardless sive; see arguments in favor of its importance in Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 88 –91; idem, Plato’s Socrates, sec. 6.4; Reeve, Socrates, 28 –32. Plato himself exhibits the greatest admiration for Delphi; Rep. 427b1– c4. I see no reason to agree with Daniel and Polansky, that the oracle only served to confirm for Socrates the necessity of his mission and did not contribute to that mission’s “origin” in some sense (James Daniel and Ronald Polansky, “The Tale of the Delphic Oracle in Plato’s Apology,” Ancient World 2 [1979]: 83– 85; Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin,” 663 n. 13).

6. As Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 4, has claimed, in Socrates’ characterization of what he would be giving up if he stopped philosophizing—“search nor philosophize” (Ap. 29c8)—the “nor” is epexegetic; and at 41b5 – 6 “to philosophize” is rendered “to examine” (ejxetavzein, where this is a common reference to the elenchos; cf. Ap. 28e5 – 6).

7. Since Socrates’ gods are by far our intellectual and moral superiors, and since— on Socratic principles—to know the good is to be good, whatever they command must be just and virtuous; hence, it is wrong not to obey the commands of such superiors (see McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2; and, e.g., Ap. 29b, 29d; Charm. 176b – c; La. 184e; Phd. 61eff.). Note, though, that this amounts to an acceptance of what is only a nonnaive kind of voluntarism (pace Alexander Nehamas, “Socratic Intellectualism,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. John J. Cleary and William Wians [Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986], 305 – 6, who maintains there is no trace of voluntarism in Socrates).

As I argue in McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2, the Socrates of Euthyphro 10a–11b should be understood to reject the naively voluntaristic view that piety is defined by reference to the love of the gods, advocating instead the view (often termed “theological intellectualism”) that pious actions are loved by the gods because the gods recognize them to have a piety-making feature— hence, that the pious is constituted by a god-independent property that evokes the gods’ love in response to it. This view subtly undermines the authority of Euthyphro’s gods (as opposed to Socrates’) as divine legislators and thus, potentially, the conventions (nomoi) underwritten by their authority. For under the traditional conception of the gods as modeled after the aristocratic rulers of Homer’s world, justice and piety are in a sense defined simply by reference to whatever these rulers command out of their own selfish motives or even arbitrarily and irrationally. What trips Euthyphro up in his defense of his claim that “piety is what all the gods love” is his desire to retain both this traditional conception of the gods as capricious, disagree-

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of any dangers (including death and banishment; 29d; cf. Rep. 368b – c).8 Despite their skepticism and outrage, then, Socrates’ jurors should “know well” (eu\ i\ste; Ap. 30a5) that the oracle’s pronouncement marked a turning point in his life so profound that he now philosophizes under a unique and divine mandate (29c–30b, 33c).9 Naturally, many of us who have found Socrates’ uncompromising alleing rulers and his thought that they might also behave in a uniform, rational, and standard-setting fashion (e.g., that Zeus displays a standard of justice we should adopt and imitate [Euthyp.

5e– 6a] and that the gods might all have a rational love for the same thing). But then once Euthyphro insists on this latter idea and is thereby forced to concede that the piety of an action is thus ultimately justified by reference to god-independent standards of virtue, the authority of the gods and their commandments must be acknowledged as derivative: one obeys the commands of the gods not because they come from more powerful beings that one ought to fear and placate, but rather because as wholly good and virtuous beings the gods—more so than any human—must themselves behave (and thus speak) in a fashion consonant with the universal dictates of virtue (cf. Ap. 28b, 28d).

8. In the following I assume that the philosophizing Socrates urges on his fellow Athenians is to be pursued on his own model: an activity conducted through the relatively autonomous use of the elenchos that aims at freeing people of their pretensions to wisdom (Ap. 23b, e, 28e, 38a) and their overly zealous care for material things (29e–30b), aiming at the perfection of the soul (29e) through its possession of the most precious good there is, namely, virtue (30a–b, 31b). In McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.2, I provide justifications for this assumption. Although Socrates insists (Ap. 33a, 36c) that his own philosophical activity is to be construed as in some sense a “private” mission, and that if some of Socrates’ students imitate him by elenctically examining others, they do so of their own volition (aujtovmatoi; 23c3–5), I take this to mean that when Socrates admonishes others to do philosophy (29d, 30a–b, 38a), he is not thereby setting himself as a standard for us whereby, if we fail to pursue philosophy in the active mode regardless of other normally prudential factors (e.g., bodily danger), we are morally culpable.

Hence, I credit Socrates with an instrumentalist qualification of both our pious and secular obligations to do philosophy.

On this account, Socrates must be seen as someone with an inordinate degree of selfconfidence and relative certainty concerning his own intellectual talents and moral worth: Socrates’ interpretation of the oracle’s pronouncement as a command to do philosophy ceaselessly and regardless of material and bodily consequences must result from a judgment that he, Socrates, is uniquely qualified as the person who best stands to net the greatest gain in good for himself and others currently residing in Athens. In fact, and in confirmation of my thesis that the duty to do philosophy is consequentially variant, this is just how Socrates is portrayed (30c–32a, 36b – e). He is said to be a rare gift of the gods (30a, 30d– e), a great benefactor of the city (36d). Furthermore, Socrates’ obligation to pursue philosophy actively is portrayed in the Apology as far greater than that borne by others: he has neglected his affairs, both public and private, and his family (23b, 31b); he has done it without reward of enjoyment, money (23c, 31b – c), or leisure (23b); and it has been a seemingly inhuman and unreasonable (31b1– 2, 31b7) vocation in just that way: an obligation, over and above the obligations of others, that would be wrong to ignore or moderate (39d, 37e). He alone, finally, seems to be the one Athenian assigned the task of exhorting others to philosophize, even at the risk of death.

9. According to Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 73, Apology 33c “demotes” the oracle story, making it just one of several indications of what the god wants of Socrates. But I think that the text and its dramatic structure make it plain that the oracle continues to be central, with the

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giance to philosophy attractive have been just as repelled by the shady religious origins on which he grounds it (see esp. 33c).10 This puzzlement is legitimate, insofar as the Pythia’s response to Chaerephon’s question is clearly and explicitly descriptive, not prescriptive.11 Moreover, it would appear that well before Chaerephon’s trip to Delphi, Socrates had already been pursuing a life of elenctic philosophy (see below), and so the pronouncement of the oracle would not have been what initiated his philosophical career. No wonder, then, that some have found Socrates’ “derivation” of his alleged divine mention of “indications” at 33c serving primarily to confirm Socrates’ interpretation of the oracular pronouncement as inaugurating his “mission”; cf. Reeve, Socrates, 24.

10. The individual I have most in mind here is Gregory Vlastos (e.g., Socrates: Ironist, chap. 6); but see also Martha C. Nussbaum, “Commentary on Edmunds,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 1, ed. John J. Cleary and William Wians (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 234 –35, and Nehamas, “Socratic Intellectualism,” 305 – 6. Such worries are, of course, only compounded by a consideration of the many other occasions on which Socrates gave credence to extrarational incursions. In particular, the conscientious trust he displays in the warnings of his supernatural “voice”—the daimonion—make Socrates appear even more superstitious than the average Athenian(!): not at all the sort of behavior we expect from our paradigm of the rationally self-examined life (who affirms at Crito 46b4 – 6 that we ought to be persuaded only by the best reason [where it is natural to take this as referring to the “secular ratiocination” provided by his characteristic elenctic method]). And if such enlightened contemporaries as Pericles, Thucydides, and even traditionally minded playwrights such as Aristophanes could poke cruel fun at seers and “oracle-mongers,” how could Socrates not do so as well?

11. See, for example, J. B. Bury, “The Trial of Socrates,” Rationalist Press Association Annual (1926): 580; Anton Hermann Chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth: The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1957), 31–32; August Doering, Die Lehre des Sokrates als sociales Reform-system (Munich: Beck, 1895), 57; E. Dupréel, La légende socratique et les sources de Platon (Brussels: R. Sand, 1922), 45; Olaf Gigon, Sokrates: Sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte (Bern: A. Francke, 1947), 99; Theodor Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (New York: n.p., 1905), 2:104 – 8; R. M. Hackforth, “The Apology of Plato,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 55 (1935): 83– 84; Mario Montuori, Socrates, Physiology of a Myth, London Studies in Classical Philology, vol. vi, trans. J. M. P. Langdale and M. Langdale (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1981), 57–143, esp. 133ff.; Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 1:401–3; Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission”; and idem, Plato: Apology of Socrates (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1997), 123. For a history of this problem, see Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin,” 657–58 nn. 1– 4, and Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 29 –33. Stokes (30 –31) rejects accounts like mine (see below), which appeal to Socrates’ prior commitment to the virtue of piety, on the grounds that this forces Plato’s audience to read the Apology backward (that is, interpret the oracle story in light of the later sections, which only there reveal a Socratic pious obligation to do philosophy) and requires them to have prior knowledge of the Euthyphro. But this is not a weighty objection, for as Stokes himself suggests (50; cf. 62 – 68), Socrates and his jurors would all assume well before the trial that the gods enjoin just behavior from humans; and since they would also have already thought that piety is a form of justice, then they would in fact have all the essentials on hand to make rough sense of Socrates’ account of how he felt compelled to understand what Apollo said.

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obligation as analogous to pulling a rabbit from a hat: a rabbit concealed within the hat by the magician himself.12 Others, as well as myself, have addressed the most worrisome general problems that Socrates’ acceptance of extrarational indicators—such as the oracle’s report—present (in particular, the seeming problem of reconciling such an acceptance with Socrates’ profound respect for rational justification).13 My account, in particular, shows that while Socrates does not pursue an intellectualist rejection of divination’s efficacy,14 he also does not merely take the operations of traditional divinatory practices at face value.15 Rather, while Socrates accepts the popular notion that the gods really do provide humankind with “signs” (that is, truths concealed within oracles and dreams), he also goes on to insist that traditional methods of oracular interpretation must give way to his sort of rational, elenctic methods for interpreting and testing such “signs.” 16 However, despite this general solution, 12. Gregory Vlastos, “Socratic Piety,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 5, ed. John J. Cleary (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989), 229 –30, chap. 6, esp. 171; Nehamas, “Socratic Intellectualism,” 305 – 6. In particular, those persuaded by Gregory Vlastos’s analysis of extrarational phenomena in Socratic philosophy might think that since Socrates says of his analysis of the oracle that he “supposed and assumed” (w/jhvqhn te kai; uJpevlabon; Ap. 28e5; cf. Phd. 60d– 61b) that the god had commanded him to philosophize, this “derivation” is really a prime example of Socrates’ utterly free use of rational interpretation to make up whatever plausible story his prior philosophical beliefs would warrant, a story of obligation that he then slips into the top hat of the god (cf. Reeve, Socrates, 66, 71). Hence, on this view, Socrates’ talk of having been divinely ordered to philosophize is not so much a description as an ironic public-relations ploy made in “the language of popular morality” for the sake of his jury (Laszlo Versényi, Holiness and Justice: An Interpretation of Plato’s Euthyphro [Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1982], 112; see also Burnet’s sympathetic views on this, Plato’s Euthyphro, 3, 107; Hackforth, “The Apology,” 101– 4; I. G. Kidd, “Socrates,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7, ed. Paul Edwards et al. [New York: Macmillan, 1967], 482; A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work [London: Methuen, 1926], 160; and Vlastos, “Socratic Piety”).

13. See, in particular, Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, secs. 6.3, 6.4; and McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.1.

14. For example, in the manner of the characters of Euripides, who challenge both the abilities and honesty of traditional seers (e.g., Philoc. fr. 795) and the existence of the gods who allegedly provide foreknowledge (Bel. fr. 286; Tro. 884 – 87; Fr. 480; Sextus, Ad. Math. 9.54). See Martin Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 279 –90, for discussion.

15. McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.1.

16. The outcome of this analysis shows that Socrates has a double warrant for his relentless wielding of the elenchos: as Socrates conceived of it, elenctic philosophical activity is a pious obligation for all insofar as it is a service that aids the gods in the production of goodness via the deflation of human presumptions to divine wisdom (Ap. 22d–23b) and the improvement of human souls. In addition to those religious, and apparently other-regarding, considerations, however, Socrates also has a eudaimonistic imperative for pursuing his own course of elenctic

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it still remains unclear how exactly Socrates derived from the Pythia’s report a command to do philosophy.17 Thus, my first task in what follows is to unpack and explain Socrates’ elenctic interpretation of the oracle’s pronouncement. Next, I also think that this section of text has more general lessons to teach us. In particular, since our texts leave to interpretation the task of deciding whether and how the elenchos as a practice of eliciting contradictions from an interlocutor could be used constructively to secure Socrates’ moral and action-guiding tenets,18 I want to indicate how one important key to the resolution of this matter has been right at our feet, so to speak, in the “urelenchos” of Apology 20c–23c.

The story provided by Apology 20c–23c allows us to distinguish three periods in the philosophical life of Socrates: (i) his intellectual activity prior to Chaerephon’s return from Delphi, (ii) his subsequent investigation of the meaning of the oracular pronouncement, and (iii) his philosophical activity following the “discovery” of its meaning. i. It is obvious that Socrates was brilliant and intellectually vigorous, and thus curious, and hence knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics, well before his hearing the oracle’s pronouncement: not only is there evidence that Socrates “investigated nature” in his youth,19 but it also seems likely self-examination. For, among other things, refutation of one’s own habitual conceits of wisdom helps one to avoid the commission of unjust actions harmful to oneself.

17. My own prior account in McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.2, strikes me as acceptable but unsatisfactorily vague. This paper is an attempt to use that material as the framework for presenting a more exact analysis.

18. Recent expressions of opposition to this idea—the “anticonstructive” position—include Benson, “A Note on Eristic”; idem, “The Problem of the Elenchos Reconsidered,” Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987): 67– 85; idem, “The Priority of Definition”; and Michael C. Stokes, Plato’s Socratic Conversations: Drama and Dialectic in Three Dialogues (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 1–35, 440 – 43. I hold that the more plausible position is the “constructive” one, namely, that for Socrates elenchoi of various kinds contribute to his living an “examined life”: through their use in, inter alia, deliberating on courses of action, exhorting others to virtue, testing the adequacy of virtue definitions, and giving Socrates good inductive grounds for holding true those moral propositions whose negations are constantly defeated under elenctic examination; Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, chap. 1, and “Socrates’ Elenctic Mission,” provide an extensive defense and exposition; see also Kraut, “Comments”; Reeve, Socrates, 52 –53, 64 –166, 176 –79; Robinson, Earlier, 2d ed.; Vlastos, “The Socratic Elenchus”; Woodruff, “Expert Knowledge.”

19. See, for example, Phd. 96a–99c; McPherran, Religion, secs. 3.2.3, 5.2. As Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 68, notes, though, Socrates cannot have imagined himself wise on various topics, since that would make nonsense of his later being puzzled by the report of the oracle.

Stokes is in error, though, to think that Socrates could not have gained a reputation for elenctic refutation early on, since there is no need to think that Socrates only began to employ the elenchos subsequent to the oracular report.

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that Socrates would have displayed a degree of intellectual ability sufficient to have incited Chaerephon to visit the oracle with his question.20 In view of the skill at elenctic examination Socrates testifies to possessing subsequent to his hearing the oracle’s report (21b –23a), it is reasonable to suppose that he had been wielding the elenchos on topics of ethical import for a good deal of time prior to his setting about to “refute” the oracle’s claim.21 In fact, then, we can hypothesize that he was quite proficient at elenchos-wielding, sufficiently proficient that Chaerephon came to think of him as being wise in some sense—so wise, in fact, that he was prompted to travel to Delphi to take the measure of that wisdom from the god himself.22 After all, Socrates 20. On this point, see Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin,” 662 – 63; Guthrie, Socrates, 86; Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 271 n. 43; Taylor, Socrates, 78. Of course, and as Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 29, 68 – 69, notes, it may not have taken much to set Chaerephon off, since—apparently by way of explanation for his heading off to Delphi—Socrates characterizes him as having an overenthusiastic, impetuous temperament (Ap. 21a, Charm. 153a–b).

21. And on the hypothesis that Delphi was relying on evidence in making its response to Chaerephon, it also seems likely that this show of talent and “wisdom” would also have to be something with enough merit from Delphi’s point of view to warrant the oracle’s claiming that “no one is wiser” and yet also of the sort that would help to explain Socrates’ puzzlement at the oracle’s response; see, for example, Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 94 –95; John Burnet, Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), 74 –75, 90 –91; Kraut, Socrates, 271 n. 43; Taylor, Socrates, 78 –79; Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 26 –29.

Support for this hypothesis is also found in the idea that the priests’ interpretations of the Pythia’s “ravings” would have been slanted by their interests and knowledge; see Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 1:30 – 41. But note too that the oracle was mainly interested in telling suppliants what they wanted to hear; see Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 7– 8, 11–57, 233– 39. Some have observed that besides a written response based on an interpretation of the Pythia’s “ravings,” there was also the much less expensive oracle by lot (“the two beans”). On this basis, they argue that since Chaerephon was poor, this would then have most likely been the method employed, and hence that the oracle cannot be supposed to have relied on evidence of Socratic wisdom; H. W. Parke, A History of the Delphic Oracle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 249 –50; Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 1:17– 45; see Reeve’s discussion, Socrates, 28 –30. However, Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 219 –23, and Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 58 – 60, present arguments against Delphi’s use of the lot. My account is essentially unaffected by this problem, since what matters here is not Delphi’s method but Socrates’ response to the report brought by Chaerephon.

Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 53–54, argues convincingly that the opening scene of the Laches (187d–188a) presents evidence that Socrates “engaged in elenctic practice soon after he ceased to be a boy” (namely, soon after the age of eighteen; Stokes’s emphasis). Note, too, that the Parmenides portrays a youthful Socrates (approximately twenty) who has already acquired great philosophical ability. The Symposium continues this idea, showing us a Socrates in his early thirties who already possesses a reputation for wisdom and philosophical ability.

22. Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 94 –95; Kraut, Socrates, 271 n. 43. Chaerephon could have come to the conclusion that Socrates possessed some sort of wisdom in the same naive way some of his fellow Athenians had (23a1–5): by watching Socrates elenctically

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nowhere says that he began to wield the elenchos only after the report of the oracle; rather, he implies that it was the report that initiated his “mission,” that marked the point at which he began systematically to examine people with a self-endorsed reputation for wisdom (21b9 –23b4). Also, Socrates’ characterization of his puzzlement upon learning of the oracular response indicates that he already thought that he was without wisdom (21b4 –5), and the best explanation for this piece of self-understanding is that he had come to it by means of his primary tool of self-examination: the elenchos (or its prototype).23 ii. Allowing for a reasonable measure of interpretive latitude, the inferential moves underlying Socrates’ interpretation of the oracular pronouncement (20c4 –21d7) and his explanation of his subsequent behavior (21d7– 23c1) can be represented as follows: A. Chaerephon asked the Pythia: “Is there anyone 24 wiser than Socrates?”

B. The Pythia’s/god’s response is reported as amounting to the claim that (1) “No one is wiser (than Socrates).” 25 refute those with a reputation for wisdom (note that Chaerephon had known Socrates from youth; 20e8 –21a1); cf. Reeve, Socrates, 32. Again, the evidence provided by the Phaedo (97b – 99a) and Aristotle (Met. 987b1– 4, 1078b19 –20) suggests that Socrates was always centrally concerned with ethics; thus his alleged wisdom would likely have been of the ethical sort; see McPherran, Religion, secs. 3.1–2, 5.2. Of course, if Chaerephon had also heard Socrates disclaim such wisdom, that would have provided him with an additional motive for traveling to Delphi, namely, to have Delphi settle the apparent contradiction between the evidence of wisdom Socrates’ elenctic skill implies and Socrates’ own disclaimers of wisdom.

23. Ap. 28e5 – 6, 29c6 –d1; Reeve, Socrates, 31–32; Strycker, “The Oracle,” 46.

24. The text leaves it unclear whether Chaerephon meant and was understood to mean “anyone now living in Athens” or “anyone in Athens (living or dead)” or “anyone at all in Athens (including those who will come to inhabit it later)” or “any person now alive” or “anyone at all (living or dead)” and so on. Here I will assume that—for a variety of reasons— Socrates understands Chaerephon’s question and the Pythia’s response to refer to “anyone now living in Athens.” I think this restriction to Athens is indicated by Socrates’ claim that he has been set on Athens (not the larger world) by the god just as a gadfly is set on a particular horse (and not all horses; 30d–31a).

25. It is surprising that we never see Socrates raise the issue of inaccuracy of transmission: surely he should entertain the possibility of human error in the chain of message transmission stretching from the god through the Pythia and Chaerephon to himself. As Stokes, Plato: Apology, 116, notes, for example, reports of oracles were not at all above suspicion (see, e.g., Soph., OT 707ff.).

See also Xenophon’s Apol. 14, which—while omitting Chaerephon’s question—presents a negative form of the response (namely, in response to Chaerephon’s inquiry, “Apollo answered that no man was more free than I, or more just, or more prudent”); D.L. 2.37–38 also supports

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C. Claim 1 is deemed unshakably true, since Socrates is confident that it is not lawful (qevmi~) for the god to speak falsely (21b5 –7).26 Socrates then takes (1) to mean that (2a) “Socrates is the wisest of all in Athens” (see note 24 above).

This, however, leaves hanging the issue whether the god might have simply meant (2b) “Socrates is very wise (although there are others in Athens who are as wise).” 27 D. “Wisest”/“wise” in (2a) and (2b) are ambiguous, meaning either (i) “wisest /wise in respect of the greatest things” (namely, the virtues; 29d–30b) or (ii) “wisest /wise in respect of one’s self-knowledge (in Plato’s version. On the probable and widespread assumption that Xenophon had Plato’s version in mind while composing his own Socratic apologia, his account would be a natural expansion of Plato’s; Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 89 n. 71. However, Paul A. Vander Waerdt has recently argued that Xenophon revised Plato’s version “in the service of his own quite different interpretation of Socrates’ philosophical mission” (“Socratic Justice and SelfSufficiency,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 11 [1993], 29). As he sees it, Xenophon’s main purpose with his Apology is to remedy the impression Plato created with his version of events, that Socrates conducted his defense imprudently. Xenophon’s oracle story fits into this strategy by providing Socrates with a basic reply to all the formal charges, which he can then go on to elaborate; cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 56 –58.

26. Socrates’ claim that the god cannot lie follows four confessions of the incredulity he felt when he interpreted the god’s claim literally, indicating that Socrates holds (1) to be absolutely true on some other reading; Stokes, Plato: Apology, 116. But on what grounds can Socrates claim to know that Apollo cannot lie? The Homeric, Hesiodic gods are notorious liars, after all, and even a sophisticated Athenian could think that a good divinity might lie in order to achieve some noble end. However, there are sound reasons for thinking that Socrates took it as one of his tasks to “launder” the Homeric gods: his gods are perfectly good, a goodness entailed by their boundless knowledge and wisdom. Hence, that goodness is also so vast that, conjoined with their power, they have no need to commit right-making deceptions or wrongs (Rep. 379a ff., 381e–382c, 389b – c; Phd. 62d– 63c). McPherran, Religion, sec. 3.2.4. Note also that at Euthyphro 9c1 Socrates tells Euthyphro that the gods will listen to him if he “speaks well” (eu\ levgein), and this usually means “speaks the truth” in Plato (e.g., Rep. 338b), indicating that for Socrates the wisdom of the gods implies a love of truth on their part.

27. Commentators typically assume that Socrates—bewildered by the oracular message— mistakenly inferred “wisest” from “no one is wiser,” something admittedly possible since “the negative comparative can . . . stand, by understatement, for the superlative”; Stokes, Plato: Apology, 116; cf. 123. I prefer to think that Socrates/Plato has decided to report Socrates’ initial state of mind here in light of the results achieved by his subsequent mission. That is, by the period of life he refers to at 30e, he has decided that he is in all probability the only best-selfrealized gadfly in Athens; thus, in moving from “no one wiser” to “wisest,” he is projecting back upon the oracular report the lesson of the past thirty or so years (introducing into his interpretation of the oracle a revelation that only came later, after he had elenctically tested many “experts”). The other option, that the god meant that “no one is wiser than Socrates because all humans are equally unwise in terms of self-knowledge,” is implicitly ruled out by Socrates’ later discovery of his own superior “human wisdom” (e.g., 20d– e, 23a–b).

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particular, self-knowledge of the extent of one’s wisdom[type i]),” but Socrates initially assumed the former (i), thus interpreting (2a) as claiming that (2a ) “Socrates is the wisest(i) of all in Athens concerning the greatest things” and (2b) as claiming that (2b ) “Socrates is very wise(i) concerning the greatest things.”

E. Socrates, however, was already convinced that (3) “Socrates is not at all wise(i), much or little” (i.e., he is not wise[i]).

Thus, Socrates was sure that (3a) “Socrates is not the wisest(i) of all in Athens.” 28 F. As a result, Socrates was thrown into perplexity, since he was also (rightly) convinced that (2a ) and (3a) cannot both be true.29 G. To resolve this apparent contradiction, Socrates decided to investigate the real meaning of (2a) by attempting to discover a counterexample to its interpretation as (2a ): namely, a person who would show (2a ) false by being wiser(i) than Socrates.30 Socrates found politician Z, who seemed wise to himself and others (in senses [i] and [ii]), but after “examining” and “investigating” Z,31 it appeared likely 28. Throughout this entire section of the Apology it is clear that wisdom (sophia) is a kind of knowledge (episte¯me¯) (otherwise the use of eidenai at 21d7– 8 is meaningless); cf. 22d, 23c, and 29a; and at Grg. 509a4 –5 Socrates unequivocally says that he does not know (eidenai) the truth of the matters under discussion (i.e., the moral truths that constitute wisdom).

It should be noted that there is in fact a third, implicit meaning of “wise” at issue in (2a) and (2b), one that Socrates later exposes and discards, namely, the “wisdom” constituted by the technical expertise possessed by craftspeople (Ap. 22c– e). In this later passage, Socrates appears to say that he knew all along that these individuals had a kind of knowledge of things he had not, a fact that (apparently) helped him to realize, right at the start of his interpretive quest, that the oracle could not have meant “technical expertise” by “wisdom.” His subsequent interrogation of the artisans—who were led by their own epistemological confidence into a selfdeceived presumption that they were additionally wise in sense (i)—then helped him to determine that since they lacked wisdom in sense (ii), wisdom (ii) must be the sense of “wisdom” employed by the Pythia.

29. Strikingly, he seems not to have ever interrogated Chaerephon regarding what sense of wisdom he intended when he asked his question of the Pythia, and whether he may have intimated or successfully communicated that sense to her.

30. Why does he test (2a’) first and not (3) instead (aside from whatever pious motives he had)? Because, it seems apparent, (3) has already been rigorously tested over and over again through Socrates’ restless, early search for wisdom(i) (see in [1] above): that is why Socrates believes it true.

31. Stokes, Plato: Apology, 120 –21, claims that the “examination” (diaskopw`n; 21c3) and “investigation” (skopw`n; 21c4) mentioned here need not refer to Socrates’ question-and-answer method of producing contradictions, which we term the elenchos. Rather, he sees the first mention of this method at 22b2 –5. However, I find it hard to believe that Socrates employed this

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that Z was not wise in sense (i) (and so could not provide a counterexample to [2a ]).32 H. Socrates then tried to convince Z that although he supposed he was wise(i), he was not wise(i).

I. This attempt was unsuccessful, from which Socrates concluded that Z was also not wise in sense (ii).

J. Socrates then formulated a hypothesis that would leave (2a) unrefuted: “Socrates is wiser(ii) than Z (but not [2a ] wiser[i] than Z)” (by knowing that [3] and [3a] are true).

K. This hypothesis is then generalized as (2b ) “Socrates is very wise(ii)” (by knowing that [3] and [3a] are true), and both this and (2a ) (“Socrates is wisest[i]”) are repeatedly tested in comparison with other claimants’ pretensions to wisdom (i) and (ii) by the same procedure, and Socrates obtains the same results with each interlocutor. This is taken to show that (2a ) (“Socrates is wisest[i]”) is false and that (2b ) “Socrates is very wise(ii)” is true.33 This kind of wisdom—the wisdom of self-awareness—allows him to conclude that (2b ) (“Socrates is very wise[i]”) is false.

L. This, however, leaves open the question whether (2a ) “Socrates is method to “examine others” only after running through all the politicians (and using what method of examination prior to that?). Moreover, as seen above (i), it seems probable that Socrates had been employing the elenchos for some time prior to Chaerephon’s visit. Thus, I think it makes better overall sense to suppose that Socrates is referring to his use of the elenchos on Z and other politicians here. Doing so makes the best sense of Socrates’ claim that his investigations caused widespread dislike among his interlocutors (21d– e), dislike Plato elsewhere associates with the effects of the elenchos (e.g., Meno 79e– 80b). The use of the elenchos is also associated with the disavowal of wisdom Socrates was already professing (E); that is, since he has no wisdom, Socrates prefers not to lecture or answer questions, but would rather ask them of others who claim to know (Euthyp. 6a–d, 15c–16a; Rep. 337a–338a; Prot. 334c–d; Grg. 505e–506a). Finally, note how Socrates’ description of the three classes of people whose resentment he aroused by his ignorance-revealing examinations—the politicians, poets, and craftspeople (Ap. 21b –22e)—humorously and rhetorically prepares his audience for his reply to the formal charges. For, as it happens, his three “later accusers” are of those three classes (23e–24a). Stokes’s assumption that Socrates did not use the elenchos against the politicians, then, introduces an unnecessary note of dissonance into the Apology’s literary and forensic strategy.

32. Here Socrates is trying to unmask his own ignorance of how (2a’) could be true and not Z’s ignorance.

33. The procedure, then, is inductive and reasonable: if on the streets of Farmington, Maine, I interrogate one person after another who claims to know something that I confess on good grounds not to know—for example, the identity of the postmaster—but none can provide even a roughly coherent, consistent description (and yet all refuse to give up their knowledge claims), then I am entitled to think that I am wiser than they are in respect of my own selfawareness on that topic.

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wisest(ii)” is true. The only test that would show (2a ) to be not merely probable but unshakably true is for Socrates to interrogate every person who might plausibly be thought as wise(ii) as or wiser(ii) than he. But until (2a ) is thus established, it remains rationally possible to believe that the god has spoken falsely (on the possibility that the god meant [2a ] by [2a]).

M. Socrates proceeds “to come to the god’s aid” by defending (2a )— and thus the claim upon which it rests, that “it is not lawful for the god to speak falsely”—by interrogating every person who appears to himself or herself and others to be wise ([i] or [ii] or both).

N. Continually successful experiences of elenctic refutation of these individuals lead Socrates to understand how (2b ) (“Socrates is very wise[ii]”) is true, from which he infers that he is indeed (probably) per (2a ) the wisest(ii) in Athens in that sense: this is “human wisdom.” 34 This result, however, means that he must continue “to defend the god’s claim” that (2a ) and/or (2b ) are true (thus serving the god [since there may yet exist another like himself somewhere in Athens]).35 O. Socrates also continually elenctically interrogates others because he has come to believe that the god is using him as a paradigm to deliver the message that that person is wisest who, like Socrates, becomes most cognizant of how he or she is in truth worth nothing in respect of divine wisdom (concerning virtue; 23b2 – 4).

The preceding displays the details of what I take to be the most explicit instance in Plato’s dialogues of what has been termed “elenctic interpretation.” 36 Hence, a close examination of A through O should not only help us 34. The field of human wisdom comprises the knowledge that we lack divine wisdom (23b3– 4), and may include our partial and fallible knowledge of virtue; it does not extend to the full and infallible apprehension of divine objects such as gods, or otherworldly issues such as whether dying is certainly good (20e), whether the life of philosophy certainly achieves something in the hereafter (e.g., Phd. 69d), or what names the gods apply to themselves (cf. Crat.

400d). Rather, Socrates endorses Heraclitus’s claim that “the wisest of men is like a monkey compared to the god in wisdom, fineness, and everything else” (Hi. Ma. 289b3– 6). See Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, sec. 2.1, and Reeve, Socrates, 33–37, on the human /divine wisdom distinction.

35. This raises the issue of whether Socrates interrogates anyone who seems to him wise(i) or only (or primarily) those who consider themselves wise(i) (irrespective of whether they seem wise[i] to Socrates). I think the evidence favors the latter, but I cannot pursue the issue here.

36. Woodruff, “Expert Knowledge,” 83– 84; cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 37– 41; and Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, sec. 1.3. Other cases of elenctic interpretation similar

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to understand how Socrates derived his “duty to do philosophy,” but will also clarify more general aspects of the elenchos.

The progression A through F indicates that despite Socrates’ (inevitable) awareness of his own impressive philosophical talents (and even, perhaps, a growing belief that he was wise in some sense), he found Chaerephon’s report (A, B) a stunning paradox, leading him to ask: “What on earth is the god saying, and what on earth lies behind his riddle?” (21b3– 4). For the oracular report “No one is wiser”—as Socrates read its surface meaning (C [2a])—appears to credit some wisdom to him, a wisdom that might make him the wisest of Athenians (and perhaps all humans; 21b – c). But Socrates believed that his previous investigations and elenchos-wielding had given him no wisdom at all in the sense he usually ascribes to “wisdom” (21b4 –5) —namely, real understanding of the “greatest things,” a moral expertise/ wisdom laid claim to by some politicians, poets, and artisans (22c9 – e1).

Rather, (E) his activities had only revealed to him his lack of all such wisdom (3a).37 Whether he realized at this point that (D) there might exist another sort of wisdom—“human wisdom,” which he might possess—is unclear.

Socrates’ attempt to resolve the contradiction between (2a ) and (3a) outlined in G though J deserves close inspection. First, although the question is not hard to answer, we should ask why Socrates did not simply ignore this contradiction in hopes that his initial psychic dissonance would dissolve through a process of neglect. Or, if this was impossible because of his congenital curiosity, why didn’t Socrates settle the issue for himself either by merely “supposing and assuming” (cf. 28e) that he is the wisest in terms of some form of “human wisdom,” not divine wisdom, or by preferring the certifiably true report of the god to the one given him by his own mortal judgment (namely, that he has no wisdom)? Here, I take it, neither alternative was a live option, because Socrates had yet to hit upon the idea that recognition of ignorance could count as a form of wisdom and because he thought that he had reasons over and above mere introspection for believing that he lacked all wisdom. These reasons, we can safely assume, derive from his own past failures fully to survive his own elenctic testing of himself; that is, we to Apology 20c4 –23c1—that is, those involving the resolution of a riddle by means of the charitable interpretation of some saying propounded by someone described as “wise”—include the riddling definition of Charmides 161c, Simonides’ riddle at Rep. 332b, and Protagoras’s riddle at Tht. 152c–d; Stokes, Plato: Apology, 116.

37. We can thus even imagine his first encounter with the Pythia’s pronouncement as a quasi-Cartesian moment of global doubt: “If I (of all people) am the wisest of all Athenians, then we are all utterly bereft of the wisdom we think we have.”

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can hypothesize that he attempted (unsuccessfully) to define various virtue terms and then interrogated himself regarding the coherence of those definitions with his other beliefs (cf. Charm. 166c–d). These failures, then, have— by a process of induction—allowed him to “know himself” in just the sense that Delphi advised; that is, he has come to the realization that by lacking the “more-than-human wisdom” such definitions would help to constitute, he has only “mortal thoughts” (see note 51 below). Thus, Socrates is caught in a genuine dilemma, both of whose horns are underwritten by the religious, truth-telling authority of Delphi. Add to this the reasonable hypothesis that by this point in his career he had concluded that contradictions in belief— especially those connected to a god’s claims concerning oneself (that is, one’s own self-knowledge and moral knowledge)—impede our achieving the happy life we all desire (while true belief helps to achieve it), and it seems clear that Socrates had more than enough motivation for attempting to resolve the contradiction marked in F. It also seems as though it was psychologically necessary for Socrates to pass through steps G to I in order to be able to discover the meaning of “wise” that allows him to hypothesize (2b ) (“Socrates is wise[ii]”) at J. Beginning at G we also see a growing determination on Socrates’ part to ensure the veracity of Delphi’s claim (1). In order fully to understand this and Socrates’ subsequent behavior, I think we must bring Socrates’ prior religious commitments into play.38 First, as we have seen, Socrates affirms that Apollo speaks nothing but truths through the Pythia and that the god is wise (21b, 23a). Next, we need to credit him with having held a view roughly similar to one we can elicit from the Euthyphro: P The virtue of piety is the part of justice that is a service [uJphretikhv] of humans to gods, assisting the gods in their chief task of producing their most beautiful product [pavgkalon e[rgon].39 38. Especially in view of his later comparison of himself to a soldier who has been “posted” by a god in order to provide a unique service to Athens. The following strategy of interpretation owes much to Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin”; cf. Reeve, Socrates, 21–32.

39. Of course, if pressed to describe this product in detail, Socrates will respond with the observation that we humans cannot have a complete account of it other than that it is superlatively good and with other such general and unspecific characterizations; McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2. See also, e.g., Ap. 23b – c, 29e–30b; Phd. 62c– 63a, 84d– 85b. This is the answer one expects from Apollo’s missionary, a man who disclaims possessing the “more-than-human” wisdom (Euthyp. 6a–b, Ap. 20e) had only by gods (Ap. 23a), and who is quite conscious of this shortcoming (e.g., Ap. 20d).

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Given P, Socrates will then also agree that since the gods are wholly good, their main project and beautiful product must be wholly good. But since the only or most important good is virtue (for example, Cri. 47e6 – 48a4; Euthyd. 281d2 – e1),40 it is likely that the only or most important component of the gods’ chief product is virtue; and hence, our primary service to the gods is to help produce virtue.

Now, then, given these assumptions, it appears that Socrates must think himself obligated to do two things. First, he will see the virtues of piety and justice as demanding that he uphold the god’s reputation for truth-telling, for by doing so he serves both gods and men by preserving a good-making belief.41 Second, since anything a superior might say to an inferior under his command could conceal a demand for some sort of service on the inferior’s part, and since piety (P) requires that we serve the gods, then it is part of Socrates’ pious obligation to discover the meaning of the god’s claim. Naturally, for his method of discovery, of interpretation, Socrates turns to his customary elenctic method, attempting to refute (ejlevgxwn), to show false, the apparent meaning of the oracular pronouncement taken at face value, not— as a literal reading of the text (and as some commentators) would have it— the oracle or the god (21b9 – c2).42 After all, how could one hope to refute that which cannot be false (Ap. 21b6 –7; Rep. 382e–383a; cf. Laws 800a)?

Furthermore, it was common knowledge that the oracle sometimes spoke in riddles (aijnivssoma; 21b4) and that any sensible person ought—if only for strictly prudential reasons—to look past any obvious meaning for whatever truer meaning might be concealed underneath (Charm. 164d–165a; cf., for example, Herodotus 1.91–92).43 40. On this, see Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, sec. 4.2.

41. Although neither Apollo (as Socrates conceives of him, namely, as not concerned with Homeric honors) nor Athens will hurt Socrates if he allows others to think Apollo a liar, Socrates will be driven by the universal innate desire we have to possess the good to serve the god and justice by defending the god’s reputation. The harmful effects of believing that the god might lie are many; for example, those who believe this will cease to pay attention to the useful “signs” such gods send to guide humans; McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.1.

42. The text says that Socrates went to those reputed to be wise, since there, if anywhere, he might “refute the divination” (ejlevgxwn to; mantei`on) by showing the oracle (ajpofanw`n tw`/ crhsmw`/) that “[t]his man is wiser than I, [although] you declared that I was [wiser].” Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 34 –37, and Plato: Apology, 117, raises interesting grammatical questions relevant to Socrates’ intentions, but in the end concludes that the text does not support the view that his procedure expresses doubts regarding Apollo’s veracity.

43. In view of the oracle’s past dealings with figures such as Croesus and Oedipus, any Greek would have thought it especially well advised to unpack the meaning of an oracle that made personal reference to oneself; Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 32, 46 – 47; cf. Guthrie,

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Socrates’ attempt to uncover the god’s meaning by trying to discover a counterexample to the truth of (2a ) suggests that Socrates must have by this point believed that (2a)’s true, determinant content was to be identified with either of two possible readings, fixed by there being only two possible meanings of “wise” (see note 28 above, however): (2a ) “Socrates is the wisest(i)” and “Socrates is the wisest (in some other sense).” Hence, if he can disconfirm (2a ), that is sufficient to establish that the god’s claim is true for some other sense of “wise.” This he proceeds to try to do with politician Z (as his test case), but rather than disconfirm (2a ), this interrogation convinces Socrates instead that Z does not possess wisdom(i).44 At this juncture, however, Socrates does something that has seemed odd to many commentators: (H) he apparently now goes on to try to convince Z of the same thing, trying to show him that he too, like Socrates, is not wise(i) at all.45 Why, we should ask, does Socrates do this? Why does he care the slightest about what Z believes about himself? Here, I think, we can imagine Socrates offering several plausible reasons. First, note that Socrates’ test subject Z is a politician; thus, since Socrates cares for Athens as a child cares for his or her parents (for example, Cri. 49e–52d [Socrates has even fought Socrates, 87; Reeve, Socrates, 23. A. D. Nock provides evidence that it was generally assumed that whatever the Pythia prophesied would come to pass and that one should use one’s reason to unpack the meaning of her pronouncement (Essays on Religion and the Ancient World [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972], 2:536 – 40). However, see Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 33, 58 – 62.

44. Presumably Socrates asked Z one of his typical “What is x?” questions (where x names some virtue concept), and— despite his best efforts— Z could not defend his responses to further questions consistently, something that could not have happened had Z possessed the wisdom concerning x that he originally laid claim to (and that attracted Socrates’ attentions).

45. I say “apparently” because, as Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 41, and Plato: Apology, 117, points out, the “and then” (ka[peita) at 21c7 may not be temporal but analytical (as with Crat. 441b) (also, elenctic examination by its very nature makes it difficult to keep its revelation of ignorance hidden from the interlocutor). Weighing against this possibility, however, is the fact that Socrates recognizes the difference between detection and demonstration (Ap. 26e– 27a; Grg. 457e), and in this and the subsequent elenctic encounters Socrates engages in we are given no sense that he thinks he has successfully demonstrated the interlocutor’s ignorance to him merely by investigating the interlocutor’s alleged wisdom. Moreover, detection and demonstration could not be a unified process for Socrates at this point (taking his apologia at face value), since that would presume that prior to his interrogation Socrates already had knowledge that Z was not wise. That is, his intention to convince Z of his ignorance could not have come into play until he had first carried through on his initial intention to determine the interlocutor’s state of wisdom. Also, unlike other elenctic encounters, where the audience enjoyed the spectacle (23c), the audience to Z’s examination is also made angry (21c– e), and the best explanation for this—I think—is that Socrates went beyond detection on this occasion and “rudely” attempted to demonstrate ignorance.

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and risked his life for Athens]), and since a politician— or any citizen for that matter—stands to harm Athens if he acts out of an unaware, hubristic assumption that he possesses sufficient wisdom to counsel the city, Socrates must for reasons of piety and justice attempt to convince that person of his lack of wisdom.46 Second, Socrates will declare that the demands of piety (P) require him to serve both Z and Athens by convincing Z of his ignorance. However, for Socrates to discover a motivation to philosophize in P, he would have to have had the prior belief that his philosophical practice is productive of goodness in some fashion (thus subsequently realizing that this serves the desires of the gods). Socrates will therefore have had a “secular,” eudaimonistic motivation for his pursuit of philosophy prior to Chaerephon’s visit.47 We even see evidence that Socrates recognizes this distinction between “divine” and “secular” warrants for pursuing courses of action when he distinguishes between being “stationed by a ruler” and “stationed by oneself” at Apology 28d, and between “obeying god” and “doing what is a great good for a human being” at Apology 37e–38a. Commentators sometimes miss this distinction, supposing that it was the oracle alone that “gave his mission its meaning” and that there is thus something puzzling about Socrates’ trying not only to test for himself (as part of his “trying to refute the apparent meaning of the oracular response”) someone’s claim to wisdom but— once the claimant’s ignorance was detected—to demonstrate this to the claimant (per Ap. 21b –d).48 On my account this puzzle dissolves: even prior to the oracular response Socrates had grounds for thinking that elenctic examination of others and the revelation of ignorance it brings are good things for a human being, and that we ought to do what is good (see, for example, Ap. 29d–30b; Grg. 470c).49 It is also reasonable to suppose that first-time hearers/readers of 46. This concern would seem to explain why Socrates chooses a politician as his first candidate for testing (2a ).

47. For detailed discussion, see McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.2; see also, e.g., Ap. 28b5 –9, d6 –10; Cri. 48c6 –d5; cf. Grg. 499e. Cf. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, chap. 3; Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist, chap. 8.

48. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 41– 42, 68 –70; idem, Plato: Apology, 117, 123.

49. In Mark McPherran, “Piety, Justice, and the Unity of Virtue,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38, no. 3 (2000): 299 –328, I argue that Socrates appears implicitly to accept the idea that human justice and humanly just actions must involve the “therapeutic tendance” of humans in some sense. Since conceiving of human justice as a form of therapeutic tendance involving craft knowledge would fully agree with the Socratic assumption that the virtues are forms of beneficial craft knowledge (e.g., La. 165c– e) and that justice is beneficial to oneself and aims to benefit other humans (e.g., Ap. 24c–26a, 29d–31c; Cri. 47d; La. 192b –d; Charm.

160e, 164b – c; cf. Rep. 345e–347a), humanly just actions are those that produce a therapeutic

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Socrates’ apologia would have supplied a similar motive, for it would have been conceded by many that you do a person a good turn in bringing that person’s ignorance to his or her attention. There is no need, then, to read 21c7 as burying the difference between detection and demonstration “in order to stop awkward questions arising.” 50 Rather, it may be part of Plato’s literary, pedagogical strategy to provoke us to recognize and examine the gap between G and H and thus come to a better understanding of Socrates by supplying an account of his motives such as the one I am attempting here.

Finally, I think it likely that Socrates at this point suspects that if he cannot convince Z of his lack of wisdom(i) that he will then have discovered the other sense of “wise” that would make (2a) true. What sense? Only one that Delphi would praise and commend—the sense, then, encapsulated in (1): antihubristic wisdom concerning one’s own state of deficient wisdom(i). In short, the idea that humans are far inferior to the gods in power and wisdom([i] and [ii]), that god, not humanity, is the “measure” of truth, and so forth.51 That realization, then, instantly leads to the hypothesis marked by J, benefit in respect of oneself and other humans by avoiding causing harm to oneself and trying to avoid causing harm to others and/or by improving the functioning of one’s soul and aiming to improve that of others. Of course, on this account, some or all occasions of human justice could also then be pious, since to produce good by means of justice serves to promote what appears to be the gods’ chief project. Socrates’ own apologia is, for example, both (prima facie) humanly just and pious (cf. Ap. 28b –29b, 35c–d).

50. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 42; idem, Plato: Apology, 117.

51. Delphi’s Apollo must, therefore, similarly call Socrates “wise,” for he—just as the god—has also been vigorously insisting on the “human wisdom” (ajnqrwpivnh sofiva; 23a7, 20d8) of acknowledging the great epistemological and metaphysical chasm separating humanity from the gods, a chasm rarely bridged and only by the intentional descent of a divinity and never through human attempts at ascent. Moreover, Socrates is especially worthy of Delphi’s praise because—as we will see below—he explicitly acts out of piety, as evidenced by the fact that he undertakes his interpretation of Chaerephon’s report not out of idle curiosity or superstitious prudence but because he believes that “the business of the god is of the highest importance” (Ap. 21e4 –5); Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 95. As Reeve, Socrates, 25 –26, argues: “who but a religious person . . . would puzzle over one of his [Apollo’s] oracles . . . and persist in that activity even when it made him poor and unpopular?”

This connection between Socrates and the antihubristic message of Delphi is well drawn by Reeve, Socrates, 28 –32; cf. the less satisfactory suppositions that it was Socrates’ scientific accomplishments (attested by the Clouds) that recommended him to Delphi (Burnet, Plato’s Phaedo, 74 –75, 90 –91), or rather his elenctic ability (Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 26 –29) or his philosophical doctrines (Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 94 –95). On the Greek concept of hubris and its religious import, see Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 54 –55, 110 –11; Douglas M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), 129 –32.

The oracle at Delphi and its god had long been understood as underwriting the virtue of humility and self-effacing restraint—and insisting on the vice of hubris—in the face of divine wis-

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since that hypothesis provides an exact explanation for why Delphi praises him: namely, that he had, prior to Chaerephon’s visit, been discovering the very same antihubristic truths constitutive of the wisdom appropriate to humans that Delphi itself had always insisted upon. Especially important is that Socrates would already seem to have been coming to know that he did not possess the sort of wisdom the gods possess—“divine wisdom” (Ap. 20e1, 23a5 – 6)—in particular, the sort of expert knowledge of virtue he had been seeking and failing to find.52 iii. Having come to a hypothetical account of the meaning of the oracular pronouncement—that he possesses the “human wisdom” of comprehending the nature and depth of his own ignorance—why doesn’t Socrates simply leave other self-deceived individuals alone (stopping at J)? After all, why continue to pursue a course of action that—seemingly on almost every occasion—has caused others to hate him, thus leaving him plagued by pain

dom. On the walls of the temple at Delphi were inscriptions to just that effect (e.g., “Know thyself” [gnw`qi sautovn], meaning, “Know that you are but a human, not a god”; “Hate hubris” [u{brim meivsei]; “Nothing in excess” [mhde;n a“gan]; “Curb thy spirit” [qumou` kravtei]; “Observe the limit” [pevra~ ejpitevlei]; “Bow before the divine” [proskuvnei to; qei`on]; “Fear authority” [to; kratou`m fobou`]; and “Glory not in strength” [ejpi; rjwvmh mh; kaucw`]); see W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), 183–204; Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 1:378 –92; Reeve, Socrates, 30. According to Plutarch (Ad. Col. 1118c), it was the Delphic inscription “Know thyself” that set Socrates off on his inquiries. Parallel with the story of Socrates are many others in which persons noteworthy for their wisdom or other accomplishments request that Delphi declare the identity of “he who is the wisest” (or most pious, and so forth), in the full expectation that they themselves will be named. But instead, the oracle endorses some poor and obscure person living a life of humble contentment, the message obviously being that a person living free of hubris and pretension has a life much more in accord with the pious spirit of Delphi than any self-important man of the world; for example, the person whose sacrifices most please the god is not the wealthy Magnesian who sacrifices a hecatomb to Apollo, but the poor and obscure farmer, Clearachus of Methydrium; see other such stories collected in Parke and Wormell, Delphic Oracle, 378 –92, and reported by Reeve, Socrates, 31; cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 60. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 60 – 62, presents an interesting account of how the Apology’s oracle story in various details systematically reverses the “standard” oracle tale. Stokes goes too far, however, in using this to conclude that the story is purely or primarily fictional, since literary elaboration of an actual event with actual significance does not render the event itself or its significance spurious; cf. other similar moves by Montuori, Socrates, 57–146; P. J. Armleder, “Death in Plato’s Apology,” Classical Bulletin (1966): 42 – 46; and Fontenrose, Delphic Oracle, 34. It is disturbing, as Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 55 (cf. 62), notes, that we do not hear more about the oracle story from Plato and others. At the bare minimum, however, the story represents the sort of literary device (or pious fiction of the Socratic circle) that presupposes Socrates actually did possess the sort of religious motivations I have ascribed to him (cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 67).

52. See Reeve, Socrates, 25 –26, and Vander Waerdt, “Socratic Justice,” on why Socrates came to focus exclusively on ethical inquiry.

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and fear (22e)? The answer, Socrates says, is that he had to go on kata; to;n qeovn (23b5) to examine all those with a reputation for wisdom, “considering what the oracle was saying” and given that “it seemed to be necessary to regard the business of the god as most important” (22c) (my emphasis). In other words, Socrates was (again) driven by a concern for piety and justice to confirm to the highest degree of truth possible his account of what the oracle meant, and from his perspective that meant piling up as much evidence as he could so as inductively to warrant that (2a ) is false and that (2b ) is true, interviewing every Athenian alive if need to be to rule out the belief that the oracle might have said anything false.53 This pious activity of attempted disconfirmation of (2a ) and attempted confirmation of (2b ) is said to have occupied Socrates for a length of time, and this helps us to see that although Socrates says he “supposed and assumed” the god had stationed him in Athens (28e), that phrase does not warrant the view that his interpretation of the oracle was due to the free, unconstrained play of reason: if Socrates had been free simply to make up the meaning he settles on, there would be no reason for him to have been baffled for a long time about its exact meaning (per Ap. 21b).54 So, then, at K Socrates proceeds to establish the true meaning of the pronouncement “No one is wiser than Socrates” by the constant elenctic interrogation of those whose claims would falsify the oracle if true (21a–b, 22a). What Socrates discovers in case after case is that those who presume a “knowledge of the greatest things” (22d7) not only lack that knowledge but are also unable to recognize their lack of it. The text here, though, seems to pass over yet another logical gap without comment: although with every elenctic encounter subsequent to the investigation of Z (where the interlocu53. One odd feature of the oracle story is that Socrates seems to presuppose that once the Pythia’s report began to circulate in Athens, there was a real danger— continuing up to the present moment of his trial—that people might come to believe on its basis that since Socrates is not wise(i), the god is a liar. But the story seems surprising to the jurors. Hence, the only individuals whose faith in the veracity of the god might be threatened are Socrates, Chaerephon, and Socrates’ other followers.

54. Contra Vlastos’s view, Socrates: Ironist, 172, Socrates also refers to his interpretive investigation as “Herculean labors” performed “on behalf of the god” (22a), and this is further testimony that—far from showing irreverence by attempting to “refute” the apparent meaning of the oracle—it instead demonstrates the intensity of his pious commitment always to put “the god’s business” first; Brickhouse and Smith, “Origin,” 663– 64 n. 15. Additionally, Socrates’ actual procedure in this section of the Apology blocks the objection of those, like Vlastos, who hold that genuine Socratic interpretation would make the gods powerless to improve souls, on the grounds that the required antecedent beliefs of interpretation cannot be provided by the gods to those, such as Socrates, who doubt their signs: for neither here nor anywhere else does Socrates doubt the truth underlying what he takes to be a divinely given sign.

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tor is revealed not to possess either wisdom[i] or wisdom[ii]) Socrates has better and better inductive evidence for concluding that he is wise(ii) (2b ), this still leaves unresolved (per L) the question whether Socrates is actually the wisest(ii) (2a ). Socrates must be seen here, I think, as rigorously investigating (if not exploiting) the other semantic possibility that could—if unexplored—“leave the god refuted”: namely, that by “no one is wiser(ii)” the god meant “Socrates is the wisest(ii)” (2a ). Until that claim is thoroughly tested, it remains possible for a rational person to believe that the god has said something false. Hence, both piety and justice drive Socrates to conduct further elenctic investigations L and M. Now, it seems to me that Socrates could well have thought at this point that there existed at least a few Athenians who would acknowledge their own ignorance of “the greatest things”—say, a few of his more self-effacing young followers. To explain his carrying on further tests, then, I hypothesize (N) that by this juncture, Socrates has begun to distinguish between knowing that something is true and understanding how something is true (see, for example, Grg. 508e–509a).55 With this distinction in hand, Socrates will think that he may be the wisest(ii) even in comparison with such unpretentious individuals by virtue of his having the best evidence for and—in particular—the best account of the distinction between human and divine wisdom, plus the best grasp, in light of that understanding, of his own epistemic state (especially by knowing exactly which few specific moral truths he does possess and which aspects of the virtues he is ignorant of). Nonetheless, since there may exist (or may come to exist) another philosopher like himself somewhere in Athens, he must continue “to defend the god’s claim” that “Socrates is the wisest(ii).” Doing so, again, serves not only the god but also himself and his fellow Athenians.

