On the Socratic Education PDF
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ON THE SOCRATIC EDUCATION ON THE SOCRATIC EDUCATION An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues CHRISTOPHER BRUELL ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder' New York· Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX29RU,UK Copyright © 1999 by Christopher Bruell All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bruell, Christopher, 1942- On the Socratic education : an introduction to the shorter Platonic dialogues / Christopher Bruell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8476-9402-0 -ISBN 0-8476-9402-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Plato. Dialogues. I. Title. B395.B765 1999 184--dc21 99-13993 CIP Printed in the United States of America §TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences--Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z.39.48-1984. CONTENTS Preface vii I INTRODUCTION 1 Hipparchus, or Lover of Gain 3 2 Minos, or About Law 7 II STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 3 Alcibiades 19 4 Second Alcibiades 39 5 Laches 49 6 Euthydemus 63 7 Greater Hippias 75 8 Lesser Hippias 93 9 Theages 103 III THE LIFE ITSELF 10 Euthyphro 117 11 Apology of Socrates 135 12 Ion 157 13 Meno 165 v VI Contents IV CONCLUSION 14 Cleitophon 189 15 Menexenus 201 16 Crito 211 Index of Textual References 223 About the Author 225 PREFACE N othing is so well established in our Western democracies today as the right of each to seek happiness in his or her own way. It is as if a pass to that effect had been issued to us at birth. This much is obvious. Less obvi ous is the fact that certain opinions have been conveyed along with the pass which are meant to be accepted as a condition of its possession and use. But what if a thorough-going critique ofj ust those opinions should turn out to be the condition of our effectual use of it? Is it this possibility, a suspicion somehow sparked that this may indeed be the case, that has roused the guardians of our opinions from their restless slumber and brought them into ponderous action against the forces that they take to be capable of assisting us to mount or to carry out the critique in question? Reason itself has not escaped their slander; and the honor which they cannot avoid offering to the intellectual giants of the past is bestowed by them in such a manner as to carry with it the message that we ourselves have nothing of importance to learn from the thought of the past. With all of the advantages of numbers and position, our intellectuals could no doubt look forward with complete confidence to victory, a victory they may yet achieve, were it not for the one obstacle that their efforts are constitutionally incapable of removing. The way of life whose perpetuation is the result towards which those efforts tend-for it is a certain way oflife that our intellectuals wittingly or unwit tingly champion-is almost completely devoid of what makes a life most worth living or worthy of being called truly human. It is not impossible, then, even in our time that some individuals may seek, that some indeed are already seeking, to find their way back to a proper use of their native pow ers. And they may thus come to wonder whether anything can be learned about that use from such an author and such works as those to which the following study is devoted. Vll Vlll Priface Plato is credited by a reliable tradition with authorship of thirty-five dialogues, all of them preserved to the present day. Of the twenty-one of these which are shortest in length, two (Critias and Epinomis) present con versations that continue or resume conversations presented in other, longer dialogues (Timaeus and Laws). Three others (Charmides, Lysis, and Lovers) are narrated by Socrates himself, and these three-each in its own way-strike into the heart of things rather more quickly than is suitable for purposes of an introduction. The remaining sixteen of the shorter dialogues are dis cussed in the sixteen chapters that follow. They are discussed in the order in which, as it seems to me, it is most fruitful to approach them. Each chapter is therefore intended to be read where it is given; in particular, a reader who has failed to attend to the matter which is taken up by the chapters that comprise Part II should not expect to have access to those that make up Part III. For I have attempted to find a path through the dialogues by following the indications of subject matter, even more than of form, that link them one to another and each to all. And while the path that I have traced out is clearly not the only one by which they can be approached, it is as it seems to me a path that must be taken sooner or later by the reader who is to understand them. References to Plato and to other classical authors are to the standard Greek texts-in Plato's case to the Oxford edition edited by John Burnet. My translations and paraphrases may differ here and there from those found in the usual English versions of Plato: they strive for greater literalness than is usually sought by translators, and they make occasional use of manuscript readings that have been rejected by the editor in favor of other readings or of conjectural emendations of the text. The leisure available to me for carrying out the study was very sub stantially increased by grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee to the Boston College Institute for the Study of Politics and Religion and by a fellowship from the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation of Munich. I would like to thank particularly Hillel Fradkin, then Vice President for Program of the Bradley Foundation, and Heinrich Meier, Director of the Siemens Foundation, for their friendly interest and support. David Bolotin, Robert Faulkner, and Amy Bonnette Nendza con sented to read my chapters as they appeared and to give me their reactions to them; their friendly generosity in sharing with me their views consider ably enhanced not only the profit but also the pleasure with which I pur sued a work that is not intrinsically devoid of pleasure. I INTRODUCTION
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