Socrates' reverse irony

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 52, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 220-230

  Vasiliou, Iakovos ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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EID: 33845711300     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/52.1.220     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. By 'Socrates' I am referring to the character in Plato's 'early' or 'Socratic' dialogues, consisting of (in alphabetical order): Apology, Crito, Charmides, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Protagoras, Republic 1.
2. For some reasons for this division, see G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, 1992), ch. 2
3. and T. Irwin, Plato's Ethics (Oxford, 1995), ch. 1.
4. See C. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge, 1996) for a contrasting view. I treat these dialogues as a group because of their similarity in style and substance, rather than because of any firm belief about the order in which they were composed, or indeed even about whether they were all composed earlier than so-called 'middle' or 'late' dialogues.
5. On questions of chronology, see also: J. Cooper, 'Introduction' in J. Cooper (ed. ) Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis, 1997), esp. 12-18
6. and A. Nehamas, Art of Living (Berkeley, 1998), chs. 1-3, in particular 219, n. 64, in response to Cooper. I am making no claims about the historical Socrates. I shall, however, treat the character Socrates 'realistically' - that is, as though there were such a person who had such conversations, and had such and such effects on his society.
7. See I. Vasiliou, 'Conditional irony in the Socratic dialogues', CQ 49 (1999), 456-72.
8. Contrast Vlastos's 'complex irony' ([n. 1], ch. 1, originally 'Socratic irony', CQ 37 [1987], 79-96), where in one sense Socrates means what he says, but in another sense does not. See Nehamas (n. 1), ch. 2, and Vasiliou (n. 2), §§2, 4, 5, for detailed discussions of Vlastos's position and additional references.
9. The distinction between the inner and outer frame complicates any discussion of the extent to which Socratic irony is deceptive. We must ask, 'deceptive to whom?' - Socrates' interlocutors or Plato's readers? See Vasiliou (n. 2), esp. §4.
10. I have also argued that, contrary to Vlastos, eirôneia does not begin to shift meaning in Plato from 'dissembling' or 'putting someone on' to something more akin to what Vlastos believes is the modern meaning of 'irony': to say the opposite of what one believes without intending to deceive. Socrates engages in conditional irony but is also accused by his interlocutors of engaging in eirôneia; on such occasions he is, according to them, saying something other than what he really means. See Vasiliou (n. 2), §5, 465-8. Nehamas (n. 1), 54ff. believes that Vlastos's view that opposites or contraries are necessarily part of irony is too simplistic, and covers only the crudest cases. Vlastos appeals to Cicero's and Quintilian's accounts of irony as part of the justification for his emphasis on opposites, but Nehamas argues that this is not actually warranted by the Latin texts.
11. In the popular G. M. A. Grube translation, included in Cooper (n. 1), the conditional, and therefore the conditional irony, is lost: 'Yet I think it a fine thing to be able to teach people as Gorgias . . . '; not so in D. Gallop's Plato: Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito (Oxford, 1997).
12. Not, of course, the logical implication, which would be a simple fallacy. See Vasiliou (n. 2), 462, n. 21.
13. See Vasiliou (n. 2), 461-3 for the importance of contrast in determining whether a claim is ironic.
14. Given our knowledge of all the dialogues together - and so the 'experience' of many Socratic conversations - we judge the Sophists' lack of knowledge (by Socrates' lights, at least) to be the truth, against which this remark in the Apology can be understood as ironic. T. Brickhouse and N. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton, 1989), 229, provide internal evidence for the claim that Socrates must not believe that Evenus has this knowledge: if Evenus had such knowledge, he would be wiser than Socrates and so the Oracle would be lying.
15. J. Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1998), 166-79,esp. 175-6, argues persuasively that Socrates' speech itself involves an 'inversion' of traditional rhetorical tropes I hope to show that reverse irony involves an inversion of a particularly Socratic trope as well: conditional irony.
16. Thus attributions of conditional or reverse irony importantly contrast with accusations of eironeia insofar as the latter are sometimes made by speakers within the 'inner frame': e. g. Thrasymachus at R. 1. 337a4 and, significantly as we shall see, Socrates about himself at Ap. 38a1.
17. See 19a2 for some foreshadowing.
18. In I. Vasiliou, 'Socratic principles, Socratic knowledge', Philosophical Inquiry 21. 3-4 (1999), 43-60, I contend that understanding the nature of SV (which is there called 'the Supremacy of the Ethical [SE]') is critical for a proper understanding of the argument in the Apology and Crito, and that it also allows us to resolve the apparent conflict between Socrates' frequent disavowals of moral knowledge and his occasional avowals.