As Socrates began his elenctic interpretation of the oracle via the elenctic examination of supposed wise individuals, then, he gradually came to realize the meaning of the oracular phrase, a meaning that reflexively confirms the reliability of the oracle: namely, that by grasping something the “experts” do not, “that he is in truth worth nothing with respect to wisdom” (23a–b), Socrates is, in comparison with such self-proclaimed “experts,” the wisest of the Athenians.56 Naturally, however, he would want to consider any case of alleged wisdom that came to his attention (since there is no way for him to be certain that there are no genuinely wise human beings somewhere in Athens or elsewhere), and so—as he says at 21e–22a—he wishes 55. See Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, sec. 2.2.1.

56. Cf. Kraut, Socrates, 271.

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to go to all those reputed to be wise, so that his interpretation of what the oracle means will remain unrefuted.

From Socrates’ perspective, how important is this “business” of defending the bona fides of the god? More important, says Socrates, than even the task of securing the standard human goods of leisure, family life, and money.57 By the end of his career, Socrates has become so successful at unmasking mortal conceit that he now conceives of himself as a unique gift of the god, specially qualified to awaken the Athenians (30d–31b). Thus, Socrates (O) continues to philosophize even after nailing down the probable truth that he is wisest(ii), because—as a result of the rigorous testing initiated by the oracle—his success is best explained on the view that he is probably being used by the god as a paradigm to deliver the message that any person is wisest who, like Socrates, has become cognizant that he is in truth worth nothing in respect of wisdom (23a–b). Having reflected on the true meaning of the oracular pronouncement (2a ), then, Socrates found in it an obligation elenctically to examine others without regard to even everyday prudential qualifying factors. Nevertheless, this unfinished—and unfinishable—“labor” can be understood to be compelling without postulating the sort of unconditional obligation that we find Socrates displaying.58 So what deliberative path led to this all-consuming end?

It seems that prior to fully understanding and defending the oracular pronouncement (2a ), Socrates had yet (i) to realize the full importance of the antihubristic effects of the elenchos and (ii) to see himself as especially qualified elenctically to examine all and sundry, and thus did not yet conceive of himself (iii) as obligated to pursue philosophy ceaselessly and even at the expense of those external goods that make incidental contributions to general human happiness (Ap. 23b, 30a–32a). He saw his duty at this point— we might say—as significantly qualified by ordinary prudential considerations, and so he had yet to conceive of himself as he later did, namely, as free of the normal prudential restrictions that limit the obligation we all possess to pursue philosophy. For although Socrates has “secular” reasons available to him for the view that everyone ought to pursue philosophy, it should be recognized that this obligation is qualified by considerations having to do with what it is that justifies doing philosophy in the first place: the development of human happiness and virtue. Hence, our duty to philosophize is mit57. Others whose happiness is enhanced by the pursuit of such things must also consider “this business” of utmost importance, but it seems that their inferior skill at elenchos-wielding significantly qualifies their obligation to do philosophy (23b – c, 31b – c; and see below).

58. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 42 – 47.

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igated when such engagement would be contrary to justice and the production of happiness. For many, then—but not for Socrates, his peers, and his true pupils—this consideration will place significant limits on the actual opportunities for satisfying their obligation to philosophize.59 By means of his elenctic prowess, then, Socrates has by N elicited from the pronouncement of the oracle an item of knowledge: his understanding that he lacks knowledge of virtue. Moreover, and as the oracle has informed him, he now grasps that this knowledge constitutes a form of wisdom (human wisdom), a wisdom endorsed by the god Apollo.60 Prior to the report of the oracle and his long interpretive and confirmatory work, then, Socrates had not fully realized the full value of the antihubristic results of the elenchos. Rather, taking his ignorance of wisdom(i) as a personal failing, his recognition of that ignorance—and thus the elenctic process that led to it— seemed virtually worthless. Now, however, his long labor has revealed this recognition to be universally recommended for all; hence, the kind of labor that is a means to it is just as valuable. In addition, he now sees that he alone, of all the Athenians, has best instantiated this god-valued activity.

The now-interpreted report of the oracle is also tantamount to the claim that all other Athenians are lacking not only in real wisdom but also in the god-valued awareness of that lack. All these results, then, allow Socrates to recognize the much greater extent to which he is obligated to philosophize 59. On the preceding account of our secular philosophical obligation, any individual possessed of inordinate intellectual abilities and moral integrity will be inordinately obligated to philosophize actively; and were such a person in fact to realize the degree of moral deficiency (especially moral hubris) alleged to be present in the Athenian polis—as Socrates is later made to realize by the oracle—he would be morally negligent not to practice the elenchos assiduously, “stationing himself” to his task (Ap. 28d) even at the risk of death. Such an individual would pursue philosophy for prudential reasons of self-improvement and to ensure right moral action, but also because piety (per P) demands it. This obligation, then, is fully independent of the method of discovery of the present moral lack in oneself and others that may bring it into play: it may be by oracle, by insight, or by failing the test of Socratic examination.

Apology 28d (above) also suggests that Socrates is indeed capable of this sort of understanding of things. For by suggesting that the order he has received from the god to do philosophy in Athens is comparable to the order from a general stationing him to a military post, Socrates tacitly grants the possibility that a person might (i) initially post himself and do battle on his own initiative, (ii) then be told by a general “no one is better,” (iii) be puzzled by that report, (iv) set out to comprehend it by engaging in combat with leading warriors, (v) understand its precise meaning by experiencing continual combat successes, and finally (vi)—via the prior belief that generals should be obeyed and that every citizen should fight to the extent that he produces good results—naturally end up with the view that he has been “ordered” to fight ceaselessly and without regard to personal sacrifices (per 29c–d, 31a– c); cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 70. For further discussion, see McPherran, Religion, sec. 4.2.

60. See Reeve, Socrates, 33–37, on “human wisdom.”

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in accord with the demands of principle P. For according to P, our primary service to the gods is to help them produce good, and we seem best situated and suited to perform that task by furthering the development of virtue in ourselves and others via the protection and improvement of the human soul.

Because elenctic examination of oneself and others is for Socrates the key activity that helps to achieve this goal (Ap. 22d–23b), elenctic philosophy is, then, a preeminently pious activity.61 The life of philosophy for Socrates is thus a prime case of pious, antihubristic, “street-preaching” activity, activity whose aims include the rational reestablishment and revisioning of the traditionally warranted metaphysical /epistemic gap that separates mortal humans from gods.62 Socrates, more than anyone, is obligated to philosophize without regard to standard prudential considerations, since—as the god has now “informed him”—he, of all the Athenians, has achieved the highest level of self61. See McPherran, Religion, secs. 2.2, 4.2.

62. See ibid., sec. 4.2; cf. Ap. 38a2 – 6. All human beings profit from engaging in elenctic moral inquiry (if only by coming to see how deficient they are in respect of true wisdom [Charm.

166c7–d2; see also Ap. 22d– e; Grg. 470c]). As Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 50, perceptively observes, Apology 22c–d argues that since Socrates thought he was better off knowing of his own ignorance, he would have thought that subjecting others to the elenchos and its revelations was to confer a benefit on them. Stokes later (63– 67) constructs a secular explanation for Socrates’ sense of mission, based on the idea that it would be unjust to withhold the benefits of the elenchos from the Athenians, but does not show how this could account for the extent of obligation Socrates perceives himself alone as under (a perception, I argue, that explains the special place of the oracle’s revelation in Socrates’ sense of mission).

Next, Socrates insists that thanks to his elenctic service to the Athenians, they enjoy the greatest good (30a5 –7) and that whereas the Olympic victor makes them merely seem happy, he makes them be it (36d9 – e1). This suggests another derivation of an obligation to pursue philosophy: in view of Socrates’ arguments in the Crito for remaining in Athens and not fleeing, we may expect him to argue that since he and all other Athenians have derived benefit from the institutions of the polis, they owe it benefits in return; and the greatest benefit to it would be to improve the souls of its citizens via elenctic philosophy (cf. McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2, on Euthyp. 14e–15a); Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 63– 66). Note, however (and contra Stokes, 65), that this will not generate the degree of determination and obligation we see exemplified by Socrates; that is what the oracle provides. With this I lean toward agreement with Terence H. Irwin, Plato’s Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 91, who holds that Socrates values philosophy solely for its results (pace Kraut, Socrates, 271 n. 43). The elenchos, for Socrates, is a means to a good end (virtue and recognition of ignorance), but nothing chosen for the sake of a final good is a good in itself (Lys. 219c–d, 220a–b; cf. Grg. 472c–d, 500c). See also Reeve, Socrates, 177–79, esp. n. 84, who claims that the value of the elenchos derives (instrumentally) from its unique power to keep us from hubris and blameworthy ignorance. Against all this, however, we must weigh Socrates’ claim at the end of the Apology that an afterlife of elenchos-wielding among the famous dead (with no mention of expertknowledge-gaining or hubris-reduction) would be an “inconceivable happiness” (ajmhvcanon eujdaimoniva~; 41c3– 4).

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understanding, knowledge, and skill requisite to performing this labor in satisfaction of our general pious obligation.63 He, of all the Athenians, is in the best position to serve the god’s desire that the hubris of the Athenians be removed. He too is the only person to have this prescriptive interpretation of the oracle confirmed by the daimonion and backed up with other dreams and divinations (Ap. 33c4 –7).64 This, then, is why Socrates claims that he now continues to philosophize: because as a result of the testing initiated by the oracle he has come to the realization that he is being used by the god as a paradigm 65 to deliver the message that any person is wisest who, like Socrates, has become cognizant that he is in truth worth nothing in respect of wisdom (23b2 – 4).

The delivery of such an ego-deflating communiqué is, however, problematic: the message that we are all (like Socrates) ignorant of real wisdom would be rejected out of hand by those who believed they had expert moral knowledge, were that message to be directly asserted. Hence, its delivery must take the form of an ad hominem demonstration: specifically, through an elenctic refutation of the relevant knowledge-claims. Thus, when Socrates finds a person who pretends to moral expertise, he “come[s] to the god’s aid” (23b7); that is, he serves the god Apollo, in accord with the demands of piety encapsulated in principle P, by delivering the antihubristic message of the god concerning our ignorance per demonstrandum.66 With this analysis we can see why Socrates’ derivation of his duty to do philosophy from the oracular pronouncement has proved so puzzling: the 63. We should probably say here that for Socrates philosophy-as-elenctic-examination is the best method for the attainment of virtue and happiness “in the present situation”—that is, the present state of moral ignorance in Athens—thus leaving open the possibility that another form of philosophizing might replace the use of the elenchos should its propaedeutic function result in a general advance toward the knowledge of virtue.

64. I take it here that “oracles . . . and every other way in which a divinity has ever ordered anyone to do anything,” at 33c4 –7, must be intended by Socrates to include the daimonion (where perhaps, per the argument of 40a2 – c3, it is the silence of the daimonion—not its active prescription—that indicates his duty).

65. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 44 –50, argues convincingly that paravdeigma at 23b1 is not being used in a merely instantiating sense (so that Socrates provides but one example of human wisdom), but in a recommending, paradigmatic sense (viz., “if you want to be wise, be like Socrates”).

66. As pointed out by Reeve, Socrates, 27–28, once Socrates achieves a satisfactory interpretation of the truth of the oracle, his elenctic activities do not become useless; rather, they are valuable insofar as they continue to promote the value placed by Apollo on recognizing and avoiding hubris. This interpretation is backed up by Phaedo 85b, where Socrates claims to be a fellow servant of Apollo (along with Apollo’s prophetic swans); cf. Stokes, “Socrates’ Mission,” 44 –50.

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prescriptive element was not what the oracle provided. Rather, that element lay implicit in Socrates’ antecedent commitment to do what is just and pious.67 What the oracle provided was an enigmatic descriptive component that—given Socrates’ prior moral commitments—prompted him to go on to discover the factual conditions to which it referred (namely, that his discoveries of ignorance were endorsed by the god and that the Athenians lacked antihubristic human wisdom), which brought the obligations of P into full play (just as, for example, I may have a duty of charity, but this duty becomes action-guiding for me only insofar as I am made cognizant of opportunities for exercising that obligation). Put another way, what the oracle provided was “information” that stimulated a lifetime’s occupation of interpretation, disconfirmation, and confirmation, a task that as it continued allowed Socrates to fix more exactly the scope and degree of effort and sacrifice that piety required of him; but this clarity then reciprocally revealed that more effort on his part was required . . . until his work became allconsuming. Prodded by the oracle, then, Socrates gradually discovered through his increasing success at elenctic refutation that in his case his own obligation to philosophize was free of virtually all the mitigating factors present in the case of other people.68 Freedom from these, however, meant becoming the sort of refutational busybody around whom slanders begin to multiply (20d–21a).69 67. Contra such interpreters as George Grote, Plato (1865), 1:284 – 87; C. Phillipson, The Trial of Socrates (London: Stevens & Sons, 1928), 293–96; and Paul Friedländer, Plato, trans.

Hans Meyerhoff (London: Pantheon Books, 1964), 2:162.

68. Thus, on my interpretation, Reeve, Socrates, 72, is quite incorrect to suggest that only Socrates has a religious reason for living the examined life. Rather, principle P implicitly commends philosophy as a pious practice for all (see McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2). It is still, for example, just as much our prima facie duty as it is Socrates’ to demonstrate to others that the god did not lie when it declared Socrates wise; cf. Vlastos, “Socratic Piety,” 231–38, and idem, Socrates: Ironist, chap. 6, 173–78.

69. Finally, although Socrates had plenty of rational, secular warrant for supposing that he had a duty to philosophize prior to, during, and after Chaerephon’s visit to Delphi, it appears that it was the oracular pronouncement—together with the extrarational input that followed (33c)—that allowed him to recognize the lack of mitigating limitations on that duty (and thus its supererogatory demands) as applied to his own person. For only after he elenctically examined all those self-professed moral experts in the course of trying to refute the surface reading of the oracular claim taken as true did Socrates come to a recognition of the true worth of his recognition of his own ignorance (and the true worth of the method that revealed this), the extent of moral deficiency in Athens, and his talent for elenchos-wielding. Thus, it is the extrarational impetus provided by the oracle that prompts him to realize that since one ought to philosophize to the extent to which that furthers the good, he, Socrates, is inordinately obligated to philosophize by virtue of these revelations. Thus, although Socrates’ secular and religious

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What, though, can A through O teach us more generally about the elenchos as a “constructive” practice for grounding moral claims? Here I can only indicate and not thoroughly establish an answer. To begin, it may seem that there are no general lessons to be learned from Apology 20c–23c, since Socrates’ procedure only displays the use of elenchoi with reference to a special class of proposition: those already believed to be certain (since uttered by truthful deities), where the issue is a matter of disconfirming one of two possible meanings, thus confirming the truth of the other. There is, however, no particular reason to limit the procedure in this way. Any proposition that is taken to be either certain (for example, “Gods are wise”; Ap. 23a5 –b4; Xen., Mem. 1.1.19; cf. Hi. Ma. 289b) or probable (for example, “Courage is one of the fine things”; La. 192c5 –7) (and bearing even more than two possible readings) would be grist for the sort of mill we find at work in A to O. Thus, it seems that here we have another text (in addition to the possibly Platonically “contaminated” Gorgias 508c–509d; cf. Cri. 46b – c) where Socrates’ refutational procedure is implicitly advertised as producing not merely inconsistency of belief but inductive proof (in this case, of the falsehood of [2a ] and [2b ] and the consequent truth of the remaining [2a ] and [2b ]).

Perhaps a good example of how elenctic interpretation might play a constructive role within Socrates’ larger project is the third elenchos of the Euthyphro (12e–13e). Here, following the failure of Euthyphro’s initial definitional attempts to specify the nature of pious action and the resulting “aporetic interlude,” Socrates offers Euthyphro renewed assistance (11e3–5) by asking whether all the just is pious, or whether justice is broader than piety such that piety is then merely a part of justice (11e2 –12d9). Subsequent to his explanation of these alternatives, Socrates secures Euthyphro’s assent to the second alternative, which then yields a partial account: (a) Piety is that part of justice having to do with the relation of humans to the gods (12e5 – 8).

The search then begins for the character of this relation that would differentiate pious justice from the remainder; it is then agreed as follows:

reasons are not wholly independent, it is the oracle that explains the extraordinary extent of Socrates’ particular philosophical obligations; cf. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist, chap. 6, 173–78; Reeve, Socrates, 72.

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(b) Piety is that part of justice that is a therapeutic tendance of gods (qerapeiva qew`n).70 (c) Socrates raises the issue of the kind of “therapeutic tendance” (b) intends, implying that there are two sorts, T1 and T2 (13a1–2). (d) T1 is the same kind as that which cares for horses, dogs, and cattle. (e) Hypothesis: Piety is that part of justice that is a T1 of gods. (f ) T1 benefits its subjects (for example, horses) by restoring or maintaining their health or by otherwise meeting their essential needs and improving the way in which they function (13b7–9). (g) If (e), then our pious actions benefit the gods by meeting their essential needs and improving the way in which they function. (h) But pious actions cannot benefit the gods by meeting their essential needs and improving the way in which they function (since gods have no needs and cannot be improved). (i) Thus, not-(e): Piety is not that part of justice that is a T1 of gods. (j) Thus, piety must be a T2 (namely, a “skillful service” [uJphretikhv] along the lines of assistance to craftspeople).

The preceding exemplifies in part what I take as a pattern common to many elenchoi: (1) some interlocutor advances a thesis p (here, hypothesis e); (2) prodded by Socrates, the interlocutor admits that he holds propositions q, r, and s (here [f ], [g], [h]); (3) through the assistance of Socrates, the interlocutor concedes that q and r and s entail not-p, whereupon (4)—since q and r and s are assumed true—Socrates claims that p (e) has been refuted and not-p (i) shown true.71 Here, in addition (as part of an “interpretive elenchos”), since (c) shows (b) to presuppose two meanings of “tendance,” one of which not-p (i) eliminates, (j) is proved true as the result of a disjunctive syllogism. To see how (j) can be claimed to emerge as a truth, however, we need to appreciate how the argument pattern (e) through (j) is embedded in a larger process of inference that begins with what I take to be propositions conceded to be true by not only Euthyphro but Socrates as well (a, b, d, f, g, h). Moreover, since we have independent reasons for believing 70. The term qerapeiva can refer to service of gods or care of what is “below us”; it simply means the correct treatment of any class of being. Here, then, Socrates opts for a particular interpretation of the term; see Burnet, Plato’s Euthyphro, 135, on Euthyp. 12e6; Versényi, Holiness, 100. Note also that in Xenophon (Mem. 1.4.10) Socrates holds that it is the gods that give qerapeiva to humans, not vice versa.

71. Or that the interlocutor is ignorant about p or, where p is a premise in the argument, that the interlocutor’s belief set is inconsistent (see, e.g., Euthyp. 7a– 8b; Grg. 475a–d).

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that even prior to this elenctic episode Socrates took conclusion j to be true,72 I would suppose that he understood the argument above to provide one good reason for believing that (j) is true. We have also seen the same pattern at work in A through O, where the only direct interlocutor, so to speak, was Socrates himself, as he disconfirmed one meaning of “wise” as applied to himself so as to establish the identity and truth of the proposition employing the other. In that case, of course, his propositions q, r, and so on were internal but well justified by experience and his understanding of his own language. Both cases, then, are examples of elenctic self-examination productive of what Socrates regards as truth. In the case of (a) through (j) we can also see why Socrates could say that by examining others his (other) purpose is to examine himself (Charm. 166c–d): this process constitutes a “recertification” of what Socrates already believes true.

Now, some may find it bothersome that in both these examples Socrates seems to be assuming that consistency is a criterion of truth (albeit one he recognizes as inferior). But one lesson to be taken from our study of Socrates’ long investigation of the oracle’s meaning seems to be that (as he saw it) one single elenchos does not a sufficient truth make: only by trying to disconfirm “Socrates is wisest(i)” over and over again and only by observing how the hypothesis “Socrates is wise(ii) (and wisest[ii])” resists disconfirmation over and over again does Socrates come to regard the latter as a secure truth that his jury should “know well.” Thus, if we ask in the case of the Euthyphro’s argument above why we might not reject starting point (a) (or [b] or [h]) instead of (e), Socrates’ answer would be the same, I suspect, as his response to the question “Why not resolve the contradiction created by the oracle’s report by rejecting the initial assumption that it is not lawful for Apollo to lie or your conviction that you are not wise(i)?” Namely, his 72. The division of just action into two kinds of just relations by reference to two different sets of relata is, for example, suggested by Apology 32c8 –d3 (“no unjust or impious deed” [32d3]), Crito 54b – c (“The act of leaving Athens would be unjust and impious”), Laches 199d– e (which suggests a division of courage and/or virtue along the same lines), and Gorgias 507a–b (where Socrates asserts that a person acting appropriately toward other people acts justly and acting appropriately toward the gods acts piously). Moreover, in the Apology Socrates often refers to his service to the god as a latreiva, but like uJphretikhv, this term connotes the work of, among other things, a servant for a master (latreiva especially connotes the work of a prophetess or temple employee for a god; see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans.

John Raffan [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985], 273). Note also that although the term keleuvw at Apology 30a5, commonly translated as “command,” does have several other possible translations, it is this sense of the term that should be preferred, given Socrates’ likening of his situation to a man’s being on station at a military post (Ap. 28e–29a).

For further discussion, see McPherran, Religion, sec. 2.2.

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response would be that both these beliefs and (a) have greater “evidential security” than their competing beliefs.73 By detailing Socrates’ long and varied confirmation of (3b ) and disconfirmation of (2a ) and (2b ), then, while also displaying how the entire process of discovery rests on both a critical and apparently unsecured proposition (“It is not lawful for Apollo to lie”) and another secured by long argumentative and reflective experience (3), the oracle story emphasizes that while Socrates proceeds on assumptions, he does so not unreasonably. Those propositions that he does assume, we are assured, are those every prior attempt to overturn which has resulted in selfcontradiction, while every argument where they serve as leading premises has either furthered inferences to similarly resistant apparent truths or contributed to the unmasking of a self-professed expert who, like Euthyphro, cannot make his words “stand still.” That this is warrant enough for Socrates is only worrisome, then, when we forget just how many such arguments there must have been in thirty years of playing the relentless gadfly and street preacher. One function of the oracle story, then, is to remind us that by being always on the move, Socrates was best able to stand still.74 73. For a good exposition of the contention that on Socrates’ view the elenchos reveals falsehoods and secures truths because of the evidential strength of the agreed-upon premises, see now Adams, “Elenchos and Evidence.”

74. My thanks to Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith for their commentary on this paper, as well as the many conversations concerning Socrates that we have enjoyed over the years.

I am also grateful to Jennifer Reid, Debra Nails, and Gary Scott for their comments on previous versions of this paper (and Gary’s invitation to contribute to this volume).

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8 The Socratic Elenchos?

THOMAS C. BRICKHOUSE and NICHOLAS D. SMITH

Few topics in Socratic philosophy have received more attention than has “the Socratic elenchos.” Despite the intense and extensive attention the subject has received, however, we find no general agreement about precisely what the elenchos is. In perhaps his most famous and most often cited work on Socrates,1 to which we can credit much of this interest in “the Socratic method,” Gregory Vlastos conceived of the elenchos as a method of proof that could only work given a general assumption that no one can be a consistent immoralist and a specific assumption that all of Socrates’ own considered moral beliefs were consistent.2 Vlastos argued that, given these assumptions, Socrates could conclude that all of his own considered moral beliefs were true.3 Accordingly, Socrates could be assured that any valid inference from moral premises in which he believed would also be true. On 1. Vlastos, Socratic Studies.

2. Respectively, Vlastos’s “tremendous assumption” [A], “Whoever has a false moral belief will always have at the same time true beliefs entailing the negation of that false belief” (ibid., 25), and the “further assumption” [B], “The set of elenctically tested moral beliefs held by Socrates at any given time is consistent” (ibid., 27–28).

3. Ibid., 28.

145

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this basis, Vlastos claimed to have solved what he called “the problem of the elenchus”: How could Socrates suppose that he ever proved anything with a style of argument that logically only demonstrated inconsistency among the beliefs Socrates adduced from his interlocutor?

Vlastos’s understanding of the elenchos, however, has failed to generate even a consensus, much less universal agreement, among scholars. Most of the subsequent scholarship on the topic has sought to show the ways in which Vlastos’s account fails, and several alternative accounts have been offered. None of these, either, has won much support among other scholars, who—as the three papers to which we are now responding amply show— continue to disagree even about the most basic defining traits of the elenchos. According to Benson, the elenchos requires only what Benson calls the “doxastic constraint”: 4 The interlocutor must believe the premises of an elenctic argument are true. Contra Vlastos, Benson provides impressive textual evidence against the claim that Socrates himself had to believe the premises he used in his arguments. According to McPherran, however, Socrates’ interpretation of the famous oracle to Chaerephon is elenctic—but in this case, the one responsible for the oracle (Apollo or the Pythia) is not directly examined at all, and so none of the premises Socrates uses in his subsequent investigation can plausibly be held to meet the sole condition Benson proposes. Socrates’ interpretive quest, therefore, cannot count as elenctic (at least in regard to the oracle) for Benson; but for McPherran, the interpretive activities count as a model of elenchos. Carpenter and Polansky simply despair of giving any general account of the elenchos.

We do not intend to offer detailed responses to any of the arguments above but will rather only give very brief explanations of why and where we do not find the accounts entirely compelling, though, as we have now already hinted, we find some very good evidence against each author’s view in the others’ arguments. Benson claims that the so-called “problem of the elenchus” cannot be solved—the elenchos, in his view, is not and cannot be a method for constructive philosophical discovery or development of moral doctrine. McPherran appears to be more optimistic, for he finds good reason to think that Socrates can employ elenctic arguments in constructive ways. He quietly concedes, however, that not all elenctic arguments appear to have the feature he uncovers in Socrates’ interpretive debates. In this concession, he appears to disagree with Benson, who proclaims that “the elenchos [is] a unique form of argument with unique features” (107). Carpenter 4. Benson, 105. Vlastos calls this “the ‘say what you believe’ requirement” (ibid., 7).

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and Polansky complicate the picture even more than McPherran does, arguing that the Socratic elenchos actually has several functions, which cannot be given a single common analysis. Our own view is less optimistic still for the project that has occupied so many scholars. Briefly, our view is that there can be no solution to “the problem of the elenchus” and no single analysis of elenctic arguments, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as “the Socratic elenchos.” Socrates argues with people in several different ways. Although it is tempting to group all or some of these ways under a single heading, “the elenchos,” it is a temptation that should be resisted, for nothing in Plato’s texts compels such a grouping, and gathering all of Socrates’ various arguments under a single heading only gives rise to interpretive problems now so familiar in the literature. In brief, then, our view is that the very idea of “the Socratic elenchos”—and thus the notion that there is some very special “problem of the elenchus”—is an artifact of modern scholarship.

I. The “Doxastic Constraint” According to Benson, the sole condition that must be met for a proposition to qualify as a premise in an elenctic argument is that it be believed by the interlocutor. Given only this condition, as Benson shows quite vividly, it cannot be that elenctic arguments prove any proposition true or false—at most they display an inconsistency in the interlocutor’s beliefs and thus reveal some ignorance in the interlocutor. Benson recognizes, however, that even this single condition eliminates several instances of Socratic philosophizing—indeed, virtually whole early Platonic dialogues—from the elenctic category. Benson thus excludes the “speech of the laws in the Crito, most of the argument of the Apology [with the sole exception of the interrogation of Meletus, and] the prologue of the Laches” from consideration in his account of the elenchos (107). Now, we are not entirely convinced that Benson’s “doxastic constraint” actually does exclude all of these: We see no reason to suppose that the speech of the laws in the Crito, for example, includes any premises to which Crito would not give his sincere assent. On the contrary, the substantive conclusions Socrates draws about the citizens’ duty to obey the law are derived from Socrates’ and Crito’s agreement about the premises.

Because the laws’ argument has the effect of refuting Crito’s claim that Socrates should escape, moreover, it reveals that Crito did not “speak well,” or with knowledge, when he urged Socrates to escape.

Benson’s approach faces a more serious problem, however. According to

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the “doxastic constraint” no argument can count as elenctic unless the interlocutor actually believes the premises. But even if Socrates often insists that his interlocutors express only their own beliefs, he is also all too often willing to allow his interlocutors to answer his questions without making any such commitment— or even to give answers that they explicitly deny believing. Socrates does not simply give up the argument in the Gorgias when Callicles quite plainly stops giving answers he is willing to claim as his own beliefs (see Grg. 505dff.), or when Thrasymachus does the same in Republic i (see Rep. i.350dff.), nor does Socrates seem at all daunted by Protagoras’s arguing from a point of view that he explicitly disavows (Prot. 333cff.). According to Benson’s analysis, then, Socrates’ arguments with these interlocutors may start out as elenctic but cease to be such the minute the interlocutor fails to satisfy the “doxastic constraint.” These arguments, we are to suppose, become generic, as it were, and no longer the “unique form of argument with unique features” that we uniquely associate with Socrates. This sudden shift, however, comes with no dramatic acknowledgment from Plato’s Socrates, who happily continues and draws his conclusions in each case.

We should also wonder just how strongly the “doxastic constraint” must apply in this “unique form of argument.” Must the interlocutor hold the premise with any kind of confidence, or is it enough that he is willing even tentatively to affirm it? In the passages in which Socrates insists on this “say what you believe” rule, he seems to want his interlocutors to signal their assent in fairly strong ways: “For the sake of the argument” is not good enough (see Cri. 49c–d, Grg. 500b, Prot. 331c, Rep. i.346a). In other cases, however, he says nothing about the “constraint,” so we should wonder how strongly it applies in these cases. One special reason for skepticism about this comes from a feature common to many of Socrates’ arguments (a feature about which Benson himself has had very important things to say in other papers): Socrates often directs his arguments—sometimes from the very beginning—toward a definition of some moral term or other. In these arguments, which always end up in aporia, Socrates often very deftly guides his interlocutor through several attempts to provide the sought-after definition. So what are we to make of the interlocutor’s condition, in regard to the “doxastic constraint,” in each successive attempt to provide a definition? 5 It might be tempting, perhaps, to attribute to the interlocutor a belief in the 5. We are indebted, in what follows, to the very interesting analysis offered in Hope May, “Socratic Ignorance and the Therapeutic Aim of the Elenchos,” in Wisdom, Ignorance, and Virtue: New Essays in Socratic Studies (suppl. Apeiron 30.4), ed. Mark L. McPherran (Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1997), 37–50.

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first attempted definition, given his willingness to affirm that definition at the beginning of the argument. Even if we were to concede that the “doxastic constraint” applies in first definitional attempts, however, we might well wonder whether it also applies to subsequent attempts. Socrates may hope, of course, that each new attempt is sincere in some way—he may want the interlocutor to suppose that each new attempt has at least sufficient initial plausibility to earn it serious scrutiny. But any evidence that the interlocutor actually believes the first definitional attempt may actually qualify as some evidence, at least, against the claim that the interlocutor believes subsequent attempts, unless a case can be made that the interlocutor’s beliefs are constantly changing during the elenctic process or that the interlocutor has several inconsistent beliefs about the definition of the relevant moral term.

Certainly in the last definitional attempt in the Euthyphro, for example, the “doxastic constraint” does not apply to Euthyphro: Socrates actually has to explain several features of the attempt— one initiated by Socrates himself— to the clueless Euthyphro (see esp. Euthyp. 12a and Euthyphro’s very tentative assent at 12d).

Such definitional attempts in the dialogues may qualify as sincere attempts to capture some convictions the interlocutor holds about F-ness or F things in a definition, but that is a different matter: One might well think that F-ness is a virtue, for example, or have several strong beliefs about what things are F, without having anything like a clear or strong belief about what F-ness is. If this is so, however, and if the “doxastic constraint” is a serious constraint at all, then, according to Benson’s interpretation, most (if not all) of Socrates’ definitional searches must also be ruled out as nonelenctic. Such an exclusion would, of course, still leave those dialogues or parts of dialogues in which Socrates does insist on the “doxastic constraint,” but we think it would leave far more Socratic argumentation unexplained than explained.

In this case, what Benson’s analysis requires threatens to make the “Socratic elenchos” the exception, rather than the rule, of Socratic philosophizing.

II. Socratic Interpretation In Benson’s account, it makes no sense to think that Socrates’ search for truth is pursued by elenctic argument. In McPherran’s interpretation, by contrast, which derives mainly from Socrates’ attempt to understand the oracle to Chaerephon, it does make sense to suppose that Socrates’ refutations constitute a serious and substantive attempt to uncover truth. McPherran

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argues that an interpretive element can be identified in elenctic argument. In the case of the oracle, Socrates is presented with a claim (the oracle that no one is wiser than he is) that he regards as indubitably true—but it is not a claim whose interpretation is at all obvious. Since only the correct interpretation of that claim will expose to clear view the truth of the claim (whereas false interpretations might render the claim false), Socrates undertakes to interpret the oracle correctly. This he does by testing rival interpretations of the claim made in the oracle (in this case, there are just two such competing interpretations), and discovers to his reasonable satisfaction which of the rival interpretations works—which renders the oracle’s claim true and which does not.

As McPherran notes, however, this situation has some very special features. For one thing, the claim made by the oracle, because of its divine origin, Socrates feels he has strong reason to accept as true. The same can hardly be said for most of the claims made by his mortal interlocutors, which Socrates subjects to scrutiny. In these other cases, Socrates seems to think he has at least some reason to think the relevant claims are not true— or at least there is nothing in the “authority” of those making the claims that provides any reason to accept them as true. So McPherran’s interpretive conception of the elenchos can only apply to those cases in which there is some (other) reason to accept the relevant claim as true. It may be enough that Socrates finds some plausibility in the claim, though, if this is all there is to it, the success of Socrates’ interpretive strategy will be founded on nothing more than his intuitive sense about the claim in question. After all, maybe Socrates’ hunch is wrong and the right way to interpret the claim is the way that reveals what is wrong with the claim—rather than some way that would make the claim seem right! This seems a very insecure foundation for the pursuit of truth. And yet, how else would a search for truth proceed, by those who do not already have access to the truth, except by searching about for those reasonings that seem to give the most plausible answers to our questions?

And short of divine sanction, who else but the ignorant are to judge what will count as “most plausible” among competing answers?

A rather different problem, however, seems more troubling. In the case of the oracle to Chaerephon, Socrates may reasonably suppose that the only two interpretations worth considering are those that McPherran identifies. But in order to make this assumption, Socrates must also suppose that in making his pronouncement, Apollo’s oracle used words in at least something like the ordinary way. But this assumption seems insecure against the (perhaps legendary) history of the Delphic oracle: In proclaiming Athens’s

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preservation by “wooden walls” in the Persian invasion, for example, the oracle hardly made an ordinary reference to the sides of ships, despite Themistocles’ successful interpretation. One might rightly worry that the field of possible candidates for correct interpretation might be considerably larger than McPherran’s Socrates seemed to suppose. As we ourselves are finding with some scholarly discomfort, even very clearly articulated and ubiquitous phenomena seem open to a confusing array of inherently plausible interpretations.

But these are versions of skeptical worries that have been aimed, in other circumstances, against the possibility of gaining knowledge from the senses, from inductive reasoning, and from what is called inference to the best hypothesis. McPherran’s Socrates is no more guilty of epistemic vice (apart from the peculiar religious element of his beliefs) than any of the rest of us are when we seek the truth. McPherran has offered one model of how Socrates can seriously think he is pursuing truth by refuting people. This is obviously in sharp contrast with Benson, who states unequivocally: “I do not deny . . . that Socrates aims to uncover truths and acquire knowledge. . . . I do deny, however, that Socrates (directly) employs his elenchos in an attempt to achieve these goals” (107). Benson never explains what he had in mind in making the qualification that Socrates does not directly employ the elenchos in his pursuit of truth, but perhaps McPherran has, in a sense, articulated in detail what Benson may have had in mind. For in McPherran’s account it is noteworthy that Socrates’ approach to truth is quite obviously an indirect one: Socrates seeks to improve his and others’ understandings of things by ruling out false alternatives. The problem is that there may be no limit to human ingenuity in generating new moral hypotheses to test. The same may be true for hypotheses that generate new possible interpretations— of empirical phenomena or oracular pronouncements, or of premises that seem intuitively to be true. In science, we freely invent new hypotheses, but must generally resort to methods that can only (and at most) disconfirm one of the rival hypotheses we have dreamed up. Such is the human epistemic condition, and in McPherran’s account the elenctic method is in good company with other ways we pursue truth indirectly.

We have argued for a different sort of indirect constructivism elsewhere,6 and there is no reason now to repeat our earlier arguments. But understanding Socrates’ pursuit of the truth and of knowledge as an indirect one seems to be called for if his refutations are to be understood as playing more 6. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, chap. 1.

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than a preparatory role. The question is, can there be a single univocal analysis of Socrates’ philosophizing under the heading “elenchos”?

McPherran has not helped much (and may not have intended to help much) in the achievement of this goal, for he acknowledges that not all of Socrates’ arguments appear to have been interpretive in nature. So even if we find his account of Socrates’ reasoning about the oracle quite plausible (and we do indeed find it a very plausible account), McPherran has done little to support the kind of strongly unifying ambitions of those like Vlastos and Benson. This fragmentation becomes even more pronounced in the essay by Carpenter and Polansky.

III. The Many Purposes and Varieties of Socratic Argument According to Carpenter and Polansky, refutation is at the heart of the Socratic elenchos. But even if this is its most obvious feature from a logical point of view, they observe that “Socratic cross-examinations seem to have many purposes” (89). Support for this observation, at any rate, is ample in Plato’s early dialogues if one considers all the claims Socrates makes about what he is doing—and all of the claims others make about what he is doing that he at least tacitly concedes. In our own earlier work, we actually did survey several of these and tried to show how Socrates’ refutative argumentation could serve each of them.7 Other scholars, not involved in the present debate, have also listed a number of goals Socrates appears to have, and have tried to show how each of them is reasonably pursued via refutative argumentation.8 As Carpenter and Polansky note, “An embracing reflection upon all elenctic discussion does not appear [in Plato’s dialogues],” and they claim that this is so “because Socrates has no single method of refutation or cross-examination” (90). Instead, they say, Socrates styles his approach according to the individual requirements of the specific interlocutor or argument context. There can be no doubt that Socrates shapes his approach to suit what he perceives as the specific requirements— or just deserts— of the interlocutor. Even Benson, who seeks to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the elenchos, allows that “it is always ad hominem, in the sense that it is always directed specifically at an individual” (note 17 to Chapter 6) and to concede this—unless we are to convict Socrates of pro7. Ibid.

8. See, for example, Woodruff, “Expert Knowledge.”

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ducing very poor ad hominem arguments—is surely to concede that he must to some degree shape his arguments to fit the specific blindness or perceptiveness, the prejudice or openness, and ineptitude or aptitude of distinct interlocutors. Given the great variety of interlocutors Plato’s dialogues provide for Socrates, we should not wonder that we find enormous differences in the ways Socrates deals with them. With Euthyphro, he is haughty and ironical; with Meletus, he is aggressive and demanding; with Charmides, he is teasing and urbane; with Hippias, he is sarcastic; with Crito, friendly; and so on.

Carpenter and Polansky conclude that in all of this difference of style there is no sense to be looking minimalistically for the thinnest of common logical strands, as Benson tries. But in fairness to Benson, nothing in what Carpenter and Polansky note refutes Benson’s understanding about what is, after all, common to all of Socrates’ particular refutations— or at least those in which the “doxastic constraint” is accepted and satisfied. For surely, as long as Hippias says only what he believes, and what Hippias says is all that Socrates employs in his arguments, what else we find Socrates doing will not make any difference to all that the “doxastic constraint” entails. So, despite the great variety of interlocutors and argumentative circumstances, Benson could still be entirely right about what makes an argument an elenctic argument.

Carpenter and Polansky articulate a much more telling worry, in our view, when they notice that “the term elenchos and its derivatives appear fairly commonly in the Euthydemus, and many of the refutations called by this name are performed by the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus” (92). What should trouble Benson about this is that these refutations, at least for the most part, may also be reasonably claimed to satisfy the “doxastic constraint.” But if what these eristic brothers do is the same as what Socrates does—as it must be, if Benson is right about the necessary and sufficient conditions of the Socratic elenchos—then it is no longer at all clear why we should take any special interest in coming to understand “the Socratic method.” By any contemporary measure, eristic competition does not qualify as interesting philosophy or argumentative methodology.

Of course, neither Vlastos nor Benson needs to have supposed that “the Socratic elenchos” was the only form of argument that could be called by the name elenchos. So, perhaps one point of the Euthydemus is to contrast “the Socratic elenchos” with other forms of elenchos. Plato obviously does have Socrates contrast the sort of persuasion orators provide with his own sort, as we see in Socrates’ conversation with Polus in the Gorgias, for example (see Grg. 471e– 472c, 475e– 476a). And certainly Plato means for us

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to see a contrast between what Euthydemus and Dionysodorus do and what Socrates does. Yet there is nothing in that dialogue that tells us the contrast is of two very different sorts of elenchos—the contrast is in the ends they serve: Socrates seeks truth, whereas the eristic brothers seek only victory in arguments. If we apply this as the differentia between species of elenchos, however, Benson’s view of the uniquely Socratic elenchos cannot be correct, for Benson acknowledges that a consequence of his view is (again) a denial that “Socrates (directly) employs his elenchos in an attempt to achieve these goals [sc., to uncover truths and acquire knowledge].” But Benson can also mount impressive evidence for the claim that in many (or, indeed, most) of Socrates’ arguments the goal appears quite explicitly to be the simple refutation of the interlocutor. So neither can we make the pursuit of truth a necessary or sufficient condition of the (uniquely Socratic) elenchos.

This is not to say that we cannot distinguish between Socratic and eristic refutation, for surely we can. McPherran’s approach, indeed, might be one way to do so: In Socratic refutation, ambiguities and alternative interpretations of premises might be identified and then scrutinized for their plausibility, whereas in eristic refutation these ambiguities and interpretive alternatives would (at least typically) be masked and employed to trip up the interlocutor with equivocations or fallacies. But unless there turns out to be some logical feature or features that are both unique and common to all or most of Socrates’ arguments (or at least all of his refutative arguments), then it will still turn out that there is no “unique form of argument with unique features” to be found in Plato’s early dialogues or to be attributed to (Plato’s) Socrates. And as we have said, even McPherran acknowledges that not all of Socrates’ arguments have the feature he has identified.

IV. Against the Very Idea of “the Socratic Method” So, what is left of “the Socratic elenchos”? Plato fails to give the supposedly “Socratic method” so much as a name and (as Carpenter and Polansky have shown) applies the one scholars have given it to any sort of refutation at all—including eristic verbal sports in which none of us has much interest.

Other scholars have argued plausibly that Aristotle does identify a kind of argument—peirastic dialectic—that seems to fit well with what Socrates does; 9 but even if this is so, Aristotle never so much as hints that this style of 9. See, for example, R. Bolton, “Aristotle’s Account of the Socratic Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 11 (1993), 121–52.

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dialectic is to be identified uniquely or even strongly with Socrates. The most reasonable conclusion, we claim, is a purely negative one: there simply is no such thing as “the Socratic elenchos.”

But if this is right, don’t we lose something terribly important from our study of Socrates? We think not. Plato shows us a Socrates who is absolutely dedicated to arguing and to reasoning about things. Plato’s Socrates says that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being” (Ap. 38a), and claims to be “not just now, but always . . . the sort of man who is persuaded by nothing but the reason that seems best to me when I consider it” (Cri. 46b). We do not have to suppose that “the examined life” has to follow some “unique form of argument” to be worth living, nor do we have to suppose that the reasons we should follow when we examine our lives must always flow from a single form of reasoning. Socrates’ arguments are mostly—but not always—refutative in style, which is to say they are arguments against a position someone has taken. They are often—but not always—hortative in some way. They are mostly—but, as Carpenter and Polansky rightly note, not always— ethical in content. Socrates often does— but sometimes does not—insist that those answering his questions say only what they believe. Sometimes Socrates searches for definitions with his interlocutors. Sometimes he evaluates the relative merits of contrasting individual claims. Sometimes he appears bent only on revealing the cognitive inadequacies and pretensions of his interlocutors. Other times, he seems to be enlisting their helpful companionship in pursuing something worth knowing that neither he nor they feel very sure about. Still other times, Socrates argues in ways that appear directly and unabashedly to be leading his interlocutors to some moral position Socrates himself is promoting. What is common to all of these examples of Socratic philosophizing is that they involve the examination of the life-shaping beliefs of the interlocutor (and sometimes of Socrates himself) through the generic medium of argument, but not through a specific form of argument.

As Benson notes in his paper, the very first reply to Vlastos’s famous article on the Socratic elenchos—by Richard Kraut 10 —provided essentially the same response as the one we are now offering. Vlastos’s account derived from his impression that there was a very special problem confronting the way Socrates argued, given what Socrates seemed to be prepared to claim as a result of his arguments, and Vlastos named this “the problem of the elenchus.” Kraut replied, in effect, that, on the contrary, there was nothing unusual going on in Socratic arguments or what he claimed to get from 10. Kraut, “Comments.”

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them—it was just what we all do when we try to argue well. Accordingly, there is no “problem of the elenchus.” What Kraut did not specifically say in his early reply, but might have said to anticipate our argument completely, is that neither must there be anything unique or distinctive about the elenchos for there to be the sort of problem Vlastos tried far too imaginatively to solve.

What was unique about Socrates was that he was a man absolutely— even religiously, as McPherran’s work has so powerfully shown— devoted to the life of reasoned argument. He put every other concern that occupies ordinary people behind his concern to lead “the examined life.” Unlike his contemporaries—and unlike most of us—Socrates was clearly (sometimes painfully) aware of his own ignorance, but this ignorance was a condition to which he never allowed himself simply to acquiesce. Instead, he spent his days struggling to remediate his ignorance—if not, per impossibile, to eliminate it altogether. This sort of life, Plato’s works try to show us, is a model for us all—a model we can emulate without first mastering some special method of reasoning. The very project pursued most elegantly by Vlastos and then debated by all of those who have nonetheless followed the path he proposed for us—to identify such a special method—has distracted us from the Socratic mission, which is what made Socrates what he was.

But it is not just a distraction from what is essentially “Socratic”; it actually conflicts with what we believe is at the heart of the Socratic mission, for it wrongly attributes to Socrates something more reliable and more powerful than any of us, including Socrates, actually have. We claim that it is a vital feature of the Socratic mission that Socrates claimed to have no special tools, no unique and powerful weapons, against the ignorance he exposed and sought always to transcend. Armed with literally nothing but his strength of character, Socrates leads us on a quest to become less ignorant than we are. On this quest, we must not be seduced into thinking that there are wonderful special steps we can take or “unique methods” we can master to shortcut the impossibly long distances to be traveled. Even at the end of his life, our exemplar declared himself still ignorant, after all he had done and all he had argued. But rather than rue the life that had led him to such apparent failure, he emphatically advocated it as a model for all of us to follow. The very practice of the examined life, even if it never yields moral knowledge, improves us by continually showing us when our beliefs fall short. Far worse than never to attain moral knowledge would be not to try to attain it, or to give up on trying not to be ignorant.

Socrates had no special advantage, no “Socratic method,” on which he

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could rely, and there is no such wonder, for instance, to be found in the early dialogues. To imagine that there is such a thing turns Socrates into a more clever man than he was, but also a less heroic man than he was. Like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, Socrates was and is only “like us” (see Rep. vii.515a) in what he could bring to the task of overcoming ignorance. The only advantage Socrates ever claimed over any of his contemporaries was that he was aware of his own ignorance, whereas others were not. This provides no tool or craft by which to advance one’s cognitive condition. It provides only motive for those who regard ignorance as a bad thing.

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P A R T

T H R E E

Socratic Argumentation and Interrogation in Specific Dialogues A. Clitophon, Euthydemus, Lysis, Philebus

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9 The Socratic Elenchus as Constructive Protreptic philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti, ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum — Cicero, Academica I, iii, 9

FRANCISCO J. GONZALEZ

In a dialogue of greater importance than its brevity and disputed authenticity would lead one to suspect,1 a disgruntled student named Clitophon criticizes Socrates for only turning people toward wisdom and virtue without 1. The epigraph from Cicero is cited by Grote, Plato (1865), 1:277, as applicable to the Platonic dialogues.

The most balanced and thorough account of the question of authenticity currently available is Simon R. Slings, Plato: Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Slings concludes that “[t]he Clitophon is written from a wholly Platonic point of view” (253; see also 127) and that no linguistic case can be made against its authenticity (222 –27). While this still leaves open the possibility that the dialogue was written by a pupil “who not only understood completely Plato’s aims in writing dialogues and rejecting protreptic, but also the niceties of his use of elenchos; someone, moreover, who had adapted himself so much to Plato’s manner of writing that even his use of language faithfully reproduces that of Plato in his last period” (231), Slings finds the hypothesis of such a perfect look-alike of Plato who is yet not Plato too far-fetched. Of the arguments against authenticity considered by Slings, the two I consider strongest, excluding ones that depend on Slings’s questionable interpretation of the dialogue (see below), are the following: the dialogue is a pastiche, or “cento,” to an extent greater than what is necessary for its purpose (228 –29; see 93–98), and foreign material is sometimes adapted to the context in a very clumsy manner (229 –30; see 98 –127). Slings counters that the pastiche is not as obvious in the Clitophon as it is in the Dubia, that the dialogue could have been written in haste, and that “clumsiness is a highly subjective concept” (232). Because he 161

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getting them there.2 What I here translate as “turning toward” is the verb protrepein. “Protreptic” became in antiquity the technical term for discourse that converts or exhorts one to the philosophical way of life.3 Central to Clitophon’s critique is the characterization of Socrates’ philosophizing as nothing but protreptic. A brief summary of the dialogue and Clitophon’s argument shows that this is by no means a frivolous critique.

I. Clitophon’s Critique of Socrates in the Clitophon Socrates opens the dialogue by accusing Clitophon, in the formal language of an indictment, of criticizing his own conversations in favor of the instruction offered by Thrasymachus. Clitophon replies that this is only half true: while he has criticized Socrates for some things, he has also praised him for others. In the remainder of the dialogue, Clitophon presents his case. He begins with an imitation of Socrates’ protreptic discourse, not to criticize it, but rather to praise its effectiveness in turning people toward the pursuit of virtue and the care of their souls. Socrates’ speeches, according to Clitophon, “can really rouse us as if we had been sleeping” (408c3– 4). But Clitophon’s praise ends there, since he does not consider such exhortation to be enough. To explain what is lacking, he proceeds to narrate a discussion he once had with Socrates’ companions. He first addressed them with the following words: O you most distinguished gentlemen, what are we actually to make of Socrates’ exhorting of us to pursue virtue [protroph; ejp ajrethvn]?

Are we to believe that this is all there is and that it is impossible to

thus finds it easier to answer the arguments against authenticity than to accept the hypothesis of a perfect look-alike, Slings concludes, “although not without hesitation” (233–34) and with “misgivings” (x), that the dialogue is authentic. For me, the misgivings caused by the clumsy and pastichelike composition are too great to be put aside. David Roochnik, “The Riddle of the Cleitophon,” Ancient Philosophy 4 (1984): 134, wrongly assumes that if no linguistic case can be made against the Clitophon, only a case based on the philosophical content remains. While I believe that the Clitophon was not written by Plato, I discuss it here because it so forcefully articulates a serious critique that any account of Socrates’ method in Plato’s genuine dialogues must be able to answer.

2. For what is known of the historical Clitophon, see Slings, Clitophon, 56 –58; Clifford Orwin, “The Case Against Socrates: Plato’s Cleitophon,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 15 (1982): 744, and Roochnik, “Riddle,” 138 –39.

3. On the different possible meanings of “protreptic,” see Slings, Clitophon, 59 – 63.

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pursue the matter further and grasp it fully? Will this be our lifelong work, simply to convert to the pursuit of virtue those who have not yet been converted [tou;~ mhvpw protetrammevuv ou~ protrevpein], so that they in turn may convert others? Even if we agree that this is what a man should do, should we not also ask Socrates, and each other, what the next step is? (408d1– e2) Clitophon then explained what exactly he wanted: if we were exhorted to take care of our bodies, we would also need to be told what specific skills (technai) are capable of benefiting the body, that is, gymnastics and medicine. Likewise, if we are now being exhorted to care for the virtue of our souls, we also need to be told what specific skill (techne¯) has this virtue as its object (408e3– 409a3). One of Socrates’ companions at this point responded by identifying this skill with justice (409a4 – 6). Clitophon, however, objected that this response only names the skill and demanded a definition meeting the following requirement: in the case of the techne¯ of medicine, we can distinguish the skill itself, which is what doctors teach to others who wish to become doctors, from the product of this skill: health; analogously, we cannot define justice simply as the skill by which just people become just: we must specify what this skill produces for us (409a7– c1).

When Socrates’ companions identified this product with “the beneficial,” “the appropriate,” “the useful,” or the “advantageous” (409c1–3), Clitophon objected that these words could describe the product of any skill.

What, he insisted, is the peculiar product of justice? Finally one of Socrates’ companions replied that it is friendship in cities (409d1– 6). Yet this person was immediately subjected to Clitophon’s persistent elenchus (409d6 – e10).

Clitophon first pointed out that while the product of justice must be good, some friendships, for example, those of children and animals, are often harmful. Socrates’ companion attempted to escape this contradiction by defining true friendship strictly as agreement (homonoia) and therefore as something of which animals and children are not capable. Clitophon then countered by pointing out that there are two types of agreement: we agree about something either by having the same beliefs about it or by having knowledge of it. But shared beliefs can often be harmful. In this way, Socrates’ companion was able to preserve the goodness of friendship and thus save his definition of justice only by identifying friendship with agreement in the sense of knowledge. All those present immediately saw the circle: justice was being defined as the type of skill or knowledge that produces knowledge.

In other words, the definition is circular because it fails to identify a product

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of the skill of justice distinct from this skill itself (justice is knowledge or agreement about what? 409e10 – 410a6): justice is identified with knowledge that produces only itself.

Yet Clitophon’s greatest disappointment came when he turned to Socrates himself. Socrates identified the product of justice with hurting one’s enemies and helping one’s friends. This of course is no improvement on what Socrates’ companions said, since it too is vulnerable to the problem of defining friendship. But Socrates himself undermined the definition by later claiming that the just man does not harm anyone (410a7–b3). Because he has often experienced the kind of disappointment he has just finished narrating, Clitophon explains that he has no choice but to conclude that while Socrates excels in praising virtue and exhorting us to its pursuit, he either does not know what virtue is or does not want to share this knowledge with his students. Though Clitophon leaves both possibilities open, we can suspect that he is inclined toward the former, since why would Socrates keep this knowledge hidden if he had it? In either case, Clitophon concludes that he will go to Thrasymachus, since the Sophist, as we know from the Republic, has very definite views on justice that he would be glad to share for a price. Socrates makes no response.4 In the words of George Grote, Clitophon “is sick of perpetual negation and stimulus: he demands doctrines and explanations, which will hold good against the negative Elenchus of Sokrates himself.” 5 The source of his frustration is the view that philosophy should be more than the protreptic Socrates offers, a belief that he considers justified by the fact that other technai are more than this. Doctors do not simply praise medicine and exhort us 4. The absence of a response has led many modern scholars (though apparently no one in antiquity) to the view that the Clitophon is unfinished. Slings, Clitophon, documents the history of this view (10 –13) and then presents arguments against it (13–18). The decisive argument in my view is the following: through his ironic assumption that Clitophon’s praise and blame will accurately describe his strengths and weaknesses, Socrates shows at the very beginning of the dialogue that he intends to make no response but instead to listen demurely (15).

