[l
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 37
I I
iil
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS1
GREGORY VLASTOS
I wrongly.
In Plato's earlier dialogues2-in all of them, except the Lysis, Euthydemus,
arrd Hippias Major-Socrates' enquiries display a pattem of investigation
whose ationale he does not investigate. They are constrained by rules he
does not undertke to justify. In marked contrast to the'Socrates' who
speaks for Plato in the middle dialogues, who refers frequently to the
'melhod' (ptoo) he follows (either systematically3 or for some parti-
@ Gegory Vlastos 19E3. Reprinted with pemission fom .ford Sadies in Akcient philos-
opht,I (19$),n-58.
I An ealie drft of this essay was delivered as one of a seies of lectues, ,fhe pbilosophy
of Socates', under the Giflord Trust at the University of St Andrews in the winter nd
spdg terms of 1981. A ater draft was presented at a meeting of the Ameican philosophical
Association on 29 Dec. 1982. An bstract of that drft was published jD the Jouria of
Philosophy,'7g (1982),711-1,4. I am deeply indebred to my friend Richad Kraur, who
served as commentato at that meetiDg, for his exceediDgly cute ad stggestive critique of my
paper. I tust he will soon put into print his own, highly original, interpretatioD of th Socatic
elenchus.
'z The chonological order of those works of Plato which I accept as authetrtic (not mteri-
ally different from that generally recognized in recert Platonic scholarship) is as follows
(1) The ealier dialogues (listed i lphabetical oet\: Apology, Charmides, Cito,
Euthydmu,s, Euhtpho, Gotga6, Hippias Major, Hippias Mikor, Ion, Laehes, Lys, Men-
eehus, Proragoras, Reprfic 1.I take the r,r.r, EuthydemL.an Hippias Mdr, to be the latest F 195?), pp. xxivff.), which he locates primarily in the later dilogues.
of these (see the appendix below), falling between the co;gdr (which I take to be the only
one of the ealier dialogues to precede this tro) nd the Merro, which I tke to mark the point
of tansition fom the earlie to the middle dialogues. I group the frrst book of the Rpbljc
with the ea ier dialogues: Soctatic elenchus (which, s I argue in the appendix, is dropped in
Lys, Euthydemus, Hippias Malo) is practised there as vigorously as any.where in the
corpus, ^trd
(2) The middle dialogues (listed in pobable chrorological order): Catylus, phaedo, Repub-
lic 2 10, Symposium, Phaedrus, Parmenides, Theaeretus,
(3) The later dialogues (also in probable chronologicl otder): Timaew, Crttias, Sophst,
Po liticus, Phileb u.s, Laws.
I 'Our customay method'0R 10,596a5J);'the dialecrical method'(Rep. ?,533c?), which
has bee explined (533b2-3) as the only'method which endeavourc in every case to appre-
hend concefning ach thing what it really is'.
cular purpose in a special contexta), the'Socates' who speaks for Socrates
in Plato's earlier dialogues never uses this wod5 and never discusses his
method of investigation. He never troubles to say why his way of search-
ing is the way to discover truth or even to say what this way of searching
is. He has no name for it. 'Elenchus' and the cognate verb, elenchein (lo
m
refute, to examine critically, to censure), he uses to describe,6 not to baptize,
what he does;only in modern times? has'elenchus' become a proper name.
So the'What is F?' question which Socrates pursues elenctically about
other things, he never poses about the elenchus, leaving us only his prac-
tice of it as our guide when we try to answer it ourselves. Lacking his
deflnition of it, ours can only be a hypothesis-a guess. And we may guess
I guessed wrongly twenty-flve years ago in the account of the elenchus
I put into my Itro duction to the Ptotagoras,s and so have others before or
since. Here is the one in the article 'Dialectic' by Roland Hall in the Ency-
cloped.ia of Philosophy (New York, 1967): 'The Socatic elenchus was
E 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 questions and answels, a consequence that con-
tadicts the thesis.' This comes close, but still makes three mistak$. Obvi
ously wrong is the suggestion that Socrates gets the opponent to draw the
consequence that contradicts the thesis. It is Socrates who draws it; the
F opponent has to be calried to it kicking and screaming. Less obviously and
fi
4 The'ethods' he has followed i woking out the tripartite analysis of the soul (p. 4,
&
435d). Ct
also the desuiption (without use of the \\or methoos) i. Pd, 99d4-100b4 of the
method he is to follo$, i the final argument for the immotality of thp soul.
B s Tl word method.os, \sed often in dialogues of the middle period and almost as often in
those of the late period (see s.v. methodos,Lf"or,ard Brandwood,.4 Wod ltldx lo PIao (L,eedsl
Maney, 1976)), created by Plato (its tust occurence in preserved Greek is in the Pld,, ?9e3,
97b6), is itself an expression of the intensity of its creator's new-found interest iD method. lt is
E impotat teminological coinage, strangely overlooked by Lewis Campbell i his discussion of
E 'Plato's Technicalities' (ir f Sophistes a/rd Politicus ofPldto (Oxfod: Oxford Unive$ity Press,
And this in great profusion. There ae dozens of ses oI the nouD and the verb in Plto, a
F majority of them in the earlier dialogues, as a look t Bandwood,.4 Word ldet to Pla,will
$ show.
? Perhaps no earlie than its use for this purpose by George Gote ii
Plato nd the Other
Compnoks o Socrates,lst edn.3 vols., (London: Murray,1E65) ( my references to this work
throughout this paper will be to vol. i of the 1st edn.) and by Lewis Campbell, ? Sophistes
dd Politicus of Plato. lr was sed for the sme purpose by Henry Sidgwick soon after
('The Sophists', Jounr ol Philolo*y, Ns 8 (1A72) ), no doubt under the in-fluence of Grote and
Cmpbell, to whose work he refe.
E 3 Pot Protagos, trans. Jowett,rev. M. Ostwald, ed. with introd. by G Vlastos (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1956). I have revised some of the views I express in that intoduction. lts most
H,
serious ero is its misintepetation of the elenchus (oD rhich, sep pp. 51-4 below) and,
consequentlf of the pofessio of ignoranca,
B
E
llll
lrl
38 cREcoRY vlAsros
more seriously wrong is the assimilation of the elenchus to Zeno's dialec-
tic, from which it differs in a fundampntal respect: Zeno's lefutands are
i unasserted counterfactuals:
#there are many things, they must be both inflnitely many and finitely
mny.
f there is rnotion, then the s',viftest cnnot overtake the slo\ryest:
Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise.
Socrates, on the other hand, as we shall see below, will not debate
unasserted premisses-only those asserted categorically by his interlocu-
tor, who is not allowed to answer'contrary to his real opinion'
A third mistake is the notion that the consequence which contradicts
the thesis is drawn from that thesis, that is, deduced from it. The notion is
an invention of Richard Robinson. In his P/alo's Earlier Dialectice Robirt-
son had maintained that Plato 'habitually thought and wrote as if all
elenchus consists in reducing the thesis to a self-contrdiction' (28) If
that were true, Sotes' procedure would have been as follows:when the
answerer asserts ?, Soates would derive not-p either directly from p or
else by deriving from p some further premisses which entail not-p-in
either case deducing not-p from p 'without the aid of any extra premiss'
(ibid.). The trouble 'trith this picture is that what it pictures is not in our
texts.loThere are some thirty-nine elenctic arguments by Robinson's count
in Plato's earlier dialogues (ibid.24). Not one of them exhibits this pattern.
The premisses from which Socrates deduces not-p generally do not include
p;and even when they do, there are others in the premiss-set, elicited from
the interlocutor without any reference to p and not deducible from it.
If Socrates thought he proved what, according to Robinson, Plato'ha-
bitually wrote and thought' he did, Socrates would have believed he was
producing the strongest possible proof of the falsehood ofp: there can be
no stronger proof of the falsehood of a thesis than to show that it entails
its own negation. What Soates in fact does in any given elenchus is
convict p not of falsehood but of being member of an inconsistent
premiss-set;and to do this is not to show thatp is false, but only that either
p is false or that some or all of the premisses are false. The question then
(1st edn. Ithaca, NY 1941;2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.) My refeences are to
' than the sophist (ibid. 535): he is usig 'edstic' with clPable looseDess to mean'contentious'.
the latter. I spite of this and other mistakes, this is an adrDtble book, which seved me as a
model of exegesis in my earlier PlatoDic studies. See the trbute to it in my review of Harold
Cherniss, Collected Papers, ed,L.larn, Amecan Jomal o Philoloty, 89 (1978), 537-43: 538.
r0
As poirted out by Paul Friedlnder and Harold Cherniss at the time: fo the references,
nd fo my discussion of the textual evidence, cl my review ot Chemiss cited in the peceding
note.
I
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 39
E
becomes how Socrates can claim, as I
shall be arguing he does claim in
'standad elenchus',ll to have proved that the refutand is false, when all he
g has established is the inconsistency ofp with premisses whose truth he has
not undertaken to establish in that argument: they have entered the argu-
ment simply as propositions on which he and the interlocutor are agreed
This is /e problem of the Socratic elenchus, and it is spirited away in the
B
account given by Robinson in 1941 and 1951 and repeated in the Ency'
clopedia article in!967.1'z I shall be returning to this p.roblem in due course.
g
Let me then suggest a more defensible description:
F Socatic elenchus is a search for moal truth by adversary argument
E
in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own
beliel who is regarded as refuted if and only if the negation of his
thesis is deducedl3 ftom his own beliefs.
