The Socratic Elenchus Method Is All
The Socratic Elenchus Method Is All
The Socratic Elenchus Method Is All
METHOD IS ALL1
An earlier draft of this essay was delivered as one of a series of lectures on "The Philosophy
of Socrates" at the University of St. Andrews in the Winter and Spring Terms of 1981. Duly
revised, it appeared under the title "The Socratic Elenchus," in Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 1 (1983), 27-58 and 71-4.
On the chronological order of Plato's dialogues see additional note 1.1.
"Our customary method" (R. x, 596A5-7). This is the method of "investigating from a
hypothesis" (££ OTTOOKTECOS crKOTTEicrOai) borrowed from the mathematicians (Meno 86E-87B)
- a hypothesis whose standard content for Plato, in the middle dialogues, is the existence of
(Platonic) Forms (Phaedo 99D4-100B7), thus predicating the search for "What the F i s " on
the epistemological implications of this grand metaphysical "hypothesis": see Socrates, 63-4,
beginning with the comment on texts quoted there as TIO, TI I, T12, T13.
R. iv, 435D, where the "method" followed in the tripartite analysis of the structure of the
soul is said to be a makeshift for the "longer route" which would have been ideally desirable
(investigation of the Form of the soul).
ue0o8os, used often in dialogues of the middle and later periods, is a new word, created by
Plato in his middle period: its first occurrences in preserved Greek are in the Phaedo (79E3,
97B6). Since in his earlier and middle dialogues Plato writes pure Greek, seldom indulging
in idiolect, this neologism is itself an expression of his newfound interest in method. It is an
important terminological coinage, strangely overlooked in Lewis Campbell's discussion of
Plato's "technicalities" (1867: xxiv ff.).
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2 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
no name for it. eAeyxos and the parent verb eAeyxeiv ("to refute,"
"to examine critically," "to censure"),6 he uses to describe,7 not
to baptize, what he does. Only in modern times8 has elenchus become
a proper name. The "What is the F?" question which Socrates
pursues elenctically about other things he never poses about the
elenchus, leaving us only his practice to guide us when we try to
answer it for ourselves. Lacking his definition of it, ours can only
be a hypothesis - a guess. And we may guess wrong.
I guessed wrong thirty-five years ago in the account of the elenchus
I put into my Introduction to Plato's Protagoras9 and so have others
before or since. Here is the account in the article on "Dialectic" by
Roland Hall in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967):
The Socratic elenchus was perhaps a refined form of the Zenonian paradoxes,
a prolonged cross-examination which refutes the opponent's original thesis
by getting him to draw from it, by means of a series of questions and answers,
a consequence that contradicts it.
This comes close, but still not close enough. Obviously wrong is the
suggestion that Socrates gets the opponent "to draw" that conse-
quence. It is Socrates who draws it; the opponent has to be carried
to it kicking and screaming. More objectionable is the assimilation
of the elenchus to Zeno's dialectic, from which it differs in a funda-
mental respect. The refutands in Zeno's paradoxes are unasserted
counterfactuals:
If there are many things, they must be both infinitely many and
finitely many.
If there is motion, then the swiftest cannot overtake the slowest:
Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise.
6
The reader should bear in mind that the same terms are used by Plato in the middle
dialogues (as e.g. at R. vn, 534c 1-3) to refer to his own method, which is as different from
that of Socrates as is the Platonic Form from the Socratic form, satisfying radically different
categorial criteria (detailed in Socrates, ch. 2, section in). Throughout this essay I shall use
"elenchus" exclusively as an abbreviation for "the Socratic elenchus."
7
And this in great profusion. Dozens of uses of the noun and the verb in Plato, a majority of
them in the earlier dialogues, as a look at Brandwood's Word Index (1976) will show.
8
Perhaps no earlier than in George Grote, 1865, and Lewis Campbell, 1867, and then again
in Henry Sidgwick, 1872, no doubt under the influence of Grote and Campbell, to whose
work he refers.
9
Vlastos, 1956. As I indicated in the Introduction to Socrates, I have revised some of the views
I express there. Its most serious error is its misinterpretation of the elenchus and, conse-
quently, of Socrates' profession of ignorance.
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 3
Socrates, on the other hand, as we shall see, will not debate un-
asserted premises - only those asserted categorically by his interlocu-
tor, who is not allowed to answer "contrary to his real opinion."
A third mistake is the suggestion that the consequence which
contradicts the thesis is drawn from that thesis. This notion is an
invention of Richard Robinson. He had maintained that Plato "ha-
bitually thought and wrote as if all elenchus consisted in reducing
the thesis to a self-contradiction."10 If that were true, Socrates' pro-
cedure would have been as follows: when the answerer asserts /?,
Socrates would derive not-p either directly from p or else by deriving
from p further premises which entail not-p - in either case deducing
the negation of/? from/? "without the aid of extra premisses."11 The
trouble with this picture is that what it pictures is not in our texts.12
There are some 39 elenctic arguments by Robinson's count (op. cit.y
24) in Plato's earlier dialogues. Not one of them exhibits the pattern.