Roochnik, “Riddle,” also discusses the view that the Clitophon is a fragment (133–36), but argues that there is a reason for Socrates’ silence: Clitophon, as we learn from the Republic, is a radical relativist (139 – 40), and philosophy is incapable of refuting radical relativism (141– 42).

However, nothing Clitophon says in the Clitophon itself presupposes such relativism: on the contrary, Clitophon’s critique of Socrates rests on the assumption that the knowledge of virtue is an objective techne¯ like medicine. And the conclusion Clitophon draws is not that there are no answers but rather that Socrates is either unwilling or unable to provide these answers. I suggest that what we see in this dialogue is Clitophon’s disillusionment at not getting from philosophy the answers he expected to get, a disillusionment that eventually leads him, with the help of Thrasymachus’s ideas, to the relativism he expresses in the Republic.

5. Grote, Plato (1865), 3:23.

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to its pursuit: they have been taught medicine and can teach it to others; they also can use this skill to produce something distinct from the skill itself: health. Clitophon in this way derives from examples of technai such as medicine two sharp distinctions that he then applies to moral knowledge: (1) one between the pursuit of knowledge and knowledge itself and (2) one between knowledge itself and its product. These two distinctions are of course related, since Clitophon suggests that we can attain the knowledge or skill Socrates encourages us to pursue only if we can identify the product of this knowledge, just as one who wishes to learn medicine can only actually learn it when knowing its product. Because Socrates and his companions cannot identify the product of the skill of justice and therefore also cannot define this skill, they fail to maintain either distinction. But the consequence of their failure is an absurd circle: (1) If they do not distinguish between knowledge and its pursuit, they must absurdly claim that the task of the philosopher is solely to convert others to the pursuit of virtue so that they may in turn convert yet others. Virtue then becomes, in the felicitous phrase of Clifford Orwin, nothing but “a perpetual chain-letter of exhorting.” 6 (2) If they fail to distinguish the product of the skill of justice from the skill itself, then, as we have seen, they end up with the absurdly circular definition of justice as knowledge that produces agreement equaling knowledge. It is this circularity that confirms for Clitophon the inability of Socrates to lead his companions beyond the pursuit of wisdom to wisdom itself and its specific result.

II. What Is the Target of Clitophon’s Critique?

As I hope the preceding analysis shows, this is a cogent and powerful critique. But does it fairly represent its target, if this target is the Platonic Socrates? 7 In the Apology, Socrates describes himself as doing exactly what 6. Orwin, “The Case,” 750.

7. Slings, Clitophon, 39 – 46, denies this identification, arguing that the Socrates of the Clitophon is described as exhorting a large crowd to the pursuit of virtue and wisdom, while the Socrates of other dialogues is shown engaged in the elenctic refutation of individual interlocutors. However, in the Apology Socrates harangues a large crowd and, more important, describes his mission as one of exhorting all Athenians. Though Socrates clearly pursued this goal by talking to individuals one by one, Clitophon could parody the goal by describing Socrates as haranguing all Athenians at once, “like a god suspended above a tragic stage.” Slings’s own interpretation is that the Clitophon is a critique of an un-Socratic “explicit protreptic,” that is, protreptic that seeks to convince one directly to pursue virtue or philosophy, in favor of Socrates’ “implicit protreptic,” that is, a protreptic that seeks to convince indirectly through the

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Clitophon describes him as doing: “I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls” (30a7–b2; Tredennick trans.).8 But in addition to describing his mission as one of exhortation, Socrates in the Apology also appears guilty of that confusion of exhortation with teaching to which Clitophon objects.9 He portrays himself as the greatest benefactor of the Athenians, as if in merely exhorting them to the pursuit of virtue he had actually made them virtuous.

For example, when Socrates claims to deserve as his “penalty” free meals for the rest of his life at state expense, he explains that in exhorting (parakevleusi~) his fellow citizens he has done them the greatest good deed possible (eujergesiva; see 36c3– 4, d5 – 6). Surely, Clitophon would protest, there is a greater good than being exhorted to pursue virtue: namely, being taught virtue.

But how is this protreptic aspect of Socrates’ philosophizing related to the elenctic aspect that Clitophon himself claims to be imitating in refuting Socrates’ companions (408d1).10 The Apology appears to recognize no sharp distinction here. Elenchus is precisely the means by which Socrates attempts to turn the Athenians away from their excessive concern with material goods to a concern for virtue. Through its ability to expose their ignorance, the elenchus is the most effective means of persuading the Athenians use of elenchos (Clitophon, 3– 4, 209 –15). On this interpretation, Clitophon represents Socrates’ method (53), while the “Socrates” criticized by Clitophon represents the method opposed to Socrates’. Thus a work that has been thought to be a critique of the Platonic Socrates turns out instead to be a defense. Slings grants that the author risked some misunderstanding in presenting a Socratic critique of an un-Socratic protreptic in the form of a critique of Socrates by a pupil of Thrasymachus (213). In fact, Slings is the first person since antiquity to understand the author’s intention! Slings even cites the author’s unclarity as an argument against identifying the author with Plato (230). Yet surely no intelligent or even semi-intelligent writer would ever think of doing what Slings’s interpretation describes the author of the Clitophon as doing. It is therefore hard to imagine a more implausible interpretation: we should accept it only on the basis of extremely strong arguments, and, as is shown below, Slings’s arguments certainly do not have this character.

8. Grote also recognizes that “the description given by Sokrates of himself in the Apology, and the reproach addressed to Sokrates by Kleitophon, fully coincide” (Plato [1865], 3:22; evidence provided on 21–22).

9. Orwin has even suggested that the Clitophon can be read as the city’s reply to the Apology, as a “counter-Apology,” since “[i]n the Apology Socrates sometimes seems to confuse exhorting the citizens to virtue with success in educating them to it. On this confusion, in fact, rests his claim to have proved himself their greatest benefactor” (“The Case,” 745).

10. See Konrad Gaiser, Protreptik und Paränese (Tübingen: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1959), 142. Furthermore, as Slings himself points out, we must assume that Socrates’ description of himself in the Apology as “merely persuading” is somehow true of what he is shown doing in the dialogues (Clitophon, 148).

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to look after their souls. Both Clitophon’s critique of Socrates’ practice and Socrates’ own reflection on this practice in the Apology are therefore not in conflict with what Socrates does in other dialogues: both simply make explicit what is only implicit elsewhere: the protreptic function of the elenchus.

Socrates indeed “merely exhorts,” but his primary means of exhortation is the elenchus.11 Therefore, we can conclude that Clitophon is criticizing the Platonic Socrates and his distinctive method.12 Through his elenchus Socrates can indeed convince us of our own worthlessness and ignorance and thus of the need to pursue virtue and wisdom. However, rather than lead us to their possession, the elenchus appears to do the exact opposite: as Clitophon’s own use of it demonstrates, it can only destroy whatever positive characterizations of this goal are offered.13 11. This protreptic function of the elenchus is recognized by both Slings, Clitophon, 128 – 34, and Gaiser, Protreptik, esp. 30, 110 –11, who cites as evidence Alcibiades’ description in the Symposium of the protreptic effect of Socrates’ words (108), Nicias’s comments in the Laches (187e–188b), Socrates’ imaginary conversation with an importunate questioner (i.e., himself!) in the Hippias Major (110 –11), and, of course, the Euthydemus (29 n. 24). However, there are two important differences between the views of Slings and Gaiser (differences Slings ignores in his own account of how his position differs from Gaiser’s: Clitophon, 163 n. 310): (1) While Gaiser sees Socrates’ protreptic as itself educating the interlocutors (see note 30 below), Slings sharply distinguishes between two functions of the elenchus, the negative one of eliminating false opinions versus the positive one of leading to knowledge, and asserts that only the former function is to be identified with protreptic (see Clitophon, 135, 137– 41); (2) Slings makes a very sharp distinction between explicit protreptic and implicit protreptic, while Gaiser sees explicit proptreptic, or what he calls Paränese, as simply a means of reflecting on the protreptic implicit in the elenchus. Gaiser therefore can easily reconcile with the elenchus the explicit protreptic found in the Apology and in other dialogues where Socrates must encourage his interlocutors to persist in the discussion and put their trust in the logos (see Protreptik, 30, 148 –96, esp. 183– 87; he can in the same way reconcile Clitophon’s characterization of Socrates with the dialogues: see 141– 42). Slings, on the other hand, dismisses Paränese in the dialogues as having “rather an auxiliary function” (Clitophon, 163 n. 310) and can reconcile the explicit protreptic of the Apology with the elenchus only by ascribing to Plato in that dialogue a rather unclear and convoluted strategy (141– 48). The present interpretation sides with Gaiser on both these points of difference, since Slings’s thesis cannot yield acceptable interpretations of the Clitophon and the Euthydemus, not to mention other dialogues.

Brickhouse and Smith, who also draw attention to the protreptic aspect of the elenchus (Plato’s Socrates, 23–27), rightly observe that “it cannot be found in standard accounts of the elenchos, given their emphasis on propositions or beliefs and not, as we have emphasized, on the testing of lives” (23). Like Slings and unlike Gaiser, however, Brickhouse and Smith see this aspect of the elenchus as dependent on the completely distinct ability of the elenchus to achieve doctrinal results (27).

12. Cf. Gaiser, Protreptik, 146 n. 161.

13. According to Grote, Socrates’ practice in many of the dialogues confirms Clitophon’s accusation (Plato [1865], 3:22 –23). “The challenge of Cleitophon is thus unanswerable. It brings out in the most forcible, yet respectful, manner the contrast between the two attributes

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But then are not the elenctic dialogues themselves targets of Clitophon’s critique? Do they not simply encourage us to pursue virtue without taking us there? Indeed, already in antiquity Plato’s dialogues were seen as having primarily a protreptic function. Cicero, probably relying on an earlier source,14 has Varro in the Academica observe that the Socratic writings of Plato and others show that “Socrates’ discourse was exhausted in the praise of virtue and in the exhortation of people to study virtue.” 15 But we now also have the important early testimony of Dicaearchus, the pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastus, who is reported by Philodemus to have said that Plato, “more than any other man, made philosophy thrive and dissolved it. For while he converted [proetrevyato], as it were, innumerable men to it [philosophy] through the writing of the dialogues, he made them philosophize in a superficial manner, diverting them [ejktrevpwn] toward the obvious.” 16 This passage shows that not long after Plato’s death criticisms, like Clitophon’s, were directed against the protreptic character of the dialogues: the very success of the dialogues in exhorting so many to the pursuit of philosophy was seen as encouraging a superficiality that does not go beyond such exhortation and its obvious truisms. In 1959, Konrad Gaiser, in Protreptik und Paränese, defended at length a much more positive characterization of the dialogues as protreptic.

of the Sokratic mind: in the negative, irresistable force and originality: in the affirmative, confessed barrenness alternating with honest, acute, practical sense, but not philosophy” (24).

14. See Slings, Clitophon, 83– 86.

15. “omnis eius [Socrates’] oratio tamen in virtute laudanda et in hominibus ad virtutis studium cohortandis consumebatur” (i.4.16). Slings connects this claim with the Middle Academy’s view of Socrates and Plato as skeptics (Clitophon, 87).

16. tw`n pavntwn [ajnqrwv]pwn ouJto~ eu[xhse[n f]ilosofivan kai; katevlus[e]. pro[et]revyato mevn ga;r ajpe[ivr]ou[~] wj~ eijpei`n ejpæ aujth;n dia; th`~ ajnagrafh`~ l[ovgw]n [Gaiser reads dialovgwn]. ejpipol[a]ivw~ de; kaiv [tina~] ejpo[ivhs]e filosofei`n fanera;n ejktrev[pwn] (Tiziano Dorandi, ed., Philodemi Academicorum historia, in Storia dei Filosofi: Platone e l’Accademia [Naples: n.p., 1991], 125 –26). In my interpretation of this passage, I follow Jonathan Barnes (“Philodemus and the Old Academy,” Apeiron 22 [1989]: 146 – 47) and Dorandi, Philodemi Academicorum historia, 205 – 6. Slings finds in Demetrius, Peri hermeneias 296 –98, evidence that the interpretation of the Socratic dialogue as protreptic was already existent in antiquity, quite probably as early as the third century b.c.e. (Clitophon, 83– 86). Gaiser also cites Themistius, Orat. 23, 295 C /D (Aristotles, Nerinthus fr. 1, pp. 23–24 Ross) (Konrad Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre, 2d ed. [Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1968], 449). Slings himself concludes that the aporetic dialogues “are Plato’s protreptic” (Clitophon, 163); for a similar view, see Leonardo Tarán, “Platonism and Socratic Ignorance,” in Platonic Investigations, ed. Dominic J. O’Meara (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1985), 89, and Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) (see note 20 below).

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Whether all of Plato’s dialogues have primarily this function, as Gaiser claims, is a question that cannot be pursued here. Yet at least the aporetic dialogues that show at work the elenchus described in the Apology are, like this elenchus itself, primarily protreptic in aim. Even Vlastos, who characterizes the elenchus as “constructive,” that is, as capable of establishing doctrines, bases his case primarily on the Gorgias and makes little effort to show what is constructive about the aporetic dialogues.17 It seems that the only positive function of the elenchus in most, if not all, of these dialogues is protreptic. But then Clitophon’s critique can also be seen as a critique of these dialogues. In the Laches and the Charmides, the interlocutors have been convinced of the importance of learning about courage and temperance, but have not been shown what they are. Though at the end they choose Socrates as their teacher, he claims to be unable to teach them. And indeed there is no Charmides the Sequel. What then is the point of these dialogues? Do they not perplex more than enlighten? What is the use of the exhortation to inquire into courage and temperance if no final answer can be settled upon?

One possible solution is to interpret the protreptic of the aporetic dialogues as a prolepsis of doctrines to be found elsewhere, for example, in the Republic. But then we can imagine Clitophon asking why these doctrines are teasingly left out of the dialogues whose problems they are meant to solve and reserved instead for another dialogue with a very different set of goals and problems. Specifically, the definitions of temperance and courage in the Republic do not solve, but rather ignore, the Charmides’ problem of show-

17. In “Afterthoughts,” 74 n. 8, Vlastos admits that the conclusions reached in “Socratic Elenchus” apply mainly to the Gorgias. In “Method Is All,” 33–36, he asserts that the methodological principles made explicit in the Gorgias can be read back into other Socratic dialogues, without making clear how exactly this is to be done. While rejecting Vlastos’s view that an individual elenctic argument can establish moral truths, Brickhouse and Smith appear to rely equally on the Gorgias in reaching their conclusion that “repeated elenctic examinations can confirm the untenability of the opposed view and thus give Socrates grounds for claiming that leading the examined life has constructive doctrinal consequences” (Plato’s Socrates, 20). They do claim to find incidental doctrinal results in the failed search for definitions carried out in the aporetic dialogues (21–23), as does Vlastos, but without specifying what they are in each case (Gregory Vlastos, “Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge,” in Socratic Studies, ed. Myles Burnyeat [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994], 58 n. 44). Neither Vlastos nor Brickhouse and Smith succeed, in my view, in explaining even what is happening in the Gorgias: all that even repeated elenctic examinations can show is that individuals who, like Callicles, defend immoral beliefs (e.g., that “might is right” and good pleasure) always also happen to have moral beliefs (e.g., that the wise and courageous are better than the cowardly and stupid) that contradict their immoral beliefs; what the elenchus cannot demonstrate is that the moral beliefs are to be preferred over the immoral ones.

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ing the possibility and utility of a knowledge of knowledge and the Laches’ problem of reconciling knowledge with risk; the reason is that these definitions are meant to address different questions.18 Furthermore, Grote has a point in arguing that Clitophon would not be satisfied with what Socrates says in the Republic itself, which is a much more aporetic, tentative, and exhortatory dialogue than many readers recognize.19 In short, the protreptic of the aporetic dialogues is not clearly proleptic.20 18. In the case of courage, Socrates is explicit about the limitations of his definition. When Glaucon agrees to accept it, Socrates replies: “Do so and you will be right in accepting it, with the reservation [ge] that it is the courage of a citizen [politikhvn] [which is being defined]. Some other time, if you wish, we will discuss it more properly [e[ti kavllion divimen].” Whether or not the Laches is that “other time,” it is certainly a less qualified and more in-depth discussion of courage. Even Kahn, who sees the Republic as solving the problems raised in the aporetic dialogues (see note 20 below), must admit that “the definitions of Republic iv still fall short of an adequate account of essences” (Plato, 157; see also 222, 378 –79).

19. Grote claims that if the Clitophon was originally intended as an introduction to the Republic, Plato had to abandon it because it made Socrates’ task too hard; he therefore wrote a new introduction (Republic i) that confronts Socrates with elenctically inept interlocutors (Plato [1865], 3:25 –26). Grote is certain that the Republic would not have been as positive in outcome if it had been a continuation of the Clitophon: “The case must have been very different if Plato had continued the dialogue Kleitophon; so as to make Sokrates explain the theory of Justice, in the face of all the objections raised by a Sokratic cross-examiner” (26).

This last point of Grote’s should be taken seriously, not because it is necessarily true but because it at least prevents us from lazily assuming that the Republic can easily take care of all of those problems so forcefully presented in the aporetic dialogues. Specifically, in the Republic, Socrates, like his companions in the Clitophon, describes justice as producing philia and homonoia (351d4 – 6) and later identifies temperance with homonoia (432a6 –7). If Clitophon had been the interlocutor, would he not have insisted on an explanation of the exact nature of this homonoia? And when Socrates suggests that this homonoia is nothing but shared belief between ruler and ruled (433c6 –7, 442c10 –d3), would not Clitophon have insisted that it must be knowledge in order to be beneficial? And when Socrates suggests that the homonoia essential to justice and temperance is based on knowledge of the good (at least in the rulers), would not Clitophon have insisted that this knowledge be given some content? Would he not have pressed Socrates on the problem of the relation between knowledge and the good, a problem Socrates avoids by first giving Clitophonian reasons for why the good cannot be identified with knowledge (505b5 – c5) and then neglecting to say, in unambiguous, nonmetaphorical terms, what the good in this case is?

20. I am criticizing here the view of Charles Kahn, who, while characterizing the aporetic dialogues as protreptic (Plato, 58, 180), also sees them as “proleptic,” that is, as merely anticipating, and preparing the reader for, doctrines presented in the Phaedo, Symposium, and Republic. My first objection, and the one pursued in this paper, is that Kahn’s characterization of the Socratic elenchus “as a necessary preliminary to constructive philosophy, but as a preliminary only” (170; see also 99), is a misinterpretation of its protreptic dimension. Surprisingly, Kahn’s 1996 book does not even cite Gaiser’s very different account in Protreptik und Paränese (see note 30 below). My second objection is that the sharp distinction Kahn makes between protreptic/prolepsis in the aporetic dialogues and “constructive philosophy” in the Phaedo, Sym-

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We thus come to see the importance of the issues raised in the Clitophon for understanding not only Socrates’ method but also Plato’s dialogues.

Slings has well expressed what is at stake here: “It will be clear, therefore, that Plato’s attitude towards ethical and philosophical exhortation is crucial not only for the (relatively minor) problem of the intention of the Clitophon, but also for the interpretation of the Platonic dialogue. It might even be sustained that the problem of the Clitophon is essentially that of the dialogue in general” (127). An understanding of the dialogue form, in other words, depends at least in part on an understanding of the aims and limitations of protreptic. Do the dialogues confirm Clitophon’s critique of protreptic, or do they suggest some way of responding to it? posium, and Republic is undermined by his own account of the latter three dialogues, which stresses the limitations of their “doctrinal content” and characterizes them as primarily aiming to encourage the philosophical way of life, that is, as protreptic. Thus Kahn describes the “Theory of Forms” presented in the Symposium as “a practical ideal,” rather than as “a theoretical solution to specifically philosophical problems” (342). “Regarded as a technical account of the relation between Forms and sense appearance,” Kahn asserts, “the Phaedo must be counted a failure,” but “[w]hat Plato does successfully achieve in the Phaedo is something perhaps much more important: the creation of a rational religion for the educated classes of antiquity” (358).

As for the Republic, in addition to recognizing the limitations of the definitions of the virtues presented in book iv (see note 18 above), Kahn also recognizes that “[t]he great passages on the Sun, the Line, and the Cave do not pretend to give a systematic account of human knowledge and the nature of reality. What Plato offers us is a set of powerfully suggestive images designed to portray the need for an experience of intellectual conversion and enlightenment” (359). Kahn therefore concludes: “What Plato offers in these dialogues is not so much a systematic theory as a suggestive sketch of the metaphysical and epistemic framework for his protreptic account of the life in philosophy” (368, my emphasis). Later he concludes more generally “that much of Plato’s work, from the Laches, Charmides, and Protagoras to the Meno and Symposium, can be conceived as a sustained protreptic to philosophy” (381). But then the difference between the aporetic dialogues and the “middle” dialogues turns out not to be as great as Kahn suggests (e.g., on 99 –100): neither group of dialogues presents a system of doctrines; both are fundamentally protreptic. And if the aporetic dialogues are “proleptic” in the sense of only hinting at doctrines (e.g., the “Theory of Forms”) without fully working them out, then so are the “middle” dialogues (cf. Trabattoni’s critique: Franco Trabattoni, “Il ‘Platone’ di Charles Kahn,” Elenchos 20 [1999]: 141– 42). But then where are the final doctrines or systematic theories to be found? The esotericists have an answer: outside all of the dialogues in “unwritten teachings.”

Kahn rightly argues, however, that Plato would have regarded even his unwritten teachings as provisional and not fully adequate (386 – 88). But then Kahn should stop speaking of a prolepsis of doctrines or systematic theories, since such doctrines or theories are not to be found anywhere in Plato, and should instead come to the conclusion recently stated with succinctness and clarity by Hans-Georg Gadamer: “Tutto in Platone è, per cosi dire, protrettico, rimanda ad altro” (in Guiseppe Girgenti, ed., La nuova interpretazione di Platone: Un dialogo tra HansGeorg Gadamer e la Scuola di Tubinga-Milano [Milan: Rusconi 1998], 32). Only when we reach this conclusion can we recognize the seriousness of Clitophon’s objection, an objection Kahn ignores.

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III. Protreptic in the Euthydemus: Clitophon’s Critique Confirmed There is one Socratic dialogue in particular that appears to confirm Clitophon’s charge: the Euthydemus. This is the only dialogue in which Socrates explicitly describes himself as providing a protreptikos logos. Indeed, Socrates might appear to make his method here more positive and less elenctic in order to distinguish it from the eristic of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus.21 Yet two points need to be made: First, as we have seen, the protreptikos logos with which Socrates associates himself in the Apology and which he demonstrates in the present dialogue is not opposed to the elenchus but only makes explicit its implicit protreptic intention. The greater explicitness is as appropriate here as it is in the Apology, since in both places Socrates is explaining and defending his elenctic method. Second, as we will see, the elenctic aspect of Socrates’ method is by no means absent in this dialogue.

In short, the Socrates of the Euthydemus does not differ in any essential way from the Socrates of other dialogues. However, since the Euthydemus is the only dialogue in which protreptic is an explicit theme, it seems the ideal one to which to turn in judging Clitophon’s charge.22 Though the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus profess to teach virtue, Socrates is more interested in their ability to persuade the young boy Clinias to pursue virtue and wisdom (275a). When the wordplay of the two brothers has the opposite effect by proving to Clinias that he can learn neither what he knows nor what he does not know, Socrates proposes to give an example himself of the kind of “protreptic wisdom” he is asking them to display (278c–d). The protreptic argument through which Socrates proceeds to lead Clinias is, briefly, as follows: We all desire to “fare well” (eu prattein). Faring well depends, however, on the possession of goods, among which are numbered wealth, health, beauty, good birth, honor, temperance, justice, courage, and wisdom. Good fortune (eutuchia) has not been included in the list, because it is identical with wisdom: we experience good fortune or success only in those areas of which we have knowledge. When it comes, for example, to confronting the dangers of the sea, only the person with a knowledge of steersmanship will succeed. Next Socrates points out that what will make us happy is not the mere possession of the mentioned 21. According to Grote, the Euthydemus presents an especially tame portrait of Socrates as “a gentle, soothing, encouraging talker, with his claws drawn in” (Plato [1865], 1:536).

22. For a detailed interpretation of the Euthydemus as a whole that supports the specific points made here, see Francisco J. Gonzalez, Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 94 –128.

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goods but rather their correct use. If left unused, a good cannot benefit us; if misused, it can actually harm us. But what will enable us to make proper use of the goods we have and thus be happy? Surely, nothing but knowledge, or wisdom. Therefore, wisdom, as that upon which the proper use and therefore good of all other things depends, is itself the only thing that is good without qualification. It follows that what is necessary above all else is that we pursue wisdom, or philosophize.

While this argument is as riddled with fallacies as any eristic argument,23 it is highly successful as protreptic: it convinces Clinias of the great importance of knowledge and thus makes him desirous of its attainment. When Socrates asks him if he now intends to love wisdom (philosophein), Clinias responds: “That I do, Socrates, . . . as hard as ever I can!” (282d1–3). This success, however, does not answer Clitophon’s charge, since this charge does not deny Socrates’ extraordinary skills of exhortation. The question is: can Socrates take Clinias any farther? Can he help the boy attain that wisdom which he has made him desire?

Socrates’ second protreptic discourse, coming after another display of the eristic duo’s highly uninspiring verbal games, answers this question. Assuming the conclusion of the first protreptic (dei philosophein), Socrates seeks to go beyond it by asking: what is the nature of that wisdom which we should exert ourselves to attain? If Socrates can lead Clinias to an answer, then Clitophon’s criticism proves unjustified. Yet Socrates’ attempt to characterize the wisdom he wants Clinias to pursue ends in failure, indeed, in circularity very like that which in the Clitophon defeated the attempts of Socrates’ companions to define justice.

Given the conclusions of Socrates’ first protreptic discourse, the knowledge that will make us happy must meet the following requirement: it must not only produce something good but also tell us how to make proper use of this good. This requirement enables Socrates and Clinias to eliminate several possible candidates. The desired wisdom cannot be medicine, since medicine cannot tell us how to live a good life with the health it produces. Clinias rejects Socrates’ suggestion of the art (techne¯) of making speeches (289c), on the ground that those who make speeches do not necessarily know how to use them (289d). Clinias also rejects Socrates’ next suggestion: the general’s art, or “strategy” (290b –d). The boy argues that this art is to be classified among the hunting arts, rather than among arts of production. Hunting arts discover or catch certain objects, but must hand over their discovery or catch 23. See ibid., 102 –5

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to another art that knows how to use it: the hunter must hand over his game to the cook; the geometer must hand over his discoveries to the dialectician; the general must hand over the city or army he captures to the political leaders. The surprising and unexpected appearance of dialectic in Clinias’s explanation must be kept in mind in understanding what follows.

The next suggestion arises naturally from what Clinias has said: the highest wisdom must be that political or kingly art that rules over the general and knows how to make use of what he captures. But at this point Socrates reasserts the other half of the requirement that has been guiding the investigation: to make us happy, the political art must not only be able to use the goods produced by other arts but itself produce some good. What, then, is its product (tiv e[rgon ajpergavzetai, 291d– e)? This product must be something that is good without qualification, since, if its goodness depended on another art, that other art, rather than the political art, would be the highest wisdom. But according to the first protreptic, the only thing that is good without qualification is knowledge. Therefore, the political art must produce nothing but knowledge. But what kind of knowledge? A knowledge of making shoes or building houses? No, since these kinds of knowledge, being concerned with only qualified goods, are inferior to the political art. Apparently, therefore, the knowledge produced by the political art can be nothing but the political art itself (292b –d). But this seems absurd: surely the political art must be good for something other than itself! Socrates suggests that it is good for making others good. But good at what? Since the political art has been seen to hand over nothing but itself, we can reply only that it is good at making others good at making others good, ad infinitum (292d– e).

Faced with this aporia, the discussion between Socrates and Clinias can go no further. As Socrates himself observes (291b – c), they have gone nowhere and are as far from the goal as they were at the beginning.

As we can now see, Clitophon was not attacking a straw man. Not only does Socrates’ attempt to go beyond protreptic fail, but it fails in exactly the way Clitophon said it does: like his companions in Clitophon’s account, Socrates is unable to preserve the distinction between the political art and its product. As a result, he also collapses the distinction between the pursuit of the good and its possession, the consequence being a perpetual “chain letter” of making others good comparable to the “chain letter of exhorting” ridiculed by Clitophon.

Socrates has shown that he is better than the eristics at encouraging virtue, but has he not failed to prove himself better at teaching it? And in this case, should not an aspirant to wisdom take Clitophon’s advice and reject

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the Socratic elenchus along with eristic? Toward the end of the dialogue, Crito tells Socrates of an unnamed stranger who came to just this conclusion: having witnessed the displays of both Socrates and the two brothers, he left with nothing but disgust for philosophy as a whole (304d–305a). And no less a scholar than Stefanini has seen in the aporia of the Euthydemus a critique of Socrates that fully confirms Clitophon’s.24

IV. Defending Socrates Against Clitophon: The Aporia Reconsidered But we should consider the possibility that this aporia is also a resource for articulating a defense. We should reflect on the requirement that guides the discussion from the beginning and thus leads it into the aporia: that the highest knowledge must both produce its own specific good and know how to use both this and other goods. We should note the tension between these two parts of the requirement. What recommends the political art as a candidate for the highest wisdom is that it rules all the other arts in making correct use of the goods they only know how to produce. Yet it is precisely because it fulfills this part of the requirement that the political art must fail to meet the other part: it cannot produce any good distinct from itself, precisely because it is the highest form of knowledge in the hierarchy of use and therefore the highest good. If it is the art that enables us to make correct use of all the goods in our lives, what other good remains for it to produce? Perhaps, then, what the aporia shows us is that we need to reject the assumption that the wisdom in question must, like the typical techne¯, have some product distinct from itself. It could still in some sense meet the requirement, but with this important qualification: the good it produces is nothing other than the knowledge of how to use correctly other goods, that is, is nothing other than itself. In other words, the two parts of the requirement can be met only if they are not distinguished. In the political art, as the art of living well, there is no distinction between product and use or therefore between product and knowledge. If one lives well by knowing how to use well one’s health, possessions, virtues, city, and so forth, then what “product” need this knowledge produce except itself?

This collapse of any distinction between moral knowledge and its product does not solve the aporia, but rather justifies it. Rather than represent a 24. See Luigi Stefanini, Platone (Padua: CEDAM, 1932), 1:192 –93, 204, 206 –7.

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failure to understand the wisdom Socrates has encouraged Clinias to seek, the aporia understands it perfectly. This wisdom, which Socrates identifies with virtue throughout the discussion, is good for nothing but itself because it is the good. This means that the possessor of this wisdom can benefit others only by encouraging them to pursue it. Indeed, even the distinction between pursuit and possession must be questioned here. Since this wisdom lacks any separately specifiable product or object, any attempt to give a noncircular definition of it must end in aporia. It is in this sense indefinable. But then as something indefinable and necessarily aporetic, it cannot be “possessed” in the way a teachable techne¯ can. Perhaps all that is possible in the case of wisdom thus characterized is the pursuit of wisdom, or philo-sophy.

Perhaps this wisdom is, after all, a perpetual chain letter of exhortations.

But these reflections should not discourage us from attempting to characterize more specifically this wisdom identified with virtue and the highest good. Socrates calls it the political or kingly art. But what exactly is the political art if it has no product distinct from itself, if it is nonproductive? As already noted, Clinias, in a surprising and apparently unnecessary digression, identifies an unproductive art that knows how to make use of the discoveries of sciences such as geometry and arithmetic: dialectic. I suggest that the discussion mentions dialectic only to hint at its identity with the political art that becomes the focus immediately afterward. Dialectic, in other words, is the art that, while producing no product of its own, enables us to critically evaluate and thus make proper use of the different goods we possess. But does this not simply change the location of the problem? Does not dialectic itself need to be defined? If it is indeed the knowledge in question, it cannot be defined. However, its nature is displayed in what Socrates himself does. In other words, my suggestion is that the wisdom the discussion seeks but fails to define is identical to that dialectical knowledge which Socrates displays in the discussion.

Essential to understanding the Euthydemus is the recognition that the aporia encountered by the attempt of the second protreptic discussion to define the highest wisdom is the same as the aporia encountered by the attempt of the dialogue as whole to distinguish Socrates’ dialectic from eristic.

The difficulty in making this distinction is the following: while eristic is clearly a “speaking for the sake of speaking” (286d11–13), dialectic seems equally unable to produce positive results distinct from itself. As we have seen, the very failure of Socrates’ second discussion with Clinias appears to confirm the lack of any essential distinction between dialectic and eristic.

However, what the dialogue’s portrayal of Socrates’ dialectic in action is

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meant to show is that it, unlike eristic, is beneficial, though providing nothing but itself. The most striking illustration of this is in the second protreptic discussion, but our focus on the argument caused us to overlook it. For what is both paradoxical and illuminating about this discussion is that at the same time that it is shown to fail in terms of the explicit argument, it is also shown to have an extremely beneficial effect on Clinias. As even my brief summary indicated, Clinias takes over the discussion shortly after it begins.

He is the one who evaluates and rejects Socrates’ different candidates for the highest wisdom. He is the one who distinguishes between productive and hunting arts. Most important, he is the one who introduces and describes dialectic. Crito is so amazed by the progress the boy has made that he interrupts Socrates’ narrative in disbelief (290e). Socrates responds that perhaps the words he attributed to Clinias were spoken by a “higher power” (291a).

If there is a higher power at work here, it is only the power of the highest wisdom. What we are shown is not only that Clinias has benefited from Socrates’ dialectic but that the benefit he has received is nothing but this dialectic itself. He has become a better person not by receiving some product of Socrates’ dialectic (such as a definition) but by becoming himself dialectical.25 And Socrates makes the boy dialectical by doing nothing more than turning him toward the pursuit of wisdom and virtue. The benefit here is accomplished entirely through protreptic or exhortation. In conclusion, the discussion itself displays a type of knowledge that makes others good by providing nothing but itself and that is itself an exhortation to the pursuit of wisdom rather than its final possession: dialectic. Is this not then the kind of knowledge that Socrates and Clinias sought but failed to define and whose nature is revealed, rather than misunderstood, in the final aporia?

If this knowledge, as dialectic, is not distinct from the good it produces 26 25. Cf. Slings, Clitophon,153–54. Slings notes an important connection between the attribution of what Clinias says to one of the gods and Socrates’ description of the progress made by his interlocutors at Theaetetus 150d2 – 6. We are thus shown, Slings suggests, the incredible success of the elenchus.

26. Which is not to say that it is not distinct from the good itself. As Socrates himself points out in the Republic, it would be absurd simply to identify knowledge with the good (505b – c).

My point is that the good is instantiated in dialectical knowledge itself, rather than in some product distinct from this knowledge. In other words, we become good (participate in the good) not through the possession of something produced by dialectic but rather through the practice of dialectic itself. Dialectical knowledge is not the same as the good, but it is “good-like” (ajgaqoeidh`, 509a3), while, in contrast, there is no sense in which medical knowledge is “healthlike” or mathematical knowledge “triangle-like.”

As these reflections should indicate, I do not believe that the highly enigmatic introduction of the Form of the Good in the Republic solves the specific aporia of the Euthydemus concern-

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and is instantiated by Socrates’ very search for it, then it defies the distinctions that have been seen to form the basis of Clitophon’s critique: (1) the distinction between the pursuit of knowledge and its possession and (2) the distinction between this knowledge and its product. Therefore, the best, and indeed only, response to Clitophon’s critique is that while these distinctions are valid of any techne¯, the knowledge that constitutes virtue is in this respect not a techne¯.27 In other words, no adequate defense of Socrates is possible if we accept Clitophon’s analogy between moral philosophy and technai such as medicine: what the Euthydemus shows us is that we must reject the analogy.28 ing the highest knowledge and its product, as Kahn in particular insists (Plato, 208 –9; see also 61– 62).The claim that the object of this knowledge is a Form of the Good does not answer the question of what this knowledge produces besides itself. This is noted by Gisela Striker, who sees the Stoics as having suggested a solution (“Plato’s Socrates and the Stoics,” in The Socratic Movement, 249 –50). Socrates also insists that we do not adequately know this Form (505a5 – 6), and he must resort to an analogy to explain its relation to our knowledge. But it is precisely this relation that is at the heart of the aporia in the Euthydemus.

27. Cf. Slings, Clitophon, 150 –53. Slings simply identifies this nontechnical knowledge with knowledge of the Idea of the Good, as if this were a solution. Grote, unable to give up the technical model of knowledge, can solve the aporia only by identifying the highest knowledge with the hedonistic calculus of the Protagoras (Plato [1865], 1:540 – 41)! David Roochnik’s account of the aporia (“The Serious Play of Plato’s Euthydemus,” Interpretation 18 [1990]: 225 – 28; Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s Understanding of Techne¯ [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996], 173–77) is very close to my own, but he adds that protreptic is circular not simply in the sense that it can provide only itself, but also in the sense that it presupposes itself: in other words, only those already disposed to the pursuit of virtue can be turned toward this pursuit (“Serious Play,” 214 –15, 220 –21; Of Art, 158 –59). Roochnik therefore sees protreptic as emphasizing, explicating, and directing a desire already latent in the target audience (“Serious Play,” 229 –30; Of Art, 173) but normally overwhelmed by other desires. However, Roochnik does not show in what way this desire already constitutes knowledge, which is what must be shown against Clitophon’s claim that mere desire is not enough. In “Serious Play” Roochnik writes: “Protreptic itself manifests a kind of nontechnical knowledge. It does not have a determinate object other than itself: that is, it is the study of the desire that wishes to know about arete” (230). He articulates the same conclusion at greater length in Of Art, 233– 51. As the account in Of Art especially makes clear (see 246 –51), Roochnik equates the “knowledge about virtue” we desire with technical knowledge: his point is only that we cannot attain it. Therefore, protreptic is, on his account, the nontechnical knowledge of our desire for technical knowledge of virtue. But how does this view overcome the techne¯ model of moral knowledge (which is clearly Roochnik’s intention)? Does it not rather grant this model and thus confirm Clitophon’s objection that Socrates’ philosophical inquiry can only make us desire virtue without enabling us in any way to know or possess it? My argument here is that we can answer Clitophon’s objection only if we can show what Roochnik does not show: that, unlike what is true of any techne¯, the knowledge of how to desire and pursue virtue is itself a knowledge of virtue.

28. The inadequacy of the analogy is already suggested by the Clitophon itself. Clitophon’s attempt to force the knowledge of virtue into the framework of a techne¯ results, as we have seen, in an identification of justice with the art concerned with the virtue of the soul. But there ap-

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But then the correct response to Clitophon’s charge that Socrates’ philosophy is mere protreptic is not that it is in fact more than this but that Clitophon’s techne¯ analogy leads him to misunderstand protreptic.29 Philosophical protreptic is not empty or useless, because in turning us toward the pursuit of virtue and wisdom it is already providing them.30 Philosophy is pears to be confusion here about the place of justice in the techne¯ model. Is justice the art concerned with virtue, or is it virtue itself? Is it the knowledge of virtue or the virtue that is known?

Is it the art that produces agreement or this agreement itself? (Cf. Orwin, “The Case,” 748.)

The fact that these questions not only are not answered but even seem unanswerable shows just how uncomfortably the knowledge of virtue fits into the techne¯ model. For the way in which even Clitophon’s use of the example of gymnastics exposes the limitations of this model, see Orwin, “The Case,” 751. Roochnik, Of Art, provides a book-length argument that Plato does not conceive of moral knowledge as a techne¯, but for some doubts about the ultimate success of this argument, see the preceding note.

29. Xenophon’s response to Clitophon’s charge (see Memorabilia i.iv.1) is instead to insist that Socrates did provide his interlocutors with positive moral advice. On this aspect of Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates, see Donald R. Morrison, “Xenophon’s Socrates as Teacher,” in The Socratic Movement, who yet insists that Plato’s portrayal is not that different. It is true that even in Plato’s dialogues Socrates is depicted as a moral role model, but Plato, unlike Xenophon, stresses Socrates’ lack of positive doctrines and his disavowal of teaching in order to show that his positive and beneficial influence came mainly through his dedication to the examined life. Morrison concludes: “Plato and Xenophon agree that central to Socrates’ moral being is a certain kind of intellectuality: his commitment to the examined life and to the reasoned search for wisdom. But this commitment by itself is not enough. If Socrates had been just as clever a philosopher, and just as convinced of his own ignorance, but greedy, lecherous, and powerhungry, neither Xenophon nor Plato would have thought him a good man” (208). But I believe Socrates would deny that anyone fully convinced of his own ignorance and therefore fully devoted to the pursuit of wisdom could be greedy, lecherous, and power hungry. Similarly, Morrison’s characterization of the commitment to the examined life as mere “intellectuality” and “cleverness” is completely wrong. My contention is that, if properly understood, the examined life is enough.

30. The most important thesis of Gaiser’s book Protreptik is that the protreptic that characterizes the dialogues, even the aporetic ones, is not, like sophistic protreptic (on which, see 33–70), merely “preliminary” to some teaching to be provided later, but rather already in some sense provides the knowledge toward which it turns one, a knowledge that is fundamentally the knowledge of ignorance and that involves a complete change in the direction of one’s life. In turning us toward virtue, Socrates’ protreptic has in some sense already taken us there. This thesis is asserted and defended throughout Gaiser’s book (for an especially clear statement of it, see 18, but also 5, 28, 106, 110, 120, 131, 163– 65, 168, 183, 186 – 87, 221) and is specifically Gaiser’s solution to the aporia of the Euthydemus (137– 40, especially 138 –39) and his answer to Clitophon’s critique (145 – 46). In contrast, Gaiser unfortunately insists, against Schleiermacher in particular, that the whole of Plato’s teaching is not to be found in the dialogues: most of it, in fact the most important part, was reserved for his oral, unwritten teachings within the Academy (see 14 –16, 18 –20, 199, 221–23). This view that the protreptic of the dialogues is merely preliminary to some unwritten teachings (a view adopted by other members of the Tübingen school: see H. J. Krämer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics, trans. John R. Catan [Albany: State University of New York Press 1990], 71–72) seems inconsistent with Gaiser’s lesser-known thesis that Plato’s protreptic is not merely preliminary (vorläufig) but al-

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not something completely distinct from what it pursues: the very search for virtue and wisdom is itself virtue and wisdom. The virtuous life is the life spent in quest of virtue.31 This view, to which the aporia of the Euthydemus has led us, is clearly stated in a famous but often only superficially understood passage of the Apology. Addressing his fellow Athenians, Socrates protests: “And when again I say that the greatest good 32 for human beings is to spend every day discussing virtue and the other topics about which you hear me conversing and examining both myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not worth living for human beings, you believe what I say even less” (38a1–7). It is easy not to hear what is extraordinary in this assertion: Socrates is claiming, not that elenctic examination in search of virtue promises to produce a great good for us, but rather that it is itself our greatest good.33 Here we see precisely that collapse of the distinctions between knowledge and product, pursuit and possession, expressed in the aporia of the Euthydemus. Philosophy is not simply the search for the virtuous life: it ready provides knowledge. This is perhaps why this thesis is stated in much weaker terms in Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre, 3– 4 (and in Krämer, Plato, 72), and is absent altogether in Gaiser, Platone come scrittore filosofico: Saggi sull’ermeneutica dei dialoghi platonici (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1984); see 50, 53, 150, where one would expect the thesis to be stated.

31. For my more detailed and concrete explanation of what this means, see Francisco J. Gonzalez, “Is There an Art of Living?” Salmagundi, nos. 126 –27 (2000): 253–75, and my response to a critique of my view in “Living Well Is Hard Indeed: A Reply to Alexander Nehamas,” Salmagundi, nos. 128 –29 (2001): 310 –19. A similar view has been defended by Alasdair MacIntyre, though with no explicit reference to Socrates: “The good life for man is the life spent in seeking the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is” (After Virtue, 2d ed. [South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984], 219).

32. mevgiston ajgaqovn: That Socrates does indeed mean here “the greatest good” (and not simply “a very great good,” which is another possible translation) is made clear by his earlier claim that no greater good (oujde;n mei`zon ajgaqovn, 30a6; see also 36c4) has happened to the city than his service to the god and by his later claim that examining and conversing with the dead in Hades would be “the most important thing” (to; mevgiston, 41b5) as well as “inconceivable happiness” (ajmhvcanon eujdaimoniva~, 41c4).

33. Gabriele Giannantoni, in an important but unfortunately neglected book, is one of the very few to recognize this implication, in a chapter appropriately entitled “Il dialegesthai come sommo bene” (Dialogo e dialettica nei dialoghi giovanili di Platone [Rome: Edizione dell’Ateneo, 1963], 183– 88). Jan Blits points out that knowledge is for Clitophon purely instrumental, that is, a mere means to a good already taken for granted (“Socratic Teaching and Justice: Plato’s Clitophon,” Interpretation 13 [1985]: 327, 329 –30). As he nicely states the point, “The life of reason, as he [Clitophon] understands it, is not the life devoted to, but the life served by, knowledge” (327). Accordingly, as Blits rightly observes, “Clitophon’s fatigue is, among other things, a sign of his lack of love. He loves reputation, not wisdom; opinion, not knowledge” (333). I would add that therefore Clitophon, despite his suggestion to the contrary, has not been successfully exhorted and converted to the pursuit of virtue and wisdom. He is still very much in need of protreptic.

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is the virtuous life.34 Philosophy produces only itself: philosophers can do no more than make others philosophers. This is not an empty circle, because, as the improvement of Clinias demonstrated, one becomes a better person, not by being taught certain definitions or conclusions reached by philosophy, but by becoming oneself a philosopher. Thus we can now understand how Socrates can claim to be the greatest benefactor of Athens. Even though his elenchus can only turn the Athenians to the pursuit of virtue and wisdom, in doing so it already makes them better. Because the good life just is the examined life, what the Athenians need are not answers or doctrines but simply the provocation of Socratic elenchus. Socrates does indeed identify “exhorting the citizens to virtue with success in educating them to it,” but this is no confusion.35 This conception of the philosophical enterprise enables us to respond not only to Clitophon’s frustration with Socrates but also to a common dissatisfaction with the Platonic dialogues themselves, a dissatisfaction expressed

by Grote with regard to the Euthydemus: “As in so many other dialogues, Plato leaves the problem started, but unsolved. The impulse towards philos34. As Orwin concludes from this passage, “Practically speaking, the search replaces the object sought. Philosophy is not, as Socrates’ protreptic seems to suggest, a means to specifying the virtuous life: it takes the place of that life” (“The Case,” 753). Cf. what Gaiser has to say about the identity of Gespräch and Leben for Plato (Protreptik, 195, 203). Stefanini, on the other hand, criticizes this attempt to find confirmed in the dialogues the view that “il sapere è via e meta, mezzo e fine, strumento e opera, che risolve nel suo interno dinamismo l’oggetto al quale incessantemente tende” (Platone, 1:193). But Stefanini’s only argument is his interpretation of the Charmides as a critique of this view (an interpretation apparently shared by Giannantoni, Dialogo, 222). My own interpretation of the Charmides sees it as instead supporting this view: see Francisco J. Gonzalez, “Self-Knowledge, Practical Knowledge, and Insight: Plato’s Dialectic and the Dialogue Form,” in The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies, ed.

Francisco. J. Gonzalez (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 163– 67, and idem, Dialectic, 41– 60.

35. The view that people can be improved simply by being made to love or pursue wisdom is not confined to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues. In Aeschines’ Alcibiades Socrates is made to say the following: “And so although I know no science or skill [mavqhma] that I could teach to anyone to benefit him, nevertheless I thought that in keeping company with Alcibiades I could by the power of love make him better” (Aeschines fr. 11, translated in Charles H. Kahn, “Aeschines on Socratic Eros,” in The Socratic Movement, 92). The similarity between Kahn’s response to this passage and Clitophon’s response to Socrates’ protreptic is all the more striking for being unintended: “At least the first step has been taken. Alcibiades has come to recognize his own ignorance, his nullity as far as the excellence of man and citizen is concerned. To that extent he has already been made ‘better.’ But what is the next step? It has been strongly implied that true excellence will somehow depend on knowledge. And it has been claimed that the result so far is due to eros. How are eros and knowledge related to one another?” (93). The answer suggested by the present paper and, I believe, by the Aeschines fragment is that there is no next (understood as distinct or higher) step and that knowledge and eros are to be identified.

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ophy being assured, those who feel it ask Plato in what direction they are to move towards it. He gives no answer.” 36 And the dialogues are certainly a target in the more universal condemnation pronounced by René Descartes: “I compared the moral writings of the ancient pagans to the most proud and magnificent palaces built on nothing but sand and mud. They exalt the virtues and make them appear more estimable than anything in the world, but they do not sufficiently teach one to know them.” 37 What these two modern Clitophons have misunderstood is the essentially protreptic character of philosophy.

36. Grote, Plato (1865), 1:560.

37. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. 1, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968).

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10 Humbling as Upbringing: The Ethical Dimension of the Elenchus in the Lysis

FRANÇOIS RENAUD

Two of the most debated problems in Platonic scholarship of the last fifteen years or so have certainly been the Socratic elenchus and the dramatic form.

These two problems have been discussed in relative isolation from one another, however. Most studies of the elenchus have focused mostly on its logical dimension, while those on the dialogue form have often ignored the question of the elenchus. A rapprochement between the so-called analytic and dramatic (or literary) approaches to Plato, especially on the question of the elenchus, appears now possible and desirable. This paper attempts to show some aspects of the ethical dimension of the elenchus in the Lysis, as embodied in the drama as well as in the argument. A few preliminary remarks about the dialogue form are in order.1 Different versions of this text were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy at the State University of New York, Binghamton, in October 1997 and at the fourth Symposium Platonicum at Trinity College, University of Toronto, Ontario, in August 1998. I would like to thank not only all those who commented on my papers at these sessions, but also Louis-André Dorion, Gary Scott, Keith Monley, and an anonymous referee for the Pennsylvania State University Press for challenging observations, as well as Geoffrey Greatrex for suggestions on the final version of the text. The chapter has also benefited from Lloyd Gerson’s initial set of remarks.

1. For various accounts and interpretations of the dramatic, or literary, approach to Plato, see these useful collections: Charles L Griswold, ed., Platonic Readings, Platonic Writings

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The philosophical content of Plato’s dialogues cannot be reduced to the explicit argument. The dialogues do not simply present arguments concerning philosophical problems, but human beings discussing those problems.

The dialogues are characterized by concreteness: each dialogue takes place at a particular place and at a particular time, and its treatment of the subject matter is inseparable from the capacities and motivations of the characters.

To that extent, the drama and the argument are interdependent.2 Their relationship roughly corresponds to Plato’s own distinction between argument (logos) and action, or deed (ergon).3 The interplay between drama and argument, action and speech, is present in the Platonic dialogues in varying degrees; it is particularly striking in the “Socratic dialogues.” In the Laches, for instance, Socrates discusses courage with the generals Laches and Nicias; in the Euthyphro, piety with the self-professed pious character by the same name. In the Lysis, Plato depicts friends or would-be friends discussing the nature of friendship (philia).4 The connection between argument and action, between what one says and what one does or is, already suggests the Socratic notion that knowledge is inseparable from self-knowledge. The characters of a dialogue behave as well as argue, their speech being in a sense a part of their behavior. One may refer here to Aristotle’s well-known remark, in the Poetics, that the Socratic conversations (logoi sokratikoi) are a literary genre belonging to the mimetic art, which presents an action (praxis) governed by two causes, namely character (ethe) and thought (dianoia) (Poet. 1449b38).

(New York: Routledge, 1988); James Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, eds., Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. vol., 1992); Gerald A. Press, ed., Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993); Francisco J. Gonzalez, ed., The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995); I. Cossutta and Michel Narcy, eds., La forme dialogue chez Platon: Évolution et réceptions (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2001). For a synthetic account of the Gadamerian, open-ended version of this approach and its larger German context, see François Renaud, Die Resokratisierung Platons: Die platonische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers, International Plato Studies, vol. 10 (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1999).

2. Cf. Terence H. Irwin, “Art and Philosophy in Plato’s Dialogues,” review of The Art of Plato, by R. B. Rutherford, Phronesis 49 (1996): 349 –50.

3. For example, La. 187e6 –188a2. This distinction is widespread in Greek literature; it is common to historiography and tragedy as well as to classical rhetoric (e.g., Herodotus vi, 38; Thucydides i, 128, 3; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 336; Sophocles, Electra 59 – 60; Oedipus Rex 517, 864 – 65).

4. Cf. Robert G. Hoerber, “Character Portrayal in Plato’s Lysis,” Classical Journal 41 (1945 – 46): 271–73; Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Logos and Ergon in Plato’s Lysis,” in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 6.

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Aristotle’s opinion is later confirmed by Diogenes Laertius, who refers to it explicitly.5 Plato’s choice of the dialogue form does not necessarily entail, however, a completely open-ended philosophy, nor does it rule out didactic functions.

This paper tries to show, within its modest parameters, that there are positive views in the Lysis, corroborated in part by other dialogues, namely, the humbling and pedagogical functions of the elenchus as an integral part of the conduct of philosophy. The difficult task of retrieving Plato’s views from the dialogue may perhaps be compared to the task of extracting Hume’s own position on religion from his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.6 Two obvious and important differences, however, should be stressed: there is no additional treatise on the same topic available in Plato’s oeuvre as in Hume’s (with the possible, partial exception of the Seventh Letter), and many of Plato’s dialogues surpass Hume’s in literary or dramatic complexity. The degree of significance to be attributed to the dramatic elements may vary from case to case. The interpretative task consists in establishing the interdependence, whenever possible and relevant, between the dramatic elements and the explicit arguments. In addition to the logical question whether an argument is valid, there is the other, dramatic or interpretative one: why is an argument advanced by this particular character and in these circumstances? 7 One must ask, in other words, to what dramatic purpose something is said.8 5. Diog. Laet. ii, 48. The ad hominem character of Socratic dialectic implies that the investigations in the dialogue are partly informed by their dramatic context (especially the interlocutors) and that therefore a single dialogue does not necessarily contain everything the author knows at the moment of writing, as Vlastos’s hermeneutics assumes. On this question, see Christopher Rowe, “On Reading Plato,” Méthexis 5 (1992): 66, and the larger studies by Thomas A. Szlezák, Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), and Kahn, Plato. A related question is whether each dialogue is to be taken by itself, as a self-contained work, or whether references across the dialogues are possible. It is certainly advisable to concentrate first on each dialogue so as to respect its dramatic specificity. This initial concern should not, however, a priori exclude, but on the contrary may enable, justified crossreferences. The possibility of cross-references implies, moreover, that Plato’s positive views are retrievable from the specific, contingent contexts and formulated in general terms. The lessening intensity of the drama in the late dialogues, for instance, may perhaps be explained not only by a development in Plato’s mind but also by the nature of the characters chosen by Plato in these dialogues, such as undialogical personalities (e.g., the Eleatic visitor or Parmenides) or a young and inexperienced pupil not allowing for any resistance to the main speaker’s argument.