19. Nehamas (n. 1), 49ff. argues convincingly for a connection between irony and boastfulness, specifically in Socrates' case. Ober (n. 11), 166-79 claims that in such remarks Socrates inverts the typical rhetorical trope of a defendant: instead of claiming to be one of the people, Socrates sets himself apart from the hoi polloi.
20. For elaboration on this and an argument that it is the critical difference between him and Polus in the Gorgias, see I. Vasiliou, 'Disputing Socratic principles: character and argument in the "Polus episode" of the Gorgias', Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (forthcoming).
21. I am not saying this criterion should necessarily hold for anything one might want to count as irony. Rather it is a restriction I have put on the types of irony I am concerned with in this paper and in Vasiliou (n. 2), the point of which is, in part, to make identification of instances of these types of irony more easily susceptible to rational argumentation on the basis of the text. For similar concerns about irony, and the historical root of those concerns, see H. Tarrant, Plato's First Interpreters (Ithaca, 2000), 108-11.
22. For more complicated notions of irony, including Platonic irony, see Nehamas (n. 1), chs. 1-3.
23. Brickhouse and Smith (n. 9), 214-21.
24. The very fact that we must argue that Socrates is serious (as, for example, Brickhouse and Smith do) shows that there is something additional going on here; no one ever needs to argue that Aristotle is serious. See Vasiliou (n. 2), §1.
25. Of course, not necessarily successfully. Socrates' conversations often apparently fail to move their interlocutors. Nevertheless, had Socrates not resorted to conditional irony, we may plausibly suppose that the conversations themselves would have been impossible in many instances.
26. Without looking at irony closely, if at all, many scholars have discussed the reasons why Socrates says what he does in the Apology and Crito. Most now agree that his ethical beliefs substantially commit him to speaking and acting in the ways he does. See, for example, R. Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton, 1984);
27. Brickhouse and Smith (n. 9);
28. C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis, 1989).
29. J. Ober, 'Living freely as a slave of the law. Notes on why Sokrates lives in Athens', in Polis and Politics (Copenhagen, 2000), argues that Socrates' ethical views make Athens the best place for him to lead a free, consistent, and yet law-abiding life.
30. I owe this point to Josh Ober.
31. Shouting or crying out at public speakers was a frequent practice, see J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989), ch. 3.
32. See Vasiliou (n. 13), §5.
33. The third case is Thrasymachus in Republic 1, which would require a separate treatment, and to which the rest of the Republic constitutes the response.
34. See Vasiliou (n. 15), §2. 0.
35. See esp. K. McTighe, 'Socrates on desire for the good and the involuntariness of wrongdoing: Gorgias 466a-468e', Phronesis 29 (1984), 193-236
36. reprinted in H. Benson (ed. ), Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (Oxford, 1992), 263-97. Detailing the logical errors in the argument, McTighe maintains a minority view that Socrates does not truly endorse the conclusion, but argues with Polus simply 'destructively', treating him as a hostile witness. Against McTighe (and others), Vlastos (n. 1), ch. 8 and additional note 8. 4, argues that Socrates never 'cheats' - that is, he never knowingly uses false premises or draws fallacious inferences when he is engaged in serious argument. Therefore, Socrates (and Plato, presumably) endorse the argument and are ignorant of any fallacies that may be present. In 'Disputing Socratic principles' (n. 15) I argue that Socrates' engagement with Polus is indeed 'constructive', but not in the way Vlastos thinks.
37. Following Burnet in bracketing tontou prosthen at 467b4.
38. This argument has an advantage over the previous one in that no one doubts that Socrates believes this. If one thinks with McTighe (n. 26) that Socrates does not believe that one can do what one sees fit without doing what one wants, then his earlier enticement of Polus cannot be reverse irony.
39. On the nature and validity of this argument, see Vasiliou (n. 15), esp. §§3. 0-3. 1.
40. For different interpretations, see T. Irwin, Plato: Gorgias (Oxford, 1979), 154ff. ;
41. C. Kahn, 'Drama and dialectic in Plato's Gorgias', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 75-121;
42. M. Mackenzie, Plato on Punishment (Berkeley, 1981), 242;
43. G. Santas, Socrates (London, 1979), 233-46;
44. G. Vlastos, 'Was Polus refuted?', American Journal of Philology 88 (1967), 454-60;
45. Vlastos (n. 1), ch. 8, esp. 139-48.
46. These are Chairephon's only lines in the Gorgias other than the first two Stephanus pages.
47. See Ober (n. 10), ch. 4; for a contrasting view, see Nehamas (n. 1), esp. ch. 6.
48. I thank Alexander Nehamas for discussion about irony and Josh Ober for comments on an earlier version of this paper. In addition, I am especially grateful to the anonymous referee for helpful criticisms and suggestions.