Elenchus is first and lasf search. The adversary procedure which is sug-
gested, but not entailed, by the Greek word-which may be used to mean
'refutation', but also 'testing', or still more broadly 'censure, reproach'-is
not an end in itself If it were, Socrates' dialectic as depicted in the earlier
dialogues would be a form of verbal jousting-'eristic'14-which it is not,
E
ft
tt This term will be explained t the start of Sect.Il below.
D And still beig epeated:'One of the commonest forms lof elenchus] is to rgue that a
F giver statement leads to a sell-contadiction, i othe words to two statements which ale mutu'
I
alty cortradictory' (G. B,l<ee, The Sophtic Movement (Cambtidger Cambridge University
Press,1981),65, v,ith a footnote citing Robinson as authority).
r3 Tbe nteDded force of the argumeDt is deductive throughout; resort to epaSote is Do ecep'
tion, for itr its Socratic use this is not true iDduction: see Vlastos, Intod. to Plarot Protagoras,
F
p. xxix and nn. 18 and 45.
_ la As rnisconceived by G, Ryle in his desciption of'the Socatic Method' (article on Plto in
P Edx,ads (ed.), Enclclopea of Philosophy (New York Macmillan aDd Free Press; I-ondon:
Collier Mcmillan, 1967), 317) and also i his Plato's ProSress (Cambridge: Cambridge Unj-
vefiity Pess, 1966), 119, where the elenctic arguments in Plato's erlier dialogues are reple'
seflted as'speimens of eristic contests'.The misconception is abetted by a blatant disregrd of
fr the'say what you believe' req]Ilement (to be discussed below), which is igDored even in the
F admirable essy by Paul Moraux,'La Joute dialectique d'prs ?opiqte.t yZ (irr G E. L owe
(ed.), Atistotle on Diakctic (Oxfordt Oxford Univeity Press, 1968), 277 ff.| z900)-ar.
incomparably more exact discussion ofthe topic, which notes carefully some other points of di-
ferenc between Socratic elenchi and Aristotle's 'dialeclicat jousts' Similr disregad of that
requirement accounts for other conflations of Socratic dialectic $rith elistic, begiDDing 'ith G
Gte: he makes no mention ofit in his discussio (Plato an the Othet Companions of Socrules,
531) of'the reat contrast' between Socrates and the ol eristics i the Eulhydemus This is
what makes it possible fo him to say tht in the Proa8o Socrates is 'decidedly more Eristic'
Contentiousness irl argument is indeed one of Socrates' taiings (fo which Plato, in retlospect,
gently reproaches him; fltr 167d-168c). But in spite of such personal laPses on the part of its
E umn instument, elenchus remains in princle a method of searching for tuth, which estic
is not, but only method (or set of methods a whote bag of tricks) fol winning arguments,
regardless of whethe or not you take what you ale arguing 1o to be tue (cf the excellent
F
 40 GREGoRY vlAsros
lilrn
because its object is always that positive outreach for truth which is
expressed by words for searching (peut t, r.epeut't), inquiring ((7r,
ptt, ouuepar), investigating (oror.t, norott, orcmopa4
I rotcmopt).Tltis is what philosophy ri for Socrates. When he thinks of
being silenced by the civic authorities, he imagines them saying to him
(T1) ,.. you shall no longer etgage in this search ror philosophize . . . (Ap. 29c)
the'nor' is epexegetic. Equivalentl for Socrates to philosophize is
\/here
to'examine'-he searches by examining: were he to go to Hades, he says,
he would go on
(T2) . .. examining and searching there as I have been doing with people hee.
@p.4tb)
What is he searching for? For truth, certainly, but not for every sort
of truth-only for truth in the moral domain. If we lvanted to know
what is the wholesale price of olive oiL on the Piraeus market, Socrates
would not propose that elenctic argument is the way to find out. Nor yet
for, say,
What is the right diet for a patient with a fever?
What is the side of a square whose area is twice that of a given square?
Wht conditions must be stisfied by a true answer to a'What is F?'
question?
There is no reason to suppose that Socrates thinks that truths in the
domain of the prctical technai o of mathematics or of logic are to be
ascertained by elenctic argument. He never says or implies anything of the
kind. My last two examples are ment to be provocative. The mathemati-
cal one, of course, is fom the intenogation of the slave boy it the Meno.
In the'Socrates' of this passage Plato has already taken a giant step-the
doctrine of 'recollection'-in transforming te moralist of the earlier dia-
Iogues into the metaphysician of the middle ones. The interrogation is
laid on to support that doctrine-to help Meno 'recollect' it (81e-82a).
description of it ir Kerfe, The Sophi.stic Movement,62l, ard Euthd.272-b, ciled i r.26
below), while for elenchus the aim of'comirlg to know v]hat is true and what is false' is paa-
ourt (G.9. 505e; cl Clm.l66o-d a'd also G/8. 458a, circd in n, 27 below). (For Adstotle's
recognition of 'saying what one believes' in Soctic diaiectic, see fop. 160"19-22: the answerer
is not just 'maintaining a postiotr for the sake of argument, brt saying what he beleves'; though
Sodates is not named, the examples show that the refereoce is to Soqates' arguments with Cal-
licles and Polus ir the Gogio,r,)
THE socRATIc ELENcrtus 41
Elenchus is used to correct mistakesls-its proper, purely negative, use in
philosophical dialect as conceived in Plato's middle dialoguesr6-but not
to discover, still less prove, the proposition which constitutes the true solu-
tion to the problem.l? As to the last example, it does, of course, refet to the
p unreconstructed Socrates of the earlier dialogues.ls But note that he does
not elicit from his interloctors the logical conditions for the dght answet
to a'What is F?' question: he produces them entirely on his own initiative,
& tells the interlocutors what they are, and requires them to comply, never
inviting elenctic argument on whether or not they are the right conditions.
Thus when he tells Laches that the definition of'courage' must cover all
of the agreed-upon cases of courageous conduct, he does not ask,'Do you
F
e agree?' but only'Do you understand?'1e And this is generally true. The
F interlocutor is never shown as having dissenting vie\rys about the logical
pattem to which a good definition should conform-views which need to
be refuted by elenctic argument before the search can start. He is shown
as all at sea on the topic, too confused to have any opinions at all, needing
instruction on its very rudiments, which Socrates is only too willing to
provide. He offers it encountering not opposition but incomprebension.2o
p" The logical truths governing deflnition, and the still more abstract ones,
ts Men.83b-e,
Pd. 85c, 101d--e, 107b; Rep. 8, 534b-e.
'
L7
The method of discovey i this passage is not elenctic but maieutic (though the midwife
F metaphor is not used here, as it is not in any dialogue prio to lhe Theaetetu.s\.me Soa|es
of this passagesees the boy getting the nswe!'not by leaming it from me' (82b), but by'himself
recoveing krowledge fro himself' (86d), which is what Socrafes says of his interlocuto$
i^ lhe Theaereu$i they 'have lemed nothing ftom me but have themselves discoveted for
themselves' the sought-for truth 050d6-7). I agree \rith Myles Burnyeat (see his 'Socratic
Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration', Bulletn o the ltitute ol Classical Sfudier (Uiversity of
London),24 (1977),7-1,5) that the midwife metaphor is a PltoDic invention: his argumerit
for this thesis I consider conclusive. I would lso agree with him tat midwifery nd recolec-
tion are distct etphors which should not be conflated. Even so, they have in commor the
fundamental notion, expessed in ech of the two texts I have cited, that the true Popositions
I which are discovred in the interrogation of the intelocrto by SocIates do not come frol
.Srcrr but fom the intelocutor ('recollected' by the latter in the Mro,'bougbt forth' by
himinthe Theaetetus)-a notion which is not expressed or even hiDted t in any of the etlie
dialogues.
ts La- 191e-192bi Euthphr. 5,6d-e,1la6-b1; Hp. Ma.287 cff.; Men.12a6 ff, (Though this ast
F passage occurs in a !ansitional dia-Iogue, its pce in that dialogue antecedes the introductio
ofthe theoy of ecollection; paralleling closely the specificatioDs which a correct definiens must
meer ii
the Euthyphro--aL Men.72c6-d1 ,tilh Euthpht. 6d9-e6-th \s,clearly, a fatblul repro-
ductioD of the denitional doctine of the earlier dialogues.)
'q 191e11. same questioi Men.'12d1.
'1o
Thus when Hippias says 'there is no difference' between'Wht is the beutiful?' and 'What
is beautJul?', he s rlot represented as propounding an erroneous doctrine which clls for refu-
rT tation-only as exhibiting pitiful incapacity lo understand the very meaning of those questions
I (287d-e).
I
il
ri
42 GREGORY VLASTOS
like the principle of non-contradiction,2l ate never treated as elenctic
theses.22 Only moral truths are so treated.