6. J. Angelo Corlett, “Interpreting Plato’s Dialogues,” Classical Quarterly 47 (1997): 435.

7. Gerald A. Press, “The State of the Question in the Study of Plato,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 34 (1996): 515. Cf. Diog. Laert. iii, 65: tinos heneka leleketai.

8. The hermeneutical approach also raises the important question whether Plato’s has spokesmen. On this, see Gerald A. Press, ed., Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

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Let us now turn to the question of the elenchus. The Greek term elenchos and its cognates originally means “reproach”; then later, also the “examination” or the “test” of opinions and of the persons holding them; later still, “refutation” (or proof).9 The older meanings of elenchos and their connotations (reproach and especially examination) are still present in Plato’s dialogues. Since Robinson and more recently Vlastos, the elenchus has been taken to mean specifically the “refutation” (or defense) of an interlocutor’s thesis from his or her accepted premises.10 On the other hand, both scholars also recognize the personal or ethical dimension of the elenchus, primarily seen in the requirement of sincerity: the elenchus must be the refutation of the interlocutor’s personal belief and way of life. As Vlastos remarks, what the elenchus “examines is not just propositions but lives.” 11 This is why he speaks of the elenchus’s “existential dimension.” 12 In that sense, Vlastos’s definition is an attempt to combine both the broader, more ancient meanings of the Greek term with its purely argumentative, logical one. Indeed, the Socratic elenchus seeks to establish not only the logical but also the moral inconsistency of the interlocutor; it pertains to the whole human being and inquires into the interlocutor’s way of living.13 Yet, while the studies by Vlastos and others have sharply analyzed the logical structure of the elenchus (on propositions and beliefs), they have largely left aside its acknowledged ethical dimension.14 As a result of this neglect, as Brickhouse and Smith rightly point out, “a number of philosophically interesting uses to which Socratic argumentation may be put are thus neither claimed on its behalf nor 9. See also H. G. Liddell and R. A. Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), s.v. e[legco~. Cf. Lesher, “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking,” 7–9.

10. Robinson, Earlier, 2d ed., 49 – 60; Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 30.

11. For instance, Cri. 49c– e; Prot. 331c–d. Interestingly, the requirement of sincerity is no longer present in Aristotle’s Topics: the dialectical exercises do not require from the respondent that the thesis be a personal one. Hence what one may call the “depersonalization” of the elenchus in Aristotle: see Louis-André Dorion, “La ‘dépersonnalisation’ de la dialectique chez Aristote,” Archives de Philosophie 60 (1997): 597– 613.

12. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 37.

13. La. 187e6 –188a; cf. Rep. 518c–d, 523b – c, 525c.

14. Cf. an immediate reaction to Vlastos’s “Socratic Elenchus” in the very journal in which it originally appeared: Charles H. Kahn, “Drama and Dialectic in Plato’s Gorgias,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983): 76. This view had already been suggested, for instance,

by Robinson, Earlier, 15. One should add that the object of Socrates’ elenchus is not normally his own opinions or premises. While he says (Ap. 28e) he examines himself as well as others, rarely does he actually submit to questioning himself. There appear to be only two exceptions where he does question his own premises: Prot. 33c–339d and Grg. 462a– 467c. On this, see Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 14 –16. This further emphasizes the ad hominem character of the elenchus.

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explained.” 15 In this paper I hope to show a few of these uses—its humbling, exhorting, and guiding functions—in the first part of the Lysis.

Given his strict definition of the Socratic elenchus as the refutation of a thesis, Vlastos regards the Lysis as devoid of any genuine elenchus. To be sure, Socrates’ discussions with his very young interlocutors—Hippothales, Lysis, Ctesippus, and Menexenus—is not adversarial in nature, for they involve no contest between opponents.16 According to Vlastos’s interpretation, Plato abandoned the elenchus as the proper philosophical method by the time he wrote the Lysis. This conclusion is only possible, however, on the basis of an unduly restrictive definition of the elenchus.17 A strictly unified conception of the elenchus cannot do justice to the variety of functions of Socratic argumentation, such as humbling, exhortation, and psychagogia (or guided instruction).18 Socrates typically addresses his interlocutors in various ways. To take the example of the Gorgias, the main source of Vlastos’s conception of the elenchus, Socrates’ argumentation and strategy varies depending on who his immediate interlocutor is: the old, decent, but vain Gorgias, the inexperienced and inconsiderate Polus, or the frank but tyrannical Callicles. So it is also in the Lysis. Socrates addresses Hippothales, Lysis, and Menexenus each in a manner adapted to age or character. Moreover, Socrates’ first conversation with Lysis (207d–210d) includes an argumentative examination (or elenchus) displaying both exhortative and pedagogical functions. There Socrates corrects the boy’s mistaken view about freedom and happiness and elicits from him an admission of ignorance while also guiding him on the longer road.19 The dramatic elements, primarily the setting and the characters, are aptly 15. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 13.

16. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 30 –31.

17. Vlastos writes: “Here again there is no elenchus against anybody. [. . .] In the initial encounter with Hippothales what the love-crazed youth gets is not a refutation (he has proposed no thesis) but a dressing down. When the investigation gets under way Socrates proposes all the theses which are discussed and refutes all the theses which are refuted. There is no contest” (“Socratic Elenchus,” 31).

18. Cf. Phdr. 261a7– 8: “Isn’t the rhetorical art, taken as a whole [to holon], a way of directing the soul by means of speech [techne psychagogia tis dia logon], not only in lawcourt, and on other public occasions but also in private [alla kai en idiois]” (Nehamas and Woodruff, trans.). Cf. Phdr. 271c– e. A very similar definition of rhetoric is given in the Gorgias, but without this important addition (en idiois): Grg. 452e.

19. Charles H. Kahn, “Vlastos’ Socrates,” Phronesis 37 (1992): 250; Henry Teloh, Socratic Education in Plato’s Early Dialogues (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 23; Gary Alan Scott, Plato’s Socrates as Educator (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 51– 80.

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selected and integrated in the Lysis. The palaestra, or wrestling school, is the natural place to find young boys. The dialectical “wrestling match” or the intellectual undressing ensuing from it corresponds analogically to its concrete setting. Socrates’ wrestling match will be adapted to the strength and interests of his young interlocutors.20 Lysis and Menexenus are only paides; they are between twelve and fourteen years old and as such possibly the two youngest interlocutors of Socrates in the Platonic corpus. The stark inequality between Socrates and his very young interlocutors announces the pedagogical dimension of the discussion. In the following I pass over without comment many a dramatic and argumentative aspect of the first section of the dialogue in order to limit myself to only a few of the features of the dialogue that are immediately relevant to my concern here.

The Lysis begins with an apparently unphilosophical subject: the contest in the art of speaking to one’s beloved (eromenos, 205a–211a). Socrates asks Hippothales to show him (epideixai) his way of speaking to Lysis, his beloved, so as to see whether Hippothales has knowledge about the matter.21 Socrates is not curious to hear the verses Hippothales has composed for Lysis. His interest is not aesthetic but ethical and intellectual: he desires to know Hippothales’ thoughts (dianoia). His thoughts, one may add here, will prove inseparable from his character (ethe) and behavior (ergon). The display is not necessary, for his friend Ctesippus can give a lively description of Hippothales’ oral and written odes to Lysis: they are old-fashioned encomia, or eulogies, on the nobility of his family (204d, 205c–d). Hippothales, Ctesippus adds, “is unable to tell him anything personal [idion]” (205b).22 Socrates remarks that these eulogies seem in reality to be composed to celebrate Hippothales’ own hoped-for triumph over Lysis. But this triumph is unlikely, adds Socrates, for such praises make the beloved more presumptuous (megalauchoteroi) and more difficult to seduce (206a–b). The true art of seduction, he maintains, does not consist in flattering the beloved but on the contrary in humbling him. Already perplexed and curious, Hippothales then asks Socrates for advice (206b). Socrates agrees to show him (soi epideixai) “what one ought to say instead of these things [anti touton]” (206c).

20. Cf. Gadamer, “Logos,” 6.

21. Lys. 204e10 –205a2: kai moi epideixai ha kai tois de epideiknumi, hina eido ei epistatai.

22. The translations from the Greek (for the Lysis) are S. Lombardo’s, with occasional modifications, as in this case: I translated idion as “personal” instead of “original,” as Lombardo does. I have also consulted the translations by Lamb, Wright, and Bolotin.

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He will himself assume the role of the lover (erastes) by showing—not by arguing directly with—Hippothales how to humble and win the favors of his beloved, Lysis. Socrates will repeat the lesson of his humbling method even more explicitly later, after its successful demonstration (210e–211a).23 In what follows, then, Socrates will instruct Hippothales about the true origin of friendship not only by his words (logoi) but also by his deeds (erga).

This first conversation with Hippothales may not contain any logical, refutative elenchus as such, since it is largely mediated by a third person and since its actual demonstration occurs only later, in deed, through the encounter with Lysis. Nevertheless, this conversation already exhibits Socrates’ well-meaning—and partly playful—pedagogy.

Lysis then joins the conversation. They all move to the palaestra. The examination of Lysis is also adapted to his character, interest, and level of understanding. The initial dialogue between Socrates and Lysis deals with Lysis’s parents’ love for him and their desire to see him happy. Now, since your parents love you and wish you to be happy, Socrates remarks, they must therefore (ara) let you do, and never prevent you from doing, anything you desire to do (epithumes, 207e). Not at all, Lysis answers: they don’t let me do many things. Socrates shows surprise (pos legeis) and asks why this should be so. Socrates’ first questions intend to lead his young interlocutor on to the problematic of education and knowledge, but indirectly, for he does not tell him in advance what his point is. To this end, Socrates’ initial 23. It is important to bear in mind that philia in the Lysis is not restricted to our notion of friendship: philia here includes eros. If the main discussion on philia did not include the passionate love of Hippothales, “the whole introduction,” as G. M. A. Grube rightly observes, would be “singularly irrelevant” (Plato’s Thought [London: Methuen, 1935], 92). That this is not the case is already indicated by the loose terminology: the verbs philein, eran, agapan, epithumein are used almost interchangeably throughout the dialogue. Cf. 215a–d: agapan, philein, and peri pollou poiesthai are used interchangeably; 216c– e: epithumein and philein; 220c: agapan and philein; 221b and 222a: epithumein, eran, and philein. Cf. Laszlo Versényi, “Plato’s Lysis,” Phronesis 20 (1975): 187. Cf. Laws 837a: eros as excessive philon; Symp. 179c.

That which belongs to oneself, that is the good, is the goal of eros, philia, and epithumia (221e): these are therefore diverse forms of longing with a common goal. On the link in the Lysis between philia and eros, see Hans von Arnim, “Platos Lysis,” Rheinisches Museum 71 (1916): 365; Paul Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933), 115; Friedländer, Plato, 2:96; Robert G. Hoerber, “Plato’s Lysis,” Phronesis 4 (1959): 19; Donald N. Levin, “Some Observations Concerning Plato’s Lysis,” in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, ed. John P. Anton and George L. Kustas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971), 242. Philia is not limited to human relationships, but extends also to animals (cf. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1155a16) and even to things; for the relationship between philia and eros in Aristotle, see Nic. Eth. 1157a6 –16.

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question appears implicitly to attribute to Lysis a commonsense view, a view especially to be expected of a person of his age, namely, that happiness is synonymous with freedom, freedom understood as the power to do whatever one desires. The reader may recall that this view is essentially Callicles’ position in the Gorgias: the tyrant is the most happy because his power allows him to fulfill, unrestrained, all his desires (491e– 492e).24 Socrates argues here ad hominem by beginning with a likely prejudice of Lysis’s and with the intention of refuting his mistaken (and potentially dangerous) belief.

Socrates then gives a list of things that Lysis is likely to love doing, such as driving his father’s chariot, whipping the mules, and playing with his mother’s woolworking tools. Asked if he is allowed to do any of these things, Lysis replies in the negative in each case. Socrates expresses amazement (“By Heracles!” 208e). He then goes on to ask why then in the world (alla’ anti tinos) his parents forbid him to do so many things and treat him more as a slave than a free person. His wealth and noble birth are then of no benefit to him, since he is not his own master. With little hesitation, Lysis gives what seems to him the obvious answer for his lack of freedom: “Well, Socrates, that’s because I’m not yet of age” (209a). Socrates finds this answer unsatisfactory and undertakes to show the boy that this cannot be the real reason for his condition. He will let Lysis gradually see for himself the actual cause of his—and any person’s—lack of freedom and happiness. Socrates begins by saying: “I suspect this is not the reason [me ou touto].” 25 It becomes clear, shortly after, that Lysis’s answer is to be rejected. But instead of telling him so immediately, in a long speech, Socrates proceeds through questions and answers in order to bring him to see, little by little, that the indispensable condition for genuine freedom and real adulthood is knowledge, not a number of years. In doing so, Socrates gives a list of activities (reading, writing, and playing the lyre) in which Lysis, as any Greek child of good family, is bound to possess competence. Through his own brief admission for each example, Lysis can see for himself why he is allowed by his parents to do these other things, for which he has specific practical knowledge: “I suppose it’s because I understand these things, but not those” (209c). Socrates immediately acknowledges the correctness of Lysis’s response: “Very well!, excellent boy [o ariste], so your father is not [ouk ara] waiting for you to be24. Cf. M. Borgt, Platon, Lysis: Übersetzung und Kommentar (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 134.

25. The use of the me ou with the subjunctive conveys here a cautious negation or mere suspicion that something may not be the case.

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come old enough before he trusts you with everything, but for the day when he thinks you know more than he does.” Without knowledge, Lysis will never be useful and responsible and therefore will be no better than a slave (doulos). What Lysis needs to do is to “become wise” (sophos gene, 210d).

Such is the moral as well as intellectual lesson imparted to the young boy by Socrates. This lesson is of course no other than the well-known Socratic view that virtue is knowledge, that is, that sophia, not wealth or reputation, is the first and most important good to be sought. Socrates has thus shown to him, by two sets of contrary examples, that knowledge, not age, is the condition of friendship, freedom, and happiness. Despite Lysis’s ready admissions to the correct answers, Socrates further humbles him, more forcefully this time: “And if you need a teacher, your mind is not yet trained [. . .]. Then you’re not high-minded [megalophron] either—since you don’t have a mind of your own” (210d). Lysis acquiesces readily: “By Zeus, Socrates, I don’t think so.” (Lombardo’s freer but more telling translation: “You’ve got me there, Socrates!”) This remark seems to encapsulate the intention and effect of Socrates’ humbling method. Thus, after stimulating Lysis with an initial aporia, Socrates has guided him to a resolution, but not without a formal humbling at the end, so as to make the meaning of the “lesson” clear to Hippothales as well as Lysis. Socrates has thus examined and guided both boys, Lysis personally and Hippothales indirectly. Socrates’ method may be characterized here as a humbling, although benign, examination accompanied by exhortation and guided instruction (or psychagogia).

One usually assumes, and rightly, that the pretense to knowledge and the defense of false beliefs are indispensable conditions for an elenchus-refutation. Lysis does not ostensibly profess purported knowledge. However, the pretense to knowledge need not be declared. This pretense can assume various forms, from the most explicit and arrogant to the most implicit and (apparently) harmless. The well-known passage of the Sophist at 230a– e, which constitutes one of the very few explicit definitions of the elenchus in the Platonic corpus, might be helpful here. This description is rightly considered by many scholars as an adequate account of the Socratic elenchus. Vlastos too regards it as “an authentic, if partial, representation of Socrates.” 26 Concerning the pretense to knowledge, the passage in the Sophist remains quite general: “They cross-examine someone when he thinks he’s saying something though he’s saying nothing [an oietai tis ti peri legein legon meden]” 26. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 45 n. 50. See also Robinson, Earlier, 2d ed., 12 –14.

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(230b).27 According to this description, then, the interlocutor’s pretense to knowledge need not be professed, but merely implied. And implied it is in any uttered truth-claim, that is, any statement or answer to a Socratic question. Indeed, one might argue that the very willingness to answer a question, as opposed to asking one, is already a form of pretense to knowledge. Inversely, asking a question implies some form of awareness of one’s ignorance and a desire to know. Socrates’ art of asking questions includes his pedagogical aims: he appears to be at once searching for himself and guiding his interlocutors. As for the second condition for an elenchus-refutation, Lysis did propose a “thesis”; that is, he did express a (false) belief. His spontaneous and telling answer about his age as cause of his condition is shown by Socrates to be inadequate and is replaced, with Lysis’s assent, as always, by the correct one. Moreover, with his last, robust remark, already cited, Socrates does “inflict” on Lysis a formal humbling blow, which was already implied in his continued insistence on his lack of freedom and knowledge.

Therefore, Socrates’ exchange with Lysis does combine a humbling and exhortatory elenchus, coupled with psychagogia.

Psychagogia, or the art of guiding souls, appears akin to the art of maieutics, the art of bringing out new insights from within the interlocutor. Interestingly, the Lysis was classified in antiquity, as indicated in its subtitle, as “maieutic” (maieutikos). According to Vlastos, the elenchus and maieutics are two completely different and even incompatible methods, belonging to two distinct phases of Plato’s development. Vlastos accepts the conclusions of Burnyeat in opposing the two methods and confining maieutics almost exclusively to the Theatetus, the only dialogue in which the metaphor of maieutics is explicitly described (148d–151d).28 However, an opposition between the elenchus as purification and maieutics as discovery underestimates the resemblances between the two methods. The elenchus is not purely destructive, as sometimes assumed, since purification constitutes the first step in the right direction toward self-discovery, as Socrates’ examination of Lysis shows. Inversely, maieutics includes the refutative function: the greatest (megiston) maieutic task, as Burnyeat himself notes, consists in examining (basanizein, 150b – c) whether the opinions brought to light prove true or “viable,” that is, internally and externally coherent. In other words, some27. Translation by N. P. White (in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper [Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 1997], 251). The other passages quoted in English translation are all taken from this volume, unless indicated otherwise.

28. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 32; Myles Burnyeat, “Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 24 (1977): 7–16.

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times false fruit must be aborted (150b – c). In that case maieutics includes the negative aspect of the elenchus.29 In both cases, the aim is to make the interlocutor conscious of the real nature of a belief and to lead either to its acceptance or rejection. In the case of Lysis, his initial answer is apparently not the discovery of an originally unconscious idea or one requiring spiritual labor. In a certain sense the process is the reverse: Socrates’ examination of Lysis’s initial belief leads to its gradual rejection. The conclusion, however— knowledge makes one free, lovable, and happy— constitutes a discovery, and partly a self-discovery. Thus, the aim and conclusion of this elenchus, here conducted through psychagogia, is not as remote from maieutics’ procedure as often assumed. Indeed, all three methods are meant to awaken the interlocutor’s self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-critical inquiry.30 The first part of the Lysis is thus marked by a contrast between two contrary models of discourse: Hippothales’ opportunist flattery and Socrates’ well-meaning humbling.31 Plato’s way of establishing this contrast in the drama draws the reader’s attention to the manner and intended effect—as well as to the content— of Socrates’ speeches on his young interlocutors. In addition, it gives an important clue about the immediately following exchange with Menexenus about philia.32 Menexenus is ironically presented as an opponent, even as a dangerous eristic (eristikos).33 Socrates playfully presents himself as someone who is about to undergo an examination, and says to Lysis: “But be ready to come to my support, in case Menexenus attempts to refute me” (elenchein, 211b). The word elenchein assumes here the more technical meaning of “refutation” given to it by the Sophists. In reality, Menexenus will be the “victim” of Socrates. Lysis has by now become a friend and disciple of Socrates, and as a good neophyte he wishes immediately to apply what he has just learned from his teacher. He is of the opinion that his friend Menexenus should benefit from the same special treatment and be in turn humbled. However, apparently incapable of doing so himself, 29. For other considerations on this passage in the Theaetetus, see François Renaud, “Maieutik,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 5, ed. G. Ueding (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), cols. 727–33.

30. Cf. Laszlo Versényi, Socratic Humanism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963), 116 –23.

31. On the function of humbling in the first part of the Lysis, I have found particularly helpful Szlezák, Platon, 117–26; Teloh, Socratic Education, 69 – 81; Andrea W. Nightingale, “The Folly of Praise: Plato’s Critique of Encomiastic Discourse in the Lysis and Symposium,” Classical Quarterly 43 (1993): 112 –30; and Scott, Plato’s Socrates, 51– 80. As for the expression “well-meaning refutation,” one thinks of the Seventh Letter (344b5): en eumenesis elenchois.

32. Szlezák, Platon, 119. Cf. Friedländer, Plato, 2:95.

33. 211b8: Lysis’s remark: e ouk oistha hoti eristikos estin.

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Lysis has to delegate the task to Socrates: “I want you to have a talk with him [. . .] I want you to trounce [kolases] him.” While Lysis’s remark is largely playful, the verb kolazein (“to chastise,” “to trounce”) depicts well Socrates’ humbling method, already applied to Lysis.34 Socrates will forcefully humble Menexenus in an attempt to purge him of his eristic dispositions. Compared to Socrates’ humbling but kind treatment of Lysis, his examination of Menexenus, marked by a series of aporia, is rougher.35 Socrates’ method varies in tone and intensity according to the character of his interlocutor.36 Humbling, moderate or robust, appears as one of the central functions of the Socratic elenchus.37 The description in the Sophist, partly cited above, brings out very clearly this humbling aim. Here follows a later part of the passage from the Sophist: “The people who cleanse the soul, my young friend, likewise think the soul, too, won’t get any advantage from any learning that’s offered to it until someone shames it by refuting it [prin an elenchon tis ton elenchomenon eis aischunen katastesas]” (230c–d; White trans.). According to this description of the elenchus, then, the soul cannot receive any benefit from knowledge if it is not first refuted and humbled, indeed brought to shame. This passage emphasizes the moral obstacles to knowledge and therewith the close link between knowledge and self-knowledge. If philosophy begins in wonder, the elenchus provides the wonder through the aporia, the sufficient proof of one’s ignorance and of the neces34. The figurative expression kolazein finds an important parallel in Xenophon’s account of this aspect of the Socratic method: “the chastising purpose [kolasteriou heneka] of [Socrates’] searching refutation [elenchen] of those who thought they knew everything” (Mem. i. 4, 1). On this passage, see Louis-André Dorion’s analysis, “Xénophon et l’elenchos socratique” (cxviii– clxxxiii), in the long and detailed “Introduction générale” (vii– cclii) of the Budé edition of Xénophon, Mémorables (Paris: Collection des universités de France, 2000).

35. From 212a on the discussion about philia in the Lysis forms a series of aporetic answers to the somewhat modified question about “the way one becomes a friend to someone”: whether the friend is the “lover” (philos) or the “loved one” (philoumenos, 212a–214a); whether it is an attraction of similars (214a–215c) or of opposites (215c–216b); whether the “true friend” is good, bad, or in-between (metaxu), neither wholly good nor bad (216c–217a); whether the “true friend” is an ultimate object of desire (proton philon, 218d–221c); finally, whether the cause of friendship is “kinship” (oikeion, 221d–222d). Each definition leads to aporia.

36. Cf. Teloh, Socratic Education, 28.

37. Szlezák, Platon, 120. This gives further evidence for some scholars’ favorable judgment on the Lysis as a prime example of Socratic method; see, for instance, Edith Hamilton: “The Lysis has no superior as an illustration of Socrates’ method” (preface to the dialogue, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961]).

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sity of learning.38 This confirms the notion, shown earlier, that the pretension to knowledge is varied in form although ubiquitous in nature: everyone needs to be freed of it, whether they profess it or simply live according to it.

In that sense, the first Socratic virtue is modesty, modesty understood as both the knowledge of one’s ignorance and the spirit of genuine learning. Hence Socrates’ renowned habit of asking, instead of answering, questions.39 The phenomenon of shame well illustrates the existential dimension of philosophizing.40 The feeling of shame at the disclosure of one’s ignorance is meant as sufficient incentive to rectify one’s shameful condition.41 In other words, the purgative and exhortative functions of the elenchus are inseparable. This in turn confirms the impossibility of a clean separation between the purely logical and the ethical functions of the elenchus.42 38. Cf. Michael Erler, Der Sinn der Aporien in den Dialogen Platons: Übungsstücke zur Anleitung im philosophischen Denken (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987).

39. Cf. Aristotle, Soph. Elench. 183b.

40. On shame: Symp. 216b; Phdr. 243c; Grg. 461b, 482d; Prot. 248c. Cf. W. Thomas Schmid, “Socrates’ Practice of Elenchus in the Charmides,” Ancient Philosophy 1 (1980): 141– 47; Lesher, “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking,” 1–9; Louis-André Dorion, “La subversion de l’elenchos juridique dans l’Apologie de Socrate,” Revue philosophique de Louvain 87 (1990): 312 –17.

41. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 13. Cf. Gaiser, Protreptik, 35 – 66.

42. It is remarkable, although insufficiently stressed, that the word elenchos originally meant shame (as did aischune, aidos). Cf. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexikon, 531. Connotations of this original meaning are still present in Plato. Shame is often portrayed in the dialogues as the natural emotion stemming from the realization of one’s ignorance and of the contradictions within oneself (cf. Soph. 230b –d). Its most vivid manifestation is blushing (see, e.g., Lys. 213d; Prot. 312a; Charm. 158c.; Rep. 350d; Euthyd. 275d). The archaic meaning of elenchus is not regarded by Vlastos as an integral component of the elenchus (understood as refutation) in Plato, but only as a possible result of it. For a critique of this view, see Richard McKim, “Shame and Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” in Platonic Readings, Platonic Writings. Among important passages in Plato underlying the importance of shame, one must include Alcibiades’ confession at the end of the Symposium concerning the effect Socrates’ words have on him and on many others (“let me tell you, I am not alone”): “Nothing like this ever happened to me: they [the great orators] never upset me so deeply that my very own soul started protesting that my life— my life—was no better than the most miserable slave’s. . . . Socrates is the only man in the world who makes me feel shame [to aischunesthai]. [. . .] Yes he makes me feel ashamed [aischunomai]” (Symp. 216a–b; Nehamas and Woodruff, trans.). See also, in the Apology, Socrates’ exhortation to the people of Athens: “Are you not ashamed [ouk aischune] of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible. While you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?” (Ap. 29d– e, trans. Grube). Cf. Kenneth Seeskin, “Socratic Philosophy and the Dialogue Form,” Philosophy and Literature (1984): 190, and esp. Jill Gordon, Turning Toward Philosophy: Literary Device and Dramatic Structure in Plato’s Dialogue (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 22 –28.

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One might make a general objection, namely, that philosophy for Plato aims at a liberation from, not a playing with, the emotions, and that our emphasis on psychological or rhetorical elements obscures the fundamentally impersonal character of truth for the Greek philosopher. It is certainly true and important to say that the ultimately decisive element in Socratic dialectic remains the argumentative coherence of the opinion or thesis under discussion. In the dialogues, the logos is repeatedly spoken of as a force superior to any personal inclinations or inhibitions: it takes its own course, and we ought to try to follow its traces.43 As a result, philosophy as presented in the dialogues requires a kind of detachment from the illusions of one’s own opinions and from the hindering emotions of the self.44 On the other hand, however, for Plato philosophy as a human activity aims not only to discover permanent truths but also to convey, especially to the beginner or less advanced, a sense of the importance of these truths. The detachment from selfish, narrow-minded emotions is only possible, inversely, through the attachment to or the striving toward the universal and permanent.45 The more advanced must therefore help cultivate and maintain, in part through the emotions, a searching, argumentative attitude.46 As we have seen in the case of Lysis, Socrates’ argumentation is emphatically ad hominem: Socrates never shared, in reality, Lysis’s initial (fallacious) premises or inferences. His goal was to refute Lysis and to guide him in the right direction. Protreptic and psychagogia require, among other things, a fair amount of psychological insight and tact, and Socrates proves to possess both.47 43. Prot. 361a; La. 194a; Men. 74d; Phd. 88d– 89c; Rep. 365d, 394d, 607b.

44. As Michel Narcy rightly remarks: “le sens du Lysis, c’est ce qui s’y passe, l’ergon, plus que ce qui s’y dit, le logos; mais cet ergon n’est pas celui du sentiment; c’est, au contraire, par le découragement du sentiment qu’opère la dialectique, l’œuvre du logos, ou le travail de la parole” (“Le socratisme du Lysis: i. philia et dialegesthai,” in Lezioni socratiche, ed. Gabriele Giannantoni and Michel Narcy (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1997), 218.

45. As the Lysis makes clear and the Republic further emphasizes, the relationship between a philosopher and that philosopher’s object of learning is erotic (philos, eros, epithumia; cf.

Rep. 485a– 487c; 475b). Indeed, the Good ultimately is not distinguishable from the human good (Lys. 217a–220a).

46. See David Blank, “Plato and the Arousal of Emotions,” Classical Quarterly 43 (1993), 428 –39. As Wolfgang Wieland writes: “Affekte können Bereiche eröffnen und erfahrbar machen, die ihm [Socrates’ interlocutor] sonst verschlossen blieben” (introduction [“Einführung”] to Platons Dialoge: “Nomoi” und “Symposion,” ed. Georg Picht (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), xix.

47. The ad hominem character of the Socratic elenchus also implies the possibility that some fallacies or week arguments are conscious and deliberate and not real confusions on Socrates’ part. (See on this point Michel Narcy, “Le Socrate du Lysis est-il un sophiste?” in Plato, Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides: Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum, ed. Thomas M. Robin-

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The conception of the elenchus as pedagogical humbling in the Lysis corresponds to the notion of the consciousness of one’s deficiencies (endeia) discussed later in the dialogue.48 The person who has become conscious of his or her shortcomings, moral and intellectual, feels a painful lack, a lack that in turn creates a desire for its satisfaction. Socratic pedagogy is erotic pedagogy: it seeks to make the beloved into a lover. This is precisely what happens with Lysis: the beautiful beloved (of Hippothales) becomes himself a lover. To that extent, Socrates’ pedagogy here proves successful.49 In the Lysis, the elenchus appears primarily as a pedagogical tool, implying the asymmetrical relationship between teacher and student.50 Socrates, as a teacher, displays a double personality: he is at once searching with his interlocutor while initially holding back knowledge, if only the knowledge of his own ignorance.

This conclusion, with its emphasis on pedagogy and psychagogia, should not be seen as incompatible with the dialectical openness and modesty also characteristic of Socrates in many of Plato’s dialogues.51 Socrates’ way of addressing his interlocutors varies, as we have seen, in the Lysis, a dialogue in which the extreme inequality between Socrates and his main interlocutors highlights the pedagogical functions of Socrates’ argumentation. When Socrates says to Lysis, “And if you need a teacher, your mind is not yet trained” (210d), he is referring to the remote, not the proximate, goal of dialectic.

Most characters in the dialogues believe they do not need a guide, but only because, ironically, they fail to realize their ignorance and thus their (initial) need for one. To bring this lesson home to those in need of and receptive to it already constitutes a pedagogical achievement. In other words, Socrates’ son and Luc Brisson [Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2000], 180 –93). However, the decisive difference between dialectic and eristic lies in the intent, that is, in the dialectician’s ultimate concern for truth and the Sophist’s indifference to it. Cf. Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 16 n. 30; David Hitchcock, “The Origin of Professional Eristic,” in Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum, ed. Robinson and Brisson, 59 – 67.

48. Cf. Francisco J. Gonzalez, “Plato’s Lysis: An Enactment of Philosophical Kinship,” Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995): 69 –90.

49. Versényi, “Plato’s Lysis,” 197. The last, suggestive line of the dialogue may be understood as a further indication of this success: there Socrates claims to have become a friend to his young interlocutors (223b).

50. Cf. Thomas A. Szlezák, “Gespräch unter Ungleichen: Zur Struktur und Zielsetzung der platonischen Dialoge,” in Literarische Formen der Philosophie, ed. G. Gabriel and C. Schildknecht (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1990), 40 – 61.

51. See the potential objection of Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 4; cf. Nicholas D. Smith, review of Socratic Education in Plato’s Early Dialogues, by Henry Teloh, Ancient Philosophy 10 (1990): 108 –10.

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knowledge of his ignorance includes the awareness of the role and importance of knowledge in human life. On the other hand, the prominent position occupied by psychagogia (as opposed to mere aporia) in the Lysis is also due in part to the young boy’s unusually favorable disposition as a learner.

Indeed, Lysis receives Socrates’ elenchus and instruction graciously. His receptivity and willingness to learn make him a promising pupil, and even one of the very few of Socrates’ interlocutors who are genuinely thankful for the humbling lesson. In this he is again reminiscent of the ideal respondent portrayed in the Sophist (230b –d).

Although the elenchus and psychagogia can occur separately, they are combined in the Lysis.52 Thus Socrates’ elenchus in this dialogue not only fulfills the functions of refutation and exhortation but also guides and indeed transforms 53 the young Lysis, as is shown both in the argument and the drama.

52. Teloh, Socratic Education, 22.

53. On the notion of the formation and transformation of the individual as the goal of philosophy, in Plato and other ancient thinkers, see the far-ranging study by Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. A. I. Davidson, trans.

M. Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

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11 The (De)construction of Irrefutable Argument in Plato’s Philebus

P. C H R I S T O P H E R S M I T H

At first glance it does not appear that the Philebus could contribute to our understanding of the Platonic elenchos, or dialogical refutation. Indeed, this later “dialogue” is generally taken to be a doctrinal treatise on the good life cast in dialogical form, and rather awkwardly at that.1 After all, Philebus himself withdraws right at the start, and Protarchus, who offers hardly any resistance at all to Socrates, seems to be more a stand-in for a lay audience, who might not always follow the complexities in a monological exposition, than a worthy interlocutor in some kind of dialogical exchange.

As justified as the usual reading of the Philebus might be, it suppresses important features that can be brought to light if this work is approached in a 1. See, for example, the classic studies of the Philebus: Hans-Georg Gadamer’s 1931 work, Platons dialektische Ethik (reprint, Hamburg: Meiner, 1968), and R. M. Hackforth’s Plato’s Examination of Pleasure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945). In taking a logical, rather than ethical, approach to the Philebus, this paper will depend to a large extent on Gadamer’s later hermeneutical strategies for reading Plato. See, in particular, Gadamer’s “Das Vorbild der platonischen Dialektik” and “Die Logik von Frage und Antwort,” in Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and method) (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1965). Translations from the German and Greek are my own.

199

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quite different way, namely, as an inconclusive, truly dialectical investigation of problems thematized previously, above all in the Phaedo and Phaedrus.

The issue joined in these dialogues and, as I maintain here, in the Philebus once again is not only and not even primarily about the particular subject matter under discussion, that is, respectively, whether the soul is immortal or whether love is a bad or good thing or, in the case of the Philebus, whether pleasure or intellect is the good. Indeed, it is not even about how bad arguments on these matters may be refuted.2 Rather, the underlying concern, I suggest, is how one might secure against sophistical refutation one’s own arguments on any subject matter. Not the Socratic but the sophistical elenchos is in question.3 We see this theme of sophistical refutation in the Phaedo’s underlying concern with the danger of our becoming haters of argument (misologoi, 89d) 2. It is remarkable that after a century of Nietzsche’s ubiquitous influence Anglo-American interpreters of Plato would still cling to the paradigm of linear, one-dimensional argument and force Plato’s dialogues to conform to it as a sort of Procrustean bed. For surely any unprejudiced reading of Plato sensitive to his complex weaving of multiple and often contradictory strands of inquiry, each sometimes on the surface but sometimes running beneath it, would reveal that what you see (read) at any given time is not all that you get. Does not, for instance, the Phaedo’s evident failure to demonstrate the immortality of a soul, Socrates’, Simmias’s, or anyone else’s—see Simmias’s lack of conviction (apistia) at 107b—indicate that other things are going on in this dialogue, beneath its surface argumentation for immortality? And does not the Phaedrus’s patent incoherence in both content and style remind us of that dialogue’s own assertion at 265d that even Socrates’ glorious encomium on love was only paidia—a sort of child’s play in comparison with the much more sober and “serious” (spoudaios) consideration of rhetoric in the dialogue’s second part? I suggest in what follows that it would be equally blinkered to insist that the Philebus is simply a doctrinal argument for the good life as Plato proposes it.

But just why, then, do analytic philosophers insist in the first place on reducing Plato’s multifaceted questionings to monological demonstrations of “doctrines,” say, on the immortality of the soul, or love, or the good life? Nietzsche might have provided the answer: For is it not der Wille zur Wahrheit, the will to establish truth se-curely, without cura, without worry, that blocks out for them Plato’s own willingness to endure the thunderstorm (Gewitter) of indeterminacy, the inevitable concomitance of clarity and confusion, euporia and aporia, in any human conversation? (See Philebus 15c.) Plato is in fact a much more dangerous and destabilizing thinker than their tidy analyses would allow them to admit. (See P. Christopher Smith, The Hermeneutics of Original Argument: Demonstration, Dialectic, Rhetoric [Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998], 191–96, on apeirophobia, or fear of the indefinite.)

3. The Sophist makes clear just how concerned the later Plato was to distinguish the Socratic from the sophistical elenchos and to secure argument against the latter. See, in particular, the contrast of the Sophist’s art, as combative (ago¯nistike¯), competitive (hamille¯tike¯), violent (beastike¯), disputatious (amphisbe¯te¯tike¯), contrarian (antilogike¯), contentious (eristike¯), and belligerent (mache¯tike¯) (225a–226a), with Socratic purification of false beliefs (226b – 231a).

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and, if a divine argument, or logos, cannot be found, in the exhortation to cling in good faith to the “raft” of the best human argument (logos anthro¯pinos) when tossed “to and fro” (kato¯ kai ano¯) by the Heraclitean tides of contradictory human discourse (85c–d). We see it again in the Phaedrus’s warning against the Sophists’ seductive “technique” of “redirecting [an audience], little by little, away from the real via similarities and each time leading [it] to the contrary” (262b) and, in this way, passing off a “donkey” for a “horse,” which is to say in more serious terms, what is wrong for what is right and what is bad for what is good (260b – c). As the second half of the Phaedrus makes inescapably evident, this dialogue, certainly, is not really about its initial subject matter, love, but about arguments, logoi. My task here is to show that, in fact, the same thing can be said of the Philebus.

Put another way, the issue of the good life in the Philebus actually only provides an example, albeit a crucial one, for the dialogue’s real theme. The real question is how, conceivably, one might defend arguments, logoi, against the Sophist’s contentious “art,” not so much of refutation as of confutation —against the “art,” that is, of demolishing an opponent’s position and throwing an audience into total confusion. As the Phaedrus shows, this sophistical “art” exploits the indeterminacy and ambiguity inherent in any argument by the standard rhetorical topoi.4 Indeed, as we have just seen, the deceptive use of the topos of “contraries” (enantia) is highlighted there. As Sophists had discovered, arguments by the topoi are always vulnerable to refutation. For all such arguments reason with onomata, or spoken word names for things, whose meanings oscillate between contrary senses, and by playing on the equivocation inherent in these onomata, a uncannily clever (deinos) speaker can make anything seem to be the opposite of itself. Hence, to fend off sophistical exploitation of this inherent equivocation, this dunamis to¯n onomato¯n, or “potential of word names” to mean the opposite of themselves, one would have to bring this oscillation to a standstill.5 As we will see, in the Philebus mathematical argument immediately proffers itself as a way to do this, since it is conducted, not in equivocal, voiced 4. I have pointed out elsewhere that these topoi, or ways of constructing an argument, are all variations of arguments by “similarity” and by “difference.” Arguments by “difference” break down into arguments by “the more and the less,” “contraries,” “the part and the whole,” “the prior and the posterior,” “correlatives,” and “contradiction.” See Smith, Hermeneutics, 56 –72, and Aristotle, Rhet. ii, 19, 23, and Top. ii, 7– 8, for a discussion of argument by the topoi of “similarity” and “difference” in its various forms.

5. See Gadamer, Wahrheit, 383–95, on Plato’s attempt to overcome the inherent equivocation of the onoma.

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word names, but in univocal, written word signs, se¯meia, whose meaning has been stabilized and delimited. As Gadamer points out,6 the number is paradigmatic here; after all, everybody can see what “2” signifies, and consequently there is no possibility of twisting “2” to make it signify the contrary of itself. The Philebus advances beyond Pythagoreanism precisely because it shows that “2” signifies a sort of being different from any particular two things, people, cows, and so forth, that we might count up (see 56d– e).

Unlike words that name particular things that come to pass, “2” signifies an eidos, or species, that belongs to the genos, or genus, of “even number.” 7 In other words, “2” signifies a member of the class of “even number.” Classification by genos and eidos here requires a complete abstraction from our concrete experience of temporal and local physical beings and a turn to the static presence (Heidegger: ständige Anwesenheit) of being that ever “is,” to aei on, and “is” at no place and at no time. Once this abstraction and turn is made, argument will no longer be reasoning by the topoi of “similarity” and “difference” as these are concretely experienced in named things coming to pass. Rather, argument will now be about which abstract classes of things belong to, or are excluded from, which other classes, as, for example, in the standard syllogisms “All B are C; all A are B; so all A are C” or “No B are C, all A are B; so no A are C.” 8 The point to be established, then, is that the Philebus is fundamentally about converting rhetorical arguments by the topoi that are phrased in word names into logical inferences by classes that are signified with word signs.

What we have in this dialogue, in other words, is a kind of “thought experiment” reminiscent of the Phaedo, in which a possible way of securing argument against sophistical refutation is put to the test.9 As the Philebus makes clear, however, even the best-reconstructed argument always threatens to collapse into ultimate indeterminacy. For the original world, from which the logic of classes has abstracted, reasserts itself when, as they always do, the word signs signifying eidetic reality relapse into 6. Ibid., 389 –90.

7. Plato, to be sure, uses genos and eidos interchangeably.

8. The Sophist’s exposition at 251d–253e of the koino¯nia of “classes” (gene¯), their combining or mutual exclusion, effectively suppresses thinking in contraries by reducing not-being to a purely logical difference: “Whenever we say what is not [to me¯ on], it seems that we are not speaking of the contrary [enantion] of what is but only of what is different [heteron]” (257b).

This passage makes explicit just how this conversion of topical argument into inference from the inclusion of classes in, or exclusion from, each other would look.

9. See Smith, Hermeneutics, 104 –13, “The Trial and Failure of Demonstration (Apodeixis) as a Paradigm for Argument.”

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the original word names naming temporal, local things. The Philebus’s construction of irrefutable argument is thus—and herein lies Plato’s dialogical genius—also its deconstruction.10

I. Reconstructing the Logos In support of reading the Philebus precisely not as treatise on ethical doctrine but, instead, as a dialogical exploration of argument as such, we should first remark just how the dialogue begins: “But take a look, Protarchus, at what argument [tina logon] you are now about to take over from Philebus and what argument from us you are going to dispute [kai pros ton par’ he¯min amphisbe¯tein]” (11a). From the very start, then, we are to address traditional dialectical argumentation, the juxtaposition of argument and counterargument in amphisbe¯tein, or disputation; this is the announced theme.

And soon thereafter (12b – c) the issue of the equivocation inherent in all word names, or onomata, is joined too: Philebus would speak of “Aphrodite,” but, Socrates rejoins, “the truest name of this is pleasure” (to d’ ale¯thestaton aute¯s onoma he¯done¯n einai, 12b); and, he continues, “I know about ‘pleasure’ that it exists in various shadings. . . . For, on the one hand, to hear it this way, ‘pleasure’ is simply one thing [esti gar akouein men houto¯s haplo¯s hen ti], but, on the other hand, it takes shapes of all sorts and in some respects unlike each other” (12c). To head off arguments exploiting this ambiguity in the name we hear, “[w]e must also look and see what kind of nature it has [dei kai skopein he¯ntina phusin echei]” (12c)—this, quite apart from the voiced name with which we happen to address it. The clear implication is that we could then give this nature, or phusis, a univocal sign rather than an equivocal name like “Aphrodite” and thereby put a stop to any confusion a mere name such as this introduces.

Just how sophistical confusions can be introduced if we do not do this is made clear right away. For example, if, when referring to some kinds of things that we name “pleasure,” we say that pleasure is good and then, when referring to other kinds, say that, on the contrary, it is bad, the objection will be raised immediately that in assigning contrary qualities to any given thing we are contradicting ourselves: it will be countered at once that what is sup10. Jacques Derrida is, of course, the inspiration for the foregrounding of what, at first glance, would seem to be the background text in the Philebus, as well as for the exposition of the inherent contradictions in the dialogue insofar as it simultaneously both constructs and destroys the possibility of an argument invulnerable to the sophistical elenchos.

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posed to be one thing identical with itself is, in fact, many different things.

That discovery, it is said here, delights the heart of any young man who is attracted to Sophists like Philebus and who, in a variation on the topic of “the part and the whole,” “destabilizes with delight every argument [panta kinei logon asmeno¯s], now rolling up everything to one side and mixing it together into one, now unfolding it again and taking it apart,” and who, in the process, confounds both himself and everybody around him (15e).11 In the same way, for example, if we say that two things come into being by doubling, someone else can counter, with the topic of “correlatives,” that they come into being by the correlative opposite of halving (Phaedo 97a–b); or if, in employing “the more and the less,” we say that Simmias is “more” tall than Socrates, someone else can counter that this same Simmias has the opposite quality of being “less” tall than Cebes (Phaedo 102b). In this way anyone skilled in the “art” of sophistical refutation will pounce on the apparent contradiction in what we are saying. And so it goes not only with “the part and the whole,” “correlatives,” and “the more and the less,” but with “contraries,” “the prior and posterior,” and “contradiction” as well.

For it is characteristic of any statement of mere “belief” about what “seems” to be the case about something, any logos of doxa, that, given its inherent questionableness and the equivocation of the word names with which we state it, it can always be made to say the opposite of itself.

Foreseeing this sophistical trap, Protarchus simply clings to “similarity” or “likeness” and refuses to allow that any “pleasure” is different from or unlike any other “pleasure”: Socrates: “Do you say that they are unlike and some of them contrary to each other [anomoious . . . alle¯lais einai kai tinas enantias]?” Protarchus: “Not to the extent that they are pleasures” (13c).

Pleasure, Protarchus maintains, is one thing entirely like itself and in no way many different things. That position, were he to insist on it, would, of course, make further discussion impossible (see 13c). How, then, to get around this impasse? How can we conduct a dialectical argument, which presupposes that something is both one thing like itself and many different things, without leaving ourselves open to these sophistical sleights of hand that demolish any argument by the topics of “similarity” and “difference”?

“For it is indeed an astonishing thing to say that the many is one and that

11. That Socrates is intruding on a teaching session by the Sophist Philebus is made clear

by Protarchus’s objection at 16a: “But, Socrates, do you not see how many of us there are, that we are all youths, and have you no fear that we will join with Philebus in attacking you if you insult us?” This is underscored by Socrates’ “boys, as Philebus calls you,” at 16b.

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the one is many, and easy to dispute [radion amphisbe¯tesai] with the one who sets down either of these assertions” (14c).

The way proposed out of this predicament is to convert argument by the topoi of “similarity” and “difference” into argument by the inclusion and exclusion of classes (gene¯, eide¯) in and from each other: the “one” and the “many” must no longer, as in topical reasoning, refer to the “different” “parts” of one concretely experienced particular “whole” thing, the person Socrates, for instance. Rather, the “one” must mean “one” class of universal things with “many” different members. But this conversion of argument presupposes a radical ontological shift.

For just as when we speak of any mathematical concept, so, too, when we speak of one thing, we must no longer, as in topical reasoning, have in mind “the ‘one’ of things that are generated and destroyed,” no longer have in mind, this is to say, some one particular thing that only appears to be what it is to our senses and that we address with a name (15a). Rather, we must have in mind “ones” “each of which, being ever one and the same and susceptible neither of generation nor of destruction, . . . is most securely one and the same [einai bebaiotata mian taute¯n]” (15c). In this way we might establish a secure (bebaios) foundation on which to build our argument. With this foundation in place we could proceed next to a “many” that also, and unlike the many perceived parts of some perceived whole, is not susceptible of generation and destruction but is the many different species or forms (eide¯) of the one ungenerated, indestructible genus (genos) ever the same as itself.

And while “the ‘wise’ among men nowadays [hoi de nun to¯n anthro¯po¯n sophoi]” go straight from the one to an unlimited many in arguing contentiously (eristiko¯s), we, on the other hand, could, as a last step in arguing dialectically (dialektiko¯s), establish just how many the many forms are by counting them up and assigning them a definite number (16e–17a). The project, then, would be to enumerate the forms (eide¯) of these two genera (gene¯), Pleasure and Intellect.

Before this is attempted, however, two more illustrations of the prerequisite ontological shift are given (17a–b). First, in regard to music it is asserted that the voiced sound (phone¯), as we hear it initially, is perceived as an undifferentiated continuum extending between the indeterminate opposites of infinitely more and infinitely less, high and low pitch (17c). One has learned from Pythagorean predecessors, however, how to reconstruct this acoustical experience of the infinite variations heard over time, as well as the bodily experience of motions felt over time in the dance, into what is essentially a static visual and spatial, that is, written, system of numerically delimited

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high and low “notes” with enumerated intervals, on the one hand, and enumerated rhythms and measures, on the other (17c– e). Similarly, and even more important for us, who will be concerned to display the inevitable relapse from the ontological transition undertaken here, the infinitely various qualities of spoken sound that we experience acoustically over time are reconstructed as a system of a limited number of letters, or grammata, which is to say, written marks across a space that we see. This is the point of the story of Theuth (18b –d). That we today signify audible pitches by visual,

legible letters, A, E , F , and so forth, displays the common ground of these reconstructions as well as their enduring “historical effect,” as Gadamer would say.

To be sure, the dialogue returns to its apparent subject matter of the “good life” in the next section (19a–23b). There the conclusion is drawn that neither pleasure nor rational discernment by themselves would be complete, sufficient, and electable and that, consequently, the good life must be some sort of mixture of the two. However, close attention to the context of this section reveals that its underlying purpose is not ethical but logical, namely, to introduce the discussion of “weapons other than those of the arguments heretofore” (bele¯ . . . hetera to¯n emprosthen logo¯n, 23b). In making new argumentative strategies necessary, this section on the good life leads directly to the exposition of the four eide¯ and gene¯: the apeiron, or unlimited; the peras, or limit; the summixis, or mixture of the first two; and nous, or intelligence.

Hence, this extended exposition of the four eide¯ and gene¯ (22c–29e) cannot be taken as a mere methodological preparation for the “really important” discussion of the good life that both precedes and follows it, any more than the second half of the Phaedrus (257cff.) can be taken to be a mere epilogue to the “really important” speeches on love with which that dialogue begins. On the contrary, just as the Phaedrus’s speeches on love exemplified the rhetorical theory exposited there, the argument about the good life in the Philebus exemplifies the new argumentative strategies being developed here.

Indeed, in a continuation of the examples musicology and grammatology at 17c–18d, even these new “weapons” for argument are themselves now exposited as yet another example of the new argumentative strategy developed at the beginning of the dialogue, the strategy, namely, of securing an argumentative foundation by establishing the definite number of “forms” (eide¯) and “genera” (gene¯) of something—in this case, four. Socrates: “Let us try to take good care in setting down our starting point”; Protarchus:

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“What sort of starting point are you speaking of?” Socrates: “Let us sort out everything that is in the All into two, or, if you wish, three” (23b – c); and later: “Posit for my sake this fourth genus in addition to these three” (23d), and after that, “let us select three of the four, and seeing that each of two of these is split and dispersed as many, and gathering each again into one, let us try to intuit how and when each of these was one and each many” (23e).

In a typical, if highly confusing, Platonic convolution this new methodological exposition of “weapons other than those of the arguments heretofore” (23b) thus simultaneously exemplifies the previous methodological exposition of limiting the unlimited in musical tone and spoken voice. (No wonder Protarchus is perplexed! “If concerning these matters you could speak still more clearly,” he says, “perhaps I might follow you” [23e].)

The first element reprised from those previous expositions of music and speech is the apeiron, or unlimited. Whereas before, in reasoning topically, we had a “more and less” of unlimitedly ever higher and unlimitedly ever lower pitch in music (17c–d), here at 24a–b we have unlimitedly ever “more and less” hot and, “correlatively,” unlimitedly ever “less and more” cold. The point now, insinuated rather clumsily by Protarchus’s agreeing “strongly” (sphodra), is that all “contraries,” strongly/weakly, high /low, hot /cold, “do not allow any definite ‘just so much’ to exist [ouk eaton einai poson hekaston]”; rather, in every case the two “contraries” produce “the more and the less” by introducing a “stronger than the weaker” while causing “the ‘just so much’ to disappear” (to de poson aphanizeton, 24c).

This argument takes direct aim at the basic topoi of “contraries” and “the more and the less.” For example, “If someone can get sicker, he or she can get better” (see, with small variation, Aristotle, Rhet. 1392a 9f.). By nature topical arguments such as this are about named contingent things in their coming to pass, and precisely not about signified, statically present, conceptual beings that of necessity always are what they are. And given the contingency of their subject matter and the equivocation of the word names in which it is expressed, these arguments always cut two ways: “You say she will get better, but I say she will get sicker still.” In other words, such arguments are inconclusive, for the question addressed, “Will she get better or sicker still?” always remains open, and both the contradictory answers are always in play. The counterargument, therefore, must always be entertained too, which is another way of saying that arguments by “contraries” and “the more and the less” are always subject to refutation. It is clear, then, that, if any such argument is to be secured against refutation, it will have to be put on a new basis not of named qualitative “contraries” that

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are both unlimitedly “more and less” but of a stabilized, definite, enumerable quantity—to poson, the “just so much” and no “more or less,” signified by a number.

Accordingly, the next class (genos) introduced is the peras, or limit. In precise contradistinction to the perceived qualitative “more or less” of the apeiron, this class is defined mathematically and quantitatively as “what does not take on this [infinite more and less], rather everything the opposite of that: first, the equal and equality, then, after equality, the double and all things whatever that are number relative to number or measure relative to measure” (22a–b). Being, what is, and argument about it are now to be reconstructed numerically and proportionally. Consequently, instead of the qualitative opposites of “the more and the less” destroying the “just so much,” as they always threaten to do (see 24c cited above), the reverse will now take place: the imposition of conceptual number and ratio upon perceptual qualitative opposites will suppress their inherent indeterminacy.

All unlimited, indeterminate qualitative oppositions must have imposed on them “the equal and the double and whatever else stops opposites from relating divergently to each other [pauei pros alle¯la tanantia diaphoro¯s echonta] and, in introducing symmetry and concord, produces number” (25d– e). “For,” as was stated earlier, “these would not still be warmer and colder, these two, if they took on ‘just so much,’ since what is warmer is always going someplace further and does not stay put [procho¯rei gar kai ou menei], and so, too, what is colder. ‘Just so much,’ however, has taken a stand and has stopped going on [to de poson este¯ kai proion epausato]” (24d).

However, in anticipation of the eventual collapse of this reconstruction of argument, we note here that the reality of qualitative opposites coming to pass does not, in its own intrinsic development, impose these limits on itself.

Everything that “is” should now be reconstructed by us according to the positive converse of “nothing too much” (me¯den agan), namely, everything “just so much” and no “more or less.” The healthy body “is” now construed as limit imposed on the potentially unlimited “more or less” of its components; musical composition “is” now the imposition of limit on indeterminate voice and sound, and so, too, with the seasons: “Thus,” asks Socrates, “have not the distinct seasons and everything beautiful come to pass for us [he¯min] out of this, namely, that the unlimited and what has limit have been mixed together [to¯n te apeiro¯ron kai to¯n peras echonto¯n summichtheto¯n]?”

(26b).