The premises from which Socrates derives not-p generally do not
include/? and even when they do, there are others in the premise-set
elicited from the interlocutor, not deducible from p.
If Socrates had thought he proved what, according to Robinson,
Plato "habitually wrote and thought" as if he did, Socrates would
have believed he was producing the strongest possible proof of the
falsehood of/?: there can be no stronger proof of the falsehood of a
thesis than to show that it entails its own negation. What Socrates in
fact does in any given elenchus is to convict p of being a member of
an inconsistent premise-set; and to do this is not to show that p is
false but only that either/? is false or that some or all of the premises
are false. The question then becomes how Socrates can claim, as I
shall be arguing he does claim in "standard elenchus,"13 to have
proved that the refutand is false, when all he has established is its
inconsistency with premises whose truth he has not tried to establish
in that argument: they have entered the argument simply as propo-
sitions on which he and the interlocutor are agreed. This is the
10
Robinson, 1953: 28. In spite of this and other mistakes, this is an admirable book. It served
me as a model in my earlier Platonic studies. See the tribute to it in my review of Cherniss'
Collected Papers (Vlastos, 1978: 538), and in Socrates, Introduction, n. 55.
11
Robinson, loc. cit.
12
As pointed out by Friedlander and Cherniss at the time: for the references see my review of
Cherniss cited in n. 10.
13
This term will be explained in section in below.
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4 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 5
What is he searching for? For truth, certainly, but not for every
sort of truth - only for truth in the moral domain. If we wanted to
know what is the wholesale price of olive-oil on the Peiraeus market,
Socrates would not propose that elenctic argument is the way to find
out. Nor yet for, say,
17
See my discussion of this point in Socrates, ch. 4, n. 54.
18
Pkd. 85c.
19
The method of discovery in the interrogation of the slave-boy is not elenctic but maieutic,
though the midwife metaphor is not used here, as it is not in any dialogue prior to the
Theaetetus. Socrates sees the boy as getting the answer "not by learning it from me"
(82B), but by "himself recovering knowledge from himself" (85D), which is what Socrates
says of his interlocutors in the Tht.: "they have learned nothing from me but have them-
selves discovered for themselves" the sought-for truth (150D6-7). I agree with Burn-
yeat, 1977a, that the midwife metaphor is a Platonic invention: his argument for this thesis
I find conclusive. I also agree that midwifery and recollection are distinct metaphors which
should not be conflated. Even so, they have in common the fundamental notion, expressed
in each of the two texts I have cited, that the true propositions discovered in the interroga-
tion do not come from Socrates but from the interlocutor ("recollected" by him in the Meno,
"brought forth" by him in the Tht.) - a notion which is not expressed in any of the earlier
dialogues.
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6 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
20
La. 191C-192B; Eu. 5D, 6D-E, I I A 6 - B I ; HMa. 287cff; M. 72A6ff. (Though this last passage
occurs in a transitional dialogue, its place in that dialogue antecedes the introduction of the
theory of recollection; paralleling closely the specifications which a correct definition must
meet in the Eu. - cf. M. 72C6-DI with Eu. 6DO,-E6 - M. 72A6ff. is, clearly, a faithful
reproduction of the definitional doctrine of the earlier dialogues.)
21
191E11: f\ oOmo KcnrauavOdvEis 6 Aeyco; Same question in M. 72D1: f\ oO uocvOdveis OTI
Agyco;
22
Thus when Hippias says "there is no difference" between (a) "What is the beautiful?" and
(b) "What is beautiful?" he is not represented as propounding an erroneous view which
calls for refutation, but as exhibiting pitiful incapacity to understand the very meaning of
those questions. Choosing to ignore Hippias' statement that there is no difference between
(a) and (b), Socrates insists that it is (a) that should be answered (HMa. 287D-E).
23
Thus when the interlocutors run into contradiction Socrates never feels that he has to argue
that they have suffered logical disaster. The principle of non-contradiction is never so much
as stated in the earlier dialogues (as it is in the middle ones: R. iv, 436E-437A), to say
nothing of its being defended or justified.
24
F o r t h e view that t h e conditions of a successful definition a r e n o t themselves subject to
elenctic argument I am indebted directly to Paul Woodruff. See his remarks on the
dependence of "definition-testing arguments" on "key premises supplied by Socrates"
which "govern the form and content a definition must have to be acceptable"; on this
matter Socrates acts as "an authority" (1982: 137-8).
25
But in expounding Socratic doctrine he uses dpeTT) to mean "moral virtue": see m y discus-
sion of this i m p o r t a n t point in the opening p a r a g r a p h of ch. 8 in Socrates.
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 7
T6 G. 472C-D: "For the things we are disputing are hardly trivial but, as one
might say, those which to come to know is noblest and not to know most base.
For their sum and substance is just this: knowing, or not knowing, who is happy
and who is not."
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8 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
TO, G. 500B: "By the god of friendship, Callicles, don't think that you can
play games with me and answer whatever comes to your head, contrary to your
real opinion (irapa TOC 5OKO0VTCC)."26
TIO R. 1, 346A: "My good man, don't answer contrary to your real opinion,
so we may get somewhere."