For'moral' Socrates has no special word But neither does he have any
diffrculty indicating that what he is searching for is truth in the moral
domain:
lT3l ou arsument is ove! no chance matter but over what the way we ought
' to live.'fflne same Phrase, in the identical' ods, in g 500c341 (Rep l,
3s2d)
(T4) Of ai inquiries, Callicles, this is the noblest-about those things on which
'
vou eprached mei what sort of man should one be' and what should one
practiie and' up to wbat point, whetr he is young and when he is old (Grg
487e+884)
(T5) For the things we are disputbg are hardly trivjal, but, as oe might say, those
' which to come to know ii noblest and not to know most base. For their sum
and substance is just this: knowitg, or not knowif.g, who happy and who
not. (Grg. 472c-d)
These ae the questions Socrates attacks by the elenctic method, and he
treats them as new questions, never investigated before by the dght
method, so that what th wise men of the past have or haven't said about
them becomes a mattet of indifference. When he is talking with you he
wants to know your ans\/er. If you quote some wise man's answer-as
Polemarchus does in Republic L-he will discuss it as your answer, expect-
ing you to defend it as yours. That you do not yourself have high creden-
tials will not trouble him. He may even count it an advantage. As a partner
in the seach he welcomes
(T6) . . . anyone of you l happen to meet at any given tim . (,4P 29d)
(t?) ... anyon", young or old, citizen or foreigner. (-4p 30a)
His is the aggressive outreach, the indiscriminate address to all and sundry
of the street evangelist. If you speak Greek and are willing to talk and
reason, you can be Socrates' partner in searching, with the prospect that
truth undisclosed in countless ages might be discovered here and now, on
this spot, in the next forty minutes, between the two of you.
Fo success in this enterPrise two constraints must be observed. The first
is to refrain from speechifying, to give short, spare, direct' unevasive
2t Thus Socates never feels tht he hs to a/8e that when his intellocutors un into con- t_
tradiction they sutfer logicl disaster. The principle of Don-contradiction is never so much as
stated (as it iiin the rdid?le diatogues: ReP 4,436e-4374), to say nothig of its beig defended
or justifred.
For the view that the conditions ol successful defrnition ale not themselves subject to
elenctic argument I am indebted diectly to Paul Wooduff See his excellent remarks on the
deoendenc of 'defrnition-testing arguments' otr'key premises suPplied by Socrates hiflself'
wliich'govern the form and cont;nt tdefiition must have to be acceptable . . On lhich mtter
Socrat; is an autloity. . .' (P/aroi HiPPias Major (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982),131-.
iilill
F
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 43
E
&
answers to the questions put to you. In a cooperative endeavour for mutual
enlightenment this is self-explanatory Not so is the second-the'say what
you believe constait:
(T8) By the god of friendship, Calliclesl Dor't think that you car Play games
with me and answef whateve comes to youI head, contrary to your real
opid.on (p. td cow) . . .B (Grg. 500b)
(T9) My good man, doD't arswer cottrary to youl real opinion (p o[cw),
so we may get somewherc.u (Rep. L,346a)
(T10) If you agree with these things, Crito, watch out that you are ot doing so
cotrtrary to your reat opinion (zapri dfav). (C . 49c)
B.
E To Protagoras, who had just said in reply to Socrates' question,'But what
w
does it matte? Let it be so lor us (or iptt), if you wish', Socrates says:
(T11) I won't have this. Fo it isn't this 'if you wish' aIId'if you think so' that I
wat to be retuted, but you and me. I say 'you and me' for I think that the
thesis is best refuted if you take the 'if out of it. (P/r. 331c)
Why should Socrates object to iffy theses? Hypothetical premisses
had always been Iegitimate not only in disputation, but even in the most
stringent of all forms of argument as yet discovered in Greece: mathe-
E matical prool It is standard in Greek geometry, where indirect proofs
E (as for example in EucLid 1. 5) employ an unasserted premiss, prefaced
I by the word Protagoras had just used: or,'let this be so'. Zeno, whose
dialectic had become classical by this time-Aristotle calls him 'the in-
ventor of dialectic'5-had practised systematically the thing Socrates
forbids: each of his paradoxes investigates the contradictory consequences
of its counterfactual premiss. Why should Socrtes ban this modality
F
of philosophical argument? He doesn't say. I suggest he has three
teasons.
g
First, to test honesty in argument. In eristic, where the prime object is
to win,26 one is fee to say anything that will give one a debating advan-
tage. In elenchus, where the prime object is to seach for truth, one does
F
Cf also what he had said to Callicles ealier at 495a, a d also Euthd. 286d,'Dionysodous,
I are you sayig this for the sake of tlking-to say something ouhageous-or do you really
believe that rlo human being is ignorant?'
z For the same requirement in the gument with Thrasymachus, see also 337c: here ?
qanpevot' in mryve$ar, r rpatvpet'ot' au?O eplaces the more usul ov or t
oKot1,ra, and Socrates' ppaent willingness to waive the le at 340c1-2 is ironical, as is made
F
clear by Socrates' reiterating the requiement at 350e5, though here again he rcsgns hiflself,
as apir dller, to Thrasymachus' syitrg he will ignore it.
6 Diogenes Laertius 9.25,^nd29.
t6 Ct the description of eristic ropd:'prowess inverbalcontest and in the rcfuttion of wha!
ever is said, regraUess of v,hether it is false or tr\te' (Eulhd.272a-b).
E
44 GREGORY VLASTOS
not have that option. One must say \/hat one believes-that is, what one
thinks true-even if it will lose one the debate.2?
Second, to test one's seriousness in the psuit of truth
2s
Seiousness
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 thei opinions more expendable than their life,
Socrats wnts them to tie their opinions to their life as a pledge that what
they say is what they man.
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 vthere
Socates' 'search' is, at the same time, a challenge to his fellows to change
their life, to cease caring for money and leputation and not cadng for what
should be for everyone the most precious thing of all-what one is:
{T121 . . . and if one of vou savs . . . he does care, I will not let him go ror leave
him, but will queition and examine and refute him; and if he seems to me
not io have thi vtue he says he has,I shall reproach him for undervalu-
ing the things of greatest vaiue aod overvaluing trivial ones (Ap' 29e)
Socrates is not always so inquisitorial and censorious. But those who know
him best realize that the elenchus does have this existential dimension-
that what it examines is not just propositions but lives. Says Nicias, an old
acquaintance of Socrates, to Lysimachus, a ne\ry one:
lT13) I don't think vou realize that he who comes closest to Socates in discus-
sion, even if Le should staIt discussing something etse, will f,nd himself
unavoidably carried round and roud in argument ultil he falls irito giving
an account of himself-of the way he is living now and the way he has
liyed i the past. And when he does, Socates will notiet.him go until he
has done a tiorough job of sifting him. (la 187e-188a3)
Thus elenchus has a double objective: to discover how every human
being ought Io live qnd to test that single human being tht is doing the
answiring-to find out if lre is living as one ougbt to Live. This is a t\o-in-
one operation. Socrates does not provide for two types of elenchus-a
philosophical one, searching for truth about the good life, and a therapeutic
27
Socrates says to Gorgias: 'I am one of those who woutd gtadly be refted if what I say is
not true', adding that if Grgias iloes not share this sentiment' further debate would be point-
less t458a-b).
I ote te connection Socrates sees between'saying 14hat you beteve' and seriousness in
argument at TB above, which cofltinues 'Nor must you thjnk of me as Playing gam-es For yolt
se what the argument is all about-and is thee aEythng about which eaen arDan-of
little sense
could be more-selious than about this: what is the way v/e ought to live' (G8 500b-c;cf T3
abotr).The sume connection of the rule with seriousness in argument is made at ep 1,3494,
and is implied it the remrk to Dionysodo s quoted bove, n. 23'
THE SOCRATIC ELENCTIUS 45
one, searching out the answerer's own life in the hope of bringing him to
the truth. There is one elenchus and it must do both jobs, though one or
the other \ryill be to the fore in different phases of it. From this point of
view, too, the'say \ryhat you believe' rule makes sense. How could Socrates
hope to get you to give, sooner or later, an account of yout life, if he does
not require you to state your personal opinion on the questions under
debate?
This will also explain why on some occasions Socrates is willing to waive
the rule. So, for example, when the interlocutor is losing the debate, sees
disaster ahead, and tries to spare his battered ego further mauling by shift-
ig from combatant to bystarder. This happens to Protagoras shortly after
the passage quoted as T11 above. By this time he has lost two atguments.
At the start of the third this exchange ensues:
(T14) s. Do you believe that one who acts unjustly may act temperately ir so
actig?
pRT. Socrates,I would be ashamed to agree to that. But most people would
a8ree.
s. Shall I
address my argument to them, or to you?
pRr, Argue fiist agaiNt that view of the multitude, if you wish,
s. It makes no diffeence to me, provided you do the answering. For
what I chiefly examine is the poposition. But the coNequence may be
that I the questioner and you the answee will also be examined.
(Pf. 333b8*c9)
When Protagoras was looking for the same kind of shelter earlier on by
hedging his answer with 'if you wish', Socrates had blocked the move, indi-
cating that Protagoras had already taken a stand and would be held to it:
his ego was now on the line, as in elenchus it must, for otherwise Socrates
would be left with a proposition detached from a person willing to predi-
cate his life on it, and this Socrates would refuse, as in fact he did refuse
at the time. Once that is settled, Socrates is willing to make concessions,
zs a pis aller and tnder protest, so that the argument may go on: Protago-
ras is allowed to save face by handing his part over to that faceless surro-
gate 'the multitude'. For the same reason Soqates lets the same thing
happen again, and on a bigger scale, later in the dialogue, where Socrates
directs his argument for the impossibility of acrasia to the same notional
. ans',verer,'the multitude', dragging along Protagoras as a make-believe ally
(352eff.). At the end of that debate we see that Socrates takes the conse-
quence to be that Protagoras has been'examined' after all, compelled to
confess that ftis thesis-not just that of the 'multitude'-has been shown
to be 'impossible' (360e).
 vlAsros
46 GREGoRY
II
argu-
Because it is allowed the waywardness of impromptu debate' elenctic
ment may take any number of different routes But through its motley
variations the following pattern, which I shall callze'standard elenchus" is
predominantly preserved:
(1) The interlocutor asserts a thesis which Socrates considers false and
targets for ref utation.