This is by no means a “rhetorical question” that would foreclose on the counterpossibility; rather, it follows the dialectical form of argument that, as

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an ero¯te¯sis antiphaseo¯s, or “contradiction in question,” keeps both sides of this contradiction in play.12 As a matter of fact, the contrary possibility is openly acknowledged at 28d: “Shall we say, Protarchus, that the power of the incalculable and contingent, and what just happens by chance [te¯n tou alogou kai eike¯i dunamin kai to ope¯i etuchen], administer the sum of all things and what is called the whole, or the contrary [tanantia], namely, as our predecessors were wont to say, that intelligence and an astonishing reason order and govern them?” (28d). The interrogative form of these “assertions” already suggests that, precisely as extrinsic, any quantitative reconstruction of what was originally in the infinite oscillation of being qualitatively more or less is always open to deconstruction whenever that original, nonenumerable, incalculable (alogon) being reasserts itself in our talk and argument (logos) about it and overwhelms the reconstruction. Indeed, we see next that Plato himself knows full well just how precarious any quantitatively reconstructed argument actually is.

For that the limit is in fact conceived of as an extrinsic construct imposed by either divine or human poie¯sis becomes indisputable with the introduction of the fourth and last class, or “genus,” of things: the aitia, or “cause,” responsible for the imposition of limit on the unlimited at 26e: “Is not that which makes things [to poioun] always in the lead, according to its nature,” Socrates asks, “while that which is made [to de poioumenon], as what comes to be, follows the former?” (27a). What is more, what comes to be is even said to be “something that, for the purpose of generation, slaves for the cause” (to douleuon eis genesin aitiai, 27a). In other words, what “is,” in coming to pass, does not “freely and voluntarily” impose the limit on itself; rather, the limit must be imposed by an outside agent, here called intellect, or mind (nous).

II. Foregrounding the Background Once it has been established “that intellect is of the same family with the cause and belongs pretty much to that genus” (hoti nous men aitias e¯n xuggene¯s kai toutou schedon tou genous) and that pleasure belongs to the 12. For the dialectical ero¯te¯sis antiphaseo¯s, see Aristotle, Analyt. Pr. 24a24 –25, and Smith, Hermeneutics, 197–99. The point is that, despite its proposals, the Philebus never demonstrates its hypotheses conclusively but continues throughout to question contradictory alternatives; it is never apodeixis and always dialektike¯. In this regard, see P. Christopher Smith, “Not Doctrine but ‘Placing in Question’: The ‘Thrasymachus’ (Rep. i as an Ero¯te¯sis of Commercialization),” in Who Speaks? ed. Press, 113–25.

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genus of the unlimited (31a), the dialogue can proceed to illustrate the new, irrefutable form of argument. Dialegesthai, this is to say, will no longer be “talking things through” orally and audibly, in ordinary word names, and over a time. Rather, dialegesthai will now be “sorting things out” spatially, according to the envisionable, conceptual “look” of something, its eidos, or “form.” 13 The argument about the good life will proceed, that is, by diairesis, by “taking apart” the “just so many” forms of each of these two genera.

Accordingly, “Pleasure” and its forms, and “Intellect” and its forms, will no longer be taken as equivocal voiced onomata that “name” similar and different local and temporal experiences of pleasure and intellect. Instead, with the nature, or phusis, of these forms having been stabilized, their ti estin — the quiddity, or “what” each “is”—having been identified, these words are now to be thought of as univocal, written se¯meia that “signify” static universal concepts.14 Our task now is to read what follows inside out, as it were, and to bring to the fore the background theory of argument with its conversion of voiced onomata into written se¯meia wherever this theory shows up behind the exemplary classifications within the gene¯ Pleasure and Intellect. In the exposition of the genos Pleasure, that background theory is most obtrusive in the remarkable excursus, at 36eff., concerning the analogy of true and false pleasure to true and false belief (doxa). To establish that “true” and “false” can be predicated of pleasure too, Socrates must first clarify these words’ usual application to belief (see 38cff.). The exposition here seems to proceed naturally enough from a question one asks oneself (“What is that thing next to the rock, which appears to be standing there under a tree?” 38d) to an answer one gives oneself (“It is a human being”), to an assertion or logos 13. That what is heard over time has, in this new dialegesthai, been converted into what is envisioned in space is brought home by the Phaedrus’s reference to the “left” and “right” forms of love in the dialectical reconstruction of Socrates’ two speeches on love (266a). For more on this shift in the meaning of dialegesthai, see Smith, Hermeneutics, 115, 156, 174.

14. We remark that, paradoxically, only Plato’s surreptitious shift in onomata, or word names, makes possible this reconstruction of argument and the prerequisite conversion of onomata to se¯meia: The more practical but inexact reasoning named phrone¯sis, or “rational discernment,” which was the alternative to pleasure at the beginning of the dialogue, now becomes the more precise reasoning named nous, or “intelligence.” For it is only the noein of nous, and not the phronein of phrone¯sis, that can be said to intuit the eidos, or “look,” of something that the sign signifies. In other words, at a basic level Plato himself continues to reason by listening to the resonances of word names rather than by sorting out definite classes of signified things.

This continuing discrepancy between the argumentative theory proposed and the actual argumentative practice of the dialogue alerts us in yet another way to Plato’s ironic detachment from the proposals the dialogue advances.

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“voiced aloud to someone present” (eis pho¯ne¯n pros ton paronta, 38e). It is striking, however, that it then abandons this oral-acoustical model altogether and turns to the interior viewing of writing. Socrates: “In coinciding with perceptions and sensations experienced in connection with them, it seems to me almost as if memory at times writes assertions in our souls [schedon oion graphein he¯mo¯n en tais psuchais tote logous], and when this experience writes the truth [hotan men ale¯the¯ grapse¯i], then the belief is true, and true assertions come from it and develop in us [kai logoi ap’ autou xumbainousin ale¯theis en he¯min gignomenoi]” (39a).

In retrospect we see that this turn from communicative, acoustical orality to privately read, interiorized writing was in fact foreshadowed by the very starting point for the exposition of doxa, that is, not hearing and learning the word for something from another speaker but the soul’s own dialogos with itself aneu phone¯s, without voice (see the Sophist 263e). Importantly, this starting point coincides with the shift to the new dialectic and dialegesthai that no longer “talks things through” in audible questions and answers but “sorts things out” visually by gene¯ and eide¯. Indeed, the original experience of the logos in listening to the voiced word name, or onoma, as it comes to pass at a place and over time, first in sounding, then in fading away, is now translated entirely into the viewing and reading of stationary marks and signs, grammata and se¯meia, statically present on a surface. In the original experience of hearing the word, we came to know what something is by hearing and learning the name for it from someone else. But here it is said that we first see the form, or eidos, of what something is and then attach a conventional word sign to it should we then—and secondarily—want to communicate our insight.

Now, precisely this abstraction from hearing about the original temporal world in our speaking with each other about what is coming to pass, and precisely this turn to viewing written signs for enumerable classes of conceptual being that always is, to aei on, are what make possible the reconstruction of what heretofore had been argument by the various topoi of similarity and difference. This abstraction and turn make possible, for example, the reconstruction of argument by “the more and the less” as quantitative argument by the “just so much” and no “more or less.”

Seen in this light, the continuation of the discussion to the “false” pleasures taken in visualized, “painted” images of anticipated gratification (39b – e) is only a further manifestation of the turn prerequisite for the new, “re-vised” dialegesthai, the turn from the audible, temporal word name that brings things into being by naming them, to the visible, spatial word sign

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that designates things whose being we have already intuited ahead of time.

Indeed, the entire exposition of the genus Pleasure now emerges as an amplification of the required ontological transition from the Heraclitean realm of named, indeterminate, oscillating opposite qualities, for example, more and less pleasure and pain, to signified beings in a static conceptual structure. To speak anachronistically, the transition here is from telling about a particular train as it is coming through the station—now you hear it, now you don’t— to reasoning about the “8:05” as it is designated in writing on the schedule.

As we might expect, however, the “sorting out” of the genus Intellect provides even clearer indications of the Philebus’s fundamental concern with argumentation and the project of reconstructing an earlier kind of reasoning and argument. Of particular interest in this regard is the distinction at 55dff. between the most pure and impure forms of knowing, or episte¯me¯: “If from among all the arts,” says Socrates, “one would remove the arts of enumeration, measuring, and weighing, each of the remaining arts, to put it bluntly, would be worthless” (55e). In other words, unlike the hit-or-miss pseudoarts of flute playing, medicine, farming, navigation, and military strategy, all the true arts and sciences get beyond mere experience and familiarity with the qualitative similarities and differences among particular perceived beings as they come to pass. Their episte¯me¯, or science, is more than the bogus episte¯me¯ of merely “hitting upon” (stochazesthai) the right thing given one’s long-standing acquaintance with it. For “the admixture [that such episte¯me¯] has of what is not clear and distinct [to me¯ saphes] is large, of the secure and steadfast [to bebaion], on the other hand, small” (56a–b). True arts and sciences, like house building, focus instead on the exact (akribes) static numerical “plan” one constructs for experienced events (56b). But even house building is impure episte¯me¯ to the extent that it is applied to particular existent things in the world, to houses that come to pass. And what is more, we must distinguish further between any applied art of enumeration and the pure art of enumeration itself (56d– e). We cannot, this is to say, equate the strategist’s counting up two armies or the farmer’s counting up two oxen with the number theorist’s investigation of the number “2” (56e).

This, then, is the outside surface of the exposition here.

We already get a hint of the inside of this text, however, in the striking characterization of pure mathematics as “philosophical” (see 56e–57a), this in sharp distinction from the other arts, the arts “of those who don’t do philosophy” (me¯ philosophounto¯n) (57c). The implication is unmistakable that these other arts have something contrary to philosophy about them. They have, in other words, an element of sophism and its old, unreconstructed

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techne¯ and episte¯me¯ of dialectical and rhetorical argumentation by the topoi. After all, heuresis, inventio, the “finding” of arguments by turning to the standard topoi, is just such a stochazesthai based in experience as has just been roundly condemned here as worthless (phaulon, 55e). For rhetorical heuresis is based on mere familiarity with the qualitative similarities and differences among things as they come to pass, and surely, if it can be said of any “art,” it can be said of the rhetorike¯ techne¯ that, as we just heard, “the admixture [it] has of what is not clear and distinct is large, of the secure and steadfast, on the other hand, small” (56a–b). To saphes, the clear and distinct, and to bebaion, the secure and steadfast, have, we note, their principle application in regard to the premises for arguments. By implication we may conclude, accordingly, that, like the other inexact qualitative episte¯mai and technai, the rhetorike¯ techne¯ needs to be reconstructed on a quantitative basis.

As a matter of fact, however, we do not have to look far to find this background thought breaking through to the outside. Protarchus: “[L]et it be said, then, that in regard to measure and numbers . . . among these [most exact] arts themselves, those pursued by people truly philosophizing differ to an inconceivable degree in their exactitude and truth”; then Socrates: “In accord with you and putting our credence in you, let us indeed take heart, and let this reply stand in response to those people uncannily clever at twisting arguments [tois denois peri logo¯n olke¯n]” (57c–d). Any remaining doubt about what really is at issue here is removed when it is said next that the most exact philosophical art is the art of argument by dialegesthai (57e).

What is meant by dialegesthai is, of course, no longer argument by “talking through” what comes to pass, in the appropriate topoi, but now argument by “sorting out,” in enumerated classes, “being, what is really, and what is by nature in all ways, ever the same” (to on kai to onto¯s kai to kata tauton aei pephukos panto¯s, 58a). To this Protarchus responds that for Gorgias— Gorgias, the rhetorician, we note—not this art of dialegesthai but the art “of convincing [he¯ tou peithein] is far superior to all others” (58a), and Socrates says shortly thereafter that the people who apply such arts “make use of beliefs and persistently investigate things about belief” (doxais chro¯ntai kai ta peri doxas ze¯tousi suntetameno¯s, 59a). Rhetoricians, then, are the “uncannily clever” ones who “twist arguments” and who, with their arguments from received opinion (endoxa) and by the topics, work, “not with what is forever, but with what is coming to pass, with what will come to pass, and with what has come to pass” (ou peri ta onta aei, peri de ta gegnomena kai gene¯somena kai gene¯somena kai gegonota, 59a). The underlying concern of

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the Philebus, then, is with an argumentative defense against these “uncannily clever” people who exploit the ambiguity and indefiniteness of ordinary talk in refuting what anyone has to say.

III. Deconstructing the Reconstructed Logos Clearly, however, it remains an open question for the Philebus dialogue itself, and not just postmodern critics of Plato, whether this reconstruction of dialegesthai, as sorting out enumerable classes of things, displays things as they truly are, or whether, in Nietzsche’s words, its “truth” of static presence is a “lie,” a lie that, conveniently enough, succeeds in fending off sophistical refutation but only covers up the ultimate reality of indeterminate, unstructured fluctuation. Indeed, far from being closed off here, this question is posed in the characteristic form of what Aristotle calls the dialectical premise or proposal (protasis), which, as he puts it, is a “question that is the received opinion [ero¯te¯sis endoxos] either of everyone, most people, or the wise” (Topics, 104a 9 –10). The point of Aristotle’s seemingly contradictory formulation is that though there is a “received opinion,” generally stated as an answer, the matter is still to be taken up as an unresolved “question” (see note 12 above on the related ero¯te¯sis antiphaseo¯s, or “contradiction in question”), and so it was, we recall, at 28d in the Philebus. Again, Socrates: “Shall we say, Protarchus, that the power of the incalculable and contingent, and what just happens by chance [te¯n tou alogou kai eike¯i dunamin kai to ope¯i etuchen], administer the sum of all things and what is called the whole, or the contrary [tanantia], namely, as our predecessors were wont to say, that intelligence and an astonishing reason order and govern them?” (28d).

Protarchus hastens to affirm the latter, but more out of a sense of piety than because of any grounds he might advance (28d), and the possibility is then acknowledged that “an uncannily clever man [ane¯r deinos] might say that things behave not in this way but in a disorderly fashion” (29a). Here too the reference to the deinos speaker underscores that the reconstruction of the cosmos as an ordered whole under the governance of intelligence is no certain truth but only an ontological desideratum for countering sophistical refutation. Sophists know, after all, that any topical argument about things having come to pass, coming to pass now, or coming to pass in the future, with no static, ever-present intelligible structure or “schedule” behind them, can always be refuted with a counterargument, for as Aristotle puts it, such narrative-historical being is “susceptible of being otherwise” (endechetai allo¯s echein; see Rhet. 1357a24). The only way to defeat sophistical refu-

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tation, then, would be to reconstruct rhetorical argument in terms of a postulated static structure of enumerable classes behind what comes to pass. It is important, however, that the dialogue never claims to have shown that such a structure really exists, but only that it would be useful in countering sophism if it did.

Furthermore, as throughout this dialogue, the crucial ontological presuppositions for a new dialegesthai of “sorting out” by genos and eide¯ are arrived at uncertainly, abebaio¯s, by the old dialegesthai of “talking through” the received belief in question. Hence, in its actual dialectical practice the Philebus contradicts the theory it constructs. Everything here remains an open question to be “talked through” further in ordinary word names— why else the dialogical play of question and answer rather than a demonstrative treatise?—and nothing here is really classified firmly (bebaio¯s) and quantified definitively. Indeed, beneath the façade of any apparent classifications and enumerations one always finds the interlocutors listening to the resonances of the word names that allow them to bring the various qualities of pleasure and rational discernment into earshot (see note 14 above).

But the clearest indication that the reconstructed dialegesthai of “sorting things out” and enumerating them will not hold up comes near the end, when the ingredients of the good life are under consideration. When the question is asked whether the entire number of forms of knowledge that have been “sorted out” are to be admitted or just the pure forms of philosophy’s number theory and its dialegesthai about the forms, say “about justice itself, what it is” (aute¯s peri dikaiosune¯s, ho ti estin, 62a), the answer is emphatic that all forms of knowledge must be included, for someone with pure knowledge alone would not be able “at anytime to find the way home” (62b). In political and ethical matters, then, one needs to know how to get around in the world, and not only in doing things but in talking about them. The inescapable implication is that the art of a Gorgias, whose rhetoric about opinions on justice is useful “for human beings in their practical affairs” (58c), could no more be replaced by some new dialegesthai that might sort out and enumerate the gene¯ and eide¯ of Justice than the practical art of carpentry could be replaced by the geometrician’s knowledge of the square and circle (see 62a).15 That would never work, and in the end the structure of an irrefutable argument collapses of itself.

That this collapse would be inevitable was, after all, made unmistakably clear from the beginning. The concepts of the finite and infinite, to peras and 15. See Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1094b24 –28, on the error of expecting mathematical exactitude in ethics and necessary demonstrations (apodeixeis) from rhetoricians.

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to apeiron, this “gift of the gods to humankind,” are first broached at 16cff. in an initial effort to circumvent sophistical exploitation of the rhetorical topic “the whole and the part” or “the one and the many.” And it is proposed then that we could defend ourselves against sophistical refutation if, “having always posited each time one idea [mian idean] in regard to everything,” we would then proceed to inquire “if after the one there are may be two, or if not, three or some other number . . . until we see not only that something is one and many but also just how many it is” (16d). In other words, instead of proceeding, as Sophists do, directly from “one” sense of an onoma, or word name, to its other unlimited, indeterminate, “many” contradictory senses, we would posit one class or genos or eidos and then set about “sorting out” a determinate number of subclasses, gene¯ or eide¯, that belong to it. However, it is said next that having done this, we can “let the one of each particular thing go into the unlimited and bid it adieu” (to hen hekaston to¯n panto¯n eis to apeiron methenta chairein ean, 16e).

The importance of this statement is made clear only subsequently by the actual exposition of the “forms” of pleasure: in fact, the species of pleasure are never counted up at all, and there is no indication that the dialogical exchange might end when some definite number of them is established. Rather, we are to let the whole thing lapse eis to apeiron, into the infinite and indefinite. We also observe that, similarly, the four gene¯ that are counted up in the beginning, the apeiron, peras, summixis, and aitia, could have been five, or perhaps even more (see 23d). Thus in its own examples, the dialogue itself adheres not so much to its proposed method of classificatory logic as to the question-and-answer procedure of “talking something through” apeiro¯s—indeterminately, unendingly, inconclusively.

The result of the Philebus is this: any “positing” of one concept with a limited number of definite senses is actually an artificial superimposition on rhetoric’s inherently equivocal word names. It is a provisional construct grounded in the abyss of the incalculable, the alogon of indeterminate contingency, into which it inevitably lapses. The Philebus makes clear that any classificatory logic must always be understood as having its genesis from the apeiron of topical reasoning, back into which, like Anaximander’s ta eonta, it inevitably finds its phthora, or destruction: “That out of which beings have their generation, to that too their destruction happens of necessity” (Diels, 12 A 9, B1).

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12 Elenchos, Protreptic, and Platonic Philosophizing

L L O Y D P. G E R S O N

If one may speak nonpejoratively of “trends” in Platonic scholarship, I believe it is fair to say that, especially in the English-speaking world, there is a multifaceted trend to view Plato’s dialogues “nondogmatically.” The negative description “nondogmatic” covers much. I mention only two versions. First, there is the approach of the followers of Leo Strauss, according to which the metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, theological, and like statements made in the dialogues are not to be taken at face value. These are essentially background for Plato’s exhortation to the centrality of political philosophizing to human life. I mention Straussianism here only because it bears some resemblance to the approach taken in each of the three papers on which I have been asked to comment.1 What these papers have in common is a resolve not to take the words of the dialogues at face value or, stated otherwise, a “nondogmatic” approach to them. Thus, when the character Socrates says to one of his interlocutors, “So it seems we have proved so-and1. A good expression of that aspect of Strauss’s approach to Plato that bears a similarity to the approach of the papers considered here is to be found in the preface to Allan Bloom’s translation of Plato’s Republic (New York: Harper Collins, 1968), esp. xvii–xviii.

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so,” or when he says, “Must we not agree that so-and-so is the case,” we should not simply assume that, in the blunt phrasing of Gerald Press, Socrates is a “mouthpiece” for Plato and that such statements must be accounted elements of Plato’s established philosophy. More broadly, according to this approach, books such as Sir David Ross’s Plato’s Theory of Ideas or George Grube’s Plato’s Thought—just to name two well-known monographs of a previous generation—rest upon a fundamentally mistaken assumption, namely, that one could with sufficient effort and acumen find out from the dialogues what Plato’s views were about some area of philosophy or other. It is no doubt owing to essays such as I am considering here as well as more substantial works in a similar vein that this assumption does not seem as obviously true as it probably did to most fifty years ago. Occasionally, in the world of scholarship on ancient Greek philosophy it is possible to refute a position, whether by logic or philology, without needing to have a satisfying alternative position in regard to the same matter. One can, for example, sometimes show that a text almost certainly cannot mean what it is held to mean, without one’s even being confident oneself what it does mean. I do not believe that with regard to the general position underlying these essays this is the case. I believe that in the large issue of how to read the Platonic dialogues, the only satisfying refutation of one position is to be found in the cogency of its contrary. In lieu of an exposition and defense of a rather more traditional approach to Plato, and before I turn to the individual essays, I begin with a few general, but far from uncontroversial, remarks.

Many of those who argue for a “nondogmatic” Plato seem to me to equivocate on the term “nondogmatic.” If one holds, as I do, that Plato came to the view that knowledge, or ejpisthvmh, has exacting criteria that might not even be fulfillable incarnately, it would follow that many of the things that Plato believes to be true he does not believe he knows to be true. But a nondogmatic Plato in the sense that he does not claim to know what he claims to believe to be true is not a nondogmatic Plato in the sense in which these scholars speak of him. Rather, for them a nondogmatic Plato is a Plato who either has no belief whatsoever regarding, say, the immortality of the soul or has a belief on this matter but has striven to conceal it. Both of these alternatives seem to me to be prima facie absurd. Typically, nondogmatists concede the absurdity of the first alternative and try to make the second more palatable by claiming that the arguments offered in the dialogues for the immortality of the soul are intentionally bad ones. Thus does Plato con-

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ceal his true view. Why someone would intentionally offer a bad argument either for something he believes or for the opposite of something he believes is not generally explained. If this is in fact what Plato is doing, then I do not find much difference between Plato and the Sophists who are consistently reviled and execrated in the dialogues. If it is supposed that sophistry is the way to encourage and advance philosophy, then I would suggest that we start calling whoever holds this view “Plato” rather than call Plato Plato.

There are scholars on both sides of the question whether the dialogues display doctrine who think that in the dialogues we can distinguish Socratic doctrine from Platonic doctrine. Gregory Vlastos, in his justly praised monograph Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher, is perhaps the most notable example of a scholar who thinks that he can determine and list point by point the differences between Socrates’ and Plato’s philosophies. And Vlastos does not think that one needs to go to any sources outside the Platonic dialogues—such as Xenophon—to discern these. On Vlastos’s view, what Socrates says in Apology and Crito represents Socratic philosophy, whereas what Socrates says in Republic or Philebus represents Plato’s philosophy. I do not think there is the slightest basis for such a confident separation, other than perhaps Vlastos’s a priori judgment about what his Socrates would or would not say. I believe that the dialogues paint such a powerful portrait of the literary character Socrates that Vlastos and others find themselves taking art for reportage.

Nevertheless, at least Vlastos’s attempt at distinguishing Socratic from Platonic doctrine is based on the assumption that the dialogues do contain doctrine. By contrast, it is rather odd to maintain that there is a discernible difference between Socratic and Platonic doctrine when one is skeptical about the presence of doctrine at all in the dialogues. But that is frequently the position of those who variously tell us what Socrates is doing in the aporetic dialogues. In fact, the views of the historical Socrates are pretty much lost to us, excepting that which we know on Aristotle’s and Xenophon’s testimony. But whatever these views may have been, they can have little relevance to the interpretation of the Platonic dialogues, for the simple reason that the historical Socrates nowhere appears therein. Whether and to what extent the character Socrates conforms to or represents what the historical Socrates thought is undeterminable. Given this fact, we must start by accepting that all the dialogues represent (or conceal) Plato’s own thinking. So, we should simply abandon the conceit that we are in a position to examine Socratic elenchos or Socrates’ assumption about knowledge or

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Socrates’ theological views.2 If the Platonic dialogues are nondogmatic, it is because Plato wants them to be so.

Those who take a nondogmatic approach to Plato naturally should have no interest in the question whether there is a development of doctrine in the dialogues. However, this is not always the case. To speak about the “aporetic” dialogues, other than in a purely descriptive sense, as for example Gonzalez does, is at least in some way to distinguish a “phase” in Plato’s writing. That “aporetic” is not being used in a purely descriptive way is indicated by the fact that Theaetetus is usually excluded from this group even though it is explicitly aporetic. What I am most interested in urging at this point is that an aporia at the end of a Platonic dialogue cannot be used as conclusive evidence of the absence of doctrine throughout that work. For doctrine underlies the failed search for definitions.

Regarding development in Plato’s thought, I make only the following points against the nondogmatists. In the dialogues Socrates makes claims that clearly contradict one another. For example, in Apology Socrates evinces agnosticism about the immortality of the soul, whereas in Phaedo he offers arguments for immortality that he claims to believe are cogent. In Protagoras he argues against the possibility of ajkrasiva, or incontinence; in Republic he provides an argument for the tripartition of the soul on the basis of which he accounts for the ajkrasiva of Leontius. In Meno Socrates says that logismov~ turns dovxa into ejpisthvmh; in both Republic and Theaetetus he argues against the possibility that one can have dovxa and ejpisthvmh of the same objects. In Republic Socrates holds that the best ruler is a philosopher; in Statesman he at least implies that this is not the case. This list can easily be extended. What are we to make of these contradictory claims?

There are, of course, many interpretations that seek to make sense of the contradictions without supposing any revision or development of Plato’s thought. The “unitarian” positions, which vary considerably in their outlines of the unity of Plato’s thought, share the strategy of discounting the contradictions in one or another manner. Basically, a unitarian holds either that the contradictions are not real or that they are “dialectical,” that is, that one or another of the contradictory claims is only offered provisionally or 2. When, as in the case of Parmenides, Plato introduces in a dialogue a character whose views we can actually compare with that character’s historical correlate, it is clear that Plato is not constrained by historical accuracy. Those who insist that Plato nowhere appears in the dialogues and that therefore nothing said there is attributable to him must allow that the historical Socrates nowhere appears there either.

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within the narrow confines of the specific issue at hand. Although I do not have the space adequately to address every argument for every case against a putative contradiction in the dialogues, these all seem to me to bear the burden of being prima facie concocted in order to maintain a unitarian thesis at all costs.

In my view, the most satisfying approach to this matter is developmentalism. On this view, all of the dialogues express Plato’s philosophy, broadly speaking, but Plato’s position on particular philosophical matters changed or developed over a writing career that spanned certainly more than thirty and probably more than forty years. Socrates instilled in Plato the conviction that philosophy was relevant, indeed essential, to happiness. From this basic orientation, as expressed in the dialogues familiarly grouped as “aporetic” or “early,” Plato’s speculative genius took flight. It came to embrace questions that in all probability far surpassed anything that would have interested the historical Socrates. I believe, along with most scholars, that the two fundamental pillars of Plato’s speculative or systematic philosophy are the separate existence of Forms and the immortality of the soul. Not only does Aristotle’s historical testimony support this, but other external evidence regarding Plato’s Pythagorean interests supports this, too. The dialogue Phaedo is the first and only dialogue in which arguments for both claims are offered. It seems to me intrinsically plausible that reflecting on the ultimate nature of reality, knowledge, and the soul and personal identity, Plato would develop or alter his views even if only in small ways. I think it is highly significant that whereas Plato’s ethical views show little variation throughout the dialogues, his views on highly abstract matters both metaphysical and mathematical do change significantly. For example, developmentalism makes the best sense of the treatment of Forms in Phaedo and Republic, on the one hand, and the dialogues following Parmenides, on the other.

Developmentalism is neither simply an a priori template imposed on the dialogues nor a straightforward inference from indisputable empirical evidence. It is a bit of both. The clearest evidence for development in Plato’s thinking, apart from a hitherto undiscovered authentic autobiography from Plato himself, would be a firm relative chronology of the dialogues. The various relative chronologies that have been most widely supported are of course open to legitimate criticism. It is easy, though, to suppose that there is more disagreement than is actually the case. It is true, for example, that scholars differ and that we really have no way of knowing whether Protagoras precedes or follows Gorgias. Nevertheless, on the broad lines of relative

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chronology there is an impressive consensus, and the division of the dialogues into early, middle, and late has not been seriously challenged. This is enough for the developmentalism that I wish to defend.

The nondogmatic interpretation of the dialogues has little use for developmentalism. It is an interpretative stance that, like the Alzheimer’s patient, makes new friends every day. For this interpretation, every dialogue is a unique entity to be interpreted strictly apart from the context provided by the other dialogues.3 Somewhat disingenuously, however, it applies assumptions to the interpretation of what Socrates is doing. I do not think it is possible to say what any dialogue means without a theory about Plato’s philosophy. The nondogmatic approach wants to have it both ways. It wants to make claims about Plato’s (nondogmatic) philosophy and at the same time to treat each dialogue as an artifact descending anonymously from heaven.

I do not see how one can speak about Plato’s “intentions” in the dialogues without the context provided by an overall interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. I believe this is true whether or not one accepts developmentalism.

I do not think that nondogmatists have sufficiently appreciated this problem. It is true that some of the dialogues end in aporia. But it is easy to exaggerate the presence of aporiai in the dialogues. For one thing, only about half a dozen of the dialogues generally recognized to be genuine end in aporia. For another, the aporiai are very specific: there is a failure or impasse in finding the correct definition of a Form. It is, however, not to be forgotten that even in these dialogues many unchallenged assertoric statements are made by Socrates and others. And of course in the majority of dialogues assertoric statements and arguments abound. One must concede that these statements cannot be unambiguously attributed to the author of the dialogues quite in the way that, say, statements made in The Critique of Pure Reason can be attributed to Immanuel Kant. Nevertheless, given that Plato chose to write dialogues with interlocutors none of whom is named Plato, it is well to ask why it is supposed that Plato is constrained by the very nature of his chosen genre to be nondogmatic.

Plato could have written dialogues in which it would have been obvious that he was taking pains to present evenhandedly more than one side to a debate. Cicero perhaps provides the best example of this. But it is evident that 3. It will no doubt be objected that adducing Plato’s thought as represented in dialogue A to interpret dialogue B is somewhat circular. True enough, but, as in the case of a coherence theory of truth, the circularity is not vicious.

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this is precisely what Plato has not done. In every single dialogue there is a dominant or leading interlocutor—usually but not always Socrates—whose claims are never overturned, even when the discussion ends in aporia. It seems to me to be an obvious non sequitur to infer from an inconclusive discussion that the claims made on behalf of a conclusion, whether methodological or substantive, are to be discounted. A false model is being here applied according to which everything is up in the air until there is closure. It is a false model for the following simple reason. Taking again the case of the immortality of the soul, even if it turns out that Plato came eventually to believe that the soul’s immortality cannot be proved or that it is not a fact that the soul is immortal, it does not follow that at the time of writing the dialogue in which arguments are supplied for the soul’s immortality, he did not believe what the arguments claim about persons, souls, knowledge, and so on. The nondogmatists confuse commitment with level or degree of commitment. The latter is always difficult or impossible to discern. But this should not lead us to conclude that the former is therefore impossible to detect.

The well-argued paper by Gonzalez offers a serious challenge to dogmatists. It is interesting that the dialogue upon which Gonzalez seeks to launch this challenge is Clitophon. For Gonzalez agrees, albeit reluctantly, that Clitophon is spurious. His justification for using it nevertheless is that “it so forcefully articulates a serious critique that any account of Socrates’ method in Plato’s genuine dialogues must be able to answer” (note 1 to Chapter 9).

That critique is essentially that Socrates exhorts people to virtue but does not explain to them what virtue is. There are several faulty assumptions underlying the use of Clitophon in this way.

First, we must be careful to distinguish Socrates’ method in the dialogues (roughly, elenchos) from the method employed by Plato, which consists (in part) in using a literary character like Socrates in the way he does. These are not the same thing. Socrates does indeed claim to be ignorant about the answers to questions like What is virtue? This is actually irrelevant to whether his method is useful to acquiring such knowledge. Given this fact, I do not see the seriousness of the critique of the method. Perhaps it is the case that a dedication to philosophy is the best hope that anyone has of acquiring knowledge of virtue and so of being happy. Since Socrates admits that he does not have this knowledge, it is hardly a legitimate critique of his method to complain that he does not deliver knowledge to his interlocutors. A legitimate critique of the method would aim to show that it is not useful or necessary for acquiring the relevant knowledge. I do not see why exhorting someone

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to the philosophical life without providing him with answers to philosophical questions is open to criticism any more than exhorting someone to the appreciation of art without providing art lessons is open to criticism.

Second, and more important, since Plato’s method is not the same as Socrates’, we must not assume that Plato regards himself as ignorant about the matters of which his literary character Socrates claims to be ignorant. Let us be clear that Socrates’ ignorance is highly specific. He claims to be ignorant of the definitions of the virtues whose definitions he regards as crucial to knowing how to act virtuously. Plato does not make him ignorant of a host of other things, including the highly dubitable paradoxes like “it is better to suffer than to do evil” and “if one does evil, it is better to be punished than to go unpunished” and “a worse man cannot harm a better man.” One could plausibly reconstruct a rather extensive ethical philosophy as supporting or presumed by just these claims. And the most plausible one to whom to attribute this philosophy is the author of the dialogues in which these claims are made.

I take it that we must accept Socrates’ protestation of ignorance as we must any statement of fact by a literary character unless we are specifically told that the character who makes such a claim is lying or mistaken. As for Plato’s method, since he explicitly makes Socrates declare his ignorance, it really does not matter whether Socrates knows the answers to the questions.

Plato does not want to reveal the answers in the dialogues. And it is easy to see why without supposing that it is because there are no answers at all. He does not believe that the answers to these questions can be effectively communicated in a written work or perhaps even verbally. If I know what the definition of piety is, it does not matter to you, because you will not believe me if I tell you. Why would you believe me unless you yourself already knew the answer? But if you did not and were gullible enough to believe me, why would you do that rather than believe someone else who says the opposite?

The fact is that the kind of knowledge Socrates thought so important is not communicable in the way that, say, historical knowledge is communicable.

But this leaves entirely open two questions: (1) did Plato move away from holding to the primacy of definitions of virtues? and (2) even assuming he did not, do the dialogues nevertheless contain doctrines other than those that would consist of definitions of virtues? My answer to both questions would be yes. More to the point, I do not see in these papers or elsewhere evidence, as opposed to speculation, that the answer is no.

The main point of Gonzalez’s paper is that all of Plato’s dialogues are “protreptic” and that this fact precludes them from having dogmatic con-

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tent. At one point he does say he is arguing that only the aporetic dialogues are protreptic, but later, in a footnote (note 20 to Chapter 9), he approvingly cites Gadamer, who holds that all the dialogues are protreptic. What I find most puzzling about this claim is the second part, namely, that if the dialogues (or any of them) are protreptic, then they must be nondogmatic. Why this is so is never explained.

Consider the following interesting counterexample. Thomas Aquinas, so the chroniclers tell us, wrote his Summa Contra Gentiles for the use of missionaries in Spain in the conversion of unbelievers. Granted, Aquinas sought to convert unbelievers to Christianity, not to philosophy. But his protreptic is packed with philosophical arguments and claims. More important, the arguments and claims are constitutive of the protreptic, not an extraneous add-on. The reason unbelievers are supposed to be converted to Christianity, Aquinas surely holds, is that it is true and that his book can demonstrate its truth in comparison with its rivals. A work by Aquinas that urged people to convert from Judaism and Islam to Christianity without giving reasons why this should be done would be not a protreptic but a piece of propaganda. Similarly, supposing it is Plato’s aim in all or some of his dialogues to draw people to the philosophical life, whether this be understood broadly or narrowly as “enrollment” in his Academy, why suppose that the protreptic excludes doctrine?

Imagine a young Athenian, like today’s undergraduate, becoming excited by philosophy as he or she reads a Platonic dialogue. On Gonzalez’s view, Plato is trying to persuade his readers that philosophy is not a means to an end, namely, wisdom, but an end in itself. “Philosophical protreptic is not empty or useless, because in turning us toward the pursuit of virtue and wisdom it is already providing them. Philosophy is not something completely distinct from what it pursues: the very search for virtue and wisdom is itself virtue and wisdom. The virtuous life is the life spent in quest of virtue” (178 – 80). So, according to Gonzalez, Plato believes that once one has been converted to philosophy, one has become virtuous and wise. The achievement of virtue, it seems, is not exceedingly arduous, as, for example, Aristotle says in his very conventional poem Hymn to Hermeias; rather, it is as easy as the decision to philosophize. And the capture of that rare pearl wisdom requires nothing more strenuous than admitting that Socrates is right when he says that you do not know what you think you know. Of course, when Plato has Socrates say in Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living, even if Gonzalez is right that this is Plato’s central belief, this would be doctrine, too. But let that pass.

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There are a number of things left unexplained by Gonzalez’s position.

First, it leaves unexplained why, if we take seriously the view that one is wise when one realizes that one is ignorant, there would be any point in continuing to do philosophy after that revelation. On Gonzalez’s view, it is misleading to call the early group of dialogues “aporetic,” because that suggests that there is a roadblock on the way to a destination. For Gonzalez, there is no destination other than the realization that one is stymied. Second, it leaves unexplained what sort of a weird thing virtue is if it just consists in knowing that you are ignorant. I suppose one could say that such knowledge can produce humility and that in some circles humility is a virtue, although it is certainly not a virtue in fourth-century Athens. But even if it is, is it the only virtue? And even if it is the only virtue, why, once having acquired it, would you not be well advised to go off and occupy yourself with some more remunerative or otherwise productive activity? Third, it leaves unexplained why Plato manifestly does offer answers to the questions that Gonzalez thinks Plato thinks cannot be answered. As I said before, it must be either because Plato is sophistical or because Plato is confused or, in my opinion, more plausibly, because the answers Plato does have to these questions in some cases changed over time. His answers are no doubt often tentative or qualified, but they do prima facie represent what Plato believed at the time he wrote the dialogue in which the words occur.

Many, perhaps including Gonzalez, would avoid this conclusion by claiming that Plato nowhere expresses any views.4 The views I am attributing to Plato should actually be attributed to Socrates or Parmenides or Diotima or an Eleatic Stranger or an Athenian Stranger or Timaeus. This is a different and only slightly more plausible claim than that there are no doctrines expressed in the dialogues. Let us consider what this claim amounts to for the early dialogues with which Gonzalez is concerned. It is constitutive of his position that the dialogue is a literary work, and so when the literary figure Socrates expresses a philosophical claim, we cannot infer that Plato is reporting views of the historical Socrates. But on Gonzalez’s claim, he is not expressing his own views either. If this is true, then I can imagine all sorts of other reasons for Plato’s having Socrates say the things he does, but they are all ignoble. When in Crito Socrates makes a number of startlingly bold

4. Gonzalez may of course hold that it is Socrates, not Plato, who holds that “the good life just is the examined life.” He can say all the things he says about Clitophon and the other aporetic dialogues and maintain that Plato was a dogmatic philosopher. If so, then Gonzalez needs to establish a basis for so distinguishing Socrates and Plato.

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claims, such as that “one must never in any way do wrong willingly” and “one must never do wrong in return for an injury suffered,” we are to suppose that this is merely “protreptic talk,” not to be taken seriously as Plato’s considered view. I suppose that this is logically possible, although it does seem odd that if it is true, it has eluded virtually everyone who has written about Plato’s views from Aristotle to the present.

One further point. If it is true that virtue is the pursuit of virtue, then apparently it does not matter whether you believe that “one must never in any way do wrong willingly” or whether you believe the opposite. Indeed, apparently it does not matter if you believe neither. Therefore, if it does not matter what you believe, the pursuit of virtue becomes a complete sham.

And if wisdom amounts to nothing more than knowing that you are ignorant, why acquire the correct answers to these questions anyway?

Renaud’s short paper seems to share some assumptions with that of Gonzalez. Most important, he agrees that the dramatic form of the dialogue is an integral part of the philosophical message. He maintains that “[t]he philosophical content of Plato’s dialogues cannot be reduced to the explicit argument. The dialogues do not simply present arguments concerning philosophical problems, but human beings discussing those problems. The dialogues are characterized by concreteness: each dialogue takes place at a particular place and at a particular time, and its treatment of the subject matter is inseparable from the capacities and motivations of the characters. To that extent, the drama and the argument are interdependent” (184). The inseparability or interdependence of drama and argument in the dialogues will strike many, reasonably enough, as a indisputable commonplace. Yet everything turns of course on how we construe “inseparability” and “interdependence.” Renaud is probably not among those who take a hard nondogmatic line. For those, it seems entirely vacuous to insist that drama is inseparable from argument unless one also insists that all the arguments are evidently inconclusive or intentionally fallacious. This hardly seems to be so. In any case, the larger question is, assuming that Plato did choose to set the written expression of his philosophical views in dramatic form, on what principles are we to understand how that drama contributes to understanding the philosophy? I think that many scholars assume that there is a clear answer to this question without explaining exactly what it is.

I should like to make a distinction between “strong” and “weak” relevance of the drama to the philosophy. According to the first, in order to discover the status of a proposition p in a dialogue, it is necessary to discover every dramatic fact about the dialogue that could logically be relevant to the

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truth value of p as understood by the author. Thus, the etymology of the name of every character, every scene description, every gesture, every emotional reaction, every aside, is potentially relevant to the truth value of p as Plato intends for the reader to see it. Renaud’s insistence on the “concreteness” of the dialogues suggests this view of relevance. According to the second, the relevance of the drama is general and indirect, and there is no logical connection between what happens dramatically and the status of p. The drama is intended to heighten the importance of the questions raised and the answers given. For example, the setting of Euthyphro, before the archon’s palace as Socrates is about to respond to the charges against him, is intended to make more poignant and urgent the question about the nature of piety. It has no relevance, for example, to the distinction made by Socrates between the oujs iva and pavqo~ of piety. Consider another example. The setting and the personal interchanges between Socrates and his interlocutors in Phaedo are intended to bring home to the reader the direct connection between the question of the immortality of the soul and their own lives. And the argument itself, which rises and falls and is nearly defeated only to emerge triumphant, vividly reflects the apparent view of the author that the vicissitudes of the incarnate existence of the interlocutors anticipate immortal discarnate life.

Viewing dramatic relevance in this way in no sense diminishes Plato’s literary genius. On the contrary.

Those who hold a strong-relevance theory seem to me to have an utterly hopeless task. Furthermore, they are bound to be disingenuous in their carrying it out. First of all, there is in fact no logical entailment between any of Socrates’ banter or asides or ironic expostulations and any philosophical claim made by him. So, exponents of strong relevance must tell us what these dramatic elements mean, where meaning is a statement that does entail a philosophical claim or its opposite. Here is the problem that produces disingenuousness. Whether one believes that the dogmatic content of the dialogues is nonexistent or exiguous or rich and varied, only one’s view of that can determine what parts of the drama one focuses on and the meaning one finds there. It is because one believes that Plato believes that virtue is the pursuit of virtue or because one believes that Plato believes that philosophical wisdom is knowledge of one’s own ignorance that one focuses on certain dramatic aspects rather than others and interprets them to mean what has antecedently been decreed the dialogue must mean. So, claiming to take the drama seriously, that is, taking it as strongly relevant, amounts to telling a story in support of a predetermined conclusion. Renaud’s phrase “the ethical aspect of elenchos” in a small way neatly encapsulates the problem.

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How do we determine what the ethical aspects of elenchos really are? I take it that “ethical aspects” must mean one or more ethical claims presumably attributable to the author. If these can be located in the dialogues in a nonquestion-begging manner, then they can be located independently of the drama; that is, the drama does not have strong relevance. Indeed, even if the only ethical aspect of the elenchos is the metatheoretical one that philosophy or philosophical knowledge is a good thing, it is hard to see how one can discover that in the dialogues except in the traditional manner of those who hold that the dialogues do have dogmatic content.

Nondogmatists argue that dogmatists make unwarranted claims about Plato’s views based on what Socrates says. But nondogmatists, in speaking about Socrates’ “pedagogical aim,” are no less committed to making claims about Plato’s views, since Socrates’ unspoken pedagogical aims can be none other than those of Plato. And unless the nondogmatist and I mean something radically different by “pedagogy,” Plato’s pedagogical aim must be to teach something. That which he aims to teach is, I take it, doctrine, whether or not we disagree on what that doctrine is.

Renaud presents Plato’s Lysis as an example of the “humbling and pedagogical functions of the elenchus as an integral part of the conduct of philosophy” (185). It is hard to disagree with these words, particularly if we understand them in the benign sense that false conceptions need to be cleared away before true conceptions can be gained. One must add the obvious points, however, that there is no clear sense of elenchos in the dialogues (as Renaud seems to acknowledge; see page 187) and that most of the dialogues are taken up not with elenchos but with “positive” arguments. I would be especially keen to know how Renaud sees the inseparability of drama from these. Moreover, even if we concede that elenchos is an integral part of the conduct of philosophy, we must also concede that elenchos is an integral part of, say, forensic rhetoric. So, insisting on the inseparability of the elenchos from philosophy tells us nothing or very little about the latter.

Smith apparently belongs to the nondogmatist camp, but he is not, it seems to me, committed to strong relevance in the way that at least Gonzalez is. He is, however, remarkably confident that he has a heuristic key to the inner workings of the dialogues, especially Philebus. He starts by allowing that the “usual reading” of Philebus is “justified,” then moves to a different “approach” that, several lines later, turns into the claim that the dialogue is “not only and not even primarily about the particular subject matter under discussion [viz., whether pleasure or intellect is the good] [but] how one might secure against sophistical refutation one’s own arguments on any sub-

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ject matter” (200). In short, Philebus is a dialogue about methodology.

Smith is supremely confident that this is the case not only for Philebus but for Phaedo and Phaedrus as well. For him, it is “inescapably evident” that Phaedrus is not about love and Phaedo is not about the immortality of the soul, but both are about argument forms. As it turns out, however, they are really about the impotence or self-destruction of the argument forms that Plato is ostensibly advancing, thereby arriving at a nondogmatic dénouement. Smith tells us that the “announced theme” of the dialogue is the “juxtaposition of argument and counterargument” (203), whereas the plain sense of the text is that the announced theme is whether a life devoted to pleasure or a life devoted to intellectual activities is superior. I think we need far, far more argument than we are given before we are justified in rejecting the obvious in favor of the recherché.

The inspiration of Gadamer behind this way of reading Plato is clear, as Smith acknowledges. A similar inspiration animates Renaud’s paper. Perhaps it is somewhat unfair to Smith, since his paper is obviously not intended as a full-blown interpretation of Philebus, but one cannot forbear asking for the reasons behind his rejection of the “usual reading.” Since we do not have an aporia at the end of Philebus—far from it, we have a straightforward agreement by the interlocutors that Socrates’ dogmatic pronouncements are true—Smith seizes upon points in the dialogue where Socrates suggests that there might be five, rather than four, classes of “everything in the universe” and where the list of types of pleasure is acknowledged to be incomplete. But it is a long way from saying that Socrates advances one or another points in his argument tentatively to saying that he is setting up his interlocutors for a self-refutation of his own position. In fact, it is an astonishingly long way, and Smith gives us no indication of an argument that takes us from one to the other.

I believe there is a systemic confusion in positions like those held by Smith.

It is a confusion similar to that underlying Pyrrhonian skepticism. That is, both the Pyrrhonian skeptic and the Gadamerian critic of Plato hold that if one does not know something, then one can have no reason for believing it.

Smith believes that if there is not an infallible expression of a position, then whatever expression there is will “collapse into ultimate indeterminacy” (202). Smith is correct to emphasize that Plato is alive to the ambiguities of language and to language’s ultimate inability to convey knowledge. From these obviously important observations, however, he draws the false conclusion that Plato thought that there was no rational belief to be had about anything. Such a position has a certain power when located within a non-

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Platonic metaphysics, that is, when it rejects the view that the sensible world, language, and thought are images of intelligible reality. In a Platonic universe, there is actually a firm basis for holding that one can speak and write cogently and correctly of images, using images. I believe that all the tentativeness and the provisional status of so many of Socrates’ pronouncements can be well accounted for by the phrase eijkov~ muvqo~ used in Timaeus 29d2 to describe the best possible discourse about the world of becoming. And though Philebus evidently strives to say something about more than the world of becoming, it does so with words and concepts that do belong to that world. The possibility that Socrates’ incomplete or sketchy remarks can be thus interpreted is never considered by Smith. Instead, we get the blanket rejection of every speculative or constructive metaphysical assertion by Socrates, a rejection apparently grounded in the rhetorical question “why else the dialogical play of question and answer rather than a demonstrative treatise?” (215). Like Gonzalez, Smith seems to assume that a dialogue must be nondogmatic, and even deconstructive, but I have no idea why.

Smith’s analysis of Philebus as advancing a new method, or “new argumentative strategy” (206), for doing philosophy and then undercutting it is odd. For this method is familiar from the earliest dialogues. The search for the single ei\do~ over and above the many and varied instances is an essential feature of the dialectic employed in, say, Euthyphro. That this is a search for a single “concept,” as Smith holds, is simply a mistake, at least if there is any basis for speaking about the meaning of ei\do~ in the Platonic dialogues.

In addition, it is a particularly far-reaching mistake because Smith, like Gadamer, is then poised to claim that all concepts are conditioned and so conditional and eventually deconstructible. The precise confusion here is between an ei\do~ as a concept and the concepts used as images to talk about the images of an ei\do~. I am actually sympathetic to one aspect of Smith’s view. That is, for example, the concept of pleasure and the word “pleasure” are not to be identified with anything about which certainty, or “static universality,” is to be sought. To this extent, there is in principle an openendedness, not to say self-refutative dimension, to every assertoric statement in every Platonic dialogue. Even the most ardent dogmatist should recognize that Plato is aware that the currency of his public philosophizing is tainted.

Recognizing this, however, should not lead us to say that dogmatic Platonism, as we know it from the dialogues and more or less from the time of Aristotle, is in the eyes of Plato actually bankrupt.

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B. Four Interpretations of Elenchus in the Charmides

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13 Socratic Dialectic in the Charmides

W. THOMAS SCHMID

This paper discusses Socratic dialectic and education, taking the Charmides as guide. I argue that standard accounts of the dialectic do not sufficiently explain Socrates’ typical failure to engage his interlocutor, as measured by the standard set forth at Sophist 230a–d. The depiction of dialectic in the Charmides, however, is especially relevant to this problem, focusing as it does on the psychotherapeutic aspects of the elenchus. I detail four ways in which Socratic dialectic is intended to draw the interlocutor into philosophical self-expression and turn him toward a philosophical life and membership in the philosophical community. These aspects of the dialectic are expressed through the drama, as well as the argument of the dialogue. They show how the dialectic can lead to positive, as well as negative, results.

To appreciate the Socratic dialectic, we need to examine its manner of operation. The standard form of the definitional elenchus is familiar: I delivered an earlier version of this paper by invitation to a session of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy on Socratic Dialectic chaired by Gerald Press and Gary Scott at the international conference on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy hosted at the State University of New York, Binghamton, in October 1997. It was adapted from chapter 4 of Schmid, Plato’s Charmides.

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1. The interlocutor asserts a definition of a virtue, d.

2. Socrates secures agreement to further premises, q and r.

3. Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, that q and r entail not-d.

4. Socrates claims that not-d has been proved true, d false.1 This description makes the elenchus appear to operate in a manner similar to any refutative argument directed toward a single object, the truth of the propositions under consideration. In this respect, dialectic is an impersonal process, its focus on the logical consistency of the interlocutor’s statements.

But the Socratic elenchus is also highly personal, as a result of four additional factors.2 First, the virtue under consideration is central to the value system of the interlocutor, to his practical understanding of life. Second, dialectic requires that the interlocutor say what he believes. Third, the examination takes place in public, where the interlocutor’s self-image and reputation, as well as self-understanding, are at stake. Finally, the interlocutor typically believes he knows the truth about the ideal under discussion and about the good. He may not acknowledge this claim initially, but it emerges in the course of the inquiry. Because of these factors, the interlocutor’s words become vehicles for his self-expression and self-determination, no less than his self-understanding and conception of the world—they become vehicles of self-knowledge.

It is the self-expressive, self-revealing, and potentially self-reformative nature of the elenchus, the fact that it involves the interlocutor’s desires and emotions as well as his beliefs in the dialectical situation, that makes it such a powerful tool for moral inquiry. The elenchus, in calling forth from the speaker his moral beliefs, also calls forth his life and values in a way he may never have experienced before. As Nicias puts it: “Anyone who is close to Socrates and enters into conversation with him is liable to be drawn into an argument, and whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and round by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his past and present life” (Laches 187e–188a).3 Such speech has the potential to engage the whole person—to put the interlocutor’s very identity at risk.

1. For the “standard form,” see Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 28 –58, 11–17.

2. For discussion of these factors, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, trans. R. M. Wallace (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 35 – 44; Robinson, Earlier, 2d ed., 15 –17; Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 28 –58, 11–17.

3. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Loeb Classical Library series.

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The Charmides turns out to be a more important guide to understanding this process than is generally recognized in the scholarly literature on Socratic philosophy, which has largely focused on the presentation of the elenchus in the Gorgias.4 In the Gorgias, where the concern is to distinguish philosophy and sophistic rhetoric, the focus is on the formal structure of the elenchus, its function in revealing inconsistent beliefs. Socrates speaks in the Gorgias of his concern for self-harmony, saying he would rather “the majority of mankind should disagree and oppose me, . . . than that I, being one, should be out of tune with and contradict myself” (482c). Thus, when he refutes his interlocutor, he implies the interlocutor is self-discordant, disconnected from himself. The elenchus is the means by which he might come back to rational self-harmony, affirming a consistent set of moral principles his “true self” believes in.5 The question why Socrates believes his interlocutor must agree with these principles, and therefore must assume that the interlocutor’s views have been refuted if they are shown to conflict with the principles, has been thoroughly discussed in the scholarly literature and has been solved at least in part by Vlastos.6 The answer involves Socrates’ projection of universal agreement with the moral principles he has come to in the course of his inquiries and experience. But there are other aspects of the elenchus Plato scholars have not discussed as thoroughly, particularly the relation of the Socratic ideal of rationality to a diagnostic moral psychology.

In the Charmides, the dramatic setting and subject matter of the dialogue focus attention on the psychotherapeutic, rather than the logical, structure of the elenchus and thus on the question of the nature of the “diseases” for which the elenchus might be the cure. The Charmides provides answers to this important question in the persons of Socrates’ two interlocutors, Charmides and Critias. Charmides represents the psychic illness of moral thoughtlessness and heteronomy, of “weakness of thought” and its attendant sense of inferiority.7 The dialogue shows us how this disease might be cured by involvement in the dialectic process; how personal identity might be trans4. This is true both of Vlastos’s discussion and of Brickhouse and Smith’s Plato’s Socrates, in which almost two-thirds of the citations are to the Apology, Crito, or Gorgias, and but few to the Charmides.

5. Francis M. Cornford discusses the relation of the concept of the true self to the arguments of the Gorgias in his Before and After Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 51; on the same notion, see Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 101–2.

6. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 17–29.

7. On Charmides’ role in the dialogue, see Friedländer, Plato, 2:68 – 69, and W. Thomas Schmid, Plato’s Charmides and the Socratic Ideal of Rationality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 11–12.