TI 1 Cr. 49C-D: "If you agree with these things, Crito, watch out lest you are
doing so contrary to your real opinion . . . "
26
Cf. also what he had said to Callicles earlier at 495A, and also what he says to the sophist
at Eud. 286D: "Dionysodorus, are you saying this for the sake of talking - to say something
outrageous - or do you really believe that no human being is ignorant?"
27
E.g. E u c l i d , Elements 1. 14.
28
D.L. 9.25 and 29.
29
Cf. the description of eristic sophia: "prowess in verbal contest and in the refutation of
whatever is said, regardless of whether it is false or true" {Eud. 272A-B).
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 9
for truth, one does not have that option. One must say what one
believes, even if it will lose one the debate.30
Second, to test one's seriousness in the pursuit of truth.31 Seri-
ousness can be feigned. One can put on a solemn face, a grave voice,
shamming an earnestness one does not feel. But if one puts oneself on
record as saying what one believes, one has given one's opinion the
weight of one's life. Since people consider their opinions more ex-
pendable than their life, Socrates wants them to tie their opinions to
their life as a pledge that what they say is what they mean.
A further reason comes from that other dimension of the elenchus
to which I have made no allusion so far. It is highlighted in the
Apology where Socrates' "search" is, at the same time, a challenge to
his fellows to change their life, to cease caring for money and reputa-
tion and not caring for the most precious thing of all - what one is:
T13 Ap. 29E-30A: "And if one of you says ... he does care, I will not let him
go nor leave him, but will question and examine and refute him. And if he
seems to me not to have the virtue he says he has, I shall reproach him for
undervaluing the things of greatest value and overvaluing trivial ones."
Socrates is not always so inquisitorial and censorious. But those who
know him best understand that the elenchus does have this existen-
tial dimension - that what it examines is not just propositions but
lives. Says Nicias, an old acquaintance of Socrates, to Lysimachus, a
new one:
T14 La. 187E-188A: "I don't think you realize that he who comes closest to
Socrates in discussion, even if he should start discussing something else, will
not cease being carried round and round in argument until he falls into giving
an account of his own self- of the way he lives now and has lived in the past.
And when he does, Socrates will not let him go until he has done a thorough
job of sifting him."
Socrates says to Gorgias "I am one of those who would gladly be refuted if what I say is not
true," adding that if Gorgias does not share that sentiment further debate would be
pointless (458A-B).
Note the connection Socrates sees between "saying what you believe" and seriousness in
argument at T9 above, which continues: "Nor must you think of me as playing games. For
you see what the argument is all about - and is there anything about which even a man
of little sense could be more serious than this: what is the way we ought to live?" (G.
500B-C; cf. T4 above). The same connection of the rule with seriousness in argument is
made at R. 1, 349A, and is implied in the question to Dionysodorus quoted in n. 26 above.
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io The Socratic elenchus: method is all
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 11
to save face by handing over his part to that faceless surrogate, "the
many." For the same reason Socrates lets this happen again, and on
a bigger scale, later in the dialogue, where he directs his argument
for the impossibility of akrasia to the same notional answerer, "the
many," dragging along Protagoras as a make-believe ally (352Eff.).
At the end of that debate we see that Socrates takes the consequence
to be that, given Protagoras' subsequent admissions (crucially the
ones at 358 A5-6, B3-5), he has been "examined" after all, com-
pelled to confess that his thesis - not just that of "the many" - has
been shown to be "impossible" (360E).
II
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12 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
34
Op. cit. 22ff. I n "indirect elenchus" the falsehood of/> is demonstrated by assuming its truth
alongside that of q and r and arguing that, since the premise-set {/>, q, r) is inconsistent
and the interlocutor stands by the truth of q & r, he must infer that/> is false. So in point o f
logic there is n o substantial difference from standard elenchus. As Polansky suggested
(1985: n. 3) m y treatment of indirect elenchus was wrongly dismissive of it in the 1983 ver-
sion of this paper. (I a m accepting Polansky's point that at R. 1, 349D "indirect elenchus"
is used.)
35
H e counts 31 indirect elenchi in nine dialogues (p. 24). But it is hard to know what to make
of this figure because he does not give the references from which it could be checked. In any
case he fails to recognize h o w many of Socrates positive doctrines are established by
standard elenchus a n d h o w different is the relative weight placed o n it. Thus in the
argument against Polemarchus (R. 1, 33iEff.) indirect elenchus is used to rough him u p
(333D, 334A-B) without reaching any positive result, merely discrediting the ultra-respect-
able definition Polemarchus defends, keeping standard elenchus in reserve until it is needed
to establish the powerful Socratic thesis that the just m a n will not harm his enemies
(335B-C). Similarly, Euthyphro's first definition is attacked by indirect elenchus ( 6 E -
8 A ) and standard elenchus is then brought in to prove the doctrine, so fundamental for
Socrates' rational theology, that pious action is god-loved because it is pious, not vice versa
(9D-11A).