(2) SoJrates secures ageement to further premisses, say 4 and r (each of
which may stand fr a conjunct of propositions)'3o The agreement is
ad hoc: Socrales argues from 4 and r, but not to them'
(3) Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees' that q and r entail
not-p.
(4) Theieupon Soates claims thar not-p has been proved true, p false'
The main alternative to this pattern i.s'indirect' elenchus-so called3l
because here the refutand may be used as a premiss in its own refutation,
hence Socrates is not himself committed to the truth of the whole of the
premiss-set from which he deduces the negation of the thesis All he could
reasonably claim to accomplish by this means is to expose contradiction
within th interlocutor's premiss-set. To estabsh the falsehood of the
thesis he must trn to standard elenchus
32
Here, and here only, we con-
2e
Because it is Socrates'marD instrument of PhilosoPhical reserch With a sigle major
exceDtio lPt. 352d-3584), jt is lhe only torm of argument he uses not merely to exPose
con'
iruiiiion n it oppooenis beliefs. bui to establish srbslntive doctrines of his own' such as
i-fr"l""*"g (,h"jirt is nol. tDeant to be exhaustve): that the just man will oot harm enemies
iirr. i. ssl,h"t rlt" ust ruler fltes not in his own interes! but i lhat of his subjects (Rp l,
ei-SZalr'iut usd;, is more profitble than injustice (ep 1, 347e-354); that to teach me not bring them into the argument. He asks the interlocutot if he agrees,
i"J." ir r, fajo to make them just (Gr'8 4604-<)ithat it is bel(er to sufter wong lhan-to
io.trlii ir'"o't.u"t to suffer deswed pu-nishmeni than escape it 1(he great argument lo be
iscusseO Uelow); rat the good and th; Plesant re not the sme and pleasure should be
r"r tt" t" of the ood. not vice versa (Grg 494-5Q04); rht in malters o[justice we
""'"""
!ooi toito* not',t".ani' but'the man who knws' (ci. 474-484) thal the poel versifies
justice, tem'
an the haosode recites bv a kind of madess. not by craf! (/o/,): lhat piety and
o"r"n". un^*itdo- nierentailing (P 329e-333b);that pious ction is god'loved because
".e
it is pious, not pious because i! is godloved (EuthPhLgd-17\'
b'I use two'vaiableg though oe would iuffrc, with a view to the special-case, to be dis-
cussed below, where the interlcutor hs the oPtion of weshitg on
just one of the agreed-upon
oremisses,
'-ii i uo* notinton's terminology (Plob Earliet Dialectic,22ff)'i}noing those thirgs in
his discrlssion of indirect' elenchuslirielevant to my main argument i this paper) {'ith which
I disagee.
t S-ee e.g. how indirect elenchus is used to rough up Polemarchus, discrediting-io.his eyes the
definition ofjustice as'renderiDg to each what is due'(RP 1,331e) by shovig
ultra-respetable
justice
ttrat wtre^n;oilea to ottrer admissions of his it has bizarre conseq'rences (that'in all things
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 47
front what I called earlier on'the problem of the Socatic elenchus'. Here
there can be no question of taking the aim of the elenchus to be only to
show the interlocutor that lr must consider his thesis false if he chooses
to stick by his further admissions. So personal and contingent an outcome
would not begin to stisfy Socrates'drive for universally valid results:
(T15) For I think that we should all be contentiously eager to come to know what
is tue ad what is false about the things we assert;fol it is a common good
for all that this should be made evident. (Grg 505e)
(T16) Or don't you think that it is a commo good for practically all mankind
that how each thing is should be made eridenll (Chrm.l66d)
What Socrates must do-and wht, I shall be arguing, he is convinced he
does-is to prove p not just false /or tfte interlocutor,btl lals.If he cannot
hope to do this by standard elenchus, he cannot hope to do it at all
My discussion of standard elenchus will focus on points (2) and ( ).This
is how I can best set in historiographic perspective the interPretation of
the elenchus I am defending in this paper.At these two points I am depart-
ing sharply from each of the leading lines of past interpretation, repre-
sented respectively in the two woks of nineteenth-century scholarship
which are the landmark studies in the field: Eduad Zeller, Phtlosophie
der Griechen,3s and George Grote, Plato and. the Other Compnions of
Soates.3a I am going against Zeller at point (2), against Grote at point
(4). Since Grote's Socrates is incomparably more interesting than Zelle's
and, in my view, much closer to the truth, I shall have more to say of the
relation of my Socrates to Grote's than to Zeller's.
The claim I am making at point (2) is that the premisses [4, r] from which
Socrates deduces tht negation of the opponent's thesis are logically unse-
cured within the argument: no reason has been given to compel agreement
to them. Socrates does, of course, have reasons for q and for r. But he does
and if he gets agreement he goes on from there. So in elenctic argument
the question of referring to some court of last appeal for settling
philosophical disagreement does not arise. In particular there is no appeal
is uselessir thet use, useful when they are useless' (333d), that the just man is a kind of thief'
(334a-b) ), keeping staDdard elenchus i reseve until it is Deeded to establish the Sosatic thesis
that the just man will not harm enemies (335b-'c). Similarly, Euthyphro's tust deniton is
attacked by indirect elenchus (6e-8a), and standad elenchus is then brought iD to pove the
doctie, so fundamentl for Socrates' rational theology, tht pious action is Sodloved cdure
it is pious (9d-11a).
rr The volume entitled Sokrotes und d.ie Sokralk,5th edn, (Leipzig,lgz2i rcv.1963). My
references will be to the Eng. trans. of the 3rd Geman edn,, by O. f Reichel (epr. New York:
Russell & Russell. 1962).
48 GREGoRY vlAsros
to what Aristotle takes to seNe this purpose: none, on one hand, to those
self-evident t.ruths which are for Aristotle the foundation of all demon-
strative argument;35 and none, on the othr, to what he calls r ivofa-
what is woithy of belief because it is believed'by all or by most or by the
wise'-which constitutes for Aristotle the foundation of dialectical argu-
ment.36 Socrates spurns both. He never tells the interlocutor that be must
grant 4 or r because they are self-evident truths nor yet because they are
he m;st generally accepted opinion on the topic. To self-evidence there is
no upp"uiut ,ll by anyone in Plato's earlier dialogues.3T To common belief,
thers, but not by Socrates. It is Polus who apPeals to it in the GorSas'
only to find Socrates rejecting it out of hand. When Polus says
lT17) Soqates. don't vou think you've been refuted already when you say things
with which no'one woul agree? Just ask any of these People here '
(Grg.4'13e)
Socrates stands on his previously expressed conviction that the only
opinion which matters in an argument is that of the arguers themselves:
(T18) If I catnot poduce one man-yourself-to witness to-my assetions,
believe that I shall have accomplished nothing.. Neitber will you, I
beieve, if this one man-myself-does not witness for you,lettiDg allthose
other people go.33 (Gt1 4?2ba)
35
Demonstfttion (rnE.) proceeds from premisses which are'Primary' (xp&at)' ie'
induce loviction 'thugh themslves and not troughsome other things lt hpuv
t arv lvovr ritv ,ror;vl op. l1}"21-b2i cL A Po.64h34fn.' Phvs l9i"+6)
r The pienrisses of diaiectical reasoning are'those which re believed by all or by most or
by the wiie aad, of these,by all o by most-or the most distinguished aDd most rePutable'(Top
roo29-b23).
37
Normn Gulley appeas to hold that there is impicit aPpeal to self-evidencei'while the
initial logical aim oi thsocratic lencrur is to eveal a contadiction in a respondent's views,
its lurthe'r ajm is to es!blish as lbe conlradictory of the resPondent's initial thesis proPosi-
tion Dresented s so obviouslv true that the respondent is driven to bandon his lhesis' (1'
Philosoohv of Socates (Londn: Macmillar,1968),43-4) ff this statement is taken at face vale'
it is surlyialse: ttr us in the Gol8ir in each of soqates' major argumets aginst.Gorgias, Polus,
and Callies, the conttadictory f tir thesis is a paradox-not at all hkely to strikelhe sponso
of the efutand as'obviously true', no matter how it is'peseted' to him Thus in Socrtes'
second agument against Polus the contrdictory of Polus'- thesis is that it is better
to suffer
;nusrice rar to cormt it arid better !o submit !o punishment tha lo escape i(;that Socrates
stiould exDect that his arqumen! would make this proposition look'obviously true to Polus is
iL tft" f.rstiafter Socrates bas 'provd' it, its immediate consequences (480a-d)
".i;t.r"- ""u as out rageo us' (rroza; 480e 1). If we revise the ctaim { as we probably should
still st rk e Pols
i the light of other thig Gu ey says on pp 42-3), taking it to mean that when.the interlocu-
tor is co;fronted with th-e inconsistency oihis thesis with lhe agreed-upon Premisses the ltter
*ui[ ,t ik" hi. u, aot"'obviously tru' than the forme, the claim, thougb moe Plausible, is
stiii unacceptaute: ttre obviousness oI one o more of the premisses is-irrelevant to the logic of
the sume;. Soqates does not argue, 'concede that youf thesis is f-lse becuse the agreed-
uptn t"i"r.t u," .ore "obviousli true" than it'; even if those premisses te obvious, thei
ob\ousness would not be a Premiss in the argument.