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formed through the practice of critical reason; how autonomy is related to cognitive, no less than moral, life. The other interlocutor, Critias, represents the opposite moral and cognitive disease, sophistry, with its twin defects: an incapacity to recognize the limits of one’s wisdom, together with an arrogance of superiority (hubris) following on that inability/unwillingness.8 Moreover, Critias will prove no less lacking in the habit of critical reason than his ward, despite the fact that he, unlike Charmides, seems to be a morally autonomous agent. (This is a feature of his moral psychology the Charmides does not have the theoretical tools to explain, though it does display the fact.) Together, Charmides and Critias represent the two chief and opposite types of deficient or vicious relationship to one’s own rationality and self-knowledge. It is this deficiency that the Socratic dialectic is intended to address and “cure” in an intellectual therapy with moral significance for the patient.

There is both a positive and a negative aspect to the operation of the elenchus. The negative aspect is more obvious: the interlocutor claims wisdom, is refuted, and should be cured of his self-deception of wisdom and self-conceit of virtue. The process and resultant state are described in the Sophist: They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing; and easily convict him of inconsistencies. . . . Those who see this become angry with themselves, and grow gentle toward others, and thus are freed from high and mighty opinions of themselves, in a way which . . . produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation. . . . the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from refutation is brought to modesty, and thus purges him and makes him think that he knows only what he knows and no more.

(230a–d) 8. On Critias’s role in the dialogue, see Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 12 –14. It is surprising how many commentators have failed to recognize the critical portrait of Critias in the dialogue.

Even T. G. Tuckey at one point says of him and Charmides: “[T]here is no hint of their later enormities; both are human and sympathetic” (Plato’s Charmides [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951], 4). (His later remarks are more discriminating, 15 –17.) See also the account by W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 3:299: “Though writing years after his death, Plato still thinks of his uncle Critias with respect and affection.”

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This latter condition is the “best and most moderate state of the soul,” according to the young Theaetetus. This process—this experience—should release the interlocutor’s latent human desire for genuine knowledge and wisdom.

The problem with the description in the Sophist, which sets out the claim of the elenchus to constitute a form of moral therapy, is that it practically never works that way in the Socratic dialogues. The interlocutors are refuted, again and again—but don’t admit and learn from it! This is puzzling.

Why aren’t the interlocutors brought to modesty and the knowledge of their ignorance? What should they do to bring about that result? How is the Socratic dialectic supposed to work, if it is to have the therapeutic effect ascribed to it in the passage above?

In the discussion that follows, I present the answer to this question suggested by the Charmides, an answer in which personal choice plays a decisive role in the educational process. In particular, the failures of the elenchus are exposed by the drama of the inquiry—the moments in the narrative in which the interlocutor’s choices and actions are displayed and discussed. It is in those moments that we are also made to see how the elenchus is intended to challenge the interlocutor and give him opportunities for personal growth that he may embrace or reject. I have organized my remarks under four headings: “Dialectic and Autonomy”; “Dialectic and Virtue”; “Dialectic and Community”; and “Dialectic and Choice.”

1. Dialectic and Autonomy As mentioned above, the interlocutors are personally attached to certain moral values, and under the right guidance these values can be rationally articulated and thereby brought out “into the common world of reason” (Robinson) and subjected to critical examination. This self-revelatory aspect of the Socratic dialectic has only recently begun to be more fully appreciated in the accounts of his method.9 With regard to it the key definition in the dialogue for Charmides himself is the second, in which the young man does not merely express what his society expects him to say but is led to articulate his own self-understanding of the virtue and his own implicit claim to possess it, which is why Socrates both directly and in his narrative praises 9. See Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 12 –14, 17–18.

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Charmides for his articulation of it (160e2, 6). Only after his self-understanding has been exposed and Socrates has refuted it is Charmides put in the position where he has to decide whether he will continue down the path of critical thought— even if it means overthrowing the ideal at the center of his own self-understanding— or retreat from that path. That is to say, the Socratic dialectic challenges him not only to acquire the correct moral opinions but to question himself and think for himself and develop his own moral rationality. Thus Socrates’ inquiry with Charmides displays the relation of the elenchus—and of the ideal of rationality associated with it—to the formation of personal autonomy.10 If the interlocutor chooses to think for himself, he begins to adopt a new relation to his beliefs and to his life insofar as it is guided by those beliefs. In this relation, he is no longer simply guided by conventional norms or authorities, but he also does not simply assert himself against them; instead, he begins to take moral responsibility for them, begins to hold his received beliefs and values up to a norm of “universal reason.” This is why Charmides’ decision to retreat from selfexpression and to put forward Critias’s definition for criticism represents not merely an intellectual but also a moral failure: the failure to develop himself as a morally thoughtful and questioning person (which is why Socrates not so playfully calls him a “wretch” at 161b8). Charmides chooses the seemingly safe, but cowardly, option of examining his uncle’s definition over the seemingly dangerous, but potentially far more rewarding, possibility of attempting to think on his own. He thereby chooses to abandon the opportunity he has been given to remake his own values and to appropriate the practice of critical thinking as his own, as part of who he is to be. He chooses not to identify with his rational self, but with a lesser self-identity, which takes its guidance from his uncle, the future tyrant.

2. Dialectic and Virtue As depicted in the Charmides, the elenchus is not only a cognitive but also an emotional and potentially value-inducing process. In fact, the structure of 10. On the relation between autonomy and thinking for oneself, see Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research 38 (1971): 438 – 66, revised and reprinted in The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 1:166 –93; William Frankena, Ethics, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 1–9; Stephen Nathanson, The Ideal of Rationality (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), 3–16; and Kant’s classic essay “What Is Enlightenment?” found in Carl Friedrich’s edition, The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings (New York: Modern Library, 1949), 132 –39.

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elenctic inquiry ideally involves a reciprocal interplay between anticipatory acts of several types of virtue and engagement in Socratic dialogue.11 Such interplay is evident at distinct moments in the drama of the Charmides: (i) Dialectic and courage. Because of the necessity of self-exposure, the elenchus can test the willingness of the interlocutor to endure the fear of embarrassment and ignorance; that is, it can test his moral courage and constancy in the dialectical quest for the good. Charmides exhibits such courage when, after his first definition has been rejected and Socrates challenges him to offer another, based on his own experience, the boy “pause[s] and quite courageously [andrikos] investigate[s] it with regard to himself” (160e6), and then articulates his second definition.12 (ii) Dialectic and moderation. Because of the possibility of self-contradiction, the elenchus requires intellectual moderation, in the sense of humility before the truth, the willingness to admit that one was mistaken or that one’s reasons fall short. Critias represents the failure to manifest such virtue, when, in the context of examining the definition of moderation as the knowledge of what you know and do not know, Socrates challenges him to explain how it would be possible for something to have its own power with regard to itself. But then, as Socrates narrates, “[Critias] was ashamed before those present, and he was neither willing to concede to me that he was unable to draw the distinctions I was calling upon him to make, nor did he say anything plain, concealing his perplexity” (169d).13 (iii) Dialectic and justice. Finally, because Socratic inquiry is interpersonal, one character may relate to another in an attitude of competition and jealousy, as rivals for victory, or in an attitude of fairness and cooperation, as partners in the quest for truth, and it is possible in this process to care for,

11. See Burnyeat, “Socratic Midwifery,” 7–16, 12, and Kenneth Seeskin, Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 81– 92.

12. Compare Laches 194a and the discussion in W. Thomas Schmid, On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato’s Laches (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 90 –100.

13. There is another sense in which dialectic involves moderation, exemplified at 155d– 156d (and anticipated at 154b –155c). Socrates recounts how he suddenly had an erotic passion for Charmides, brought about by his chance view inside the young man’s cloak, but then, in dialogue, regained his composure and “was rekindled to life” (156d2 –3). What is noteworthy is the relation between his success in that effort and his practice of rational inquiry, on the one hand, and the reachievement of his moral identity, on the other. Socrates’ self-mastery is critical to his rational freedom and deeper sense of himself as a lover of wisdom. While his practice of philosophy depends in part on the ability to restrain impulses he perceives as alien to his deeper purposes, that restraint itself is rooted in his love of wisdom and in an awareness of what he does not know. For discussion of this scene, see Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 6 –10.

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or to be indifferent to, the other’s well-being, as well as one’s own. The best example of this conception of justice in the dialogue is provided by Socrates himself when, after being accused by Critias of eristic, he denies the charge, explaining that it is mistaken to think, “even if I do refute you, that I am refuting for the sake of anything other than that for the sake of which I would also search through myself as to what I say, fearing that unawares I might ever suppose that I know something when I don’t know. . . . Or don’t you suppose that it is a common good [koinon agathon] for almost all human beings that each of the beings [hekaston ton onton] should become clearly apparent just as it is?” (166c–d).14 If Socrates’ interlocutor meets the moral challenges set before him, he is taken up in a process that results in the formation not only of new opinions but of new values—values of critical reason, principles of a rational self. If instead he withdraws from the inquiry—by refusing to persist in selfexamination, as Charmides does after his second definition is rejected, or by refusing to acknowledge his own refutation, in the manner of a Critias, or by refusing the Socratic concern with the “common good” of truth—the elenchus is powerless.

3. Dialectic and Community Another aspect of Socratic dialectic as displayed in the Charmides is its involvement of community. The social dimension of Socratic dialectic has seldom been discussed by Plato scholars, but it is obvious from the drama of the Charmides that it is all-important to the pedagogical aspect of the conversation. Will Charmides break loose from the domineering influence of his “father” and guardian, Critias—an influence both moral and intellectual— and enter into the influence of Socrates and his way of reflective concern? Or will he hold back from giving himself over to the community of moral thinkers, the community established in the dialectical practice? Socrates’ obvious willingness to engage in dialogue with Critias—the mockery at 161b seems intended to force his entry into the conversation—may well be a function not only of the fact that the definition they have taken under consideration derives from Critias and that Socrates wishes to continue the investi14. In the dialogue this is Socrates’ clearest expression of his own manner of self-knowledge. It also exemplifies Socrates’ autarcheia, or self-sufficiency, particularly in contrast to Critias, who seems independent but actually is driven by his desire for recognition from others (which he seeks eristically; cf. 169c–d).

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gation of the idea of so¯phrosune¯, but also of Socrates’ recognition that whatever influence he may have on Charmides can only come about through the refutation and hence diminishment of the authority of Critias. Had Socrates been more successful in that regard, he might have performed a political service to his city. Unfortunately, the ending of the dialogue suggests that Charmides remains firmly under the influence of his uncle, despite Socrates’ efforts and Charmides’ own superficial attraction to him.

Notwithstanding the fact that Charmides, like so many others, finally rejects him, it is clear that what is at stake in conversation with Socrates is not only the topics of this particular conversation but the opportunity for other conversations and indeed perhaps for the whole rich social relationship of his educational-dialogical circle. The call to commit oneself— one’s thought and ultimately one’s life, as Nicias suggests—to the test of the elenchus is also a call to involve oneself in the third aspect of the dialectic, the involvement it presupposes of membership in rational community with Socrates, a community reflected late in the dialogue in Socrates’ utopian “dream” (onar, 173a7) of a society in which all members submit to one another for critical appraisal and discussion the items of which they are uncertain of their knowledge, giving over the decision on the right course of action to the one who proves to know what to do, that is, to the logos (cf. 171d–172a).15 Appreciation of the value of autonomy should not obscure the fact that what Socrates offers is not only thought but friendship, not only discourse but shared values and a shared life. One does not engage in the practice of Socratic dialectic as a solitary individual, but as one person among others, all equals in the epistemic community.16 Furthermore, however aversive most of his interlocutors may be to Socrates’ power to expose their ignorance— at possible cost of “face”—they are also generally attracted to the prospect of sustained community with him. It is not just his ideas that make him interesting; it is the fact that he embodies those ideas/values and that the interlocutor, through rational intercourse with him, may make those ideas/ values his own as he participates with Socrates in the open-ended but ruleguided and virtue-demanding deliberative assembly the dialectic forms. The 15. For discussion of Socrates’ dream society and its relation to the dialogue, see Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 125 –32.

16. The fact that all are equal members in the epistemic community of the dialectic does not imply that one may not be called upon to play the role of teacher as well as inquirer. Socratic self-knowledge would thus include not only quietness in the subtle sense hinted at in the summary, and shame in the sense of fear of error and humility before the truth, but also knowledge of one’s role in the interactive community of the dialectic— of leading or of openly, reflectively being led.

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failure of so many of Socrates’ partners to persist in the elenchus is a turning away not only from exercising their own reason but also from the opportunity Socrates offers them to join with him in a community of people committed to reason. Of course, many appear not to appreciate what they are giving up, but a few seem to realize that they are abandoning something of vital importance (for example, Alcibiades). It must have been puzzling to the young Plato that anyone would choose against, rather than for, membership in the Socratic community.

4. Dialectic and Choice This last point brings us back to the fact that it is possible to reject Socratic rationality and that this possibility is dramatized so often in the dialogues as to constitute one of their most characteristic features. At 161b4 – 6 Charmides rejects further pursuit of self-knowledge. Critias will reject it even more obviously at 169c3–d1. Laches and Nicias reject it at the end of their dialogue. Euthyphro to all appearances runs away from it at the end of his.

Meno and Anytus turn away from self-examination in the Meno. A wide assortment of Sophist-types fail to acknowledge the elenchus they have suffered in many other dialogues. The most dramatic account of the rejection of elenctic self-insight is given by Alcibiades in the Symposium: “He compels me to agree that, being deficient as I am, I neglect myself, when I involve myself in the affairs of Athens. . . . So I flee from him as if I were a slave running away from his master; but then when I see him again I think of those admissions, and I am cast into shame” (216a– c, my italics).17 Contrary to the Socratic paradox that “no one willingly does wrong,” the dialogues show people akratically rejecting moral knowledge again and again.

This is a crucial fact about the relation of drama and argument in those dialogues—and one that readers tend to overlook.

The fact that Socrates’ interlocutors consistently reject the opportunity for moral insight and personal growth he makes available to them indicates a decisive reason why he cannot be said to possess a techne¯ of moral education and why he insists that virtue cannot be taught. Ideally Socrates should lead the student into a deeper understanding of his own moral beliefs, to the recognition that they are inconsistent and that he “doesn’t really know what 17. On Alcibiades and akrasia in the early dialogues, see W. Thomas Schmid, “Socratic Moderation and Self-Knowledge,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 345 – 47.

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he is talking about.” Ideally this process should prick his inflated self-evaluation and lead him to a deeper commitment to rationality, out of the state of inconsistency and/or heteronomous dependence on moral authorities and into the attitude of mind in which he examines his actions in the light of universal reason and in which the policy of testing what he believes himself to know becomes a chief vehicle of his self-evaluation. But this call to self-investment in reason can be and typically is rejected by Socrates’ interlocutors. The development of the moral habit of dialectical reason implies overcoming habits of inferiority and achieving the willingness, through intellectual courage, to question authority figures and think for oneself in matters of personal values (this is where Charmides fails); it also implies overcoming, through intellectual humility, habits of self-assertion, in the sense of the unwillingness to submit one’s values to rational criticism (this is where Critias will fail); and it involves a commitment of self-election in the community of rational inquiry, with its ideals of truth, fairness, and mutuality (both fail in this respect). When his interlocutors reject reason, they reject also the moral principles that orient and underlie the commitment of the citizen in the dialectical community. Their motives for rejecting Socratic rationality may be found, at least in part, in their resistance to those principles.

The elenchus cannot compel the choice of self-knowledge on behalf of the interlocutor. Socrates can refute his “patient” and expose his “patient’s” ignorance, but he cannot force him to prefer the good of truth to his desire for safety and comfort or to his will to assert his own superiority.18 The Charmides teaches that this preference, this choice, depends upon the interlocutor himself and that this volitional dimension of self-knowledge cannot be eliminated but is inherent in the process of the elenctic inquiry. For this reason, if for no other, Socrates cannot “teach” virtue, insofar as he cannot produce in a consistent and predictable manner the right values in his students.

The process of learning through the elenchus—the process of rational selfdevelopment, the process of appropriating the values and principles of critical reason—is not a matter of correct instruction but of rational elicitation to which one must respond by personal choice.

The picture I have drawn of the elenchus has implications for the interpretation of the relation of Socrates’ practice of dialectic, his ethics, and his ideal 18. Socrates can use shame to compel verbal acknowledgment of refutation, but this is not sufficient for his educational purposes. For discussion of the role of shame in Socratic dialectic, see McKim, “Shame and Truth in Plato’s Gorgias,” in Platonic Readings, Platonic Writings, 34 – 48.

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of rationality. Regarding the relation of dialectic inquiry to virtue, it suggests why the dialectic may be held to have not only negative but also positive results. Focusing primarily on Socrates’ self-description in the Apology and the representation of dialectic in the Gorgias, many scholars have argued that this must be the case: that Socrates clearly has arrived, through his lifetime of inquiry, at a core of fundamental moral beliefs that he is now convinced are both consistent and irrefutable.19 These are the beliefs that have stood the test of many examinations. They are no mere beliefs, but reasoned, “proven” beliefs—beliefs concerning which Socrates can “give an account,” beliefs whose contradiction he believes he can show to be ridiculous. The interpretation offered here of the Charmides adds a different kind of empirical component to that understanding of Socratic rationality by enabling us to appreciate how Socrates might have come to his principles through participation in the practice of dialectic; how that practice might have led him from within its dynamic, participant form to the values he lives by; and why, despite his conviction that the beliefs he has come to are irrefutable, he must still disavow any claim to certainty regarding them. For on this view, Socrates’ ethics would emerge out of and reflect the practice of rational inquiry itself, the values of moral-philosophical discourse. His ethics may then be understood as the substantive embodiment of the formal principles of such discourse and mutual involvement: the primacy of the good of truth over superiority or honor or safety or physical desire; the commitment of the rational inquirer to values of moral courage, intellectual humility, and dialectical fairness; the willingness to suffer “punishment” (refutation), if such punishment /refutation is warranted, rather than inflict it on another, if it is not; the realization of personal interest and the common good; and the imperative to apply one’s findings to the conduct of life.20 Socratic ethics, on this view, is the idealized extension of the norms required by and created in the very practice of dialectic.

19. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 17–29; Reeve, Socrates, 45 – 62; Seeskin, Dialogue, 73– 90, 144 – 45; and Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, Foundations of Socratic Ethics (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 1994), 138 –39.

20. For the primacy of the good of truth, see Charmides 166d4 – 6; on the necessity of moral courage and intellectual humility, see 160e2 –5 and 169c6 –d1 (cf. Laches 194d and Gorgias 487b –d, 492d, 505e); on dialectical fairness and concern for others, see 166c7–d6; on applying reason to conduct, see 155c5 –156d3, and compare Crito 46b, Gorgias 488a. Socrates implies his willingness to be refuted at Charmides 166d8 – e2; compare Gorgias 458a. Compare Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, 44 –51, and Jürgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics,” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. W. Nicholson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 42 –115.

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The value-creative dimension of dialectic makes it something other than mere mental gymnastics aimed at throwing the opponent, despite its outward appearance. It is true that there is an external isomorphism between dialectic and eristic, in the sense that the Socratic elenchus aims at criticizing and overthrowing the logos put to the test.21 This partly explains why Critias, not appreciating the moral principles that guide dialectic, thinks Socrates is merely trying to refute him. Dialectic, no less than eristic, has the logical form of a refutative argument aimed at the interlocutor’s statements.

But the inner nature of dialectic is entirely different from that of eristic. Its goal, its guiding principle, is not the good of acquiring victory for oneself; it is the community-creating good of truth, of the “revelation of each of the beings” (166d5 – 6).22 But what is this revelation? What does it entail?

As we may now appreciate, the phrase has a double meaning. For the revelation of “the beings” in a Socratic dialogue does not only refer to the goal of making evident things as they are in the world— of expressing/uncovering the truth in propositional terms (truth in words). It also refers to the revelation of selves— of exposing/uncovering the speakers and their innermost values, even if they are in a state of confusion—and of bringing them to the life of reason (truth in souls). Charmides is not prepared for such truth and will fearfully withdraw from it; Critias will angrily reject it. But the interlocutor who would persist in dialectic comes to a revelation of himself, his beliefs and values, not only to an understanding of the objects of those beliefs, and thus it takes him to a point of moral decision: Will he persist in and submit to the process of rational inquiry, a process that requires and indeed takes the form of a new kind of self-determination? Or will he withdraw from and refuse such self-formation and self-knowledge, in anger or fear?

In other words, the elenchus potentially involves the interlocutor in a kind of rite of passage, a confrontation with a self whose irrational attachments of appetite and ego are exposed and that must be overcome for the interlocutor to progress in and through the cathartic element in the inquiry. The true elenchus is no mere philosophical conversation but a “going-down” of the whole self—which is why so many reject it, but also why it can lead to a genuine “rebirth” of the psyche¯ and of self-knowledge at the other end of the zetetic tunnel. It is the potential rebirth of the interlocutor’s selfhood in

21. See Nicholas Rescher, Dialectic (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1977), 46 – 60; also Alexander Nehamas, “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato’s Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1986): 3–16.

22. See Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics, 51– 65; also Nehamas, “Eristic,” 10 –11.

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the values of universal reason that makes the elenchus not merely a zetetic but a “medical” or therapeutic and even spiritual practice.23 For if the interlocutor is virtuous and persists in the dialectic process, he will find himself taken out of his “accidental and irrational arbitrariness” and revealed in the light of reason, and he will also begin to find and remake the very structure of his self-identity in the values of that rational process, as he identifies more completely with his cognitive self.24 He will find that the pursuit of knowledge has involved him in the values and virtues of cognitive life and in the participant community of that life.

The practice of dialectic should form, in the life of the Socratically so¯phro¯n individual, an intellectual conscience, and this quality of thoughtfulness about his life should make it significantly different from that of a person who does not engage in critical thought.25 There is an amusing characterization of this difference in the (possibly spurious) Hippias Major, where Socrates, having failed utterly to lead Hippias to recognize his own selfcontradiction and conceit of wisdom, proclaims ironically that he, unlike Hippias, cannot rest easy with eloquent and beautiful speeches about beauty and virtue, because he, unlike Hippias, is held to account for his beliefs by a man who is always cross-examining him: “He is a very close relative of mine and lives in the same house, and when I go home and he hears me give utterance to these opinions he asks me whether I am not ashamed of my audacity in talking about a beautiful way of life, when questioning makes it evident that I do not even know the meaning of the word ‘beauty’” (304d).

In other words, Socrates has come to live in the dimension of rational selfexamination, but Hippias’s “inner house” is empty—there is nobody home.

The dialogue displays not only Hippias’s inability to define the beautiful; it also displays his deeply engrained unwillingness to reflect upon the meaning of that failure for his moral self-assessment and epistemic self-confidence.26 23. Compare Hadot, Philosophy, 89 –93.

24. On dialectic and the self, see Christopher Gill, Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), and Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 78 – 83.

25. Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 283: “The great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. I mean: does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward. But what is goodheartedness, or refinement, or creativity to me, when the person who has these virtues does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress?” Compare Vlastos on moral versus epistemic certainty, Socrates: Ironist, 269 –71.

26. See the discussion in Arendt, “Thinking,” 438 – 46, and Life of the Mind, 1:188 –93.

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But the dialogue displays the contrary, very beautiful quality in Socrates— whatever his critical friend may say.

This interpretation of Socratic dialectic has important implications for understanding how knowledge is depicted in the early Platonic dialogues. It points up the fact that Plato’s concern in these works (and not only in these works) is not only with the object of knowledge but with what is involved in becoming and being a knowing subject—what kinds of moral /intellectual virtues must be appropriated and made part of the personal value system for philosophical self-knowledge, regarded as a personal and yet curiously impartial achievement, to be realized. It helps us to see why the distinctive virtue of Socratic rationality does not lie merely in its realization of logical consistency but in its embodiment of personal commitment to the norm of reason: “So we must examine the question of whether we ought to do this or not; for I am not only now but always the kind of person who follows nothing but the reasoning [logos] which seems to me best” (Crito 46b, my italics). It is this performative principle that connects the will to reason and determines that emotion shall be subordinate to deliberate guidance. It is this that is the guiding principle of a rational self, one critically self-conscious of the fact that the good he values may not be what he should value—so that if he determines it is not what he should value, he must act otherwise, because for him to be a self—to enjoy self-harmony—is to be committed to reason, to be a rational self.27 The interpretation offered here of how Socratic dialectic may yield positive results corresponds to the description of the so¯phro¯n person and of so¯phrosune¯ found at Charmides 167a1–7.28 The state of mind involved in such practice originates out of the critical awareness of the values governing dialectic, including the primacy of truth, the necessity of the virtues, and in general the appreciation of oneself as a finitely rational being. But it also originates out of the active disposition to submit one’s own values to the 27. Compare Stephen Darwell, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 101–2: “Rationality consists, at least partly, in our capacity to make our ends and preferences the object of our rational consideration, and to revise them in accordance with reasons we find compelling.” As Darwell points out, this is a richer conception of what it means to be a rational person than is found in contemporary decision theory.

28. “Then only the so¯phro¯n will both recognize himself and be able to examine both what he happens to know and what he does not; in the same way it will be possible for him to investigate others in regard to what someone knows and thinks he knows and supposes, if he does know, and what he himself supposes he knows but does not know. No one else will be able to.

And this is what being moderate [to so¯phro¯nein], and so¯phro¯sune, and oneself recognizing oneself [to heauton auton gignoskein] are: knowing both what one knows and what one does not know” (167a1–7).

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community of dialogic inquiry and to do this as a matter of principled habit—the chosen habit of the examined life. It is a volitional, no less than a cognitive, state, an intentional policy rather than a mere psychological or naturalistic disposition. The former, cognitive aspect is conspicuously missing from Charmides, who is unwilling or unable to think for himself and to take rational responsibility for his own values; the latter, volitional aspect is not only conspicuously absent from Critias, but its very opposite is present.

For Critias is characterized by an attitude of mind that is deeply aversive to knowing its own cognitive limits and morally blind to the common good of reason and truth.

As the passages at Sophist 230a–d and Laches 187e–188a suggest, and as has been argued in this essay, Plato had good reason to believe that perseverance in Socratic dialogue could have a profound effect on the moral formation of its practitioner. Out of the practice of dialectic might arise a quality of moral reflection and commitment that would be both liberating and binding, freeing the interlocutor from the accidental and irrational arbitrariness of the values in which he had been raised, directing him toward the values of universal reason implicit in the practice of inquiry. In that process, the person might choose to identify with those first-order desires that were consistent with his rational self, and reform his own self-understanding through a new process of self-determination. This is not to say that Plato believed Socratic dialectic to be the cure for all evils. It is evident that his dialectical therapy depends on the willingness of the patient to endure and persist in it—paradoxically the patient learning to philosophize must want to be cured and must act in such a way as to be cured in order to progress, and we may assume that experience of the limitations of other ways of living would play an important role in the protreptic to dialectical commitment.29 The examined life is a matter of choice and cognitive endurance, no less than rational insight, and the commitment to such choice and effort grows with the development of interpersonal, as well as intellectual, interests.30 Moreover, it is clear from the scene in the prologue involving Socrates’ self-control in relation to Charmides (155c–56d) that the commitment to truth must be applied in one’s life as a whole, not only in those contexts in which it might be expected.31 This, too, calls for habits of moral and cognitive attention 29. On the paradox, see the discussion, earlier in this essay, of dialectic and virtue. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics ii.1, on the relation of anticipatory acts of virtue and the development of the character trait.

30. This subject is thematized in the Lysis, Phaedrus, and Symposium. Socrates’ erotic method of teaching is the subject of Gary Alan Scott’s Plato’s Socrates as Educator.

31. See note 13 above.

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that extend beyond the confines of dialectic practice alone. But it also seems clear from the Charmides that Plato believed the Socratic dialectic to be causally related to the formation of the virtue of Socratic so¯phrosune¯ and that he believed the practice of this virtue was central to a good human life. The elenchus was the medicine by which Socrates sought to lead his “patients” into the world of moral autonomy, social responsibility, and critical reason.

The ideal of rationality to which the first part of the Charmides ascends is an achievement of dialectical practice, a practice requiring courage, humility before the truth, and a sense of solidarity with the other participants.

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14 The Elenchos in the Charmides, 162 –175

GERALD A. PRESS

The Charmides has not received much scholarly attention, as Platonic dialogues go,1 and most discussions of the dialogue focus their attention on the latter half, in which Socrates cross-examines Critias about so¯phrosyne¯.2 This 1. I know of only four books in English on the Charmides. T. G. Tuckey, Plato’s Charmides, is historically contextualized, philosophically rigorous, but pays insufficient attention to dramatic structures. N. Van der Ben, The Charmides of Plato: Problems and Interpretations (Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner Publishing, 1985), is a close study of several important and controversial passages rather than an overall interpretation. Drew A. Hyland, The Virtue of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Charmides (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), is a Heideggerian “reading” of the dialogue rather than an attempt to see the dialogue in its own historical and philosophical context. W. Thomas Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, is a detailed and sensitive interpretation marred by commitment to Platonic chronology and developmentalism and by the attempt to find a “Socratic” view. One reason for the relative lack of attention may have been the way the dialogue violates modern preconceptions about Platonic dialogues, mixing together, as it does, “early” and “late” characteristics. I. M. Crombie found it impossible to understand what the point might have been (An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962]). For monographs in German, see note 2 below.

2. This orientation goes back at least to the nineteenth century; see C. Schirlitz, “Der Begriff des Wissens vom Wissen in Platons Charmides und seine Bedeutung für das Ergebnis des Dialoges,” Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Pädagogik 155 (1897): 451–76, 513–37. It characterizes the work of Tuckey, whose monograph is about three-quarters concerned with knowledge of knowledge. For more recent examples, see Christopher Bruell, “Socratic Politics

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is probably due to the fact that two especially interesting formulations are discussed in this section: (1) that so¯phrosyne¯ is self-knowledge and (2) that it is knowledge of knowledge or science of science.

This elenchos, however, has several substantial problems, which may explain why the scholarly discussion has produced so little agreement. First, the extreme abstraction of the crucial section (167bff.) seems inconsistent with the “early” characteristics of the dialogue.3 Second, it is striking that a number of ideas that are typically “Socratic” on the basis of other dialogues are here put into the mouth of Critias, and then puzzling that Socrates apparently rejects them.4 Third, there are disagreements about what exactly the subject is at various points,5 and some interpreters argue that there is a fallacious shift of subject from “knowledge of oneself” to “knowledge of itself” (166e), though even here there is disagreement about whether to atand Self-Knowledge: An Interpretation of Plato’s Charmides,” Interpretation 6 (1977): 141– 203; M. Dyson, “Some Problems Concerning Knowledge in Plato’s Charmides,” Phronesis 19 (1974): 102 –11; G. Fabris Pianon, “La techne introvabile: Una rilettura del Carmide,” Discorsi 5 (1985): 7–27; H. Herter, “Selbsterkenntnis der Sophrosyne zu Platons Charmides,” in Festschrift für Karl Vretska. (Heidelberg, 1970), 74 – 88; Michael Thomas Liske, “Absolute Selbstreflexion oder wertkritisches Wissen: Thesen zu Platons Charmides,” Theologie und Philosophie 63 (1988): 161– 81; Ekkehard Martens, Das selbstbezügliche Wissen in Platos Charmides (Munich: Hanser, 1973); Richard McKim, “Socratic Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Knowledge in Plato’s Charmides,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 115 (1985): 59 –77; T. F. Morris, “Knowledge of Knowledge and of Lack of Knowledge in the Charmides,” International Studies in Philosophy 21 (1989): 49 – 61. Although the Charmides has been considered Plato’s dialogue about so¯phrosyne¯ at least since it was given the subtitle Peri so¯phro¯synes in antiquity, so¯phrosyne¯ figures also in Protagoras (332b –333b), Gorgias (esp. 491d– 508c), Phaedo (68c– e, 82c), Symposium (188a, 209a–b), Republic (esp. 430c– 442d), Phaedrus (esp. 247b –250d), Timaeus (273c, 277c, 279b – c), Sophist (228a–230d), Politicus (306b – 309e), and Philebus (12d, 19c).

3. For example, the long, detailed dramatic opening (153a–159a), which amounts to approximately one-quarter of the entire dialogue and which Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 1, correctly describes as “one of the most richly textured and fascinating among all the prologues to Plato’s works”; Socrates’ playful elenchos with Charmides (159b –162b); and the aporetic conclusion (175a–176a).

4. Especially ta hautou prattein (161bff.), but also self-knowledge (gignoskein heauton, 164dff.) and the deep interest in episte¯me¯ that is evinced from that point to the end of the dialogue (noted by Tuckey, Plato’s Charmides, 30). Charles H. Kahn, “Plato’s Charmides and the Proleptic Reading of Socratic Dialogues,” Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 541– 49, attempts to resolve the apparent doctrinal contradictions by arguing that the dialogue has an anticipatory (“proleptic”) function, “to prepare the reader for the reception and understanding of later doctrines” (541). But the argument depends on a chronology that cannot be sustained. See Holger Thesleff, Studies in Platonic Chronology (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1982), for the chronology and idem, Studies in Plato’s Two-Level Model (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1999), for a sustained critique of Kahn.

5. Cf. Robert R Wellman, “The Question Posed at Charmides 165a–165c,” Phronesis 9 (1964): 107–13.

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tribute this to Critias, Socrates, or Plato.6 Finally, there is the usual question that arises in the so-called aporetic dialogues: whether there is a doctrine of so¯phrosyne¯ (Socrates’ or Plato’s) to be found here or, what is apparently unacceptable, whether Plato is a skeptic or the propounder of only an unwritten doctrine.7 There is a more general interpretive problem of which our passage is an example—and it is a microcosm of the larger confrontation between doctrine-oriented interpreters who ignore the dialogues’ dramatic characteristics and those who take the dialogues’ dramatic form seriously and are less interested in isolating Platonic or Socratic doctrines: what kind of reasons ought one to give or look for to explain the various turns or steps in the elenchoi? One strategy is to give no explanation. From this point of view, Charmides first offers shame (or modesty, haidos) and then quietness (hesychia) as answers to the question, What is so¯phrosyne¯ ? They are simply different answers, and neither survives Socrates’ examination. But here, as in many Platonic dialogues, there are connections to be found if one just scratches the surface of the various answers. For one thing, as any of Plato’s original audience would have recognized, “shame” and “quietness” are traditional meanings of so¯phrosyne¯ that we find in earlier poets and playwrights; 8 for another, these answers seem to relate to the character who offers them in ways that are philosophically interesting—modesty and quietness are appropriate forms of so¯phrosyne¯ for a stripling (meirakion), which is what Charmides is. This implies that there is some reason for the various answers given, but raises the question: what sort of reasons should one seek?

It is helpful to distinguish between what might be called external and internal reasons. By internal reasons I mean that each successive speech (hence each proposed answer) would be explicable by the interaction of the characters conversing within the dialogue itself. It should be noted that this is a criterion that would be applicable to all drama and would contribute, in many cases, to distinguish between better and worse drama. By external reasons, I mean that the successive answers are taken to represent ideas imposed on the characters—just inserted into the dialogue—by Plato for his own 6. Tuckey considered this “the central problem of interpretation” (Plato’s Charmides, 33).

7. In “Interpreting Plato’s Dialogues,” 423–37, Corlett argues that interpreters such as Kraut, Irwin, Annas, and Frede err by taking it as self-evident that the dialogues are meant to communicate Plato’s own theories, doctrines, or beliefs. George Rudebusch, “Plato’s Aporetic Style,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (1989): 539 – 47, on the other hand, argues that the aporetic structure serves to produce in the reader an understanding of Socrates’ philosophical opinions as expressed in the dialogues.

8. For example, Hom., Il 4.402, 21.468 – 69, Od. 4.158.

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reasons. On this view the characters’ speeches do not derive in any significant way from them as characters, but from Plato, for whom they are then merely mouthpieces of various sorts.9 The problem with this approach, of course, is that, lacking any evidence other than that of the dialogues themselves, it is difficult to justify the claim that Plato had this or that reason for putting a particular speech into the mouth of a particular character without either invoking a set of interpretive assumptions that will themselves need proof or else begging the question.10 If these alternatives—internal only or external only—seem too extreme, one could look for a combination of internal and external reasons. This approach produces alternative lines of interpretation. One possibility is that the internal and external reasons in some way coincide; that is, the characters’ reasons and Plato’s reasons are the same. Another is that they differ or even conflict; that is, the character means one thing, but Plato means for the audience to see something else.11 A third is that they are coordinated in some way—for example, inner-outer, higher-lower, foreground-background.

These are logical possibilities, but in the nature of the case I don’t think that they are real possibilities. Since the dialogues themselves are alone what we are given by Plato and since they are self-evidently dramas, whatever else they may be, we must begin by looking for what I have been calling internal reasons and only retreat to the quest for external reasons if the internal reasons do not produce an adequate explanation of what goes on. In fact, careful attention to the internal reasons for a sequence of proposed answers may provide evidence to resolve some of the doubts and disagreements among the scholars, as I think it does in the present case. I propose that the solution to the problems that interpreters have had with Socrates’ elenchos of Critias are to be explained neither by Plato’s criticism of Socrates nor by the demands of a Socratic or Platonic doctrine of so¯phrosyne¯ being propounded, but rather by Critias’s character, his education by Socrates, and his politics.12 9. See Press, ed., Who Speaks? for arguments in theory and history, and interpretations of dialogues, on the view that neither Socrates nor any other individual character ought to be taken as directly expressing Plato’s own views and arguments.

10. See Debra Nails, “Mouthpiece Schmouthpiece,” 15 –26, and Gerald A. Press, “The Logic of Attributing Characters’ Views to Plato,” 27–38, both in Who Speaks? ed. Press.

11. This is a position taken by some Straussians and some followers of the Tübingen approach.

12. On the importance of character in Plato’s dialogues, see Lucinda Coventry, “The Role of the Interlocutor in Plato’s Dialogues: Theory and Practice,” in Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature, ed. C. B. Pelling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 174 –96; Mary Whitlock Blundell, “Character and Meaning in Plato’s Hippias Minor,” in Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues, 131–72; Eugenio Benitez, “Characterization

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Does Socrates Have a Method?

Critias is a character about whom we know a great deal. Historically, he was a Sophist, a poet, and a politician.13 He was also Plato’s relative, as was Charmides.14 In the dialogue, he is richly and continuously characterized.

We find in the dialogue clear evidence of his elitist aristocratic attitudes,15 intellectual and moral traits, and, ultimately, his violently reactionary politics. Note the following: he brags about Charmides as philosopher and poet (154e), dreams up a lie to tell Charmides about Socrates’ skill at medicine (155b), and then brags more about Charmides’ moral qualities even though he doesn’t actually remember what they were talking about (157a). Then again he makes vague, sweeping generalizations about how perfect Charmides is, but is himself shown to be more interested in physical than spiritual beauty. He lies about the origin of “doing one’s own” as an account of so¯phrosyne¯ (161c). He is “agitated” and “eager to impress” (agonion kai philotimos) the assembly but “angry at” Charmides for failing to explain what “doing one’s own” means (162c–d). His high opinion of himself is reiterated at 169c. His struggle and then failure to “hold himself in” at 162c shows his lack of so¯phrosyne¯. Agon in the passage above suggests sophistic competitiveness, and Plato has given his Critias a sophistic character in other respects. For example, he tends to speechify (163c–d, 164d–165b), and he brings in a poet to support his case (163b). On the other hand, Critias is porand Interpretation: The Importance of Drama in Plato’s Sophist,” Literature and Aesthetics (1996): 27–39. On its importance in the Charmides, see Schmid, Plato’s Charmides, 10 –14.

13. As a politician, nicknamed “The Tyrant,” he was involved with Alcibiades and went to Thessaly after his fall, was accused in the mutilation of herms but released on the evidence of Andocides, had a controversial role in the Council of Four Hundred, was a violently aristocratic opponent of democracy and leader of the extreme wing of the Thirty Tyrants (Donald Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987], 152), was implicated in the liquidation of Theramenes in the Thirty’s reign of terror, and died in street fighting in 403 (cf. Xen., Mem. 1.2, 2, 9; Hell. 2.3, 2.4.19; Andoc. 1.47; Lys. 12). Whatever else he was, he was not temperate, and this background also gives the dialogue a political flavor from the very beginning. As a poet, he wrote political elegies (his Political Constitutions was apparently partly elegiac) and tragedies (Tennes, Rhadamanthy, Pirithous, Sisyphus). Some of his work was compared or confused with that of Euripides. Fragments can be found in Augustus Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 770 –75. He may also be considered a Sophist or a pre-Socratic, though G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 53, has doubts about his being considered a Sophist. Fragments of his Definitions (Aphorisoi) and Conversations (Homiliai) are collected in Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 88.

14. A second cousin on Plato’s mother’s side, Critias seems to have been the dominant male figure in the family during Plato’s youth, after his father died. See J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 322 –35.

15. On the elitism of the historical Critias and the circle of men out of which the Thirty Tyrants emerged, see Peter Krentz, The Thirty at Athens (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 62ff.

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trayed as dialectically cagey; note the distinction between making and doing at 163a. He makes sound objections to Socrates’ procedure (163a, 165e, 166c), though he is unable to follow up on them. Yet he complains when Socrates refutes him (165e, 166c); he just doesn’t like it. He exhibits an elitist superiority to such persons as cobblers and fishmongers (163b, 173e).

And at the end of the dialogue he implies that he would be willing to use force in order to have Socrates teach Charmides (176c–d).

Plato makes his character display repeatedly a kind of intellectual-moral self-confidence (confidence that he knows, self-certainty, belief in his own knowledge) that characterizes other Platonic interlocutors also and that remains unshaken despite its having been shown to be unwarranted.

Plato’s character Critias, therefore, is complex, but strikingly consistent with the historical figure. He is not intellectually dense, like a Meno or Euthyphro; he has some dialectical skill and makes sound objections to Socrates’ procedure at several points. But his intellectual style is sophistic; he likes to give speeches, compete for recognition, cite poets, and argue from authority.16 His moral character is fairly abysmal. He brags, lies, is eager to impress, has a high opinion of his intellectual abilities that we see to be unwarranted; and he is distinctly lacking in so¯phrosyne¯ by many of the definitions put forward in this dialogue.17 Many of his statements reveal the aristocratic political bias that is elsewhere attested. A contemporary reader or hearer of the Charmides would have seen in Critias the notorious political leader of the Thirty.

How does this help us understand the steps in Socrates’ cross-examination of Critias?

There are essentially four stages in the elenchos, and we will need to look at each one briefly. The questions I suggest we need to keep in mind are as follows: (1) Are the answers given by Critias all different? 18 How do they re16. Regarding Critias’s withdrawing his statements (164d), Friedländer observes that it is characteristic of the Sophists to withdraw all their previous statements (Plato, 2:73).

17. That he lacks hesychiotes (calmness, quietness) is shown by the loud, pushy tone of 165d–166c and 176a–d. That he lacks aidos (shame, modesty) is shown by his bragging (154e, 157a). His lack of emotional self-control is shown by his outburst at 162c– e and is to be contrasted with Socrates’ control of his sexual arousal at 155d–156a. His lack of self-knowledge and knowledge of knowledge is shown both by his inability to give a coherent account of them and by his behavior. For example, he repeatedly fails to recognize that he does not know (163d– e, 164c–165b, 166b – c, 168c– e).

18. A tricky interpretive question is whether, when Critias gives a new view, it is to be understood as a completely new view, replacing previous views of his, or is to be taken by us (or was taken by him) as an explanation of the previous view. The latter is Van der Ben’s interpretation (and, in fact, a main general point of his book); the former is the view of George Grote,

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late to each other? (2) How do the shifts occur and what do they signify (as distinct from the question, What does each answer signify?)? In each case, I argue that what happens is fully explicable on the basis of Socrates’ educational endeavor with respect to Critias.19 What happens is a result of the character of Critias as it is clearly presented in the dialogue, of his political history as it would have been known to Plato’s original audience, and of Socrates’ attempt to reveal to Critias both his ignorance and his lack of so¯phrosyne¯.20 The first two steps of the elenchos are relatively straightforward. “Doing one’s own thing” is an antidemocratic political slogan and the very phrase Socrates uses to define justice in Republic.21 Thus the answer itself might seem to be “Socratic”; in fact, it may have seemed so to Critias, who was an associate of Socrates and may have been accustomed to hearing him use the phrase. He seems shocked and angry when Socrates attacks the notion as presented first by Charmides. If we are looking for ethical or political doctrines, however, this attack constitutes a problem. If we see Socrates as engaging in his usual educational activity, it is less so because he can be seen to be trying to show Critias that he doesn’t really know what so¯phrosyne¯ is.

Critias’s entry into the conversation displays him as intemperate in several ways and brings politics into play.

Socrates commences a refutation based on the questionable identity of “doing” and “making,” but Critias notices the trap and tries to evade it by appealing to Hesiod for the difference between them. The speech reveals a “narrow . . . snobbish . . . typically aristocratic” attitude, Tuckey rightly Plato (1865) 2:155; Guthrie, History, 4:160; and Tuckey, Plato’s Charmides, 24f., who also cites Max Pohlenz, Aus Platons Werdezeit: Philologische Untersuchungen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), 49, to the same effect.

19. On Plato’s presentation of Socrates’ educational mission in general, see Apology and other dialogues. Many recent commentators have emphasized it. See, for example, Debra Nails, Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 195 –210; Brickhouse and Smith, Plato’s Socrates, 3–29; and David O’Connor’s chapter on Socrates in The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

20. Richard Robinson’s sound comments on the personal character of dialectic (Earlier, 15 –19) are echoed by many later interpreters, who have noted that Socrates refutes not just arguments but persons. Cf. Seeskin, Dialogue and Discovery, 1– 4 21. Cf. Victor Ehrenberg, “Sophrosyne,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 67 (1947): 46 – 67; Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966); and A. W. H. Adkins, “Polypragmosune and ‘Minding Your Own Business,’” Classical Philology 71 (1976): 301–28. The phrase also turns up in different ways in the Gorgias (526c), Politicus (307e), Timaeus (72a), Theaetetus (184e), and Alcibiades i (127b).

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says.22 Critias’s position is that “making” of the sort that is so¯phrosyne¯ is not that of artisans. This amounts to saying that the sort of work done by those who work for a living excludes them from so¯phrosyne¯ and thus from social or political power. It is sophistic in both its language and its use of poetry as evidence.23 This step suggests that although he has some dialectical skill (he heads off Socrates’ announced refutation), he nevertheless lacks constructive philosophical alternatives and instead uses sophistic strategies (poetry interpretation). But when Socrates says, improbably, that he doesn’t understand the distinction between doing and making (163e), Critias just abandons “doing one’s own” and accepts Socrates’ suggestion that what he really means is “doing good things.” Note that this is not a reflective move on Critias’s part; he is essentially reacting against Socrates’ criticism.

Thus he comes to his second answer, “doing good things,” which, as indicated, reveals his aristocratic class bias against people who “make” things.

His position is that the sorts of things that should be called “good” are not what is made by the many, artisans, for example, only what is made by persons like himself and members of his class, who don’t make things in that same sense and whose “own things,” presumably, include poetry making, speechmaking, and governing. And note that, like many another Platonic interlocutor, Critias does not think that his first answer has been refuted, only that he needs to explain it more clearly.

Socrates suggests that a temperate man might be ignorant of himself as temperate if so¯phrosyne¯ is understood as simply “doing good things” (164a– c). This motivates Critias to back away from “doing good things” and give a long speech about Delphi the point of which is to shift to another idea about so¯phrosyne¯, that it is self-knowledge (to gignoskein heauton, 164d). The transition thus initiated from step two to three is where matters begin to get complicated.

The first complication is Critias’s speech itself, which is the subject of radically differing assessments in the literature.24 It is sophistic, mock reasoning and displays apparent, not real, intellectual seriousness. It reveals that he is 22. Tuckey, Plato’s Charmides, 103f. Van der Ben, Charmides, 34 –38, analyzes the false reasoning in detail.

23. On sophistic reasoning, see Guthrie, History, 3:41–50, and Kerferd, Sophistic Movement, 59 – 67.

24. Although Van der Ben, Taylor, Shorey, and Hyland say nothing, Tuckey reads this as Critias struggling to catch “what Socrates is driving at” (Plato’s Charmides, 24). Guthrie, History, 4:160 and n. 2, considers the reply “frank” and disagrees with Friedländer, Plato, 2:73, that such a reply “made in these terms is surely a sign of grace.”

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not ashamed to be caught contradicting himself. He still doesn’t think his answer has been refuted, and he is not learning anything.

Observe that the refutation of so¯phrosyne¯ as “doing good things” derives from ignorance; hence the notion of knowledge, which Critias asserts next, is suggested by Socrates, as was “doing good things” before. Thus again Critias’s next proposal is essentially a reaction to Socrates’ criticism rather than an independent reflective proposal. The actual motivation is something like this: Socrates shows Critias that “doing good things” can be made to seem (the suggested argument is faulty) to conflict with a traditional identification of so¯phrosyne¯ with self-knowledge, and Critias is so distressed by this appearance that he leaps into precisely this traditional notion. Critias is trying to make his beliefs square with traditional beliefs. Again, note that Plato makes us see that Critias is distressed by Socrates’ suggestion, but distressed, to be clear, about his public refutation rather than by a recognition of his lack of knowledge.

The idea of self-knowledge, like the idea of doing one’s own, seems like a serious and Socratic notion, but Critias is vague,25 and given how distressed and reactive he is, his response seems much more like an attempt to escape criticism by a pretense of piety reminiscent of a modern politician’s “wrapping himself in the flag.” The idea does relate to a traditional association of so¯phrosyne¯, but the traditional meaning, “recognize your limits as human,” is not what Critias takes the meaning to be.26 His view is actually nontraditional and consistent with the sophistic orientation toward expert knowledge. Once again Critias wants to give a speech and appeals to authority, this time that of the god at Delphi. Socrates’ attempt to find out the peculiar subject of this knowledge leads Critias to his final attempt at a definition.

There are several further complications at this point. One is the assumption—to which Critias here seems peculiarly committed—that a so¯phro¯n must know he is so¯phro¯n. Although it was laid down as a basic premise of the entire conversation about so¯phrosyne¯ (159a), Socrates himself illustrates that it’s a false assumption,27 or at least not true in any simple sense. Thus Cri25. “This is pretty much what I say temperance is” (trans. Sprague). Schedon . . . ti egoge auto touto phemi einai so¯phrosyne¯, to gignoskein heauton. Note the schedon . . . ti.

26. As it turns out later, “knowledge of knowledge” is not a new account but an explanation of “self-knowledge,” so Critias is interpreting “Know thyself” as meaning “Know what episte¯me¯ you have.” And if, as I think, he still holds to “doing one’s own,” with its class implications, then he is taking the Delphic inscription to address only kaloi kagathoi like himself.

27. As in many dialogues, Plato presents Socrates as possessing the quality under discussion at the same time that he makes Socrates deny knowing what that quality is. To take just one ex-

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tias’s commitment to it is peculiar. Since he is demonstrably not so¯phro¯n,28 what he really seems to believe is that it’s the reputation (doxa) for so¯phrosyne¯ that matters.

Another complication for many interpreters is what exactly the topic of the dialogue is from here on. It is easy to think that self-knowledge and knowledge of knowledge are each a new and independent proposal. The dramatic context, however, shows that Critias is continuing to refine the account of so¯phrosyne¯ as self-knowledge, which, in turn, he considers to be a clarification of “doing one’s own.” 29 Thus the “clarifications” Critias is driven to make actually serve to reveal the ideas that lie behind his spoken words.

Next, although Socrates begins the elenchos here by securing Critias’s assent to the statement that this self-knowledge is a kind of episte¯me¯, we ought to wonder, Is (or in what sense is) gignoskein a species of the genus episte¯me¯ ?

That Critias agrees shows us that he is not careful about ideas and that, again sophistically, he wants to reduce the kind of religious-moral recognition of Gnothi sauton to a technical expertise.30 In the ensuing discussion (165c– e) Critias makes several objections to Socrates’ procedures, but, as before, in each case he gives in quickly and revises or clarifies his position, now to “knowledge of itself and other knowledges” or briefly “knowledge of knowledge” (166c). Does this, as some interpreters believe, involve a fallacy? No, for Socrates’ returns to “selfknowledge” (167a, 170a) indicate that he still considers self-knowledge the operative account. Moreover, Critias’s view makes sense—to a Critias. Selfknowledge is knowing that one has episte¯me¯. It’s an amoral, aristocratic, intellectualistic notion; and it is this that Socrates now refutes. ample of this from the Charmides, Socrates’ description of his sexual arousal and his loss and then recovery of self-control at the sight of Charmides (155d–156a) exhibits him to us as possessing so¯phrosyne¯ in one of its traditional meanings, as has often been noted.

28. The evidence for his lack of moderation is collected in note 17 above.

29. Unlike Charmides, Critias never admits he has been refuted and attempts a new account. Instead, he takes himself only to be clarifying his account in the shift from “doing one’s own” to “doing good things” (164b – c) and refining his account in the shift from “doing good things” to self-knowledge (164c–165c) and in the shift from self-knowledge to knowledge of knowledge (166b – e). Socrates’ comments, too, assume that the previous accounts remain operative: for example, at 170a, where he equates knowledge of knowledge with self-knowledge.

30. The ultimate result in the present case is that what is refuted is not the idea that so¯phrosyne¯ is self-knowledge but Critias’s way of understanding that idea. As here, so often, one must interpret through the superficial, apparent generalization and then through the real ad hominem level of the argument to the deeper kind of generalization that Plato is after, which is moral and political and philosophical.

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Like self-knowledge, “knowledge of knowledge” superficially seems a serious and Socratic kind of idea, with its emphasis on episte¯me¯. But in light of Critias’s evident distress at Socrates’ questions and the way he again just gives in to Socrates’ objections without trying to counter them, it looks more like a philosophistic makeshift that, however, does appeal to him. Critias’s position would be that a so¯phro¯n is a person who, having some episte¯me¯, has episte¯me¯ of that fact.

The refutation of this, Critias’s final account, has two different phases. In the first, Socrates forces Critias to experience aporia. The aporia is about whether such a thing as (that is, the category, kind, genus) episte¯me¯ episte¯me¯s—which is exactly what Critias’s correct account is—is possible; and thus Critias is brought for the first time in this dialogue to doubt himself, his knowledge, though he doesn’t admit it.31 Thereafter, as in many other dialogues, Socrates takes over and becomes much more overtly directive. In this second phase, Socrates proceeds hypothetically to argue that even if there were such a thing as so¯phrosyne¯, it wouldn’t, by Critias’s account of it, be beneficial, and given the earlier premise about benefit, if follows that it wouldn’t be so¯phrosyne¯.

But what is most interesting is the detailed hypothesis—to which Critias gives enthusiastic assent— of what can be called a utopia of expertise or technical utopia. It is presented in two passages close to each other near the end of the dialogue.

1. Charmides 171d–172a (trans. Sprague) “[I]f, as we assumed in the beginning, the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not know (and that he knows the former but not the latter) and were able to investigate another man who was in the same situation, then it would be of the greatest benefit to us to be temperate. Because those of us who had temperance would live lives free from error and so would all those who were under our rule.

Neither would we ourselves be attempting to do things we did not understand—rather we would find those who did understand and turn the matter over to them—nor would we trust those over whom we ruled to do anything except what they would do correctly, and this would be that of which they possessed the science. And thus, by 31. Plato underscores this fact for us at169c–d. Critias is said to have “caught” aporia the way one catches yawning. Note that it seems an odd argument on Socrates’ part, but it is explicable in terms of Socrates’ educational mission with respect to Critias.