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 13
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14 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
thesis." This is surely false. T h u s in the G. in each of Socrates' arguments against Gorgias,
Polus, and Callicles the contradictory of their thesis is a paradox - not at all likely to strike
the sponsor of the refutand as "obviously true," no matter h o w it is presented to him. T h u s
in the second argument against Polus the contradictory of Polus' thesis is that it is better to
suffer injustice than to c o m m i t it and better to submit to deserved punishment than to
escape it; after Socrates has "proved" this {G. 479E8), its immediate consequences continue
to strike Polus as "outrageous" (orroTra, 480E1).
40
For Socrates' rejection of the appeal to c o m m o n opinion see also La. 184E, Cr. 4 6 D - 4 7 D .
41
6id TWV lidXidTa ouoAoyouuevcov. T h e r e is n o completely satisfactory translation o f this
phrase. But I would agree with D o n a l d Morrison, 1987: 15, that m y previous rendering o f
it as "the most generally accepted opinions" is too weak, the literal meaning being "the
things above all assented to," udAiaTa conveying "intensity as well as frequency."
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 15
42
The "pious man" is defined as he who honours the gods in conformity to the customary
usages (T& VOUIUOC, Mem. 4.6.4).
43
Cf. Socrates, additional note 6.4, "Xenophon on sacrifice."
44
Cf. Socrates, ch. 7, "Socrates' rejection of retaliation" and additional note 7.1, "Plato vs.
Xenophon on Socrates' rejection of retaliation,"
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16 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
that "reputable beliefs" constitute the court of last appeal for settl-
ing moral disagreement.45 For so bold an innovator in ethics to
concede this principle to his opponents would have been disastrous.
It would have offered them a short way of refuting those of his
ethical views which went flat against traditional moral sentiment.
No belief would count as more reputable in current opinion - and
would continue to hold this status for centuries to come in Greco-
Roman antiquity - than the one which puts doing evil to enemies on
a par with doing good to friends and sanctifies retaliation as a
principle of justice. Those Socratic views which strike Callicles as
"turning our human life upside down" (G. 481c) would not have
had a leg to stand on if appeal to what Aristotle calls "reputable
beliefs" and Xenophon "most strongly held opinions" were accepted
as foundational in moral inquiry.
So the conflict between Plato's testimony and Xenophon's is un-
negotiable, and the gravest fault in Zeller, great historian though
he was, is that he sided with Xenophon's instead of Plato's ac-
count of this fundamental matter. Declaring that "the peculiarity"
of Socrates' method was "deducing conceptions from the common
opinions of men,"46 Zeller misses completely what Plato recognizes
as the peculiarity of Socrates' method: getting results not by ap-
pealing "to the common opinions of men" but by deducing the
refutans of the interlocutors' theses from their own beliefs.*7 Zeller
thereby bequeathed to the historians who followed him - most re-
cently Guthrie48 - an account of Socrates' method of argument
which is fatal to the elenchus. And so we see in Zeller,49 and now
45
In 1983: 43, n. 41 I claimed that Socrates requires some non-endoxic premises to reach
contra-endoxic conclusions. Various critics have objected (Kraut, 1983; Polansky, 1985;
Morrison, 1987). They have given me good reason to renounce my former claim, but none
to convince me of its contrary. So far as I can see now, the point is undecidable on the
textual evidence and anyhow, my former claim is dispensable: I have dispensed with
it entirely in expounding the Socratic view in the text above.
46
Op. cit. 121, citing (at 122, n. 1) Mem. 4.6.15 (cited above as T I 8 ) .
47
And Zeller fails to recognize that on this point Aristotle implicitly supports Plato against
Xenophon, since for Aristotle the reason why Socrates "asked questions, but did not answer
them" is that "he confessed he had no knowledge" (Soph. El. i83b7~8): one who professes
to have no knowledge and cannot argue cos elScbs (ibid. b3) would have no option but em-
ploy what Aristotle calls "peirastic" argument in which one argues "from the answerer's
own beliefs" (IK TCOV 5OKOUVTCOV TW drroKpivouevcp, ibid. 165D4-5).
48
Guthrie, 1969 and 1975.
49
No discussion of the elenchus in Zeller, op. cit. ch. 6 ("The philosophical method of So-
crates"). None in Guthrie either (see next note).
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all i7
Ill
50
W h i c h is all the more surprising in that he, unlike Zeller, takes Plato to b e "the chief, and
Xenophon only an auxiliary, source of our knowledge of Socrates as a philosopher" (1969:
35O):
51
My interpretation of standard elenchus, taken as a whole, and applied rigorously, con-
ceived as the onlyfinalsupport Socrates offers his moral doctrines, has no clear precedent in
the scholarly literature, to my knowledge. Its affinities are with views like those of Gulley,
1968: 37rT., and Irwin, 1977: 37ff., and 1979, who also recognize that the elenchus has
positive, no less than negative, thrust, aiming to give argumentative support to Socrates'
affirmative views. My difference from Gulley was indicated in n. 39 above. As for Irwin,
who does understand that in Plato, unlike Xenophon, "the elenchus was Socrates' method
of securing agreement" (1974: 412), residual difference arises over his view (1977: 37) that
"not all [of Socrates'] positive doctrines rely on the elenchus; some rely on the analogy
between virtue and craft." I see no sound reason for putting this analogy outside the
elenchus: all of the arguments which draw conclusions from that analogy are pure elenctic
arguments. A further disagreement arises over alleged constraints which, according to
Irwin, Socrates "normally" imposes on what the interlocutor can or can't say: "normally
[the interlocutor] is not allowed this freedom [sc. to reject counter-examples which refute
his proposed definition]" (1977: 39). On my understanding of the elenchus Socrates always
allows - indeed requires - his interlocutors to say anything they believe, if they believe it
(T9, TIO, TI 1, T12 above).