3i For Socrates' rejection f the appeal to commoD opiion, see also a l84e, Cri 46d-47d'
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 49
At this point the Soates of Plato's earlier dialogues is at loggerheads
rvith Xenophon's:
(T19) Whenever Socates himself argued something out he proceeded ftom the
most geneally accepted opitrions (n rtu pJ.m pd.oyopvuv),
believing that secudty ir agument lies therein. Accordingly, wheneve he
argued he got much geater assent ftom his heaers than anyone I have
eve known. And he said that Homer made Odysseus'the safe speaker'
lod,8.lTLj because he was able to conduct his arguments ftom lyhat is
beleved by mankind (r nt orcoortav toq <ptir6).1e (Mem. 4.6,1.5)
If we were to believe this,' hat would we do vith those doctines of the
Socrates of Plato's earLier dialogues that go dead against'the most gener-
ally accepted opinions' of his time and shock its common sense: that it is
better to suffer injustice than to commit it; \/hat one should neve harm
one's enemy, never return evil for evil;that happiness is not the reward for
virtue, but virtue itself; that virtue and knowledge are the same so that to
known the good nd fil to do it is impossible? And what would we do with
the profession of ignorance?4o If Socrates had 'proceeded from the most
I generally accepted opinions whenever he argued something out' he could
$ Since what Xenophon is calling here'the most generally accepted opinions' and'what is
believed by mankind' is the very thing Aristotle would call rd 'o, Soates'philosophical
method, as uDderstood by Xenophol, would be congruentwith the method which Aristotle co-
trts with the Socratic.Hesays that the accomplished dialectician will ague not only ()'pelras-
tically', keeping within the questioner\ tole i argurnent, content to do lo ore thafl 'exact an
accounl' Q,yov )t aBev) ftom his interlocutor, without expouding aDd defendig positive views
of his own, but also () 'as one $,ho knows' ( el), going into the answerer's role,'render-
i[g a\ accoror' ().yo' rxo're) to 'defend a thesis (p,tapeu rv Aotv) fom the most gen-
erally accepted views' (l t'ootrot') (SE 183b2-6: he is ecalling the distiction he had
established between a,tr Krt Ko nd neaartKo tlo in the opening paagraphs of the teatise,
165'3-6). It is at just this poinl that he makes his famous efeence to Socates:'aDd this is why
[i.e. because he adhered to ole (d)lSocrates put questions and gave no eplies;fo he confessed
tat he had no knowledge' (SE. 183b?-8). Thus Xenophon's Soates is at loggeheads u,ith Aris-
totle's no less than with Plto's. Xenophon's Socrates would be doing regularly (nd does fte"
qtrenrly rthe Mmorcbtr) wbatAristotle does not represent Socates as doing at all. (Aristotle
need notbe understood as denying to Socrates the willigness, often attested h Plto (Pr.336c,
338c-; Grg.449b,462a-b, 504c), to 'reply', no less tha'sk'. He is content to gnore this in tbe
plesent, ll too brief, allusioD to Socmtes, probably because he had failed to understnd (as have
so many othe$ after him) that Socates could virdicte positive theses of his owrl in adve$ary
argument pito welshing on his confession of ignoranca ar,d. withoul i|oking endoxa a
^s
coult of lst resort.)
0 I am ot suggesting that there is some obviously true interpretatioD of this extremely per-
plexing feature of Socrates' thought (which I reserve fo separate discussion in a late pape).
Editols notetThis la|er pape appears in this volume as Ch. IL] But it is certainly Socratic,
attested rot only by Plato ad Aristotle but by many other qeditble witnesses-in fact by all
of ou ancient authoities who address the questio. Hece no irterpttion of the elenchus
wiI stard if it cantrot be sustained in full consistency with his profession of ignoftnce. I count
it a meit of the present intepretation that it is both logically and textually independeDt oI my
particular iterpretation of the profession of ignomDce,but is none the less perlectly consistent
with the latte-indeed, provides the foundation for it.
50 GREGORY VLASTOS
not have argued for those paradoxes,al nor could he have professed to
know nothing-as he, in fact, does not in Xenophon: in Xenophon's
Socrates there is no profession of ignorance, no interdict on harrning the
enemy,az and the identity of virtue with happiness and of knowledge with
vitue are blurred and flattened out-the paradoxes become common-
places. So at point (2) of my account of the elenchus the conflict between
hto's testimony and Xenophon's is ufilegotiable, and the gravest fault
in ZelLer, gteat historian though he was, is that he fudged an issueal
which callei for a flrm decision for one of his two major sources against
the other. He thereby bequeathed to the historians that followed him-
most recently Guthriea-an impossible reconciliation of irreconcilable
data.To accept, as Zeller did, Xenophon's description of Soates' method
of argument inT19 above,a5 is fatal to the elenchus.And so we see in Zeller'
and iow again in Guthrie, the elenchus disappear without a trace It is
a
not argued out of their account of Soqtes' philosophical rnethod lt iust
drops out.
4r Tht Socrates uses endoxic plemisses fo ll they ae \l'olth should go without saying- But
without some contra-endoxic prmisses how could he hope to get cont-endoxic-corclusions?
Consider Rp. 1, 335b-c, arguing by staridard elenchus for a thesis (cf above' n 32) which goes
-moriy
against the grain of Greek where doing evil to one s eDemies is on a-Par,with doing
godto one-'s friends ('belongs to the same characer'(rot' arc iou;fop 113"3-4). says Aris-
t-otle, the same dmi)abte (ineuv;113"13) character); nd doing good to.ftieds s a sta
ei.lxon (Top.1o4'22).The argument starts wilh e/do4-when horses (or dogs) are hrmed
thev are made worse ir resoec-i of equine (or canine) excellence-nd theE moves by analogy
Lo tire oemiss that when men are harmed tey afe made worse in resPect ol their'human excel'
lence'i-which would be as counter-intuilive for the Greeks as i! would be for us (does stealing
a man's v/allet make him'worse in respect of human excellece'?) Equally contra-endoxic is
the next premiss, that'justice s hma; excellence', iJ uderstood to mean (as it must for the
o*oo""rf th" uteomnt) lhat iustice is not merely . but buman excellence
' a''
Quite the opp-osite: enopon's Socrates explicitly endoses the tr'rdilioal.view
(Mem 2'
6.3s).
'By
a] a curious sort of inadvertence: nowhere irl hrs book is there a sign of his even having
nol;c this conflict, nol yet the conflict between Aistotle and Xeophol on the same issue
(above, n.39).
'4 w K. c. cuthrie,,4 Histotv oGreek PhilosoPhv':Th Fith centuty L'nli+htenent,and
iv PIto: The Eartiet Peio (Cambridge: Cambridge Uneity Press, 1969. 1975) Certied by
ihe Cmbridge imprint, this is now th standard ferene work througbout the world for all
non-soecialisis and. ofte enouqh, for specialists as well
t5 2eller quotes it without issent iDd takes Socrates' PhilosoPhical melhod t consist
i 'delucing'cotrceptions from the common opinions of men'(Soklfes und die Sokrctiker,
127).
6 o discussion whatever of elenchs by Zeller, ibid, ch lv ('The Philosophical Method of
Socrates') or Guthrie,,4 Hi.stoly of Greek Philosophy,i 425-9'^d iv' Pssim The disaPPear-
ance is moe surprising in Guihie since he, unlike Zeller, takes Plato to be 'the chiet, and
XenoDhon onlv a'n auxiliarv souce of knowledge of Socrates as a PhilosoPher' (i 350) and
since. moreover, the two m;jor studies of Socrates'ethod of enquiry that had ppeaed iD
English during uthrie's li[e-tine-Robinson's in 1941 and 1951, Gu[ey's in 1968 (nine yers
befre the pulication of vol. iv of Gulhde's lrloly) hd put the elenchus at the cantre of their
interpretation of Socrates,
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 51
III
No.,v for point (4) in my analysis of standard elenchus: the most novel of
my proposals.4? I must begin with the position I had reached in earlier
Socralic studies-the extreme opposite of the view I wish to defend now.