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means of temperance, every household would be well run and every city well governed, and so in every case where temperance reigned.

And with error rooted out and rightness in control, men so circumstanced would necessarily fare admirably and well [kalos kai eu prattein] in all their doings and, faring well, they would be happy [eudaimonas]. Isn’t this what we mean about temperance, Critias,” I said, “when we say what a good thing it would be to know what one knows and what one does not know?”

“This is certainly what we mean,” he said.

“But now you see,” I replied, “that no science of this sort has put in an appearance.”

2. Charmides 173a–d (trans. Sprague) “Listen then,” I said, “to my dream, to see whether it comes through horn or through ivory. If temperance really ruled over us and were as we now define it, surely everything would be done according to science: neither would anyone who says he is a pilot (but is not) deceive us, nor would any doctor or general or anyone else pretending to know what he does not know escape our notice. This being the situation, wouldn’t we have greater bodily health than we do now, and safety when we are in danger at sea or in battle, and wouldn’t we have dishes and all our clothes and shoes and things skillfully made for us, and many other things as well, because we would be employing true craftsmen? And, if you will, let us even agree that the mantic art is knowledge of what is to be and that temperance, directing her, keeps away deceivers and sets up true seers as prophets of the future. I grant that the human race, if thus equipped, would act and live in a scientific way—because temperance, watching over it, would not allow the absence of science to creep in and become our accomplice. But whether acting scientifically would make us fare well and be happy [an prattontes eu an prattoimen kai eudaimoimen], this we have yet to learn, my dear Critias.”

“But on the other hand,” he said, “you will not readily gain the prize of faring well by any other means if you eliminate scientific action.”

Critias’ idea of what so¯phrosyne¯ leads to is by his definitions a society in which citizens would do all that they knew and only what they knew, including governing. This is consistent with Critias’s aristocratic bias, for he

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imagines that he and his class are those who know how to govern.32 It is this vision of things that Socrates at the end of the Charmides shows would not be beneficial even if it were possible. The refutation of Critias’s final definition is a rejection neither of so¯phrosyne¯ nor of episte¯me¯, but of Critias and the kind of aristocratic-epistemic elitism in which he believes in the dialogue as he seems to have done in reality.

Interestingly, though, Socrates has gradually brought to light—possibly for Critias but certainly for us— Critias’s notion of civic happiness, which has been masquerading as (or mistaken for) a notion of so¯phrosyne¯. Thus the late elenchos of the Charmides illustrates the Socratic maieutics of the Theaetetus and the Socratic paideia of the Apology.

The problems that interpreters have had with Socrates’ elenchos of Critias can, therefore, be explained through the character of Critias as it is clearly presented in the dialogue, his political history as it would have been known to Plato’s original audience, and Socrates’ attempt to reveal to Critias both his ignorance and his lack of so¯phrosyne¯. The abstraction in the discussion of “knowledge of knowledge” that is sometimes taken to be a “late” characteristic actually reflects the carefully drawn character of an intellectual but sophistic Critias who has a penchant for fancy talk and an inability to admit his ignorance. The puzzling occurrence of otherwise “Socratic” ideas in Critias’s mouth and their rejection by Socrates is less puzzling in light of Critias’s oligarchic politics and his habit of adopting each critical concept that Socrates uses rather than rethink his beliefs or think critically about Socrates’ refutations. It is worth considering, too, that one function of the dialogue as Plato intended it may be to reveal to us the problems with the sort of epistemic utopia that is dreamt of by Critias and envisaged in the Republic.

Similarly, the subject account of so¯phrosyne¯ at each point is less problematic if one keeps in mind who Critias is and how each account is consistent both with his character and with his previous answers. For him, so¯phrosyne¯ characterizes only the actions of aristocrats, who “do their own” by governing inter alia, who alone fit the Delphic maxim because they alone have the kind of expert knowledge Critias cares about, and, moreover, whose so¯phrosyne¯ consists in their knowing that they have such knowledge.

Finally, although many interesting ideas come up in the refutation, the 32. “Charmides and Critias were extreme oligarchs, and evidently wished to confine political activity to their own, very small group of aristocratic Athenians.” Adkins, “Polypragmosune,” 325.

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dialogue ends aporetically; no Socratic or Platonic doctrine of so¯phrosyne¯ is directly propounded, though it is suggested that the kind of knowledge that would satisfy the beneficiality criterion is knowledge of good and evil.

That does not mean that we learn nothing about so¯phrosyne¯, however.

Critias both in his ideas and in his character instantiates lack of so¯phrosyne¯ just as Socrates in both ways instantiates so¯phrosyne¯. Charmides can be located somewhere in between; but we know how he turned out, and we are invited to infer from this dialogue the reason why. Thus there is what I call an enactment of so¯phrosyne¯,33 which gains our adherence as much by extralogical means as by its arguments.34 Rather than a propositional definition of so¯phrosyne¯, we come to a clearer vision of what it is and what it is not to be so¯phro¯n. And rather than acquire a definition by means of a purely logical proof that might obtain our rational assent, we acquire a vision by means of arguments complemented by the imaginative and emotional attractiveness of Socrates’ and repulsiveness of Charmides’ and Critias’ characters and comportment.

Attention to character also suggests an explanation for what looks to some interpreters like a Socratic or Platonic doctrine. To be believable, to be true in the sense that good stories are true, characters must have beliefs, attitudes, and practices only some of which appear directly in words or actions; the words and actions of a “true” character, in this sense, come from within. Socrates is the most fully developed of Plato’s characters, and in some ways the dialogues are monuments to and memorabilia of him. What readers take for Socratic or Platonic doctrines may just be the beliefs and attitudes that serve to define one of the most well formed characters in the history of Western literature.

33. My conception of the dialogues as enactments is developed in Gerald A. Press, “Plato’s Dialogues as Enactments,” in The Third Way, 133–52. A similar notion is developed in Eugenio Benitez and Livia Guimares, “Philosophy As Performed in Plato’s Theaetetus,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (1993): 297–328, and in Victorino Tejera’s conception of the dialogues as philosophy in the “exhibitive mode” (Plato’s Dialogues One by One: A Structural Interpretation [New York: Irvington, 1984]). See also Benitez’s “Argument, Rhetoric, and Philosophic Method: Plato’s Protagoras,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 25 (1992): 222 –52.

34. Blank, “Plato and the Arousal,” argues that there is no conflict between the dialectical, protreptic Socrates of history and the philosophical arguer of Plato’s dialogues, because “[t]he intended effect of Plato’s arguments is essentially, though by no means exclusively, emotional; his logic affects us while it teaches” (428).

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15 Certainty and Consistency in the Socratic Elenchus

JOHN M. CARVALHO

Davidson called “The Socratic Elenchus” “brilliant and provocative.” 1 He was at least half right. Eighteen years later, commentators are still exercised by the controversial hypotheses Vlastos defends in that essay.2 Notably, they have taken pains to clarify or correct the claim that, while Socrates would seem able through elenchus to establish only the inconsistency of one of his interlocutor’s beliefs with beliefs whose truth has not been tested, Socrates is nonetheless “justified” in asserting that he has proved the belief in question false.3 I have nothing to add to that discussion here. It will be clear enough how far I’m aligned with those who doubt that the Socratic elenchus produces the constructive results Vlastos and others attribute to it. But I have little to add, 1. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 27–58; Donald Davidson, “Plato’s Philosopher,” London Review of Books, August 1985, 15 –17.

2. See Benson, “Problem of the Elenchos Reconsidered”; Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, “Vlastos on the Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985): 185 –95; Davidson, “Plato’s Philosopher”; Kraut, “Comments”; Nehamas, “Socratic Intellectualism”; Polansky, “Vlastos’s Analysis”; Vlastos, “Afterthoughts,” and “Socrates’ Disavowal.”

3. Vlastos, “Socratic Elenchus,” 55.

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at this point, to the case Benson has made for a nonconstructivist reading of Socrates’ “method.” So I will focus, in this essay, on a question that is not discussed at all, so far as I know, namely, how does Socrates come to believe, pre-elenctically, that his interlocutor has a false moral belief, or, to put it more neutrally, how does Socrates arrive at the belief that his interlocutor has a belief that warrants examination? What makes a belief the target for testing? In principle, of course, every moral belief is a candidate for crossexamination. But since Socratic arguments work so hard at shattering the interlocutor’s confidence in his beliefs, it would seem important to understand what raises Socrates’ dander? Is it the content of the belief or the claim to certainty contained in the belief that gets under Socrates’ skin?

In the following, I argue that it is both. The interlocutor’s claim to certainty challenges Socrates’ very way of life, a life based on the disavowal of knowledge and the affirmation of reasoned argument as the best means of testing beliefs conducive to right conduct. The content of the belief provokes testing whenever it is inconsistent with the complex of beliefs, and practices based on beliefs, that define Socrates’ character. The unrelenting assault on an interlocutor’s belief that characterizes many Socratic dialogues is motivated by Socrates’ constant attention to forming and reforming the consistency of those beliefs and practices (especially the practice of crossexamination) that define his character. For while his character also incorporates beliefs and practices relevant to the conduct of everyday life that Socrates shares with his interlocutors, including beliefs that sometimes figure in the premises of an argument without being subject to testing, Socrates’ character is more precisely defined by the practice of testing his own beliefs and by those beliefs Socrates takes to be true because they have survived previous testing. And it is the consistency of all these practices and beliefs, resulting from rigorous examination, that makes Socrates outstanding among his peers.4 So the formation of his own virtuous character, not the formation of a positive moral doctrine, is the constructive effect of the Socratic method.5 This is the little (he will think it a lot) I would add to the conclusions Benson draws about “the problem of the Socratic elenchus.” It is primarily for his own sake, I argue, and for a character that is always in a pro4. This is taken from a rendering of arete¯ suggested by Alexander Nehamas (“Meno’s Paradox,” 3– 4) and so contains the implicit claim that Socrates believed sufficient for virtue whatever he could know through the elenchus. This is, if we believe what Socrates says in the Apology, the only form of knowledge appropriate for arete¯.

5. Vlastos is clearly the strongest voice on this but not the only one. Irwin, in Plato’s Moral Theory, and Kraut, “Comments,” certainly hold the constructivist view.

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cess of formation through argumentation that Socrates targets interlocutors’ beliefs for cross-examination, because their claims to certainty are incompatible with his conduct of life, because the content of their beliefs is inconsistent with beliefs that constitute his character, because not to challenge these beliefs is tantamount to accepting them and convicting reasoned argument of failing to furnish a basis for right action.

I But do Socrates’ interlocutors believe that certain knowledge is possible, even that they possess it, and do they base their beliefs on truths they take to be infallible? These are the questions I want to address in the examination of the Charmides that follows. I believe it will point out how Socrates stands out from his peers in rejecting both certain knowledge and the deference to certain standards for the truth about practical life.

The Charmides ostensibly portrays the several attempts by Charmides and Critias to give a definition of the virtue so¯phrosune¯. Charmides, whose physical virtues are plain to all who have seen them, is exhibited to Socrates as an example of the psychical virtue, even philosophical acumen, of Athenian youths. The war-weary Socrates does not begrudge himself a peak inside the cloak of the unspoiled youth, but quickly gets down to the business of laying bare Charmides’ soul. He proposes as a cure for righting the boy’s physical ailment (his headache) a natural remedy (to phullon) that can only be prescribed together with kaloi logoi (the “charm”) for the right order of his soul.

Critias has presented his nephew as the paragon of virtue among Athenian youths. He vouches for the so¯phrosune¯ in Charmides that the charm (he¯ epo¯de¯) is supposed to produce. When Socrates asks the youth whether he is truly as virtuous as Critias has claimed, the boy dramatically demurs (158c5).6 He cannot say yes, since that, in effect, would not be very so¯phro¯n, nor can he say no, since that, besides being odd (atopon) on its own, would make Critias and all those who believe his account liars (158d1–5). Socrates says this response is fitting (eikota) and proposes they test together whether 6. Charmides’ blushing redirects Socrates’ attention to the boy’s physical attributes, but he recovers quickly in the face of Charmides’ noble reply. Plato elsewhere (Republic 350d, Gorgias 494e, Lysis 204c and 213d) uses blushing and embarrassment as nonverbal clues about the interlocutor’s beliefs. Here, Charmides unquestionably thinks of himself as virtuous and just on the terms he proposes in his first two definitions.

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Charmides has the virtue in question by examining Charmides’ beliefs about so¯phrosune¯: “Clearly, if so¯phrosune¯ abides in you, you will have something to say [doxazein] about it. For it must to some degree, since it abides in [your soul], if it does abide, offer some sense from which you may come to some belief about what so¯phrosune¯ is and what sort of thing” (158e7–159a2).

What does Charmides believe so¯phrosune¯ is? In his first attempts at defining it, he proposes just the qualities he had exhibited when pressed by Socrates to confirm that he was what Critias said he was. Quietness (he¯suchiote¯s, 159b5 – 6) bespeaks a certain kind of conduct that is, as Socrates notes (159b7– 8), characteristic of hoi so¯phrones. Likewise a sense of shame (aido¯s, 160E3–5) is appropriate for the virtue Charmides believes he possesses. Socrates, of course, shows that both fail to say what so¯phrosune¯ is.7 But why does Charmides believe these will account for so¯phrosune¯? And what in these beliefs does Socrates judge to be false prior to being tested in argument?

Charmides’ sentiments about so¯phrosune¯ are derived from the presence in him of some other virtue than the one Socrates has in mind. Charmides is certain about what to do and say in front of his elders and how to display the qualities appropriate to his lineage.8 He proves himself equal to Socrates’ challenge (158b4) that he exhibit the superiority of his houses by proving himself superior both in virtue and, by Socratic implication, in his ability to say what the virtue in question is.9 What Charmides’ beliefs exhibit is a certainty in the unquestionable priority of those traditional aristocratic values that, ironically, are destined to undermine the democratic polity Socrates has been defending at Potidaea. It is not surprising that Socrates is unwilling to accept the authority of these values in the argument without subjecting them to examination. Not only is Charmides unable to argue for them elenctically, but they represent the tradition of holding men in esteem because of their reputation among the many and others like themselves. The virtue Socrates 7. From Charmides 159b7 to 160d4, the elenctic method is deployed in its “standard” form. After Charmides offers that (p) so¯phrosune¯ is quietness, Socrates secures agreement from him that (q) so¯phrosune¯ is something noble (kale¯), that (r) it is possible to do things quickly as well as quietly, that (s) in all the exercises of the body what is done quickly is noble, quietly base, that (t) facility at learning is better than difficulty, and (u) that quick learning exhibits facility but quietness difficulty; thus (v) everything concerning the body and the soul that is done swiftly is clearly better (kallio¯n) than that done quietly, from which it follows that (-p) quietness is not so¯phrosune¯.

8. Socrates himself (157d9 –158a7) comments on the nobility of the houses of which Critias is a prominent member and from which Charmides is descended. The fact that this is the line from which Plato is descendent amplifies the significance of the allusion.

9. See Van der Ben, Charmides, 20 –21.

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is asking about will make a man outstanding among those few who are his peers because they know what so¯phrosune¯ is.

One way Charmides has of exhibiting his certainty about these values is deferring to the authority of his elders, especially Critias, whose face he is attempting to save. When his first two attempts to answer Socrates fail, he falls back on this strategy only more obviously. He recommends that Socrates test the belief he has “heard from someone” that so¯phrosune¯ is “doing our own business” (161b4 – 6).10 Socrates suspects the source: “My god, I said, you have heard this from Critias here or some other wise man” (161b8 – c1). Critias at first denies that the definition originates with him, but comes around to accepting responsibility for it when Charmides cannot explain what it means. Socrates shows, though without the argument,11 that whatever might be the sense of this expression, it is riddling (ainigmati), since it seems to say one thing but mean another.12 Charmides cannot explain what the meaning is, because the belief does not “abide” in him; he cannot say what sense he has of it, because he is unaware of what more certain beliefs it is founded on.

But Critias can say. And he enters the discussion to clarify its meaning and to defend its claim to say what so¯phrosune¯ is. There is no ambiguity in saying that it is virtuous to “do one’s own business” if we do not confuse what is “done” with what is “produced” by the various crafts Socrates has introduced. As it turns out, Critias’s account of so¯phrosune¯ depends on a derivation out of Hesiod of a distinction between doing and working. Hesiod had said (Works and Days 309) that “work is no disgrace,” and Critias contends that such a statement, which he takes to be unquestionably true because said

by Hesiod, is incompatible with what Socrates has been describing as to ta heautou prattein. The so¯phro¯n, on Critias’s account, is the man who does good things. “For I define so¯phrosune¯ for you plainly as the practice [praxis] of good things” (163e10 –11).

When Socrates shows Critias that a possible consequence of this account is that those who do good things do not know that they are so¯phro¯n when 10. This is, of course, generalized to suit the context of the discussion (to ta hauton prattein), the definition of justice proposed by Socrates in the middle books of the Republic (433b3– 4). There it is defended as a reasonable account of the division of labor and distribution of virtues in the polis. Here, as we shall see, it is an unreflective borrowing from traditional authority unclearly stated.

11. And so there is no problem of a seeming suspension of the “say what you believe” constraint in this case.

12. In “Does Socrates Refute Apollo?” (an unpublished manuscript) I argue that this is just the case with the Delphic oracle that proclaims that no one is wiser than Socrates. There what is said and what is meant are not just different but necessarily exclusive.

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they do them, Critias withdraws the definition without embarrassment.13 Critias cannot believe that the so¯phro¯n would not know that he is virtuous, would not know himself. And this inspires him to invoke the inscription at the Delphic oracle of Apollo: “For I would almost say that so¯phrosune¯ is this very thing, to know oneself, and I concur with the one who set down such an inscription at Delphi” (164d3–5). Critias suggests that this is the formal address of the god himself to those who enter the temple. “Know yourself!” the god says, and by that he means, “Be moderate.” 14 With this insight, Critias believes that if Socrates denies so¯phrosune¯ is self-knowledge (to gigno¯skein auton heauton), he can give him an account (logos) that substantiates his claim (165b3– 4).

Since Socrates does not know what so¯phrosune¯ is, he says, he can neither agree nor disagree with Critias’s definition. But he is willing to examine this new proposal and begins twice (165c4, 166a5) what might turn into a crossexamination only to be cut off. Critias complains that Socrates only wants to refute (elenchein) him and that he has abandoned what he had said (165b7– c2) would be an examination of Critias’s account. Although the arguments in this passage are unsuccessful, we do get from this exchange (165c4 – 167a7) a refinement of Critias’s definition, not a new definition but a redescription of Critias’s belief that so¯phrosune¯ is what the god bids us, to know ourselves.

This is clear if we follow the different statements of Critias’s belief and attend to their relation. To gigno¯skein auton heauton from 165b4 is restated as [episte¯me¯] heautou at 165c7 in response to Socrates’ recommendation that, if so¯phrosune¯ is knowledge, it must also be a science (episte¯me¯), and a science of something. But sciences like medicine and house building, Socrates continues, produce something worthwhile, namely, health and houses, while it is not clear that the “science of oneself” produces anything we can 13. So much for Hesiod, it may seem. But I think it is more likely that Critias believes either that he needs to attend more carefully to the poet to find out what he means or that, since the meaning of the poet cannot be conceived as deviating from what the god says, the meaning of Hesiod can be made clearer and preserved by the definition he offers next. At 165b1–3, he shows that he does not believe that Socrates’ arguments were conclusive.

14. Van der Ben argues (Charmides, 42 – 43) that there is no good reason for deleting heneken from the text at 165a5, as Burnet, Croiset, and Lamb (following Cobet) all do. The word appears in all the manuscripts, and the deletion is justified only by the absence of the preposition at 164d7. The point that should not be missed is that Critias’s argument depends on interpretation of the inscription as a greeting. If it is a greeting, it must be spoken by the god, since it appears at the entrance to his temple. Unlike unenlightened humans, who are content with “Chaire!” the god knows and uses the proper form of greeting, which would be “Phronei!” (164d6 – e2). So, gno¯thi sauton, “know yourself,” must mean phronei, “be moderate.”

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point to. Further, even sciences like calculation and geometry, which do not “bake any bread,” are at least distinguishable from the subjects of those sciences, but so¯phrosune¯, on Critias’s account, does not appear to be the science of anything other than itself. Critias answers Socrates’ objections by explaining that so¯phrosune¯ is a unique science, the science of the other sciences and of itself, to¯n te allo¯n episte¯mo¯n episte¯me¯ esti kai aute¯ heaute¯s (166c2 –3).

The whole of this last formula is a substitute for heautou at 165c7.15 Critias continues to give a specification of the self-knowledge he believes so¯phrosune¯ is. And after the interlude with Socrates about the true purposes of their discussion, Critias repeats this formula: “I say, then, that [so¯phrosune¯ ] alone of the other sciences is itself a science of itself and a science of the other sciences” (166e5 – 6). Socrates adds, with Critias’s approval, the “science of an absence of science” (anepiste¯mosune¯ episte¯me¯) to this pair and expounds on the wide expanse of knowledge this account describes. It is here Socrates confirms that they have been talking about Critias’s extrapolation from the Delphic inscription all along and that the definition they are about to test is more of the same. “So this is ‘being moderate’ and so¯phrosune¯ and self-knowledge [to heauton auton gigno¯skein], to know what you know and what you don’t know [to eidenai ha te oiden kai ha me¯ oiden]. Is this what you mean? Yes, he said” (167a5 –7).

Thus, Critias, like Charmides, depends for all his beliefs on a secondorder belief in the infallibility of certain standards. The poet and the god at Delphi, like the traditional aristocratic order, are believed to be an unquestionable source for what it is true to believe about questions concerning the correct conduct of life. Charmides and Critias share many such beliefs, which operate in various configurations to support different first-order beliefs taken to be certain by extension. Socrates judges these beliefs to be prima facie false because of the presumption of certainty in the appeal to authority by Charmides and Critias. Although he never judges Apollo, Hesiod, or Homer to be false, he does target for refutation beliefs that ostensibly borrow their claim to certainty from standards such as these.

So, Socrates judges Charmides’ and Critias’ beliefs about so¯phrosune¯ to be false prior to testing them in argument, because he sees in each instance that their beliefs are founded on beliefs in the infallibility of certain standards for the truth about the conduct of life and that these interlocutors are 15. Much of this account is drawn from Van der Ben’s discussion (Charmides, 46 – 47).

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unwilling and unable to argue for the latter beliefs.16 For Socrates this is intolerable because he only accepts beliefs that have been argued for. Until these beliefs are subjected to testing in argument, Socrates has no reason to accept them. Moreover, since Socrates believes that he has never done anything wrong and that the examination of his beliefs in dialogue is what has served him so well in this career of virtue, the admission that poets and inscriptions at divine sites can be believed to provide a certain basis for questions of conduct would challenge Socrates’ claim of the exclusivity of the philosophical method and, so, Socrates’ whole life.

As we learn from the Apology, Socrates will steadfastly maintain that what he believes he knows is only what has survived sustained examination.

But if Socrates rejects the extra-elenctic beliefs that secure the truth of his interlocutor’s claims, how can he presume in these examinations any beliefs of his own that have not or cannot be subjected to the test? In the Charmides he does not. Charmides’ first definitions are not shown to be false but to fall short of defining consistently the subject in question. Charmides truly captures only parts of what, in the appropriate context, could characterize the so¯phro¯n, but he has not given the kind of account, perhaps because of his age (162d7– e1), that Socrates is looking for. When he does offer something of the sort, it is a definition he has heard from Critias, which he does not understand well enough to defend. Critias’s own definitions are not proved false either. In standard Socratic fashion, Critias is shown that he cannot consistently hold the belief that so¯phrosune¯ is “doing one’s own business” and “knowing one’s own business” at the same time. And when Critias drops the former belief to defend the latter, the former is not shown false but unintelligible (165b1–3).

There is one passage in the Charmides that might lead us to think that, even if Socrates does not succeed at proving his interlocutors’ beliefs false, he wants to. “Now then, I say I do this, examine the account, mostly for my sake and perhaps also for the sake of some other friends; or do you not think that it is a common good for nearly everyone to know [gignesthai] clearly how each thing is?” (166d2 – 6). Vlastos believes that this is evidence of Socrates’ interest in producing “universally valid results” from his examinations. But is that what this text shows? It is given as part of a response to 16. In fact, the beliefs they do not question are announced in advance of each of the definitions they propose. That Socrates elaborates the foundation for Charmides’ beliefs does not undermine the point that all the principal unquestionable foundations for Charmides’ and Critias’s beliefs are aired prior to a discussion of the beliefs they are supposed to promote.

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Critias’s complaint that Socrates is trying to refute him rather than examine his account as he had earlier said he would (165b7– c2). Socrates does not deny that this is what he is up to but explains that, if he refutes Critias, it is only part of an examination of himself and a guard against overlooking something by thinking he knows what he does not know (166c7–d2).

Socrates says he does what he does, refutes Critias, “mostly for his own sake and perhaps for the sake of some other friends” (165d2 – 4). But doesn’t this show that Socrates practices the elenchus for himself, as part of the care of his soul that he believes is sufficient to make him happy? These “other friends” (epite¯deioi) he mentions are just those who join him in his argumentative exercises, those who literally “supply” what is necessary for the execution of this practice. When Socrates asks Critias whether he thinks it would be “good for nearly everyone that each thing be manifest as what it is,” he may believe this is true in a general way, but he does not say that this will be a necessary result of the examination by means of argument. And if this is what he believes, the argument that follows this disclosure does not give a very good example of how such results can be produced through argumentation. Socrates advises Critias not to bother with whether it is he or Socrates who is refuted: “But in this, keeping your mind to the argument [logos], examine how the one refuted will turn out” (166e1–2). Both Socrates and Critias are dumbfounded by the argument that ensues (169c3–d1). But whether anyone is refuted is not clear. It is also not clear how the discussion to the end of the dialogue is supposed to produce the kind of positive moral doctrine for Socrates or Critias at which Vlastos suggests the argument is aimed. What they examine, the possibility and possible usefulness of the knowledge of what we know and what we don’t know (to eidenai ha te oiden kai ha me¯ oiden),17 seems more appropriate for the kinds of epistemological and metaphysical inquiries Socrates is ill equipped to handle (169a7– 8).

If Socrates can be said to direct Critias’s attention to anything about the outcome of their argument, it can only have to do with the effect produced on the beliefs of the one refuted and not with universally valid results. If it were universally valid results Socrates wanted, one or another refutation might have sufficed, might have landed on that belief or set of beliefs whose universal appeal would have settled once and for all the ethical questions 17. Which, as Tuckey points out (Plato’s Charmides, 39 – 40), ironically resembles the Socrates of the Apology, whose main distinguishing feature is a knowledge that he knows only that he does not know.

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Socrates sought to answer. That Socrates never strayed from this enterprise, vowed never to give up practicing philosophy even if it would, as it did, cost him his life, marveled at the thought of conducting cross-examinations after his death (Ap. 41b5 – c4), should be enough to make us suspect that universal truth (which would not in principle require practice over an extended time) was not the goal Socrates envisioned for his arguments.

II The result arguments do produce successfully enough to persuade Socrates it is worth pursuing his whole life long is a consistency of beliefs sufficient to continue conducting his examinations. The goal of philosophy is just to go on inquiring and debating in conversation. And there is no other reason to give for why Socrates wants to go on practicing the elenchus except to say that it makes him happy.18 What makes Socrates happy is the justification his repeated examinations provide for his beliefs about the correct conduct of his life. When others are willing to join him in this practice, they are welcome. But if the people Socrates examines are not made as happy as he is when examining them, that is a consequence he seems ready to accept.19 But can we get any clearer about this consistency of beliefs Socrates produces through his examinations and how they exhibit a nonfoundational justification of these beliefs? Whatever this looks like will be conditioned by the conclusion we have just drawn about the lack of concern for epistemic certainty that characterizes Socrates’ method. As disappointing as this may seem to some, it has the distinct advantage of saving Socrates from a coherence theory of truth.20 In fact, the consistency of beliefs that results from 18. Here I agree with Vlastos’s account of the eudaimonist ethic in Socrates (see Gregory Vlastos, “Happiness and Virtue in Socrates’ Moral Theory,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 30 [1984]: 181–213), but not with Vlastos’s claim that this must be understood as a positive moral theory in the early dialogues.

19. This can be seen in every early dialogue. Socrates is made to appear indifferent to the animosity he arouses in his interlocutors. But this is not a “failure” in any sense, only a reflection of Socrates’ belief in the superiority of his own view— defined by the consistency of his beliefs on the subject in question—in comparison with the views of others.

20. And, thus, we do not find the Socrates of the early dialogues adopting anything like what Davidson has attributed to the Socrates of the Philebus in “Plato’s Philosopher” or described in more general terms in “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 183–98.

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Socrates’ arguments is of a sort that admits of incoherence in the face of certain difficulties. Not without some irony,21 Socrates tells Hippias that he believes the opposite of what Hippias has said about those who voluntarily and involuntarily do wrong, but sometimes he takes the opposite view to what he has just said himself: “Sometimes, however, I am of the opposite opinion on these things and I wander about, clearly because I do not know” (Hi. Mi. 372 d7– e1). The same sentiment is reiterated more strongly at the end of the dialogue: “Just as I was saying before, I wander about this way and that on these questions and do not even have an opinion about them” (Hi. Mi. 376c1–3). This statement is, of course, consistent with the aporetic endings and disavowals of knowledge that mark almost every early dialogue.22 But it may suggest something more than that here. It may suggest that Socrates sometimes holds conflicting beliefs about moral issues, and it recommends no other method for resolving these differences than elenctic argument, which bridges (Hi. Mi. 373c6 –76b7) the two statements of Socrates’ perplexity.

But if argument can leave Socrates in a position to accept contradictory beliefs about the most important questions for the conduct of life, what positive value is gained through it? Once again, I believe, only when we focus on Socrates’ method as a whole and look not for the propositional outcome of deductive reasoning in particular arguments but for the patterns of belief that emerge through series of examinations can we begin to describe adequately the positive moral and epistemic effects of Socrates’ argumentation.

An argument is effective just insofar as it (1) does not forestall the possibility of further examinations and (2) cannot be pronounced a failure because it refuses to give Socrates a definite criterion on the basis of which to judge with certainty in any particular case whether the interlocutor’s belief is true or false.

Beliefs that pass through testing in argument provide a background on the basis of which Socrates proceeds in further tests. The specific background in any single argument will vary relative to the particular belief being tested.

Socrates may be better or worse equipped to answer certain questions because he has or has not had experience addressing them previously in argument, and so the beliefs that are bound to figure in this particular examina21. If this is irony of the complex sort described by Vlastos (“Socratic Irony,” Classical Quarterly 37 [1987]: 86ff.), as I think it is, and Socrates does and does not mean what he says, then we have to take the statements in the Hippias Minor seriously.

22. The only exceptions are Apology, Crito (which is arguably aporetic, since its conclusion is inconsistent with views expressed in the Apology), and Gorgias.

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tion may be more or less fairly tested. What is consistent in Socrates’ technique is Socrates’ insistence that questions be examined and tested. Within any particular examination the beliefs that figure in Socrates’ negative evaluations of the interlocutor’s moral claims and in the subsequent examination need only be consistent enough for Socrates to proceed with the argument.

Exactly how that argument will proceed is a function of the consistency of Socrates’ beliefs about the issue in question. Thus, some arguments will be more satisfying than others, that is, more persuasive either to us or the interlocutor and more successful for Socrates to the extent that they provide good reasons to continue practicing philosophy how he does.

The Hippias Minor provides a good example of what can happen when Socrates himself is not sure of what he believes on the particular question being asked. This uncertainty shows up in the introduction to the dialogue. Eudicus is perplexed about Socrates’ hesitancy either to join the others in applauding Hippias or to challenge him if that’s what he thinks is necessary: “Why are you silent, Socrates, after such things as Hippias has been displaying? Why do you not either join us in commending what he has been saying or, if he seems to you to have not spoken well [kalo¯s], refute him?”

(Hi. Mi. 363a1– 6). Socrates is not clear about what Hippias has been saying; he does not immediately start in with questioning but asks him rather to clarify a point. What does he mean by saying that Homer made Odysseus the “wiliest?” Isn’t Achilles also made to be “wily?” After Hippias explains his reading of the Homeric epics, Socrates launches in with an argument that leads to a conclusion neither Hippias nor Socrates accepts, that it is better to do wrong voluntarily than involuntarily. Surely this is meant to upset the settled view that Homer can be trusted as an unqualified source of moral wisdom, since it is the reading Hippias gives the epics that seems to lead to this undesirable conclusion.23 But we do not get a clear idea of what Socrates thinks about voluntary and involuntary action from this dialogue. Socrates himself is not even sure what view he ultimately holds.

On the other hand, in the Crito we get the opposite picture. Here we see Socrates pursuing the question whether the circumstances of his unjust imprisonment can recommend a relaxation of the prescription that we must never do wrong willingly (Cri. 49a4 –5). The question is pursued in the light of beliefs Socrates says he and Crito have “agreed on often in time 23. What the poets say is always in need of an interpretation. They cannot give unqualified knowledge about moral issues, because it is not on the basis of knowledge that they say the many fine things they do (see Ion 533e5).

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past.” This includes the belief that it is never right to return harm for harm: “Whether the many say so or not, and whether it is necessary for us to suffer such things as are more difficult or more gentle, all the same it is evil and shameful in every sense to do injustice for the one who does it” (Cri. 49b2 – 7). Here, on a more consistent base, built up on a career of examinations, Socrates is on surer footing, and the conclusion reached, if unsatisfying on some grounds (its inconsistency with statements made in the Apology), is more in concert with what we would expect from Socrates. This is because, as my argument suggests, the beliefs that constitute the background for the argument and the beliefs used in the test itself form a more consistent picture within the ongoing enterprise of leading an examined life.

III In conclusion, this may seem a long way of saying that Socrates is ever ready to test any claim to certain knowledge. But it will have been worthwhile if it allows me to say, as well, that contesting claims to certain knowledge is the primary motivation for Socrates’ tests. And it will have been more worthwhile still if it shows, following just what is admitted by prior testing, that what Socrates contests in these examinations is any challenge to a way of life that depends exclusively on elenctic examination and inquiry for forming and directing the character of that life. For it would follow, then, that what Socrates examines in conversation is not only his interlocutors’ belief that F is certainly (p) but also the tendency of those interlocutors to think their beliefs about F are justified because underwritten by beliefs they cannot argue for elenctically. And it is this belief in the authority of a standard that cannot be justified with reasons that represents the most serious threat to the character and direction of Socrates’ way of life.

So, in his conversation, at the same time as he tests his interlocutors’ beliefs about F, Socrates demonstrates the inappropriateness of extra-elenctic assumptions in the justifications of his interlocutors’ beliefs.24 And if Socrates cannot accept such assumptions in the claims of others, it would be in24. If Socrates were to argue against the claim that extra-elenctic assumptions are permissible in refutations of an interlocutor’s beliefs, we would have to think of Socrates as an epistemologist, which he is not. We would also have to suppose that such arguments are necessary for the formation of Socrates’ character and the conduct of his life. But since the elenchus is the only means Socrates deploys for testing beliefs, since the elenchus is not adequate to testing the authority of extra-elenctic assumptions, and since Socrates claims never to have wronged any-

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consistent if he presumed them in his own case. Consequently, “tremendous assumptions” of the sort Vlastos would like to attribute to Socrates would appear to be disqualified by the very structure of elenctic argumentation, and such assumptions could not be used (except in the Gorgias, perhaps) to get the kinds of results Vlastos and others have proposed. And, if I am right, such assumptions are not needed to get positive results out of elenctic argumentation, so long as we are sufficiently clear about what to expect from this Socratic testing. We should expect from Socratic argumentation, finally, nothing more than what Socrates gained from it, namely, happiness and the right conduct of his life as directed by his character. That Socrates is happy right up until the end of a life he says would not be worth living without selfexamination (Ap. 38a), calculating the possibility of “unimaginable” happiness in an afterlife spent examining in turn the greatest men who have lived, shows that, in his own estimation, his way of practicing philosophy has been successful.

But we can also notice that the part of the argument that depends on Socrates’ believing his interlocutor’s belief is false, the belief that inaugurates the examination, further depends on Socrates’ successfully and consistently supplying reasons for some beliefs about the issue in question. That these beliefs can only result from reasoned argumentation must be granted as soon as we admit that Socrates has no other method for justifying his beliefs on any subject. But perhaps we have come closer to seeing how these beliefs, in relation to other beliefs, can lead Socrates to clarify the consistency in his own beliefs without requiring the contested claim of certainty about what he believes at any time.

Socrates uses the elenchus to build a consistency into his beliefs that admits of a modification of those beliefs or of the pattern of their consistency if, in the examination of any particular issue, Socrates is given good, that is to say, elenctically tested, reasons for questioning what he believes. Since Socrates’ whole life is spent in philosophical examinations of himself and others, and since whatever good there is to this enterprise is measured by Socrates’ happiness, his character, what we might call his ethical identity, must consist in what Socrates does on the basis of those beliefs that have been justified again and again in argument. Any challenge to these beliefs by the competing claims of others challenges who Socrates is, and Socrates’ investigations meet this challenge head-on. Through these investigations, one, his character and the conduct of his own life appear to demonstrate the inappropriateness of incorporating “methodological assumptions” into the elenchus.

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Socrates fashions who he is and, in his estimation, demonstrates that he is someone worthy of recognition by all of Athens. By refusing to recognize Socrates for who he is, Athens fails to avail itself of the substantial gains that could be accomplished by applying to all its citizens and the city itself Socratesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; special tools for the care of his own soul and the souls of those who are his friends.

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16 Questioning the Self: A Reaction to Carvalho, Press, and Schmid

JOANNE B. WAUGH

The scholarly neglect of the Charmides noted by Gerald Press is not very surprising given the assumptions that have dominated much English-language philosophical writing on the dialogues during the last half of the twentieth century. These assumptions cannot and should not be made without argument, and recent scholarship suggests that those who would argue for these assumptions may find it more difficult than it has been in the past.1 One such assumption is that the dialogues can be divided, as they have been for the last century or so, into works composed during the early, middle, and later periods; another is that this division reflects the philosophical purposes served by the dialogues during each of these periods. The early dialogues are accordingly Socratic, since they illustrate the Socratic method, or elenchus; the middle dialogues are constructive insofar as they present Plato’s philosophical theories; and the later are critical of the theories presented during 1. See the introduction, notes, and references in Press, ed., Who Speaks? and Press, “The State of the Question.” The problematic character of these assumptions is also discussed by Christopher Rowe, “Plato: Aesthetics and Psychology,” in From the Beginning to Plato: Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. i (New York: Routledge, 1997).

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the constructive, or middle, period.2 On this view, the Charmides is an early dialogue, and its value consists primarily—if not solely—in its illustration of the Socratic elenchus. It is not surprising, then, that when the subject is the Socratic elenchus, the Charmides finally gets some sustained scholarly attention. Still, it is important to insist that attention to the elenchus not come at the expense of the dramatic unity of the dialogue.

Moreover, the practice of dividing the dialogues into early, middle, and later rests on other assumptions that are also questionable. The first is that we may safely ignore the dramatic chronology as it is given in the dialogues themselves. Ignoring the dramatic chronology of the dialogues follows from another widespread, if recently challenged, assumption: 3 that despite Plato’s choice to remain anonymous in the dialogues, one can arrive at his positions on traditional philosophical questions without reading the dialogues as literature. It is one thing to say—as do many scholars—that Plato used the dialogue form to present dramatically the philosophical point that some character, usually Socrates, is stating for Plato.4 It is quite another to say that Plato wrote philosophy as literature—that one can only get the philosophical point of the dialogue by reading it as literature in which Socrates is but one character among others in a dramatic and historical context. Reading the dialogues as literature means that one does not assume that Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece anymore than Phaedra, and not Hippolytus, is Euripides’ mouthpiece.5 On the mouthpiece theory, one can arrive at Plato’s philosophy by looking at the “propositional content” of Socrates’ statements together with what it logically implies.6 In contrast, those who believe that Plato’s 2. Cf. Rowe, “Plato,” 426.

3. But see Robert S. Brumbaugh, “Doctrine and Dramatic Dates of the Dialogues,” in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. John P. Anton and Anthony Preus (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983). From the point of view of dramatic chronology, the Parmenides is the “earliest” dialogue, for it is the dialogue in which the twenty-year-old Socrates makes his first appearance. Indeed, Socrates’ youth and inexperience is something that the author of the Parmenides takes pains to make clear. The last dialogues are those that relate the events of the last days of Socrates, and Plato makes a point of fixing the dramatic chronology in these dialogues as well.

4. It would seem that the assumption that Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece is logically independent from the assumption that Plato’s philosophy can be arrived at without reading the dialogues as literature, but it seems reasonable to ask whether a character’s serving as a mouthpiece is not, in fact, in tension with the workings of imaginative literature.

5. See Press, ed., Who Speaks? for further discussion and criticism of the assumption that Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece.

6. This frequently involves turning a question or exclamation of Socrates’ into a statement and, in so doing, ignoring the tone, aim, and effect of the linguistic acts in question, that is, the

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philosophy can only be arrived at by reading the dialogues as literature assume that all of Plato’s characters do and say what he wants them to do and say in the dramatic and historical context presented in the dialogue, and that we must interpret their statements and actions in light of this context. On this view, in order to arrive at what Plato wanted to say about philosophy or philosophical questions, we look at what the dialogue in question did—and meant—for his audiences.7 The ancient audiences in and of the dialogues know, of course, a great deal about the historical and cultural context of the dialogues just by virtue of their membership in the polis, knowledge that we must make a special effort to acquire. Restricting our attention to the propositional content of Socrates’ remarks may thus be all the more tempting, and we may be encouraged in this practice by the fact that the Platonic dialogue both illustrates and enacts philosophical thinking, a topic with which we feel comfortable and an interest that we believe we share with Plato’s audiences.8 One can scarcely deny that the dialogues are directed to the philosophical education not only of the audience in the dialogue but also of the audience(s) of the dialogue—both ancient and modern. But what constitutes philosophy for the Greeks—the ancient audiences in and of the dialogues—appears to be something rather different from what it is for us. Neither the term philosophia nor its cognates appear with much regularity until the fourth century, illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act, as English-language philosophers, following J. L. Austin, might say.

7. The point is, perhaps, best illustrated by turning again to Euripides. The date given to the production of The Trojan Women is usually 416, just after the Athenians had inflicted the same horrors on Melos that the Achaeans had visited on Troy. Thus has this play been read as showing the Athenians the cruel consequences of their actions. Many have been persuaded by this view, despite the fact that there is, of course, no talk about Athens and Melos in the play. Although A. M. van Erp Thalman Kip has argued against this reading on chronological grounds (“Euripides and Melos,” Mnemosyne, 40 [1987]: 414 –19), that so many have been persuaded for so long that The Trojan Women was a response to Athens’s treatment of Melos shows not only how literary works can be read as commentaries on contemporary issues but also that such readings seem compelling precisely because of their reference to contemporary events. Only philosophers, it seems, are read— or expect to be read—as writing from a god’s-eye view, one unsullied by contemporary events.

8. As teachers of philosophy know from long experience, the dialogue form in which Plato chose to write is suitable both for introductory and more advanced philosophy students, and it is easy to imagine the more dramatic dialogues being read before a public audience or introductory students in the Academy, and the less dramatic, longer, and more complex dialogues before a more “advanced” audience. Cf. Gilbert Ryle, Plato’s Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Joanne Waugh, “Neither Published Nor Perished,” in The Third Way, ed. Gonzalez.

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during which what constitutes philosophia seems still to be in debate.9 The nuances connected with its occurrences in the late fifth and early fourth centuries are not what come immediately to mind when contemporary philosophers use the term. In Plato’s dialogues any number of characters— Charmides for one—are thought of as engaging in philosophia. What these characters do is recognizably different from the activities of contemporary philosophers: they seek to answer Socrates’ questions— or to justify their previous answers—by citing poetry, including epic and tragedy, or by making speeches of the sort identified with the Sophists.10 Thus it should come as no surprise when Socrates tells us in the Republic that “by long tradition paideia consists of gymnastike¯ for the body and mousike¯ for the soul” (376e3– 6), that Homer and the poets claim that they have educated Hellas (606e2 – 607), and that philosophy and poetry are ancient rivals in the enterprise of truth-telling (607b).

Classical scholarship of the past century has gone far in uncovering the meaning of these statements and in demonstrating how ancient conceptions of paideia—and philosophy’s role in it— differ from modern conceptions. In the absence of writing and/or widespread literacy, the Greeks for centuries relied upon public performance of poetry as a vehicle of paideia.11 Public speech continued to be crucial to the polis as democratic forms of government emerged, and not just epic but also tragedy and comedy became central to education in the polis.12 Indeed, tragedy and comedy assumed a cen9. Recent studies of philosophein and its cognates suggest that the fifth-century conception of philosophizing meant “intellectual cultivation” in the broad sense in which poets, Sophists, and orators could all lay claim to doing philosophy, and even in the fourth century the notion of philosophy may still have been open to dispute and was evidently disputed by Plato and Isocrates. Andrea W. Nightingale, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 14 n. 3; Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 283.

10. Thus does Havelock, Preface, observe that the philosophos of the late fifth or early fourth century engages in the sort of activity that we moderns might associate generally with “intellectuals,” and that it is only in the Republic that we find Socrates proposing a quasi-technical account of the term (283).

11. Havelock, Preface, and, among other works, idem, The Greek Concept of Justice: From Its Shadow in Homer to Its Substance in Plato (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978); idem, The Literate Revolution and Its Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); idem, “The Pre-Literacy of the Greeks,” New Literary History 8 (1977): 369 –77; and Kevin Robb, Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

12. See Charles Rowan Beye, Ancient Greek Literature and Society (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Press, 1975); Bruno Gentili, Poetry and Its Public, trans. Thomas Cole (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and Marcel Detienne, The Masters of

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tral political role in the fifth century, providing a venue for the public debate that Christian Meier identifies as a precondition for “the mental venture of politics.” 13 The dialogues attest to the fact that what Socrates and the other characters—his friends and enemies alike— do and say is judged in terms of its educational value, and this value is, in turn, judged in terms of its value to the polis. Greek paideia aimed at making the citizens of the polis good; hence the accusation that Socrates corrupted the young.14 But if Greek paideia consisted of the performance of what we would term imaginative literature and other public political speech long before there were institutions such as the Academy to educate citizens of Athens—if this was the tradition that Plato wanted philosophy to replace—then he needed a form of literature that was conducive to philosophizing but less subject to the shortcomings of epic, lyric, and tragic poetry or rhetoric and oratory.

The dramatic philosophical dialogue was an extension of the tradition of mousike¯ as paideia, and it constituted both a vehicle for philosophy and an occasion for philosophizing. As philosophical dramas, the dialogues are typically set in Athens and feature characters named after recognizable fifthcentury historical figures, including Socrates, and these figures are engaged in conversations about problems arising in fifth-century Greek life; they are not, pace contemporary philosophers, discussing “the problems of philosophy.” To understand Plato’s philosophical literature, then, we strive for as much knowledge of the characters, setting, customs, and beliefs of fifthcentury Athens as belonged to his fourth-century audience.15 For contemporary philosophers, philosophical thinking and argumentation are often identified with logical inferences, and what is “logical” is contrasted with what is “psychological” or emotional. But for Plato’s audience, Truth in Archaic Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1996). Recent studies of ancient literacy support the notion that although writing was used for keeping records, the oral way of doing things persisted long after the introduction of the Greek alphabet. See, for example, William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), and Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

13. Christian Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, trans. Andrew Webber (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 43. J. Henderson, “The Demos and Comic Competition,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysius? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, ed. J. J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 271–72. See also Gregory W. Dobrov, ed., The City as Comedy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

14. Cf. Socrates’ exchange with Meletus in the Apology and Anytus’s remarks in the Meno regarding the education of citizens through participation in the public life of Athens.

15. The dialogues feature fifth-century figures but are written for a fourth-century audience.

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“the psychological”—the study of logoi about the psuche¯ —is an essential component of the philosophical. Thus does Schmid point out, in discussing the “psychotherapeutic aspects of the elenchus,” that the dramatic setting and subject matter of the Charmides “focus attention on the psychotherapeutic, rather than the logical, structure of the elenchus and thus on the question of the nature of the ‘diseases’ for which the elenchus might be the cure” (237).

That Socrates’ interlocutors do not walk away from their encounter with him knowing the definition of so¯phrosune¯ or piety or courage, or being able to formulate some philosophical doctrine of the sort usually attributed to Plato, may not, then, be the philosophical point of the dialogue. It might rather be, as Carvalho, Press, and Schmid all recognize, that the elenchus has the potential to reform the character of those exposed to it, a potential that many who discuss the elenchus seem to miss. Schmid and Press suggest that through the elenchus Socrates addresses the personality of the interlocutor,16 presumably in the hope of increasing his self-knowledge, while Carvalho claims that Socrates “targets interlocutors’ beliefs for cross-examination . . . because the content of their beliefs is inconsistent with beliefs that constitute his character,” where the character of Socrates is “defined by the practice of testing his own beliefs and by those beliefs Socrates takes to be true because they have survived previous testing” (267). All three commentators subscribe to the belief that, as stated by Carvalho, “the formation of [a] virtuous character, not the formation of a positive moral doctrine, is the constructive effect of the Socratic method” (267).

Carvalho’s account of a Socrates more concerned with his own character and the consistency of his own moral beliefs than with the character of his interlocutors is at odds with the more common view that Socrates engages in the elenchus for the benefit of his interlocutors. Carvalho’s suggestion is a nice corrective to those accounts of Socrates in which he appears—anachronistically—to be positively “Christian” in his regard for others, and Carvalho is surely right in stressing Socrates’ concern for his own soul and his 16. Press does not directly state that the elenchus as practiced by Socrates is personal, but his treatment of the dialogue presupposes it, especially given the “educative function” of the elenchus as Press characterizes it. Press, for example, remarks that the problems that interpreters have had with Socrates’ elenchos of Critias can be explained by the character of Critias as it is clearly presented in the dialogue, by his political history as it would have been known to Plato’s original audience, and by Socrates’ attempt to reveal to Critias both his ignorance and his lack of so¯phrosune¯.

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own happiness, though this self-regard does not, of course, preclude the elenchus’s serving both Socrates and his interlocutors.

The problem with the idea that Socrates aims at improving the personality of the interlocutor through his use of the elenchus is that it is not clear that— or how—Socrates’ interlocutors gain any personal knowledge as a result of their encounter with Socrates. Although the elenchus could have been a means by which the interlocutors moved toward what we might term “selfcontrol” and “self-knowledge” and what they and Socrates term so¯phrosune¯ —the very idea that they are seeking in the Charmides—both the ancient and modern audiences know that Charmides and Critias gained neither so¯phrosune¯ nor knowledge of what so¯phrosune¯ consists in from this encounter with Socrates. Rather, they became infamous for their lack of selfcontrol, and Plato’s knowledge of this fact, as well as that of all Greece, suggests that he chose to feature these members of his family in a dialogue concerning so¯phrosune¯ precisely because they demonstrated—and not in a small way—that they did not possess so¯phrosune¯, this encounter with Socrates notwithstanding. What is the point, then, of presenting Socrates talking with these characters about a virtue that they lack? What prevents the interlocutors from acquiring self-control and self-knowledge? Why is the audience being urged to see that philosophy is a kind of medicine for the soul— as Schmid’s claim that the elenchus might serve as a cure for a diseased psuche¯ or a less-than-excellent character implies (237)?

Although the elenchus could serve as a cure for the diseased psuchai of Charmides and Critias, as Schmid suggests, it does not, in fact, do this in the Charmides. I suggest that its failure to do so in this dialogue indicates that the interlocutors are suffering from an even more fundamental problem: they do not yet understand the nature of the psuche¯, that is, the very nature of the self that one who has so¯phrosune¯ is supposed to control and know.

Or to put the matter in the language of contemporary philosophy: the interlocutors are suffering from a diseased personality because they do not yet grasp the Socratic concept of a person. They are not successful at knowing or controlling themselves, because they do not understand the soul or self, the knowledge and control of which is so¯phrosune¯.

In the opening scene of the dialogue Socrates, upon his return to Athens from the battle at Potidaea, goes to the palaestra—the wrestling school—to ask about the present state of philosophy. This might be puzzling to the modern audience, but the setting of this discussion of so¯phrosune¯ in the palaestra would no doubt evoke for the ancient audience that paideia which consists

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in gymnastike¯ for the body and mousike¯ for the soul. The young Athenian’s body is shaped through physical exercise to move gracefully and confidently —to walk in a manner that is orthos, or upright, just as his voice is trained to be forceful and skillful in public speaking. But confidence and forcefulness should not come at the price of being orderly (kosmio¯s) or well-mannered (eutales), as Charmides tries to show in his first attempt to define so¯phrosune¯ as doing things in an orderly and quiet manner (159b). Socrates’ observation that those assembled gazed upon Charmides as if he were a statue reminds the reader of the pride the Greeks took in the display of the naked male body; indeed, Thucydides writes of Greek nakedness as an achievement.17 That the naked body is an expression of the traditional notion of kalokagathia 18 —and that this notion has its weaknesses—is captured by the incident in which Socrates catches sight of Charmides’ naked body, for Socrates describes himself as feeling overwhelmed by a wild-beast appetite (155d– e), an appetite that takes some effort to control. Such control would be an instance of what the ordinary Athenian would term so¯phrosune¯.

Socrates manages to regain his composure, and a normal body temperature, by talking with Charmides (156d), by telling him that there is a cure for his headache—a leaf (phullon) and a charm (epo¯ide¯) only the recitation of which can make the leaf effective (155e5 –7). Despite the fact that Charmides very much looks as if he were the walking definition of so¯phrosune¯, as Critias suggests, Charmides’ headache suggests that Critias may be mistaken in his views of Charmides and so¯phrosune¯. Socrates takes pains to describe how he came to have this cure and to know this charm. He was instructed on these matters by a physician to Zalmoxis (156d4 – 6), who insisted that curing a headache, or any part of the body, requires first that one cure the soul, a precept that some Greek physicians apparently forget (156d7– e6). For “all things, both good and bad, in the body and in the whole man, originated in the soul and spread from there. . . . One ought, then, to treat the soul first and foremost, if the head and the rest of the body were to be well (156e6 – 8, 157a1–3).19 The soul, Socrates says, echoing this 17. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, i.6.

18. Cf. Paul Zanker’s comment: “[F]or the Greeks . . . the true meaning of a figure was contained in the body. It was the body that expressed a man’s physical and ethical qualities, that celebrated his physical and spiritual perfection and beauty, the kalokagathia” (The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. Alan Shapiro [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995], 10).

19. All translated passages from the Charmides are taken from Plato, The Early Socratic Dialogues: Ion, Laches, Lysis, Charmides, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Euthydemus, edited, with a general introduction, by Trevor J. Saunders, Charmides translation, with introduction

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physician, was “treated by certain charms . . . and these charms were beautiful words. As a result of such words self-control [so¯phrosune¯ ] came into being in souls. When it came into being and was present in them, it was then easy to secure health both for the head and the rest of the body” (157a3–b).

The mistake that is made, according to Zalmoxis, is trying to be physicians of health and physicians of so¯phrosune¯ separately (157b4 –7). The soul needs a physician in order to gain so¯phrosune¯; thus does Socrates implicitly define so¯phrosune¯ as the health of the soul, even before he begins to search for its definition.20 But what is the ailment for which Socrates is seeking a cure?