52
Pace Lewis C a m p b e l l {op. cit., 191) a n d others: see Cornford, 1935: 1 7 7 - 8 2 .
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18 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
53
The identification with Socrates is clinched in the back-reference to the passage in 268B-C:
"we set him down as having no knowledge." So too in Alcibiades' speech in the Symposium
we know that the subject of his tale is the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues when we see
him described as "ignorant and knowing nothing" (216D).
54
See especially 1865: 1 236-77 and 28 iff.; and his remarks on the elenchus in A History of
Greece, part 11, ch. 68 (vol. ix, p. 85 in the Everyman edn.).
55
"The negative cross-examination, and the affirmative dogmatism, are . . . two unconnected
operations of thought: the one does not lead to, or involve, or verify, the other" (Grote,
1865:1292).
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 19
Here Socrates says in so many words that he has done what Grote
and I had maintained he never did in an elenctic argument: "proved"
his thesis "true." Grote had certainly gone over that sentence many
times, and so had I, and so had scores of others. But it had not hit
anyone between the eyes.58 Let us see what it means when read in its
own context.
The argument starts half a dozen Stephanus pages back, where
Socrates presses the question: if one were forced to choose between
inflicting injustice on another person and suffering it oneself, which
would be one's better choice? Polus takes the first option. His thesis
is
p To commit injustice is better than to suffer it.
Socrates defends what he takes to be the logical contradictory,
not-p To suffer injustice is better than to commit it.
Attacking in standard elenctic fashion, he gets Polus to agree to a
flock of further premises, only one of which need be recalled here:
q To commit injustice is baser (ouaxiov) than to suffer it,
while all the rest can be bundled up in a single gather-all conjunct
56
The clearest and sharpest objection was raised by Dodds, 1959: 16 and n. 2. See also
Gulley, op. cit., 68ff.
57
But by no means the only one. There are many others from which the same objection to
Grote could be made (e.g., TI 7 above, and T20, T2I below). But this is the most striking and
flat-footed one, leaving no room for cavil.
58
There is no comment on it in Dodds' or Irwin's commentary and no reference to it in
Gulley, though it should have been a star text for all three.
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20 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
r, whose contents need not concern us.59 Socrates argues, and Polus
agrees, that q and r entail not-p. On the strength of this result Socrates
feels empowered to tell Polus, in the words I just quoted, that his
own thesis, not-p, has been proved true.60
Why had Socrates' plain words in T19 been ignored? Why had I
ignored them myself? Because I had scaled them down, even while
reading them, discounting them as a careless overstatement. I would
not have done so if I had noticed that it is not only here, in the last
gasps of the debate with Polus, that Socrates says he can prove not-p
true: he makes the same claim in different words several pages back,
near the start of the debate. Recall what he had told Polus in T17
above: "If I cannot produce one man, yourself, to witness to my
assertions, I believe that I shall have accomplished nothing..."
Conceding that "almost all men, Athenians and foreigners, would
agree with you" (472A), he had declared,
T20 G. 472B: "But I, a single man, do not agree, for you do not compel me,
but produce a multitude of false witnesses against me, trying to drive me out
from my property, the truth (EK TI^S oucrias KCCI
How do you "compel" your adversary to affirm what he denies?
In an argument your only means of compulsion are logical.61 So to
"compel" Polus to "witness" for not-p Socrates would have to give
Polus a logically compelling proof that/? is false. Thus already at 472B,
seven Stephanus pages before asserting, at Tig above, that he has
"proved" his thesis true, Socrates is announcing that this is exactly
what he is going to do. Thus pace Grote, ex-Vlastos, and who knows
how many others, there can be no question but that this long argu-
ment, elenchus in its standard form, which in point of logic has
done no more than demonstrate inconsistency within the premise-set
59
For an analysis of the argument see Socrates, ch. 5, section HI.
60
Socrates' other two descriptions of the result (G. 479.c4.-7, 480B2-5) go no further than
pointing out the demonstrated inconsistency between Polus' thesis and the premises to
which he has agreed. But neither does he say anything to withdraw or weaken the claim he
makes in T19. (The reader should bear in mind that throughout this chapter I set aside all
questions relating to the logical validity of the reasoning by which Socrates undertakes to
refute his opponent's thesis in specific elenchi. For this whole aspect of Socratic dialectic I
may refer to Santas, 1979, with whose detailed analyses of Socratic arguments I find myself
in substantial agreement.)