Explicitly in that brief introduction to the Protagoras of 1956 to which
I alluded aboveas and implicitly in an essay'The Paradox of Socrates',
written aound the same time,4e I had maintained that Socrates never
meant to go beyond (3) in his elenctic arguments-that their object
was simply to reveal to his terlocutors muddles and inconsistencies
within themselves, jarring their adherence to some confldent dogma by
bringing to their awareness its collision with other, no less confident,
presumptions of theirs.so This interpretation had a mighty precedent in
the work of that great Victorian student of Greek antiquit whose multi
volume Htory of Greece (1851) and three-volume Plato (1865) arc, in
my opinion, still, all in all, the flnest contributions ever made in any lan-
guage to their respective themes. Unlike Zeller, Grote saw with the utmost
clarity how central was the elenchus to Socratic enquiry as depicted
in Plato's earlier dialogues, hov centrl it had to remain in our picture of
a7
My intepretation ofstandard elelchus, taken as a whole, and applied rigorously, conceived
as the only rationl support Socates offers his oral doctrires, has no clea precedent i the
scholarly liteature, to my knowledge.Its afnnities are with view6 like those of NoIman Gulley
(The Philosophy ol Soctates,31ff) ard lerence Iwlrr (P\to's Motal Theory (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), 37 1.; Plato: Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979),parsln),
which also recognize that the elenchus has positive, ro less than negative, thrust, aiming to b ng
argltlnentative suppot to Soqates' afnmative views. One of my differences with Gulley has
beenoticed above.Mymain difference with IrwiD arises over his view that'Dot all lofSocrates']
positive docties rely on the elenchus; some rely on the aalogy between vktue and craft'
(Plato's Morql Theoty,37).I see no sound reason fo putting this analogy outside of the
elenchus;all of the arguments which draw conclusions frorn that aalogy are purc elenctic argu-
meDts.Afurther disagreement abes ove! alleged constraits whch, accodiDg to IrwiD,Socrates
'nomally' imposes or what the interloctor can or can't say in arguiDg against him ('normally
the iterlocutor is rlot allowed this fteedom [to eject counter-examples which refute his
defrnitior\]', Ploto's Moral Theoty,39).me lxt|ual evidence appears to be that Socrtes rnyr
llows-indeed requires-the interlocuto to say nything he believes, if he beieves it.
ar n.8.
ae
Queen's Quanerly,64 (1957),49516rcF. in G Vlastos (ed.), Te Philosopht o Socrates
(New York: Doubleday, 1971).
50
This is Plato's picture of'the sophist of noble lineage'in Spl, 230a-e, whose sevice to his
interlocutors is simply theapy ('purgatior') by enhaced self-knowledger their dogmatism is bat-
teed as they re made awae of conlicts within their own system of beliefs (the identincatior
with Socrates is tightened up in the back-reference to te passage at 268b-c'\r'e set him do,vn as
having no knowledge');it should be noted thatnothig is said to make this 'pgative' art a sub-
divisio of eristic,pace Lewis Campbe ('fe Sophistes drd Politicus olPto',191) and others:
see F. M. CoDford, Plato\ Theory ol Knowledge (Londor: Routledge, 1935), 177-82. No one
would dobt that this is an authentic, if ptial, repesentation of Socratesr this is the Socrtes
who destroys the conceit ofwisdom (,4p.21b-23b). ButPlato never says this is ll Socrtes was,
as he woud have been,if the account of the elenchus I have given at that time were corect.
 q

THE socRATrc ELENCHUS 53
52 GREGoRY vLASTos F

B not hit anyone between the eyes.s' Let us see ',vhat it means when read in
Socratesif we were to put any faith at all in Plato's testimony' and how its own context.
valuableacontdbutiofltohumanthoughtitsrelentlesspolemicagainst The argument starts half a dozen Stephanus pages back, where Socrates
Grote
gir -oof be, even if it were only the negative instrument presses the question: if one were forced to choose between inflicting injus-
E
'--i""*hil"
thought it.51
tice on another person and suffering it oneself, which would be the better
that picture of Socrates in my earlier work was very.much
a
and its foun- choice-the better for onesell the chooser? Polus takes the first option.
minrity view, itid not put me in bad intellectual company' His thesis is
ili.; it Plato's depictin of elenctic argument in his earlier .dialogues
that his I
E.

,""" .""nt"t ttow could Plato be telling us, I used to ask myself' (p) To commit injustice is better than to suffe it.
Socrates undertakes to prove
-he
to his interlocutors tht thet theses were F
n
Socates defends what he takes to be the logical contradictor
false and his true, if all shows Socrates doing is proving the inconsis- E
it inte ,ocutors' theses with other, unargued-for' concessions of (not-p) To suffer injustice is better than to commit it.
ii"Z"ftit
n,tt tt"lttt"r was that picte trouble-free lt left me with this ques-
of

Attacking in standard elenctic fashion, he gets Polus to agree to a flock of
tion: if that were all Socratei had expected of the elenchus-exposure further premisses, only one of which need be recalled hee:
support
inconsistencies in his interlocutors-where did he flnd positive
i;; ;;; strong doctrines of his on whose truth he based no his life? If (q) To commit injustice is baser (o.ioytov) than to suffer it,
rational
the elenchus, hii only line of argument, gave those doctrines
troubled by that question while all the rest can be bundled up in a single gather-all conjunct r, whose
.""itg, *ttut idf Grote hd not been B

""uor" " found it possible to believe ihat Socrates' own positive con- I contents need not concern us. Socrates argues, and Polus agrees, that q and
tracks: r entail not-p.When this result is reached, Socrates tells Polus, in the words
victions and his criticl assaults on those of others ran on separate
are two I just cited, that the Socratic thesis, not-p, has been 'proved' true, that is,
'the negative cross-examination and the affrmative dogmatism E that p has been proved not just inconsistent with 4 and r, as it of course
of thought; the one does not lead to' or. involve'
oi"onn"t" operations
I l myself has, but proved false.sa
o. tJiy trt" otit"t' (Plato,i. zgzr' could not could not reconcile
examined life, who was a dogmatist himself' Why had Socrates' perfectly clear-cut words in T20 been ignored?
to Grote's missionary of the
Why had I ignored them myself? Because I had scaled thern down, even
And there were ceainly textual grounds too for uneasiness \vith the while reading them, discounting them as a careless overstatement. I
p"tor", ur critics started pointing out.52 So I began to lose my enthusiasm
would not have done so if I had noticed that it is not only here, in the
ioii.not it it on" thing t becomi disgruntled with a picture, quite nother
last gasps of the debate, that Socrates claims he can prove not-p true:
to liberate oneselfro it by discovering the textual evidence
that destroys E
critics they did he makes the very same claim in different words several pages back, at
itr" pi"ture. tat i could not get ftom my because
"vidence it for mysell the staft of the debate. Recall what he had told Polus in T18 above: 'If I
not iave it themselves. I had to discover
cannot produce one man-yourself-to witness to my assertions, I believe
The cucial text is
that I shall have accornplished nothing.. .'. Conceding that 'almost all
lT20) Has it not been proved (droer'rra) thal what was asserted [by myself] men would agree with you. Athenians and foreigners' (472a), he had
is tue? (Grs.419e) declared
and I
Here Soqtes says in so many words that he has done what Grote E
he says that he has $ There is no comment on it in Dodds's ot lrwin's commefltarf afld no refetence to it in
had maintained he never did in an elenctic argument: B
;froved' his thesis true. Grote had certainly gone over that senteice in the Gulley, though it should have been a sta text for all three.
5a
Socrates' other tn'o desciptioris of tle result (Grg. 4'79cA-5,480b2-5) go no further than
orgi^ times, and so had I, and so had scores of others But it had
poiting out the demonstted iDconsiste[cy between Polus'thesis nd the premisses to which
^uny he has agreed. (The reder should bear in mirld tht throughout ths pper I set aside ll ques-
tions relatiDg to the logical validity of the argnments by which Soctates undertakes to refute
5t See eso. Plao.i 2317 and 281f|;and his remaks on the elenchus in his HistorY of Grcece' his oppoets'theses in specifrc elenchi. For thjs whole aspect ofSocatic dialectic I would refe
dn. (Londo:Dent. t906), ix 85
-Eueryman
!;'rilr"i". tharpest objeition was rised by E R Dodds (Plaro: Gorgias
(oxlord: to G. Santas, Soc/es (London: Routledge, 1979), with whose detailed analyses of Socratic lgu-
meDts I nd myself in very substantial agreemelt,)
o.r"i ui"Jiy "ti;Lr., i5e), 16 ana n r) s"e also Gullef Te P'tilosoPhv ol socrates'68ff

$
I
I
54 GREGoRY vl,Asros
i
(T21) But I, a single man, do not agree; fot you not comPel 1, but produce
d.o
' a multitude offalse witnesses against me,trying to drive me from my prop-
erty, the truth (<tli ooa ra 14o) (Grg' 472b)
How do you'compel' yow adversary to affirm what he denies? In an argu-
ment your only means of compulsion re logical. So to compel Polus to
'witness' for not-p Socrtes would have to Sive Polus a loqcally comPellinq
proof that p s /a/se. Thus heady in 4'72b, seven Stephanus pages before
sserting at T20 above that he has 'proved' his thesis true, Socrates is
announcing that this is exactly what he is going to do. So when he says at
T20 that he has done it, this can't be a slip. Thus, pce Grote, ex-\4astos,
and who knows how many others, there can be no doubt that this long
argument against Polus, elenchus in its standard form' which in point of
logic has done no more than demonstrate inconsistency within the premiss-
set {p, q, r}, Socrates takes to prove thatP is false, not-p true And in one
of his statements we see him claiming by implication that he can do the
same in all of his elenctic arguments against all comers:
(T22) But I know holY to Produce ote witness to my assertions: the man against
whom I am arytif'g. (Grg.474a5-6)
The claim he makes here is perfectly general wheneve he is arguing elencti-
calty with anyone against any thesis in the domain of morals' Socrates
'knows' how to make his adversary 'witness' to its contradictory: that is
how to prove to him by elenctic argument that his thesis is false.
This brings us srnack up against what I had called, near the start of this
essay,'/r problem of the Socratic elenchus': how is it tht 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
I of agreed-upon premisses for which no reason has been given in that argu-
l ment? Could he be blind to the fact that logic does not warrant the claim?
