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The Middle Road of Classical Political Philosophy: Socrates' Dialogues with Aristippus in Xenophon's Memorabilia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Kenneth C. Blanchard Jr.
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Extract

This article examines the contrast between philosophy and sophism in Xenophon's Memorabilia, focusing chiefly on the two dialogues between Socrates and Aristippus. In two crucial respects, Socrates and the sophist appear as opposites. He accepts what the sophist rejects: the obligations and restraints imposed by the city's laws; and he rejects what the sophist accepts: the vulgar notion that everyone knows what the good things are. In the first dialogue, Socrates defends the self-discipline proper to citizen-soldiers against Aristippus' complete rejection of political responsibility. In the second, he points to the substitution of the beautiful for the good as the proper object of philosophical investigation, hi both dialogues, Socrates walks a middle road: he is more political than the sophist, but less so than the politician. Yet he proves to be close to the politician qua philosopher than he is qua citizen.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , Fall 1994 , pp. 671 - 696
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1994

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References

This essay is a substantially revised version of a paper written for the North American Chapter of the Society for the Study of Greek Political Thought, and delivered during a panel at the 1992 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. I am especially grateful to Thomas Lindsay, who organized the panels.

1. Koyré, Alexandre goes so far as to say that “Plato's criticism of sophistics, his bête noire, occupies half his work” (Discovering Plato, trans. Rosenfield, Leonora Cohen [New York: Columbia, 1945], p. 63).Google Scholar See also Benitez, Eugenio and Guimaraes, Livia, “Philosophy as Performed in Plato's Theaetetus,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (12 1993): 321–28.Google Scholar

2. It should be noted that the sophism discussed in this article is the sophism of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. Compare The Clouds, lines 330–35, with The Laws 908d. See also, The Laws 891b. Gadamer, Hans–georg, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 113–15.Google Scholar

3. It must be acknowledged that Aristippus is not explicitly identified as a sophist in the Memorabilia. But then neither are Hippias, Dionysodorus, or Critias— all of whom are historically described as such. Nor are Protagoras or Gorgias so called in his Symposium. Prodicus is referred to as “the wise,” not as a sophist. Only Antiphon is actually called a sophist in this work. What is decisive here is that Aristippus meets the criteria that I outline in this essay: he has employed the devices of philosophy in order to liberate himself from the nomoi, or moral restraints and obligations imposed by the city, and considers himself clever for doing so; but he accepts a vulgar notion of the good.

4. It is possible that this is precisely what they did. Aristitdes thought that Plato was chiefly responsible for the opprobrium attached to the term “sophist,” that before Plato it was a general and not unfavorable term. See Orations 46, cited in The Older Sophists, ed. Sprague, Rosamond Kent (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), p. 1Google Scholar. However, see Zeitlin, Irving M., Plato's Vision: The Classical Origins of Social and Political Thought (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993), pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

5. Xenophon Memorabilia 1. 4.10; Plato, The Laws, bk. 10; Republic, bk 2.

6. The best portraits of sophism are found in the writings of Aristophanes and Plato. See especially the conversation between the just and unjust speech [889–1104] and between Strepsiades and his sophisticated son Pheidippides [1320 ff] in The Clouds. The sophist either rejects the Divine foundations of morality outright, by appealing to a mechanical notion of nature, or he liberally reinterprets the myths in a way to justify his libertine inclinations. This account is similar to the one found in Books I and II of Plato's Republic. See especially Glaucon's speech. The ring of Gyges is a metaphor for the same devices that Strepsiades believe would allow one to evade any punishment. These accounts are of course uniformly hostile, but a long fragment written by the sophist Antiphon closely supports them. See The Older Sophists, pp. 218–20. For more on the tension between conventionalism and conventional morality, see Irwin's, TerenceClassical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), chaps. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

7. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 107–119.Google Scholar The account of sophism presented in this essay follows closely Strauss's distinction between Philosophical and Vulgar Conventionalism.

8. See Thrasymachus' statement at 338d–339a in Plato's Republic. My account here helps explain why Thrasymachus, and Polus and Callicles, his counterparts in Gorgias, become so angry with Socrates. When Socrates argues that a tyrant who can do “whatever he sees fit,” (kill anyone he chooses to kill) nonetheless is powerless because he cannot “do what he wants,” (achieve what is really good for himself) Polus becomes exasperated. “Really, Socrates! As if you would not be envious whenever you'd see anyone putting to death some person he saw fit, or confiscating his property, or tying him up!” Plato Gorgias 31e (Zeyl, Donald J., trans. [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987]).Google Scholar Polus supposes that the goodness of this power is so obvious to everyone that Socrates can only be denying it out of an obnoxious stubbornness. At stake is the value of the art of rhetoric, which Polus believes he possesses.