61
To coercion of this sort there can be, surely, no objection. If your opponent concedes the
truth of your premises and the validity of the inferences you draw from them, then, if he
wants to be rational, he has no option but to accept the conclusion.
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 21
{/>, q, r}, Socrates takes to prove that/? is false, not-p true. And in one
of his asides we see him claiming that he can do the same against all
comers:
T21 G. 474A5-6: "But I know how to produce one witness to my assertions:
the man against whom I am arguing."
The claim he is making is perfectly general: whenever he is arguing
elenctically against a thesis Socrates "knows" how to make the op-
ponent "witness" to its contradictory, i.e. make him admit that the
thesis is false. Conversely, he maintains that it is "impossible" for the
opponent to do the same thing to him. When Polus taunts him,
saying ironically it would be "more difficult" to refute the Socratic
thesis, Socrates retorts,
T22 G. 473B10-11: "Not just difficult, Polus, but impossible: for what is true
is never refuted."
This brings us smack up against what I had called earlier on "the
problem of the elenchus": how is it that Socrates claims to have
proved a thesis false when, in point of logic, all he has proved is that
the thesis is inconsistent with the conjunction of agreed-upon prem-
ises for which no reason has been given in that argument? Could he
be blind to the fact that logic does not warrant that claim? Let me
frame the question in the terms of the metaphor that runs through
the passage: compelling a witness to testify against himself. Suppose
the following were to happen: a witness gives testimony/? on his own
initiative and then, under prodding from the prosecuting attorney,
concedes q and r, whereupon the attorney points out to him that q
and r entail not-p, and the witness agrees that they do. Has he then
been compelled to testify that/? is false? He has not. Confronted with
the conflict in his testimony, it is still up to him to decide which of
the conflicting statements he wants to retract. So Polus, if he had
had his wits about him, might have retorted:
I see the inconsistency in what I have conceded, and I must do something to
clean up the mess. But I don't have to do it your way. I don't have to concede
that p is false. I have other options. For example, I could decide that p is true
and q false. Nothing you have proved denies me this alternative.
And why shouldn't Polus in that crunch decide to throw q instead
of/? to the lions? How strongly he believes in/? we have already seen:
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22 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
62
Above T 16.
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 23
63
The terminology was suggested to me by David Gauthier. Alternatively, we might speak of
"explicit" and "tacit" belief.
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24 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 25
65
That is why I ignored it in my account of standard elenchus at the start of section n above.
It should be ignored in the analysis of the logical structure of any given elenctic argument:
[A] is not a premise in any elenctic argument, nor does Socrates suggest that it is. The
remarks from which I have teased it out are obiter dicta. The interlocutor would be perfectly
justified if he ignored them as pure Socratic bluster: he has been given no reason why he
should think them true. That is why [A] has been brought in only to explain why Socrates
himself believes that to prove the inconsistency of the thesis with the agreed-upon premises is
ipso facto to prove that, if the thesis is false, no one can affirm it without generating
contradiction within his own system of belief, and in this way to "prove" the thesis false
(T19 above).
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26 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
assumes he has the right method to search for moral truth, but
never attempts to justify the assumption. A fortiori he never attempts
to justify the assumption on which the constructive efficacy of the
method is predicated. This is not to say that the assumption is
arbitrary. He does have this much reason for [A]: every time he
tangles with people who defend a thesis he considers false and he
looks for premises among their own beliefs from which he can derive
its negation, the needed premises are in place - they are always
where they ought to be if [A] is true. So he has this purely inductive
evidence for a part of [A] - for all of it except the claim in [A] that
the beliefs from which he deduces the negation of his interlocutors'
theses are true.66 For this he would have to fall back on nothing
better than the pragmatic value of those beliefs: they articulate
intuitions which prove practically viable in his own experience; they
tell him who is happy and who isn't; he does what they tell him and
he is happy.67
Here we come within sight of the solution of "the problem of the
elenchus." To reach it we should note that from assumption [A]
Socrates could infer securely that any set of moral beliefs which was
internally consistent would contain exclusively true beliefs: for if it
contained even a single false belief, then, given [A], it would have to
contain beliefs entailing the negation of that false belief. Let us then
look at part [a] of T24. What can Socrates mean by telling Callicles
that what he had heard from Socrates in his argument against Polus
had been spoken by "philosophy," setting himself up, so very arro-
gantly it seems, as mouthpiece of the very process by which moral
truth is reached? The things Callicles is said to have heard from
"philosophy" are the theses Socrates has defended against Polus and
stands ready to defend against everyone else. The salient feature of
those assertions of his which he exalts by saying that they were
spoken by "philosophy" is their mutual consistency: his love, philos-
ophy, he says "always says the same thing"; by implication, so does
66
At this point I am much indebted to helpful criticism from Brickhouse and Smith (1984:
187-92). They convinced me that the contrary view I had expressed in the earlier version
of this paper was wrong, and I withdrew it in my next publication (1985: 18-19 = ch. 2,
PP-5 6 "7)-
67
Cf. Socrates, "Epilogue: Felix Socrates."