Let me frame the question in the terms of the metaphor that runs through
the passage: compelling a witness to testify against himsell Suppose the
I
following were to happen: a witness gives tstimony p on his own initia-
i
tive and then, under prodding ftom the Prosecuting attorney, concedes q
and r, whereupon the attorney points out to him that and r entail nolp,
and the witness agrees that they do. Has he then been compelled to testify
that p is false? He has not. Confronted with the conflict in his testirnony,
i
I it is still up to him to decide which of the conflicting statements he wants
I attest Socrates' belief that no flesh-and-blood antagonist will ever turn up
to retract. So Polus, if he had had his wits about him, might have retorted:
i 'I see the inconsistency in what I have conceded, and I must do something
I 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
r
t
I THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 55
I
& that p is true and 4 is false. Nothing you have proved denies me this
alternative.'
And why shouldn't Polus in that crunch decide to throw q instead ofp
I to the lions? How strongly he believes inp we have already seen: he thinks
it absd of Socrates to deny it when almost all the world affrms it.55 For
q, on the other hand, he has no enthusiasm. He may have conceded it only,
as Callicles obseves later,'because he had been ashamed to say tr'hat was
in his mind' (Grs.482eZ). Why shouldn't Polus then jettison with the
feeling'good riddance'? He would then have come out of the elenchus
t
believing that doing injustice is better andnobler lhansuffering it;his latter
state',vould have been worse than the first. Couldn't this always happen?
Wlenever Socrates proved to his interlocutors that the premisses they
had conceded entailed the negation of their thesis, why couldn't they hang
on to their thesis by welshing on one of the conceded premisses? Surely
Socrates would be aware of this ever-present possibility. Why then is he
not worried by it? Because, I submit, he believes that if that wrong choice
were made he would have the resources with which to recoup the loss in
a further elenchus. This, I am suggesting, is his general view: if you disap-
B
pointed him by denying q instead ofp, he would be confident that he could
F start all over again anil find othe premisses inside your belief system to
B show you that you haven't got rid of the trouble-that if you keep p, it will
go on making trouble for you, conflicting as much with these other pre-
misses as it did with and / before. Can it be shown from the text that
Socrates has this condence? I want to argue that it can.
For a start let us observe what happens i the Gorgiasi thee Callicles
enacts the part Polus might have played if he had chosen to retract q
instead of p. Polus was worsted in the argument, says Callicles, only
because he had conceded q, which he should not have done, and would
not have done if he had been less squeamish: if he had had the fortitude
to admit that to do injustice is nobler than to suffer it, he would have
F
F' escaped unscathed (482d7-eZ).Is Socrates stymied when that happens?
Not on your life. He sheds no tears over the loss of q, He extracts a ner/
premiss-set from Callicles and, sure enough, this new set contains all the
premisses Socrates needs to deduce not-p all over again. But what if a
super-Callicles should arise to repudiate those new premisses from which
Socrates derived not-p? Is there evidence that Socrates would not be fazed
even then, or even by a super-super-Callicles after him? Does our text
without always carrying along, in his own system of belief, a baggage of
5 Above,T17.
56 GREGoRY vlAsros
premisses from which he can be 'compelled' to 'testify' against P? I want
io argue that it does so in two remarks which, taken in conjunction, yield
clear evidence that Socrates believes this very thing.
The first is one of the things he says to Polus before their argument
begins:
(T23) , . . I believe that I and you and the est of mankind believe that commit-
ting injustice is worse thIl suffe rgrt.. (Grg 414b)
What in the world could Socrates mean by saying that Polus and the mul-
titudes who agree with Polus 'believe' the oPposite of what they assert?
There is one-and, so far as I can seen, only one-way of making sense of
the remark:we must understand Socrates to be using'believe' in that mar-
ginal sense of the word in which we may all be said to 'believe' innumet-
;ble things that have never entered our heads bt are none fheless entaled'
by what we believe in the common or garden use of the word. Let ne call
the latter 'overt', the former 'covert', beliels6 Thus, if I believe overtly that
Mary is John's sister and that John is Bill's grandfather, I may be said to
believe covertly that Mary is Bill's great-aunt, even if I have never thought
of that fact-indeed, even if I do not have a word fol 'great-aunt' in my
vocabulary Or, to take a less trivial example, if I believe that a given flge
is a Euclidean triangle, then I believe covertly the proposition which is so
surprising when we first learn it ir geometry, that the f.gure's interior
angles sum to two right angles. Here then is something Socrates might wish
to express by saying that Polus & Co.'believe' not-p, even while they ins.ist
that p is what they do believe-namely, that they have certain beliefs (of
the ordinary, overt sort) which entail not-p. This gives us a lucid sense for
what Socrates might be saying in our text:he is not declining to take Polus
& Co. at their \ryord when they insist that P is wht they believe; taking
their word for this he is telling them that along with their (overt) belief in
p they have also certain other (overt) beliefs which entail not-P: in this
sense they do (covertly) believe not-p.s?
56
This terminology was suggestel to me by David G\thier' Attenativelf we might sPeak
of 'explicit' and'tcit' belief .
57
. lon 539e: to lon, who had just said that it pe ais to the rhapsode's art to judge dll Pas-
sages in Homer, includig those which depict the wok of diffeent craftsmen, Socrtes replies,
'surely yon do not say 'ial", Ion (ot ou yc Ei, t "lory n'ra) Or re yo so torgettul?'
The ref;ence is to 538b, whee Ion had conceded that the hapsode's t is ditferent from the
chaioteer's and, further, tht if it is a dilferent art, it is knowledge of difeent things. Taking
dmissioris q alld to entail not-p, Socrtes feels entitled to tell Ion at 539e that he'says' not_
p,in the fac of the ct that Ion saysp.He does the same thing to Calicles by Proepsis at G,'8
495e: anticipatig that Callicles will make adrnissions which entail the negation of the identity
of the plea;nt with the good (on which Callictes is 'insisting'; 495bE), SocratesJeels entilled to
dechr; that'Callicles do;s not aglee with lthat identity] when he shall take the right vie' of
himself .
F THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 57
Now consider whai Socrates says to Callicles in part () of the little
F
speech that forms the curtain-raiser to their debte:
(T24) () ... don't be astonished that I should say these things lwhich he has
& been upholding against Polus]. My love, philosophy, is the one you
must stop from asserting them. It is she, my friend, who asserts these
things you hear fiom me, afld she is much less unstable thar are other
loves. Fo the love of Callicles says now one thing now another, while
philosophy always says the same thing
() So you must either refute her saying those very things that I was
saying-that to commitinjustice ad to do it with impunity is the geat-
est ofevils-or, if you leave this unrefuted, ther, by the dog, god of
B Egypq Callcles will disagree with you, Callicles, ad will dssent ftom
F you your whole life long. (Grg. 482a-b)
R
'What
could Socrates mean by saying that if Callicles cannot refute the
Socratic thesis then, in spite of his scomtul rejection of it, it will remain i
him as a source of lifelong internal dissension? How will it remain in him
at all, if he repudiates it absolutely? Surely, in the same way in which Polus
E
is said in the preceding text to'beLieve'the thesis he repudiates: in virtue
E
I of believing celtain other things which, unbeknown to him, entail that
thesis.Thus Callicles is being told tht ifhe cannot refute the Socratic thesis
(and he is not being encouraged to think he can), he will alwys-bs
'whole life long'-believe propositions which entail it. Here we have con-
clusive evidence for what I suggested above: Socrates is convinced that
when he shows his interlocutors the inconsistency of their thesis with
the conjunction of premisses to which they have agreed, Ihey will never
succeed in saving their thesis by retracting conceded premisses: if they try
& to save it in this way, they will be bound to failt fail they must, if regard-
less of rhich conceded premisses they choose to retract, there will lways
be others in their belief system which entail the Socratic thesis.
Socrates then is making a tremendous assumption. Stated in fullest gen-
erality, it comes to this:
(A) Anyone who ever has a false moral belief will always have at the
same time trues8 beliefs entailing the negation of that false belief.
That he is counting on the truth of this proposition is implied unambigu-
ously if we assume-as we surely may-that what Socrates is saying at
T24(b) he would also say about any of the theses he refutes in elenctic
s At this point the formulation of ssumption A iri the abstract published lhe Journal of
E
Philosophy (c1. above,n 1) is amended by the addition of the wod 'true', This is required to
E block an unintended consequence of the unamended formula, drawn to my attention by Richd
Kaut's intepretatio of that fomula.

58 GREGoRY vlAsros
arguments. We could not have derived this result from'123 just by itself.
For while this shows Socrates' assurance that'Polus and the rest of
rnankind' who have the false beliefp none the less have tue beliefs entail-
ing its negtion, it does not sho\ that Socrates is convinced that they will
always have such beliefs. That this is his conviction becomes entirely clear
in T24(). But it shows up also, though less saliently, in T22 and its associ-
ated texts,T18 and T21. For why should Socrates come to his elenctic argu-
ments confldent that he can produce as'witnesses' for his own thesis those
very persons who deny it, unless he were assuming that if his thesis is true
those who assert its contrdictory are always harbouring true beliefs which
countermand their denial of his thesis?
If this is what Socrates assumes, why does he not argue for it?