9. For evidence of Socrates' bravery in battle, see Laches 189a-b. For his law abidingness, see of course Crito and Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.3.1–4.Google Scholar It is possible, of course, that Socrates' philosophizing—which he told the jury he would not stop doing—was itself a violation of the law. But neither Plato nor Xenophon present it as such; nor does the jury: Socrates is neither indicted nor convicted for philosophizing.

10. Plato Republic 345a-e; Gorgias 469b; Xenophon, Oeconomicus 2. 2–3Google Scholar. See also Barker, Ernest, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York: Dover, 1959), pp.52–53Google Scholar. Barker correctly identifies Socrates as a conservative and as a radical, and both for the same reason: because he defended obedience to the law on grounds of utility.

11. It is not the concern of this essay whether the character presented in Memorabilia corresponds to the historical Aristippus. For a concise summary of what is known about him, see Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), III: 49–499.Google Scholar

12. The word is egkrateia, which means “in control.” The contrary term, applied to Aristippus, is akolastoteros, or unrestrained.

13. His procedure is similar to the one employed in the Republic, where the larger question, whether justice is good in itself, is eclipsed by the secondary question—'what is the best regime?

14. All translations from the Memorabilia are my own. The Greek text is the Loeb edition, 1968.

15. See Plato, Republic 496a–497aGoogle Scholar; and 499b.

16. The Republic of Plato, trans. Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic, 1968), 346e.Google Scholar Aristippus appears to share one of Socrates' unconventional opinions: that it is better not to rule if one can avoid it. If this were so, then he is no pure sophist. But he avoids rule only in order to more freely pursue vulgar pleasures, and he is not said that he would not be a tyrant.

17. Aristotle, Politics 1255b20–41.Google Scholar

18. Socrates uses the words “hoi kratountes” and “hoi kratoumenoi,” formed from the same root as egkrateia.

19. Plato, Apology 28d–29a, 31b-eGoogle Scholar; Crito 52b; Xenophon, Memorabilia 4. 4. 1–4.Google Scholar

20. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1. 5–6, 4. 8Google Scholar, Apology 18;

21. I skip over the three passages that Socrates recites at the end of his conversation with Aristippus, from Hesiod, Epicharmus, and “Prodicus the wise.” While they serve Xenophon's general purpose of make Socrates as palatable as possible to gentlemen, I do not see that they shed light on the distinction between the Socratic and sophistic way of life.

22. He would appear to be speaking of himself when he says that “Kings and Rulers are not those who hold the sceptre,...but those who know how to rule” (Memorabilia 3. 9.10).

23. Memorabilia 1. 6.15.

24. Memorabilia 1.1. 8. It should be acknowledged, of course, that Socrates' self-mastery, together with the delights of philosophy, affords him a remarkable degree of resistance to fortune. Socrates declares that he was no more impoverished during the siege of Athens than when the city was most prosperous. But there are worse fates than living through a siege. Would Socrates have continued to be happy if fortune had been as cruel to him as it is to Glaucon's, just man in Republic 361e–362a?Google Scholar

25. Memorabilia 1.3.2.

26. It is noteworthy that Aristippus' question and Socrates reply at Memorabilia 3. 8. 4. is very similar to the sophist Dionysodorus' question and Socrates' reply in Plato's, Euthydemus 300e.Google Scholar

27. See Xenophon, Symposium 5Google Scholar; and Plato Hippias Major 295c–e, and Gorgias 474d. For a thoughtful consideration of this see Guthrie, , History of Greek Philosophy, III: 462–67.Google Scholar

28. Note the beauty contest in Xenophon's Symposium. Socrates attempts to prove that his nose is more beautiful than that of Critobulos, for its snubness allows it more exposure to the air. This argument persuades none of the judges.

29. Memorabilia 3. 10. 9–15.

30. One can think of no better illustration of this independence than Winston Churchill's remark concerning Rommel, that it was almost beautiful the way he moved across the desert. This distinction is made by Socrates in Plato's, Gorgias (474d–475a)Google Scholar as well: there the beautiful is repeatedly described as “useful, or pleasant, or both.”

31. We are reminded here of the end of The Hiero.

32. See Plato, Gorgias 511d–512c.Google Scholar Socrates finds it wonderful that the pilot of a ship not only safeguards his passengers' lives and possessions, and this for a modest fee, but also walks humbly away after the trip—as if he had done nothing special. He is humble, Socrates argues, because he cannot know whether he has done his passengers any favor. Some will benefit by living on; others, who will become wretched, would have been luckier to perish. The pilot's art cannot tell him whether he has done any good or not. Socrates contrasts this humility with the boastfulness of the sophists, who exalt their own business.

33. This is of course the nature of all the arts. See Oeconomicus 1. 3.