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The Socratic elenchus: method is all 27
68
No one should be misled by his retrospective remark (527D), "we never think the same
about the same things." As Dodds, 1959, remarks adloc, "this reproach applies of course to
Callicles only . . . , but Socrates politely includes himself." For similarly ironical substitu-
tion of "we" for "you" see Eu. 1508-9, "Either we were wrong when we agreed before or,
if we were right then, we are wrong now" (as the context shows "we" in its last occurrence
refers exclusively to Euthyphro); Ch. 175B6-7, "We have admitted that there is knowledge
of knowledge although the argument said 'No'" (it was only Critias who had argued for
"knowledge of knowledge": Socrates had argued "No"); La. 194c, "Come, Nicias, rescue, if
you can, your friends storm-tossed in the argument" (only Laches had been "storm-
tossed"; Socrates, sailing very smoothly, had done the rebutting). The irony at G. 527D
should be transparent: Callicles had been convicted of numerous inconsistencies, Socrates
of not even one. Kraut, 1983: 69, missing its irony, takes this text to be "as clear a
confession of inconsistency as we could want." (Alternatively, Socrates may use "we" when
" I " is unambiguously what he means, as at Eu. 6B: "we who ourselves agree that we know
nothing of such things [strife among the gods]." Euthyphro had agreed to nothing of the
kind; he knows altogether too much about them: 5E-6A).
69
The consistency of the set is being inferred from its track-record in Socrates' own experi-
ence: in all of the elenctic arguments in which he has engaged he has never been faulted for
inconsistency. This is a very chancy inference, for the results of elenctic argument are
powerfully affected by the argumentative skill of the contestants; since that of Socrates
vastly exceeds that of his interlocutors, he is more effective in rinding beliefs of theirs which
entail the negation of their thesis than are they when trying to do the same to him. So his
undefeated record need not show that his belief-set is consistent; it may only show that its
inconsistencies have defied the power of his adversaries to ferret them out. Socrates could
hardly have been unaware of this unavoidable hazard in his method. This must contribute
to the sense of its fallibility which, I believe, is the right clue to his profession of ignorance.
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28 The Socratic elenchus: method is all
70
That Socrates should accept [B] and base on it his confidence that he can prove his theses
true and nonetheless deny that he knows that [B] is true may seem astonishing. It is no
more so than his maintaining that he can prove his theses true but does not know that they
are true: see additional note 1.3 below, "On Gorgias 508E-509A."
71
Which explains why Socrates should want to say to Callicles: "If you agree with the things
my soul believes, these things will be the very truth" (G. 486E) and "your agreement will
reach the goal of truth" (G. 487E). Cf. chapter 2, comment on the text cited there as T12.
72
Aristotle, Metaph. Q,87a32fr., with comment adloc. by Ross, 1924.
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Appendix: the demise of the elenchus 29
73
"The soul, being immortal and having had many births, and having seen everything both
in this world and in Hades, there is nothing it has not come to know" (Meno 81C5-7). In Socrates
(ch. 2, n. 32) I emphasized that there is no evidence of acceptance of this extraordinary
doctrine in the Platonic corpus prior to the Meno, hence none of its acceptance in the
Gorgias: the eschatological myth with which this dialogue concludes is "a purely moral
fable, an embroidery on the popular b e l i e f . . . in a retributive post-mortem trial . . . - a
belief with rich moral content and no epistemic import" (loc. cit.).
1
There had been no mention of it prior to the publication of the original version of the
present Appendix (1983).
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30 Appendix: the demise of the elenchus
EUTHYDEMUS
LYSIS
Here again there is no elenchus against anybody - not even pro forma
and for comic effect, as in the Hippias Major. In the initial encounter
2
On the Eud., writes Guthrie, 1975: 266, "the prevailing opinion [reviewed in Keulen 1971]
is that the Euthydemus, like the Meno, was written after the early Socratic dialogues and the
Protagoras, but before the great central group." On the Ly. see especially the useful review of
work on this dialogue in Schoplick, 1969, supporting the conclusion that the Ly. is closely
related to the Eud. and probably comes before the M. but after the G. The fullest case for the
HMa. as a transitional dialogue is made in Woodruff, 1982; 175-9; n would have been
strengthened considerably if he had noticed that 303B-C contain a clear reference to a
theorem about irrationals, the earliest evidence in the corpus of Plato's knowledge of ad-
vanced developments in contemporary mathematics which he will be displaying in great
abundance in the M.
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Appendix: the demise of the elenchus 31
HIPPIAS MAJOR
3
Cf. Shorey, 1933: 490, on Ly. 2 I 8 B - C : "Observe the readiness with which interlocutors
accept what Socrates suggests and then are dashed by his discovery of new objections."
4
Cf. n. 22 in ch. 1 above.