This allusion to Greek medicine and to its treatment of the psuche¯ reminds us that the word psuche¯ was used in a variety of contexts in the fifth century, especially in its closing years.21 That ancient audiences who were interested in philosophy would also be well acquainted with medicine, and especially with its conception of the psuche¯, is highly probable. Scholars of ancient philosophy and medicine agree that the two shared a close and complex relationship, but divide over the direction in which the influence flowed, so to speak.22 That Greek medicine constituted a form of Greek paideia was and notes, by Donald Watt (London: Penguin, 1987). These statements in the Charmides, David B. Claus suggests, are perhaps the most important in the “early dialogues” for understanding “the Socratic history of the soul” (Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into Psuche¯ Before Plato [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981]).

20. Watt, “Charmides Notes,” in The Early Socratic Dialogues, 177.

21. For discussion of the uses of psuche¯ in Plato and prior to him, see Claus, Toward the Soul. For medical uses see notes 26 and 27 below and Claus, Toward the Soul. Claus notes that apart from the scientific and technical uses of psuche¯, most of its occurrences in late-fifthcentury prose denote “life” or “courage” or are imitations of tragic diction. The two innovative exceptions are Antiphon v and Lysias 24.3 (141ff). For early Greek concepts of the soul, see Jan Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). The now classical discussions are John Burnet, “The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,” Proceedings of the British Academy 7 (1916): 235ff., and Bruno Snell, The Discovery of Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, trans. T. G. Rosenmayer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953). For a recent discussion of early ideas about the soul, see Andre Laks, “Soul, Sensation, and Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Thought, ed. A. A. Long (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

For a discussion of the various things Socrates says about the psuche¯ in the early dialogues, see Claus, Toward the Soul, and for what Socrates says about the psuche¯ in all of the dialogues, see Thomas M. Robinson, Plato’s Psychology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).

22. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London: A. & C. Black, 1945); Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein, ed. Oswei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin, trans. C. Lilian Temkin (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 354; and Michael Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), esp. “Philosophy and Medicine in Antiquity” and “The Ancient Empiricists.”

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argued with his characteristic thoroughness by Werner Jaeger, who claimed that the physician was Plato’s model for the philosopher, “who is to do the same for the soul of man and its health” as the physician does for the body.23 Plato places the philosopher with the poet when talking about the education of the psuche¯, just as the physician stands with the trainer in discussions of physical training.24 For fifth-century Greek medical writers, proper treatment does require treating the soul as well as the body; the scientific treatment of psuche¯ is therapeutic not only for the body but for the man as a whole.25 Still, the medical writers conceive of the psuche¯ in “psychosomatic” terms, that is, as that which must be treated in order to effect bodily health.26 Psuche¯ in these medical theories appears to derive from earlier conceptions of the psuche¯ as a life force that, left unchecked, may run to excess. Charmides’ headaches signal just such excess, notwithstanding his beautiful appearance, as does Critias’s insistence that Charmides is known for his so¯phrosune¯. Indeed, Charmides’ headaches and Critias’s boasting about his kinsman prefigure the later excesses of both of these men, who believed they had some knowledge about so¯phrosune¯ when they began their conversation with Socrates.

In asking whether Charmides has a beautiful soul and whether those assembled should have Charmides strip and show his soul, Socrates alludes to the traditional idea that those with noble bodies also have noble souls. At the same time, however, his suggestion that one might show one’s soul by conversing and his claim that the leaf cannot cure Charmides’ headache without the charm made up of fine words do not accord with the psychosomatic conception of a healthy soul advanced by fifth-century medical writers.27 23. Werner Jaeger, The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato, vol. iii of Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), 21–22.

24. Jaeger, Conflict of Cultural Ideals, 21–22.

25. Michael Frede remarks that in antiquity “both philosophers and physicians tended to assume that an interest in the soul was an interest in the various life-functions, like procreation, growth and nutrition, respiration, perception, thought—and both had an interest in all these functions. . . . doctors tended to concern themselves with all kinds of disturbances as long as they clearly also involved bodily disturbances, whether it be insanity (mania), effeminacy, lethargy, morbid hunger, or melancholy. . . . Doctors attended not just to the bodily effects of mental disturbances, but also to the mental effects of what they regarded as bodily disturbances” (Essays, 227). Indeed, such “scientific” treatment of the soul seems to be called for also

by Democritus (in B 31), who suggests that there must be a sophie for the soul comparable to medicine for the body. In so doing, Claus suggests, Democritus is seeking to make soul therapy, like medicine, a techne¯ (Essays, 142ff.).

26. Claus, Toward the Soul, 150ff.

27. Medical treatment might well require an explanation and defense of prescribed treatments, and such treatments might include arguments intended to persuade the patient to exer-

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That psuche¯ does not have only those meaning(s) in the fifth century that the Platonic Socrates will urge that it have in the fourth enables the dramatic—and philosophical—movement from Charmides’ headache and Socrates’ boast that his cure will instill so¯phrosune¯ in Charmides to Critias’s announcement that his young charge already possesses so¯phrosune¯ to Socrates’ suggestion that if Charmides possesses so¯phrosune¯, he should know something about what it is. The “self-control” that Critias attributes to Charmides is the control that an aristocrat exercises over his self, where the self is identified with his desires and appetites. A lack of control over these can lead to excess, which, in turn, injures the body and diminishes the man as a whole in the eyes of his fellow citizens. To have established “a dominion of self over self” is, as Foucault observed, a prerequisite to the practice of political authority: so¯phrosune¯ —the art of controlling oneself—is a necessary and sufficient condition for politike¯, the art of controlling others.28 Plato acknowledges the aristocratic tenor of Critias’s claim by having Socrates emphasize Charmides’ (and Critias’s) noble lineage, a lineage that they share, of course, with Plato. Thus is the refutation of this aristocratic notion of so¯phrosune¯ found not just in the dialogue but also, as Press suggests, in the historical record of Athenian politics: Critias and Charmides cannot say what so¯phrosune¯ is, nor do they display it in their actions (156). It would be hard to find more persuasive evidence that Plato rejected the aristocratic notion of so¯phrosune¯ than his willingness to use his own relatives to refute it.

Still, Charmides exhibits his aristocratic breeding, if not his so¯phrosune¯, when he says that he cannot answer when Socrates asks him directly if he has so¯phrosune¯, without reducing himself somewhat in the eyes of those present. It is worth noting that on an aristocratic definition of so¯phrosune¯ such as the first one Charmides offers— doing things in a quiet and orderly manner— one’s so¯phrosune¯ is not so obvious to oneself as it is to others.

What one aims at controlling in this case is the actions of one’s body—how one appears to others. One may intend to behave in a quiet and orderly way,

cise some self-control, but the treatment of the soul is perquisite of the treatment of the body.

The rationality to which physicians might appeal in their treatment of the psuche¯ is, as Claus (Toward the Soul, 154) reminds us, external to psuche¯, in contrast to the rational soul of which Socrates speaks.

28. Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1986). Needless to say, Foucault’s discussion of classical antiquity has had its critics. For recent work and references to earlier criticisms, see D. H. J. Larmour, P. A. Miller, and Charles Platter, eds., Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). I owe thanks to Lisa Wilkinson for directing my attention to the significance of Socrates’ dominion over himself for his fifth-century Athenian audience.

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but others must judge whether one accomplishes one’s intentions; it is they, and not he, who witness the actions in question. In the case of Charmides’ second definition of so¯phrosune¯ —being modest—again, it is how one appears to others in one’s speech and actions that determines whether one has so¯phrosune¯. One cannot proclaim one’s virtue without refuting it at the same time, and one could, pace Critias, have so¯phrosune¯ and not know it.

This would not preclude one from being able to say what it was in others, unless, of course, the knowledge of so¯phrosune¯ entails that one have some knowledge of the self as well.

Charmides’ next definition, one that Critias initially disowns and later acknowledges, puts forward yet another aristocratic sentiment: so¯phrosune¯ is minding one’s own affairs. What is being “minded” here are one’s things— the things that belong to one, including one’s body, one’s property, one’s family, and one’s privileges. The good that comes from so¯phrosune¯ as minding one’s affairs is presumably that one does not lose anything of value because one indulges— or overindulges—the wrong desires and appetites. Referring to this traditional formula repeatedly as a riddle, Socrates intentionally misunderstands it by equating doing (prattein) with producing or making (poiein), which allows him to turn the aristocratic notion of each person’s doing that which he is by nature most fit to do into the quite opposite notion of each man’s weaving and washing his own coat, making his own sandals, and making all of the rest of the things he needs.29 These things, too, are among one’s belongings. Critias steps in to rescue his definition by pointing out the (aristocratic) difference between doing (prattein) and producing or making (poiein), and it is then Critias’s turn to feign misunderstanding as he cites Hesiod’s sentiment—work is no disgrace—as his authority. Socrates, having tweaked Critias’s aristocratic sensibilities sufficiently, accepts his amended definition that so¯phrosune¯ is “the doing of good things,” but asks how it is possible that a man can have so¯phrosune¯ but not know that he does. The physician, Socrates points out, does not always know when his treatment is having a benefit (of course, the same may be said of Socrates, the physician of the soul). Thus can it be said on Critias’s amended definition that the physician has so¯phrosune¯ and acts accordingly, but does not know at the time that he is doing so.

Critias cannot conceive that a man who does not know himself could have (or act with) so¯phrosune¯; if one is to have control over one’s desires and 29. Friedländer, Plato, 2:71, calls attention to the fact that so¯phrosune¯ is contrasted with polypragmosune at 161d11– e1. This contrast may be another way of underscoring the antidemocratic nature of Critias’s sentiment.

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appetites, he has to know not only what they are, he also has to know his weaknesses. Critias thus offers to withdraw this definition, and advances instead the claim that so¯phrosune¯ is knowing oneself (to gigno¯skein heauton).

In making this statement, Critias effects the dramatic refutation of his own claim that Charmides has so¯phrosune¯, for Socrates has demonstrated that Charmides does not know if he has so¯phrosune¯, nor can he say in what it consists. But it is the nature of the “self” over which so¯phrosune¯ is the control— or about which so¯phrosune¯ is the knowledge—that is really the problem. What is the self that is known by one who has so¯phrosune¯? Because Critias does not have a clear answer to this question, he is undone by the exchange that follows. Socrates points out that if so¯phrosune¯ is knowing (gigno¯skein), then it is a knowledge (episte¯me¯) of something (165c4 – 6), and Critias repeats that what is known is oneself, but offers no explanation regarding the self that is being known or its activity as a knower. Socrates, invoking medicine again, points out that medicine, as the knowledge of what is healthy, produces a good thing, and asks Critias what good thing is produced by the knowledge of oneself that is so¯phrosune¯, prompting Critias to answer that so¯phrosune¯ is not like the knowledge of medicine or other technai; it does not produce anything. But surely so¯phrosune¯ consists in not just knowing one’s desires and appetites but also controlling them. Is this selfcontrol not a good thing that so¯phrosune¯ produces?

Instead of this obvious response, Critias says that so¯phrosune¯ is like arithmetic and geometry, arts that do not produce anything. This response allows Socrates to point out that in the case of arithmetic and geometry there is something that each is knowledge of, something that is different from the knowledge itself, and he asks what so¯phrosune¯ is the knowledge of, the thing different from so¯phrosune¯ itself (lege de¯ kai he¯ so¯phrosune¯ tinos estin episte¯me¯, ho tunchanei heteron on aute¯s te¯s so¯phrosune¯s). Critias, were he to subscribe to the kind of tripartite soul that Socrates talks about in the Republic, could respond that what is different from so¯phrosune¯ itself, as the act or state of being self-controlled, is the part of the self that is doing the knowing or controlling. But Critias apparently lacks a conception of the self or soul that allows him to distinguish that part of the self that has the power to regulate the desires and appetites. Critias is forced to conclude that so¯phrosune¯ is different from other sciences (episte¯mai) because they are knowledges of something else, while so¯phrosune¯ is the knowledge of other knowledges and of its own self (he¯ de mone¯ to¯n te allo¯n episte¯mo¯n episte¯me¯ esti kai aute¯ heaute¯s). Since so¯phrosune¯ for Critias means just the regulation of desires and appetites, so¯phrosune¯ must be the knowledge that one has these desires and appetites, and also the knowledges, like medicine and gymnastics, that

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tell one if and when one should satisfy these desires and appetites and which ones not to satisfy. Socrates then forces the admission that as knowledge of other knowledges, so¯phrosune¯ is the knowledge, also, of the lack of knowledge. He then presses Critias about the power that enables this knowledge that is knowledge of something and knowledge of itself. Critias is unable to explain the nature or the activity of this power of self-reflection, and Socrates expresses doubts about the possibility of a knowledge of knowledge and about whether so¯phrosune¯ consists in such knowledge, noting that while it is not clear whether such knowledge would a be a good thing, so¯phrosune¯ should be a good thing. Then granting Critias that there is such a dubious thing as the knowledge of knowledge, Socrates asks him how knowledge of knowledge increases the chances that one knows what one knows and does not know, for Critias held that this was the same as knowing oneself, that is, having— or acting with—so¯phrosune¯. Critias responds that if one possesses knowledge that knows itself, he would be like that which he possesses, that is, he would know himself. What Critias clearly lacks is a notion of a power that would enable the self or soul to know itself, an activity or power on the part of the knower the exercise of which constitutes so¯phrosune¯. In its stead, Critias is forced to advance the odd claim that it is the knowledge that knows itself that causes the knower to know himself. Whence comes the knowledge that knows itself? What is doing the knowing, if it is the knowledge that knows itself that causes the knower to be like what he possesses?

Socrates reiterates his doubts that so¯phrosune¯—knowing oneself—is the same thing as knowing what one knows and does not know. And if so¯phrosune¯ is knowing that one has knowledge—that one is a knower—this fact will not be the cause of his knowing what he knows: if one knows medicine, he knows what he knows because he has knowledge of what makes one healthy, and not because he knows that he knows. If this is so¯phrosune¯, it will not be of any use in determining whether another possesses a particular techne¯, for one must know what a practitioner of that techne¯ knows in order to tell if another also has this techne¯. Yet if one assumes that so¯phrosune¯ is knowing what one knows and does not know— enabling the achievement of a kind of technical perfection—it is not obvious that one would do well and be happy. In his insistence that having such so¯phrosune¯, were so¯phrosune¯ to consist of a knowledge of such technai, would not necessarily result in one’s doing well and being well (prattoimen and eudaimonoimen), Socrates invokes Critias’s distinction between producing good things and doing it well, on the one hand, and being well and doing well, on the other—a distinction that Socrates pretended not to grasp earlier in the discussion. The

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response of Critias—that one will not easily find a thing that achieves its end well, if one deems acting with knowledge (an) unworthy (thing)—prompts Socrates to maintain once again that he does not understand the distinction between prattein and poiein. He asks Critias if the kind of knowledge that one must deem worthy of guiding one’s action is the kind that the cobbler needs to make shoes, the sculptor needs to make bronze, or the weaver and woodworker need to make their things, and when Critias gives a dismissive response, Socrates concludes that they are no longer standing behind the position that living well is living in accordance with these kinds of knowledge.

Critias counters that the type of knowledge in accordance with which one must live to be happy is knowledge of what is good and what is bad.

This response allows Socrates to claim that it is Critias who has been leading Socrates around in a circle. Socrates argues so, first, by attributing to Critias a position that he did not really advance, that so¯phrosune¯ consists in living in accordance with the knowledge of all the other knowledges, such as medicine and weaving and navigation, and, second, by pointing out that according to his most recent definition—so¯phrosune¯ is living in accordance with the knowledge of what is good and bad— one will still need this knowledge to perform any of these technai well. Socrates concludes, by virtue of the second point, that the knowledge of what’s good and bad is not so¯phrosune¯ but the knowledge of what is beneficial to us. Critias expresses incredulity that so¯phrosune¯ would not be beneficial to us, but trips himself up by insisting that so¯phrosune¯ is knowledge of all other knowledges, not grasping the difference between technai, such as medicine and gymnastics, which provide us with the knowledge of what desires and appetites we should gratify, and the kind of knowledge— call it philosophy—that provides us with the knowledge of what is good and what is bad. If so¯phrosune¯ is the knowledge of all other knowledges, then, Critias insists, it governs over the knowledge of what’s good and bad as it does every other knowledge. In so doing, so¯phrosune¯ would benefit us. Socrates then reminds Critias that as knowledge of all other knowledge so¯phrosune¯ is knowledge only of the fact that one knows something or does not know something but not of what he knows. As such, it would not be so¯phrosune¯ but medicine that brings the benefits of health, and other benefits would be the products of other technai and not so¯phrosune¯. Socrates then asks Critias how so¯phrosune¯ would be beneficial if it were not the producer of a benefit, and Critias concedes that it could not be. Critias’s problem seems to be that there is nothing for so¯phrosune¯ to be knowledge of, no part of the self—no subject—that benefits from so¯phrosune¯ as there are parts that benefit from medicine and gymnas-

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tics. If there is no part of the self to benefit from so¯phrosune¯, then it has no benefit. Without a part of the soul to benefit from the knowledge of what is good and bad, how can one say that so¯phrosune¯ consists of anything more than the knowledge of technai, such as medicine and gymnastics?

Since Critias and Socrates have arrived at a conclusion that Socrates thinks must be false—that so¯phrosune¯ is of no benefit—he remonstrates himself that he has not conducted a good inquiry, despite the fact that he and the interlocutors were generous in granting premises, as we would say, for the sake of argument. He then expresses his regret that Charmides, who looks the very image, or form, of so¯phrosune¯ and is most self-controlled in his psuche¯, will benefit not at all from so¯phrosune¯. Still believing that this investigation was not a reasoned argument and that so¯phrosune¯ must be a good thing, Socrates urges Charmides to see whether he does possess it and to forget about Socrates’ charm. But Charmides expresses his desire to be charmed by Socrates every day until Socrates says that Charmides has had enough, and Critias, his guardian, orders Charmides to do just that. Socrates protests that no man will be able to resist Charmides if he resorts to force, and Charmides responds that Socrates, then, should not try to resist. Socrates closes the dialogue by declaring that he will not resist Charmides, but, of course, the audience knows that he will resist Charmides, for it is Socrates, and not Charmides, who has demonstrated that he has so¯phrosune¯.

Critias’s fifth-century contemporaries would doubtless fare no better than he did at negotiating the abstract and self-reflexive discourse into which Socrates has led Critias. For the fourth-century audience of the dialogue, like the modern audience, the dramatic and historical events that occur demonstrate that so¯phrosune¯ does not entail “self-knowledge” as Critias conceives of it, for Socrates demonstrates his self-control at the same time that he fails with his interlocutors to define so¯phrosune¯. That no one in the Charmides provides an unassailable definition of so¯phrosune¯ does not mean that there are, after all, no fair words by which so¯phrosune¯ can be implanted in the soul. These fair words turn out to be, not a definition of so¯phrosune¯ given by one or another of the interlocutors, but the practice of philosophy itself— the knowledge of what is good and bad. But this knowledge is beneficial only to a knowing subject that has the power to evaluate his desires, appetites, and actions as good and bad and to resolve conflicts of desires and appetites.

So¯phrosune¯ entails not just controlling one desires, appetites, and actions but knowing the true nature of the self, that is, what is good and bad for the self as a knower, and not simply as a subject that has desires and appetites.

Without the notion of a soul or self that cares for itself and for the good—

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the notion of knowing the good as the activity of the self—any attempt to define so¯phrosune¯ will be incomplete. Philosophy is the care for the soul, and the soul, as Socrates says in other conversations with other interlocutors, must be that which cares for itself and for the good.

The legacy of the Platonic Socrates includes not just the idea of the self but also, as Schmid points out, the technique of self-questioning, a technique that leads to a “knowledge of the self” that gives some measure of control over the clashes of desire and power that are so often the cause of simple human misery. But this knowledge one may have of oneself—so¯phrosune¯ —is neither achieved by nor formulated in the language of propositions; it is, rather, the type of knowledge that is uncovered, if suddenly and only for an instant, in narratives featuring ourselves and others in dramatic conversations. These conversations are not unlike those that occur in Plato’s dialogues. Thus we do learn something about so¯phrosune¯ in the Charmides but not from Charmides and Critias’s attempts to define it. Rather, it is Socrates who displays— or enacts, as Press might say— so¯phrosune¯, by gaining control over “his wild-beast appetite,” and he does this through conversation.

In contrast to the excesses that lead Critias and Charmides to their tyranny, Socrates shows so¯phrosune¯, though he does not define it, by emerging victorious from a contest with himself and establishing “a dominion of self over self.” In so doing, he reinforces the lesson of the Charmides: that the knowledge of knowledge of the self—what we might call philosophy—is a matter of how one lives and has dominion over oneself.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

HAYDEN W. AUSLAND is an associate professor of classics in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Montana. His publications include “On the Moral Origin of the Pyrrhonian Philosophy,” in Elenchos, and “On Reading Plato Mimetically,” in the American Journal of Philology. He is currently completing a book on Plato’s Republic.

HUGH H. BENSON is Samuel Roberts Noble Presidential Professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. He has published papers on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He is the editor of Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (Oxford University Press, 1992) and author of Socratic Wisdom: The Model of Knowledge in Plato’s Early Dialogues (Oxford University Press, 2000).

THOMAS C. BRICKHOUSE is a professor of philosophy and the John Franklin East Professor of the Humanities at Lynchburg College. He has authored several books and numerous articles with Nicholas D. Smith on Socrates. Their most recent books include Plato’s Socrates (Oxford University Press, 1994) and Socrates on Trial (Princeton University Press, 1989). In addition to work in Socratic studies, he has published articles on Plato and Aristotle.

MICHELLE CARPENTER teaches philosophy at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. She is currently completing her doctoral dissertation on Plato’s two Hippias dialogues, and she has several articles on Platonic dialogues forthcoming.

JOHN M. CARVALHO is associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University.

He is the author of publications on ancient Greek philosophy, contemporary critical theory, and aesthetics. His manuscript “Aesthetics of the Visible in the Visual Arts” is under consideration at the University of California Press. Another, “Aristotle’s Argument Against Democracy and Its Relevance for Contemporary American Politics,” is being prepared for consideration by Princeton University Press.

LLOYD P. GERSON is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. His books include The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (ed., 1996), Plotinus (1994), God and Greek Philosophy (1990), Hellenistic Philosophy (with Brad Inwood, 1988), The Epicurus Reader (with Brad Inwood, 1994), Aristotle’s Politics (with

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H. G. Apostle, 1986), Aristotle’s Selected Works (with H. G. Apostle, 1984), and Knowledge and the Self in the Platonic Tradition (forthcoming). He has published more than forty articles in Anglo-American and European philosophy journals, and he is the editor of Aristotle: Critical Assessment (4 vols., forthcoming).

FRANCISCO J. GONZALEZ is an associate professor of philosophy at Skidmore College. He is the author of Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Northwestern University Press, 1998) and the editor of The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). He has contributed articles on Plato, Aristotle, and Heidegger to a number of journals and collections, and he is currently working on a book on Plato’s Protagoras.

JAMES H. LESHER is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Xenophanes of Colophon (Toronto University Press, 1992), The Greek Philosophers (BCP/Duckworth, 1998), and more than thirty articles on various aspects of ancient Greek philosophy.

MARK MCPHERRAN is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maine at Farmington. He is the director of the Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (University of Arizona, Tucson, 1996 –present). His recent publications include articles on Socrates, Plato, and Pyrrhonism, as well as The Religion of Socrates (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996 [pbk 1999]), Wisdom, Ignorance, and Virtue: New Essays in Socratic Studies (Apeiron suppl. vol. 30.4 [1997]), and Recognition, Remembrance, and Reality: New Essays on Plato’s Epistemology and Metaphysics (Apeiron suppl. vol. 32.4 [1999]). He is currently working on an analysis of Plato’s Sophist as part of Project Archelogos, a commentary on Plato’s Euthyphro, and is editing a collection of essays on Plato’s psychology (entitled A Union of Powers: New Essays on Plato’s Psychology).

RONALD M. POLANSKY is a professor of philosophy at Duquesne University and editor of Ancient Philosophy. He has co-edited Bioethics: Ancient Themes in Contemporary Issues (MIT Press, 2000) and authored Philosophy and Knowledge: A Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus (Bucknell University Press, 1992). He is currently writing a book on Aristotle’s De Anima.

GERALD A. PRESS is a professor of philosophy at Hunter College CUNY and the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy. He is the author of The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity (1982), and he has edited two books: Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) and Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations (Rowman & Littlefield, 1993).

His articles on the history of Plato interpretation have appeared in the Southern Journal of Philosophy, International Studies in Philosophy, the Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, and Philosophy and Rhetoric.

FRANÇOIS RENAUD received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Tübingen (1996). He is assistant professor of philosophy at the Université de Moncton. He is the author of Die Resokratisierung Platons: Die platonische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers (International Plato Studies, vol. 10, Sankt Augustin: Aca-

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demia, 1999). His publications also include articles in Études phénoménologiques, Revista portuguesa de Filosofia, and Philosophie antique (a new journal edited by André Laks and Michel Narcy) as well as contributions to Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik (ed. G. Ueding, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1992 –) and Der Neue Pauly (ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider, Stuttgart / Weimar: Metzler, 1996 –).

W. THOMAS SCHMID is a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is the author of On Manly Courage: A Study of Plato’s Laches (Southern Illinois University Press, 1992) and Plato’s Charmides and the Socratic Ideal of Rationality (State University of New York Press, 1998).

GARY ALAN SCOTT is an associate professor of philosophy at Loyola College in Maryland. He is the author of Plato’s Socrates as Educator (State University of New York Press, 2000) and the co-author (with William A. Welton) of Eros as Messenger: The Drama of Plato’s Symposium (currently under review). His articles and book reviews have appeared in Ancient Philosophy, Interpretation, the Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, and the Southern Journal of Philosophy.

NICHOLAS D. SMITH is the James F. Miller Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. With Thomas C. Brickhouse, he has authored Socrates on Trial (Princeton University Press, 1989) and Plato’s Socrates (Oxford University Press, 1994), along with numerous articles and book reviews.

P. CHRISTOPHER SMITH is professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell. He is the translator of Gadamer’s Hegel’s Dialectic (1976), Dialog and Dialectic (1980), and The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (1986). He is the author of Hermeneutics and Human Finitude (1991) and The Hermeneutics of Original Argument: Demonstration, Dialectic, Rhetoric (1998).

His articles have appeared in Philosophy and Literature, Modern Schoolman, International Philosophical Quarterly, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Heidelberger Jahrbücher, and the New Scholasticism. He has contributed to a dozen books, most recently, The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1997).

HAROLD TARRANT worked for twenty years in Greek philosophy at the University of Sydney, and he is currently a professor of classics and head of the Classics Department at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of Scepticism or Platonism? (1985), Thrasyllan Platonism (1993), Plato: The Last Days of Socrates (with H. Tredennick, 1993), Olympiodorus: Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias (with K. Lycos and K. R. Jackson, 1998), and Plato’s First Interpreters (London: Duckworth; Ithaca: Cornell, 2001). His articles have appeared in Phronesis, Classical Quarterly, and Apeiron, among others. He serves as an executive member of the International Plato Society.

JOANNE B. WAUGH is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her recent publications include “Oral Preambles and Written Laws: The Dialogical Character of the Laws and Lawfulness,” in Plato’s Laws and Its Historical Significance: Selected Papers of the International Congress on Ancient Thought, ed. Francisco Lisi, and “Socrates and the Character of Platonic Dialogue,”

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in Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, ed. Gerald A. Press. She and Peggy DesAutels are the editors of Feminists Do Ethics. Professor Waugh is the author of Writing Philosophy: The Necessity of the Platonic Dialogue (Lanham, Md.: Rowman LittleďŹ eld, 2001).

CHARLES M. YOUNG is a professor of philosophy at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of a number of articles on ancient philosophy, and he is currently completing a monograph on Aristotleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s account of the virtues of character.

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INDEX

Numbers in italics indicate a table Academica, 168 Achilles, 277 ad hominem refutation, 107 n. 17, 139, 152 –53, 190, 196 Aeschylus, 30 n. 12, 52 aitia (cause), 209, 216 Alcibiades, 95 –97, 167 n. 11, 181 n. 35, 244 Alcibiades i, 95 –97 alethic, 104 antihubristic wisdom, 132, 132 n. 51, 133 Anytus, 244 apeiron (unlimited), 207– 8, 216 Aphrodite, 203 Apollo, 115, 116, 123 n. 26, 128, 129 nn.

41– 42, 142 n. 51, 272 Apology of Socrates belief in innocence of charges in, 109 beliefs in, 246, 273 compounds of elenchein in, 66 divine and secular, difference between, 131 elenchein in, 64 exetasis in, 72 exetazein and cognates in, 70-71 immortality in, 220 improving/corrupting youth in, 43– 44, 97, 285 Meletus, cross-examination in, 5 n. 6 obligation to pursue philosophy in, 117– 18 nn. 8, 9 oracular pronouncement interpretation in, 27 n. 10, 122 –33, 141

paideia of, 165 – 67, 166 n. 9, 264 philosophical activity after oracular pronouncement in, 133– 44 pre-Delphi intellectual activity in, 118, 120 –22 protreptic in, 165 – 67, 165 – 66 n. 7, 167 n. 11, 172 unexamined life in, 225 on unjust imprisonment, 277–78 ur-elenchos in, 120 aporia, 4, 148, 194 –95, 222, 226, 262 in Euthydemus, 175 –76, 177–78 n. 26, 180 in Gorgias, 169 in Republic, 169 –79 in Theaetetus, 220 Aquinas, Thomas, 225 arete¯. See virtue argument based on likelihood, 97 circular, 103, 163– 64 dialectical, 35, 154 –55, 176 –77, 204, 245 – 48 inductive, 46 – 47, 49, 56, 58, 125 n. 33, 128, 141 irrefutable, 203, 246 monological, 91 pragmatic, 96 –97 question-begging, 103, 255 Aristophanes, 1, 118 n. 10 Aristotle, 1, 103, 154 –55, 219 Ars Rhetorica, 44 and forensic practice, 44 319

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320

Index

Aristotle (continued) on induction, 49, 49 n. 29 logic as innovation of, 36 Metaphysics, 35, 46 Nicomachean Ethics, 35 on Socratic conversation, 184 – 85 Poetics, 184 use of endoxa by, 34 –35, 214 use of serial review by, 80 use of tekmeiron by, 53, 53 n. 37, 54 n. 38, 55 n. 39 on virtue, 225 arithmetic, 176, 293 Ars Rhetorica, 44 Athenian law, 45 – 46 Athenian politics, 30 Attic orators, 44 – 45, 54 n. 38 Ausland, H. W., 81– 84 autonomy, 239 – 40 beliefs in Apology of Socrates, 246, 273 in Charmides, 267, 272 –75, 278 in Crito, 226 –28, 277–78 and Socrates, 275 –76, 277–79 and Socratic cross-examination, 267– 68 uncertainty of, in Hippias Minor, 277 Benson, H., 3, 4, 146, 147– 49, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 267 Blits, J., 180 n. 33 Boisacq, E., 22 Brickhouse, T. C., 5 n. 6, 108, 167 n. 11, 169 n. 17, 186 – 87 Burnyeat, M., 192 Callicles, 41– 42, 68, 72 –73, 74 –76, 77, 81, 85, 92, 148, 187, 190 care for the young, 97 care of self, 95 –96, 97 Carpenter, M., 146 – 47, 152, 153, 155 Carvalho, J. M., 286 – 87 causation, 83 Chaerephon, 115 –16, 118, 121, 122 Chantraine, P., 21–22 Charmides, 153, 237, 238, 239 – 40, 242, 243, 250, 268 – 69, 270, 273, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 293, 296, 297 Charmides autonomy in, 239 – 40 beliefs in, 267, 272 –75, 278 choice in, 244 –51

community in, 242 – 44 compounds of elenchein in, 66 courage in, 241 elenchein in, 64 exetasis in, 72, 73 exetazein and cognates in, 70-71 expert in, 73 justice in, 241– 42 knowledge in, 110 –11, 169 –70, 294 –96 moderation in, 241 paideia in, 287– 88 problems with, 253–55, 253 n. 4 psuche¯ in, 286, 287, 288 – 89 scholarly neglect of, 252 –53, 252 n. 1, 281, 282 setting of, 237, 287 so¯phrosune¯ in, 243, 268 –71, 273, 286 n. 16, 287, 288 – 89, 290, 291–94, 295 –97 so¯phrosyne¯ in, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 260 – 61, 262 – 63, 264 265 sound-mindedness in, 110 steps in elenchos in, 257– 65 theme of, 268 utopia of expertise in, 262 – 63 virtue in, 240 – 41 choice, 244 –51 Cicero, 168, 222 circular argument, 103, 163– 64 Cleobulina, 51–52 Clinias, 172, 173–74, 176, 177 Clitophon critique of Socrates by, 161– 65, 178 and knowledge, 180 n. 33 target of critique of, 165 –71 Clitophon, 223 authenticity of, 161– 62, 161– 62 n. 1 knowledge in, 163– 64, 180 n. 33 as unfinished, 164 n. 4 community, 242 – 44 conceit of wisdom, 238 contradiction in question, 209 contraries, 207– 8 correlatives, 204 courage, 93, 184, 241 Cratylus, exetazein and cognates in, 71 Critias, 67, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242 – 43, 244, 245, 247, 250, 255 –58, 256 nn.

13–15, 259 – 61, 268, 269, 270 –71, 273, 274, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292 –96 Critias, exetazein and cognates in, 71

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Index

Crito, 45 – 46, 107– 8, 147, 177, 277–78 Crito beliefs in, 226 –28, 277–78 speech of the laws in, 45 – 46, 107– 8, 147 -teon verbals in, 76 n. 14, 85 cross-examination forensic, 2, 38 –39, 40 – 41, 44, 45, 51, 53–57, 81 Socratic, 35, 89, 90, 152 –54, 155, 187, 267– 68 Ctesippus, 187, 188 dame¯i, 20 n. 1 Daux, G., 27, 27 n. 10 Davidson, D., 266 definition circular, 163– 64 general, 46 of moral terms/virtues, 55 –56, 92, 93–94 definitional elenchos, 235 –36 Delphic oracle, 150 –51, 260, 271, 272 interpretation of, 27 n. 10, 43, 69, 122 – 23 on Socrates as wise, 115 –16, 118, 123 n. 27 wisdom of unpacking meaning of, 129 –30 n. 43 Democritus, 290 n. 25 Derrida, J., 203 n. 10 Descartes, R., 182 detection, demonstration, 130 n. 45 developmentalism, 221–22 diairesis, 210 dialectic, 35, 154 –55, 176 –77, 204, 245 – 48 dialectical topoi, 81– 82 dialegesthai (talking through), 210 –15 dialogue, and exetasis, 74 dialogues, of Plato. See also individual dialogues aporetic, 220, 221, 222, 223, 226, 254, 276 authenticity of, 95 n. 13, 161– 62, 161– 62 n. 1 characters in, 257, 285 chronology of, 75 n. 11, 221–22, 281– 82, 282 n. 3 concreteness of, 184, 228 disavowals of knowledge in, 276 dominant interlocutor in, 223 historical accuracy of, 220 n. 2

321

meaning to contemporary audience, 283, 283 n. 7, 285 – 86 nondogmatic interpretation of, 217–19, 220, 229 as protreptic, 168 – 69, 224 –25 reading as literature, 282 – 83 setting of, 285 Dicaearchus, 168 dielenchein, 63 Diogenes Laertius, 28, 30 n. 13, 67– 68, 185 Dionysodorus, 92, 153, 154, 172 disgrace, 21 Dissoi Logoi, 51 divination, 115 n. 4, 119. See also Socrates, daimonion of divine wisdom, 119 n. 16, 126 n. 34, 127, 132 –33 n. 51, 135 dokimasia, 8 in ancient Athens, 30 meaning in early writers, 29 –30, 34 meaning in Parmenides, 30 doxastic constraint, 105, 110, 146, 147– 49, 153 drama, dramatic, 83, 188, 227–28, 229, 255 eidos, 22, 231 elenchein, 63, 193 compounds of, 65 – 67, 66 pre-Republic, 63– 65 elenchos. See also elenchos, meaning in writers comparison of Parmenidean /Socratic, 35 definitional, 235 –36 ethical aspects of, 228 –29 as establishing inconsistency, 102 –3 evolution of, 3 n. 1, 186 forms of, 5 n. 7, 235 –36 humbling function of, 187, 191, 197 logic of, 90 method of, 102 n. 2, 142 – 43 and military failure, 23, 23 n. 6 multiple meanings of, 4, 8, 21–28, 27 n. 10, 195 n. 42 as pedagogy, 187, 189 –91, 197 as personal, 186, 236 pre-Republic, 9, 84 – 86 protreptic function of, 167 n. 11 purposes of, 144 n. 73 as serial critique or review, 2, 34, 79 – 80 steps in, 257–58 as therapeutic, 239, 248

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322

Index

elenchos, meaning in writers, 19 –21 Aeschylus, 25 Aristotle, 26 Bacchylides, 24, 25, 28 Herodotus, 26 Hesiod, 22, 23, 24, 28 Homer, 22 –23, 24, 25, 28 Parmenides, 79 – 80 Philodemus, 26 Pindar, 23–24, 25, 28 Plato, 26, 27–28 Sophocles, 25 Theognis, 22, 23, 28 Tyrtaeus, 22, 28 elenctic argument, interpretive element in, 150 endoxa (received opinion), 5, 34 –35, 69, 102, 105 epag0¯ge¯, 8, 36, 59, 81 Aristotelian, 49, 49 n. 29 interpretations of, 50 Socratic, 47 use in forensic speech, 51 episte¯me¯, 212, 213, 217, 261, 262, 272 eraste¯s, 189 ergon, 188 eristic, 176 –77, 193 eromenos, 188 eros, 189 n. 23 ero¯te¯sis, 209, 214, 215 ete¯tumos, meaning in early writers, 31, 31 n.16 eudaimonia and cognates of, 35, 119 –20 n. 16, 294 Eudicus, 37–38, 41 Euripides, 25, 38 Eustathius, 49 Euthydemus, 68, 92, 153, 154, 172 Euthydemus aporia in, 176, 177–78 n. 26, 180 compounds of elenchein in, 65 – 67, 66 dialectic in, 176 –77 elenchein in, 64 elenchos and derivatives in, 153 exetasis in, 73–74 knowledge in, 174 protreptic in, 167 n. 11, 172 –75, 176, 177 refutation in, 92 theme of expert in, 73–74

Euthyphro, 53–57, 55 n. 40, 59, 82 – 83, 93–94, 117 n. 7, 141, 149, 153, 244 Euthyphro, 54 –55, 58 –59, 93–94, 128 connection between argument /action in, 184 and doxastic constraint, 149 elenchos in, 141– 42 example in, 81 forensic practice in, 53–57 piety in, 82 – 83 search for universal in, 55 n. 40 setting of, 228 examined life, 120 n. 18, 155, 156, 181 exelenchein, 63 exempla, 47 exetasis, 8 in Apology of Socrates, 72 in Charmides, 72, 73 and dialogue, 74 and discovery of truth, 73–74 in early dialogue, 72 –73 in Euthydemus, 73–74 and examination of knowledge, 72 –73 in Gorgias, 72, 76 in Laches, 72, 73 in Phaedrus, 73 pre-Republic, 84 – 86 in Protagoras, 72 in Republic, 72 in Sophist, 72 Tarrant on, 84 – 86 in Theaetetus, 72 exetazein and cognates, 70-71 exhortation, 5 n. 7 expert, 73–74, 111, 135 fallacy, of misplaced concreteness, 5 n. 5 forensic practice, 2, 38 –39 and Aristotle, 44 difference between Socrates and court, 45 in Euthyphro, 53–57 in Hippias Minor, 37–38 and Socratic interrogation, 40 – 41, 81 use of epag0¯ge¯ in, 51 Form, Forms (eide¯), 206 –9, 210, 211, 212, 221, 222 Foucault, M., 291 Frede, M., 290 n. 25 friend, 184, 193 friendship (philia), 184, 189 n. 23, 193

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Index

Frisk, H., 22 Furley, D., 21–22, 28 Furth, M., 21 n. 3 Gadamer, H. G., 202, 206, 225, 230 Gaiser, K., 167 n. 11, 168 – 69, 179 – 80 n. 30 genos, gene¯, 202, 205, 206, 210, 216 geometry, 176, 272, 293 Gonzalez, F. J., 220, 223, 224 –26, 231 good life, 199, 201, 208, 210 Gorgias, 26 –27, 41, 68, 75, 76, 187 Gorgias, 246 aporia in, 169 compounds of elenchein in, 65 – 67, 66 contrast in argument in, 153–54 doxastic constraint in, 148 elenchein in, 63, 64–65 elenchos in, 4, 26, 27, 35, 68 – 69, 76 –77 exetasis in, 72, 76 exetazein and cognates in, 70-71 forensic practice in, 41– 43, 53, 81– 82 happiness in, 190 injustice in, 99 refutation in, 92, 99 self-harmony in, 237 serial review in, 34 Socrates as interlocutor-questioner in, 74 – 75 truth in, 106 –7 Grote, G., 62, 164, 170 n. 19, 181– 82 Grube, G., 218 gymnastics, 163, 284, 293 happiness, 172 –73, 190 health, 165 Herodotus, 26, 26 n. 9 Hesiod, 258, 270, 272, 292 Hippias, 37–38, 68, 153, 248, 276, 277 Hippias Major, 248 compounds of elenchein in, 65 – 67, 66 defining beautiful in, 94 elenchein in, 65 protreptic in, 167 n. 11 Hippias Minor, 41, 277 elenchein in, 65 forensic speech in, 37–38 uncertainty of belief in, 277 Hippolytus, 38 Hippothales, 92, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193

323

ho elenchos, 24 Homer, 49, 272, 277 ho¯ste, meaning in early writers, 31 hubris, 131, 132 –33 n. 51, 137 n. 59, 238 human wisdom, 126, 126 n. 34, 127, 132 n. 51, 133, 135, 137, 140 Hume, D., 185 humility, 226 hunting arts, 173–74, 177 hypothetical statements, 99 Iliad, 48 – 49 immortality, of soul, 220, 221, 223, 228 induction, 56, 58, 125 n. 33, 128, 141 injustice, 98 –99 interpretation, 5 n. 7 interrogation, Socratic. See also exetasis background of interest in, 62 – 63 irony, 55, 69 Isaeus II, 39 – 40 Isocrates, 57 Jaeger, W., 289 –90 Johansen, F., 25 justice, injustice, 92 in Apology, 129, 131–32 n. 49, 135 in Charmides, 241– 42 in Clitophon, 163– 64 in Euthyuro, 116 –17 n. 7 in Republic, 98 –99, 258 Thrasymachus on, 98 –99 kekritai, meaning in early writers, 31 knowledge, 73–74, 124 n. 28, 261. See also self-knowledge; so¯phrosyne¯ in Charmides, 110 –11, 169 –70, 294 –96 in Clitophon, 163– 64, 180 n. 33 dialectical, 177–78 n. 26 disavowals of, 276 in Euthydemus, 174 and exetasis, 72 –73 in Laches, 170 in Meno, 111–13 moral, 165, 175 nontechnical, 178 n. 27 in Sophist, 191–92 technical, 178 n. 27 knowledge of knowledge, 262 Kraut, R., 103–5, 155 –56 krinai, meaning in early writers, 30, 33

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324

Index

krino¯, meaning in early writers, 33 krisis, meaning in early writers, 31, 35

mouthpiece theory, 218, 282 – 83, 282 n. 4 music, 205 – 6, 284

Laches, 67, 92, 93, 94, 184, 244 Laches, 92, 94, 250 argument /action connection in, 184 exetasis in, 72, 73 exetazein and cognates in, 70, 72 expert in, 73 knowledge in, 170 Laws, exetazein and cognates in, 71 legitimacy, illegitimacy, in Parmenides, 31– 33, 79 Lesher, J. H., 78 – 80 logos, logoi, 196, 201, 247, 286 logos/ergon distinction, 184, 189 Lysis, 187, 188, 189 –91, 194, 229 Lysis, 92, 187 characters of, 188 compounds of elenchein in, 66 conclusion of, 197–98 connection between argument /action in, 184 as devoid of genuine elenchos, 187 elenchein in, 64, 193 elenchus as pedagogy in, 187, 189 –91, 197 exhortation in, 187, 191 logos/ergon distinction in, 184, 189 paideia in, 187, 189 –91, 197 setting of, 187– 88

Nehamas, A., 55 n. 40 Nemean, 24, 33 n. 19 Nestor, 48, 52 Nicias, 92, 94, 184, 236, 243, 244 Nicomachean Ethics, 35 Nietzsche, F., 200 n. 2

maieutics, 192 –93 mathematics, 212 McPherran, M., 146, 147, 149 –51, 152, 156 medicine, 163, 164 – 65, 178, 288 –91, 290 n. 25, 293, 295 n. 27 Meier, C., 285 Meletus, 5 n. 6, 43, 44, 81, 97, 153 Menexenus, 187, 188, 193 Meno, 112 –13, 244 Meno, 220, 244 elenchein in, 65 knowledge in, 111–13 problem of, 112 –13 Metaphysics, 35, 46 modesty, 195, 197, 239, 254, 292 moral knowledge, 165, 175 more and less, 207, 208 Morrison, D. R., 179 n. 29 Mourelatos, A. P. D., 29 –30, 31 n. 16

Odysseus, 277 Odyssey xxiv, 32 n. 17 onomata, 201, 203, 210 opinion. See endoxa Orwin, C., 165, 166 n. 9 ousia, 56 Ovid, 49 n. 29 Owen, G. E. L., 29 –30 paideia, 229, 264, 284 – 85 in Apology of Socrates, 165 – 67, 166 n. 9, 264 in Charmides, 287– 88 in Lysis, 187, 189 –91, 197 in Republic, 284 paradeigma, 47, 55 –56 n. 41, 81, 82, 126, 136, 139 n. 65 Parmenides character of elenchos in, 28 –34, 79 – 80 date of composition, 28 dokimasia in, 30 legacy of elenchos in, 34 –35 meaning of elenchos in, 8, 20 –28 polude¯ris elenchos in, 20 –22, 20 n. 2, 34 polu- in, 33–34 prooemium, 29 –30 Parry, A. A., 23 n. 6 particular, particulars, 55 n. 40 pathos, 56 pedagogy. See paideia peirastic dialectic, 154 pelein, meaning in early writers, 31 peras (limit), 208, 216 Pericles, 118 n. 10 perplexity. See aporia Phaedo, 64, 220, 221, 228 Phaedra, 38 Phaedrus, 71, 73, 201, 206 Philebus, 199, 203, 204 Philebus, 80, 199, 229 –30, 231 aitia in, 209, 216

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apeiron in, 207– 8, 216 deconstructing logos in, 210 –14 deconstructing reconstructed logos in, 214 –16 dialegesthai in, 210 –15 elenchos in, 35 exetazein and cognates in, 70 Forms in, 206 –9 irrefutable argument of, 203 mathematical argument in, 201–2 peras in, 208, 216 reconstructing logos in, 203–9 summixis in, 208 –9, 216 theme of, 199, 200, 202, 206 Philodemus, 168 Philolaus, 34 philosophy goal of, 275 meanings of, 283– 84, 284 n. 9 as virtuous life, 180 – 81 piety, pious, 59 in Apology, 129, 131, 132 n. 51, 134 n. 54, 135, 138 in Euthyphro, 53–57, 82 – 83, 93–94, 116 –17 n. 7, 141– 42, 184, 228 Pindar, 31 n. 16, 33 n. 19 Plato. See also dialogues, of Plato aim of philosophy of, 196 Anglo-American interpretation of, 200 n. 2 development in thought of, 220, 221–22, 226 –27 and immortality of soul, 220, 221, 223 pedagogical aim of, 229 pleasure, 35, 80, 203, 204, 206, 210 –11 Plutarch, 133 n. 51 Poetics, 184 poets, 51–52, 256 Polansky, R., 3, 146 – 47, 152, 153, 154 Polemarchus, 53, 55 n. 40 political art, 174, 175 polu-, meaning in Parmenides, 33–34 Polus, 53, 68, 69, 75, 76 –77, 99, 153, 187 Polybius, 50 Press, G., 218, 281, 286, 286 n. 16, 297 Priamel, 47, 48 n. 28 productive arts, 173, 177 Protagoras, 68, 92 –93, 95, 148 Protagoras, 220 compounds of elenchein in, 66 elenchein in, 64 exetasis in, 72

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exetazein and cognates in, 70 refutational elenchos in, 26 theme of expert in, 73 Protarchus, 199, 204, 213, 214 protrepein, 162 protreptic, 162, 196 in Apology of Socrates, 165 – 67, 165 – 66 n. 7, 167 n. 11, 172 in Euthydemus, 167 n. 11, 172 –75, 176, 177 in Hippias Major, 167 n. 11 prudence, 72 psuche¯ (soul), 286, 287, 288 –91, 289 n. 21, 290 n. 25 psychagogia, 187, 191, 192, 193, 196, 197, 198 psychotherapeutic, elenchos as, 286 Pythagoras, 30 Pythia. See Delphic oracle question-and-answer method, 1, 4, 124 –25 n. 31 question-begging argument, 103 quietness, 254 Reeve, C. D. C., 132 n. 51 refutation, 5 n. 7, 21, 26, 35, 89, 129, 186 ad hominem, 107 n. 17, 139, 152 –53, 190, 196 as decisive, 90 in Euthydemus, 92 as illustration, 97 as impersonal, 84 through myth, 53–55 universality of, 90 –91 varieties of, 90, 95, 99 –100 Renaud, F., 227, 228 –29 Republic, 164, 169, 170 n. 19, 220, 284, 293 aporia in, 169 –79 elenchos in, 27–28, 35 exetasis in, 72 exetazein and cognates in, 71 justice in, 258 paideia in, 284 -teon verbals in, 76 n. 14 Republic i, 53, 55 n. 40, 170 n. 19 doxastic constraint in, 148 forensic style in, 41 justice/injustice in, 98 –99 refutation in, 92

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Republic ix, serial review in, 80 Robinson, R., 2, 62, 186 Ross, W. D., 218 Schmid, W. T., 286 sciences, 176, 272, 293 seduction, 188 – 89 self-care. See care of self self-control. See so¯phrosune¯ self-determination, 236, 247 self-discovery, 192 self-evaluation, 245, 279 self-examination, 118, 122, 244, 248 self-expression, 236 self-knowledge, 128, 236, 238, 244, 245, 247, 249, 260, 287, 296. See also knowledge; so¯phrosyne¯ self-reflection, 294 self-understanding, 236, 240 serial review, 2, 34, 79 – 80 shame, 8, 21, 22, 23, 23 n. 6, 24 –25, 28, 77, 79, 92, 195, 195 n. 42, 254 Simplicius, 29 n. 11, 30 n. 12 Slings, S., 44, 161– 62 n. 1, 165 –166 n. 7, 167 n. 11, 171, 178 n. 27 Smith, N. D., 5 n. 6, 108, 167 n. 11, 169 n.

17, 186 – 87, 229 –30, 231 Smyth, H. W., 32 n. 17 Socrates. See also Apology of Socrates beliefs and, 246, 273, 275 –76, 277–79 consistency in technique of, 277 on courage, 170 n. 18 daimonion of, 118 n. 10, 139 declaration of own ignorance by, 224 divine mission of, 115 –19, 119 n. 12 duty to philosophize of, 116 –17, 127, 138 n. 62, 140 – 41 n. 69 elenctic interpretation of oracular pronouncement, 122 –33 intellectuality of, 179 n. 29 as moral thinker, 93–94 philosophical activity after oracular pronouncement, 133– 44 pre-Delphi intellectual activity of, 118, 120 –22 reasons to practice philosophy, 275 self-examination by, 118, 248 self-sufficiency of, 242 n. 14 utopian dream of, 243 as youth, 121 n. 21

Socratic cross-examination and belief, 267– 68 purposes of, 89, 152 –54 variety in, 90, 155, 187 Socratic ethics, 245 – 46 Socratic ignorance, 197–98, 224 Socratic interrogation. See also exetasis and forensic practice, 40 – 41, 81 recent interest in, 62 – 63 Socratic irony, 43 Socratic method, controversy over definition of, 1–2 Socratic refutation as not personal, 45 variety in, 90 Sophist, 86, 198, 238, 239, 250 elenchus as humbling in, 193–94 exetasis in, 72 exetazein and cognates in, 71 pretense to knowledge in, 191–92 Sophists, 164, 201, 214, 219, 256, 284 so¯phrosune¯, 243, 249, 251, 268 –71, 273, 286, 286 n. 16, 287, 288 – 89, 290, 291–94, 295 –97 so¯phrosyne¯, 72, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 260 – 61, 262 – 63, 265. See also knowledge; self-knowledge Statesman, 220 Stokes, M. C., 117–18 nn. 9, 11, 133 n. 51, 139 n. 65 Strauss, L., 217 strong relevance theory, 228, 229 summixis, in Philebus, 206, 208 –9, 216 Suppliant Maidens, 25 Symposium, 66, 167 n. 11, 244 Tarrant, H., 84 – 86, 108 techne¯, 6, 163, 164, 175, 176, 178 –79, 178 –79 n. 28, 294 –96 tekme¯rion, 53–55, 53 n. 37, 54 n. 38, 55 n.

39, 56 n. 41, 59 -teon, 76 n. 14, 85 Theaetetus, 239 Theaetetus aporia in, 220 elenchos in, 35 exetasis in, 72 exetazein and cognates in, 70, 71 maieutics in, 192 Theages, 52 –53

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Theages, 52 –53 Theocritus, 31 n. 16 Theoprastus, 168 therapeutic tendance, 142 Thrasymachus, 41, 68, 85, 92, 98 –99, 148, 162, 164 Thucydides, 44 n. 17, 118 n. 10, 288 Timaeus, 71, 231 to elenchos, 24 topical reasoning, 205, 207 topos, topoi, 201, 202, 203, 204 truth, 73–74, 106 –11, 135, 149, 196 Tuckey, T. G., 258 –59 unexamined life, 155, 225 unitarianism, 220 –21 universal, universals, 53 n. 37, 55 n. 40 ur-elenchos, 120 Varro, 168 verbals, 76 n. 14, 85 virtue, 131–32 n. 49, 165, 223, 224, 227, 267 n. 5 in Apology, 128, 129 Aristotle on, 225 in Charmides, 240 – 41 defining, 55 –56, 92, 93–94 self-conceit of, 238 teachability of, 92 –93

327

Vlastos, G., 2 –3, 5 n. 5, 62 – 63, 68, 101–2, 104, 105, 108, 145 – 46, 153, 155 –56, 237, 266, 273–74, 279 criticism of, 3, 4 definition of elenchos, 186, 187 on distinguishing Socratic/Platonic doctrine, 219 on elenchos as constructive, 169 on elenchos in Lysis, 187 on elenchos/maieutics, 192 on moral truth, 169 n. 17 on purpose of elenchus, 63 Whittle, E., 25 wisdom, 124 n. 28, 127, 131, 134, 173, 176, 238 antihubristic wisdom, 132, 132 n. 51, 133 divine, 119 n. 16, 126 n. 34, 127, 132 –33 n. 51, 135 human, 126, 126 n. 34, 127, 132 n. 51, 133, 135, 137, 140 witness, 51, 52 –53, 68 Woodruff, P., 5 n. 7 Xenophon, 1, 38, 42, 43, 45, 50, 68, 74, 122 –23 n. 25, 179 n. 29, 219 Zalmoxis, 289 Zeus, 53, 53 n. 37, 54, 55 n. 39, 82 – 83

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