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32 Appendix: the demise of the elenchus
all three to the Meno,5 there is this much to be said for the one in
which I have taken them up in this Appendix: the attitude of the
Hippias Major to the "What is the F?" question is furthest removed
from the one maintained towards it in the elenctic dialogues. In
none of these had Socrates regarded the aporetic conclusion as any-
thing worse than a temporary setback in his search for the definition:
he had voiced disappointment that the search had failed on the
present occasion, not despair that it could ever succeed. This re-
mains as true of the Euthydemus as of any of its predecessors. At
292E Socrates declares that he has come "less than halfway to learn-
ing what is that knowledge which will make us happy." But he does
not say that he is giving up the search. He is ready to go on and
would do so on the spot, if only the sophists would sober up and join
in. Though his appeal for "instruction" from them is heavily ironi-
cal, it conveys no indication that success depends on them.
Moreover in none of those dialogues, including the Euthydemus, is
the failure of any given search regarded as portending a moral
collapse: from his failure to discover the answer to "What is piety?"
in the Euthyphro, to "What is courage?" in the Laches, to "What
is sophrosyne?" in the Charmides, to "What is the knowledge that
makes us happy?" in the Euthydemus, Socrates doesn't conclude that
his own ability to make personal judgments about the piety or cour-
age or sophrosyne or moral knowledge achieved or missed in any
given action, his own or another's, has been discredited. This is
precisely what he infers in the Hippias Major: his failure to find the
answer to "What is the kalori?" after the long search for it in this
dialogue prompts him to conclude (304D8-E2) that he is no longer
in a position to judge whether or not any action is kalon. Similarly in
the Lysis the failure to answer "What is the philon?" leads him to say
in the dialogue's concluding sentence that he is no longer able to say
that the youths are each others' friends and he theirs. In the Hippias
5
That this is later than all three is a reasonable inference from (a) the announcement in the
Meno, for the first time in Plato's corpus, of the "recollecting," transmigrating soul, a
cardinal doctrine of his middle period, and (b) the copious display in the Meno of advanced
mathematical knowledge, in which Socrates had never shown either interest or proficiency
in the elenctic dialogues, but which he will be requiring of all philosophers in book vn of the
Republic: there is a flash of this in the HMa. (cf. n. 2 above sub Jin.), the first in the corpus,
giving us reason for regarding the HMa. as the last before the Meno.
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Postscript to " The Socratic elenchus" 33
POSTSCRIPT TO
"THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS"
6
This text, whose importance has never been recognized in the scholarly literature, will be
further discussed in ch. 3 below.
1
That the G. is preceded by {Ap., Ch., Cr., Eu., HMi., Ion, La., Pr.}, as in Brandwood, 1976:
xvii; Dodds, 1959: i8ff.; Irwin, 1979: 5-8, is now widely recognized. (With the early
dialogues I have just listed I would also group R. 1. See Socrates, additional note 2.1.) The
attempt by Kahn, 1981: passim, to predate the G. to a position immediately following the
Ap. and the Cr. has not to my knowledge gained a single adherent in the critical literature.
2
See additional note 1.3.
3
1959: 16 et passim.
4
Cr. 49C10-D9; and cf. Socrates, ch. 7, "Socrates' rejection of retaliation."
5
He says that those who cannot agree with him on this against "the multitude" can have no
common deliberation with him about anything (Cr. 49D2-5).
6
"I do not speak as one who has knowledge" (506A3-4); "but, as for me, my position is
always the same: I do not know how these things are" (509A). Dodds' dismissive comment
{ad loc.) on the latter text ("It is as if Plato had belatedly remembered to make his hero
speak in character") begs the question (how are we supposed to know that the disclaimer
represents only a "belated" afterthought?) and, in any case, disregards the equally strong
disclaimer at 506A which passes unglossed in Dodds' commentary.
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34 Postscript to " The Socratic elenchus"
7
479E, cited in T19 in chapter 1 above. In the Pr. it is Socrates' opponent who so refers to
the conclusion of the Socratic argument (&Tre8eix9r|, 359D) and though Socrates does not
demur, neither does he affirm it categorically.
8
Pr- 353B3~45 Eu- 15c 1-2; R- h 335E5- &J>ocvrj without the personal pronoun in the dative
(which is understood in context): Eu. 9C7-8; R. 1, 336A9; Kara<j>ocv6s y£vsa0ai, R. 1, 347D4;
yiyvecr8ai KocTa<|>aves, Ch. 166D5-6.
9
opas, Eu. 11 A3.
10
tore, Pr. 357EI.
11
Quoted in additional note 1.3. [GV did not live to bring the translation he gave in
additional note 1.3 into line with the version quoted above, which reflects his most recent
thinking on the text. - Ed.]
12
As Dodds (1959, ad loc.) remarks, it is not, as some have thought, the boldness of the
metaphor, but "the arrogance of the expression" that calls for apology.
13
Texts T23 and T20, T21 in ch. 1 above.
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Postscript to " The Socratic elenchus" 35
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36 Postscript to " The Socratic elenchus"
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Postscript to " The Socratic elenchus" 37
17
Chapter 4, "Elenchus and mathematics."
18
e£ CrrTo06<7Ecos (JKOTreToOai, M. 86E3.
19
As I have argued in the Appendix above and, more fully, in "Elenchus and mathematics"
(cf. n. 17 above).
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