Because A is a met-elenctic statement.5e To support it Soates would
have to engage in meta-elenctic enquiry And this, as I indicated in the
opening paragraph of this paper, Socrates never does in Plato's earlier dia-
logues. In every one of them prior to lhe Meno Soffates maintains episte-
mological irnocence, methodological navety. He assumes he has the
right method to search fo moral truth, but never attempts to justify that
ssumption. A fortiori he never attempts to justify the assumption on
which his confidence in the constructive efflcacy of the method is predi-
cated. This is not to say that the assumption is arbitrary. He does have a
reason for it. A proves true in his own experience lt never fails Every time
he tangles with people who defend a thesis he considers false and he looks
for true premisses among their own beliefs from which he can deduce its
negation the needed premisses are in place: they are always where they
should be ifA is true. So he has this purely inductive evidence for the truth
of A.
Here we come within sight of the solution of'the problem of the
elenchus'. To reach it \rye need only note that from assumption A Socrates
could infer with certainty that any set of moral beliefs which was internally
consistetrt would consist exclusively of /," beliefs; for if it contained
even a single false beliel then, given A, it would contain beliefs entailing
the negation of that false betiel We know how highly Socrates prizes the
5' That is why I ignored it in my account of standard eletchus at the start of Sect.II above.
h should be ignored i the analysis of the logical structure of any giveD elenctic argument. A is
not a premiss i te argument, or does Socates ever sggest that it is The remarks from which
I hav teased it out are obter dicta,'fbe ilrtelocuto would be pefectly justifred if he vere to
igriore them as pule Socratic bluster: he has been give to eason why i should think them
tue. That is why A has bee[ brought iri only io explain why Socrutes himselT belevcs lh^l to
prove the iDconsistency of the thesis with the ageed-upon premisses is so /ro to Plove that,
i the thesis is false, no one can af6rm it without geeratiDg contradiction within his own system
of belief
60 GREGORY VLASTOS
And, as hasjust been shown, B in conjunction with A entails that Soqates'
belief-set consists exclusively ol true beliefs.
This last move yields the missing piece required for the solution of
'the problem of the elenchus'. The puzzle arises over Socrates' claim at
(4) the above analysis of standard elenchus: when he has sho\'n that
not-p follows from and r, whose truth his rgument has done absolutely
nothing to support, why should he want to claim that through his argu-
ment not-p'has been proved true'? What makes him think it has? The
answer is in assumptions A and B, which entail
(C) The set of moral beliefs held by Socrates at any given time is
tfue,
from which it follows that 4 and r are true, since Socrates has agreed to
them. Hence Socrates would feel justifled in making the claim at (4): to
show that a proposition follows from premisses which are true iJ to prove
that proposition true.
Imigine now Plato writing Socratic dialogues with y'rr3 mind full of epis-
temological worries. Under the influence of a certain Cratylus he had
become convinced that there can be no knowledge of the sensible \ryorld
because it is all in flux,62 and this has left him wondering how there could
be any knowledge of anything at all The Socrates he brings to life in dia-
logue after dialogue, disclaiming e has knowledge, none the less searches
inefatigably for moral truth, confident that it is findable, and in the most
unlikely of all places-in the minds of those misguided, confused, wrong-
headed people whose souls he seeks to improve. The question'How could
this be true?', which never disturbs Plato's Socrates, never stops disturb-
ing Plato. For years he sees no answer to it.63 Then, one day, he becomes
convinced of something Socrates would have thought fantastic-that eve'y
person's soul had existed long before bfuth, had gone throgh many pre-
vious births into different incarnations, and had thus, in some mysterious
62 Attstotle,Meaph.g17"32ff , with coment aa to". tiv. o. no.q 'srorleb Metphysics
(Oxford: Oxford Uiversity Press, 1924).
6 We can pinpoint the iime of bis life at which this question became so isislet in Plto's
miDd that heiui it into the ceDte oI his depiction of Socrates' practice of standard elenchs:
the time whei he wote the Go8ir, on which I foltow the widely held view that it is one of
the latest of Plato's earlier dialogues (tle best case for this view is in Irwin's commentary
on lhe Gorgias (Plato: Gorgias, 4_); lor a contrary opinion, see Charles Kahr,'Did Plto writ
Socratic Diloges?', C/asslcal Quarte y,3l (1981). 305 ft) Though (he elenchus s prctised ir
all of the dialo,-gues which precede the GorSlds (except the Apolo7, arld Menexen), o ly 11
the Gortrs is ocates mde to give utteance to lhar Bock of obiter dct which reveal the
assumptLns on which he predicarcs his confidence that the elenctic method establishes truth
and falsehood.
g
t
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 59
consistency of his own set of moral beliefs. The self-consistency of his own
position is the only reason he gives Callicles for identifying his own
theses-so presumptuously it would seem-with those of 'philosophy': she
'always says the same'; by implication, so does Socrates too.60 At the con-
clusion of that speech to Callicles he elevates consistency to a supreme
desideratum in his own search fot truth:
(T25) As for myself, I would rather that my lyre were out of tune, o a chot I
was training, and that the greater part of mankind should dissent from me
and contradict me, than that I should be out of tune with my own single
self and contradict myseI (Grg.4a2b1-a.3)
For years he has been striving for just this, constantly exposing the con-
sistency of his beliefs to elenctic challenge, ready to root out any belief,
however attractive in itsel-f, which if allowed to stand would disturb the
x coherence of the system as a whole. So this is where he now finds himself
after all those years of searching: of all the sets of moral beliefs compet-
ing for acceptance in elenctic argument, only one has shown up in his
own experience that meets this desideratum-his own. All others, when
tested for consistency, have failed. So he has evidence-as before, induct-
ive evidence6l-for a further assumption,
(B) The set of moral beliefs held by Socrates at any given time is
E
consistent.
F
m Cf, also GJ'a,490e10-1L Socrates assures Callicles that he, untike Callices, always says'the
same things about the same thngs'.No one should be misled by his retrospective reark at the
dialogue's eDd (527d):'we never think the same about the same thirgs'. As Dodds (Plator
Gorgias) remarks ad loc.,'this reproach applies ofcouse to Callicles only, but Soates politely
F includes himselj'. Fo siqrlar use of the frfit-person plural-'we' ionically substituted fo
K 'yotr'----c1. Euthphr,15c8-9: 'Either we were wrong when we ageed before, or, if we were ight
then, ve are wrong nou,' (as the context shows, 'we' in its last occuence refeIs exclusively to
g Euthypho); Cln. 175b7:'We have admitted that there is knowledge of knowledge, although
the rglrrDent said "No" ' (it had been C tias who argued fo 'knowledge of knowledge'; it was
Socrates who produced the'argment that sard "No"'); . 194ci 'Come, Nicias, and,ifyou ca,
escue you fiends who are stom-tossed by the agument' (or y Lches hd been 'storm-
tossed'; Socrates, sailing vey sroothly, had rebutted each oI Laches' definitions), The irony in
Gr& 527d is Eansparet Callicles had been coDvicted of numerous inconsistencies, Socrates of
not even one,
The coDsistecy of the set s being inferred fiom its track record in Socrates' own experi-
ence: in al of the elenctic arguments in vhich he hs engged his set has neve been faulted for
inconsisteDcy-a very chancy infereDce: the results of eenctic argument ae powefully affected
by the agumentative skill of the contestants; since that of Socrates vastly exceeds that of his
interlocutorE he is ore effective in spotti[g beliefs of theirs which entail the negatio[ of their
theses thn are theywhen trying to do the same to him;so his ndefeated record need not show
that his belief-set is consistent;it may or y show that its inconsistencies have defred tbe powei
ofhis advesries to ferret them out. Socrtes could hadly have been unaware of this unavoid-
able hazard in his method.This must contbute to the sense of its fallibility which,l believe, is
the dght clue to his pofession of ignorance.
THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS 61
way, acquired knowledge aboul everythng,6a and thrs knowledge was now
in every soul in the form of true covert beliefs. Would not that have struck
Plato as ans\ryedng the question Socrates had never pursued:how could it
have happened that each and every one of his iterlocutors did have those
true beliefs Socrates needs to refute all of that person's false beliefs? That
wildest of Plato's metaphysical flights, that ultra-speculative theory that
& all learning is recollecting, is understandable as, among other things, an
g
answer to a problem in Socratic elenchus. Could this be why, when Plato
n adopts it, he puts it into Socrates' mouth?65
APPENDIX
The Demise of the Elenchus it the Euthydernus, Zysis, and
Hppiq: Major
It does not seem to have been noticed in the critical liteature that these three dia-
logues, each of which has been ftequently thought (on the strength of miscellaneous
citeia) to fall late within the earlier dialogues, have a common feature which dis-
tiDguishes them from all of the othe dialogues i this group: abandonment of adver-
sary argument as Socrates' method of philosophical investigation. The theses which
are seriously debated in these dialogues are not contested by the interlocutor;
Socrates himself is both their author and cdtic.
s 'The sout being immortl and hving had many btths, and havng seen eveything both in
this world and i Hades,there is nothing it has not come to know' (Me. 81c5-7), It should be
emphasized that there is Dot the slightest evidence of Plato's acceptance of this extraordirary
F doctriDe prior to the Mfto ad, especially, in vieu, of what was said in the preceding note, no
eviderce of his acceptnce of it in the Gogia,r. The eschatological myth with which the Cor8las
coDcludes_is a puely moal tale, without epistemological content of any sot.
6s
This essay is the outcome of discussions of the elenchus in semina$ at Berkeley, Toonto,
and St Andews. An ealie draft was circulated among friends and several of them responded
{'ith commets. Though I cannot thank them all by rame, I must mention those among them
whose citicisms pompted some specific coection: Jlia Annas, Myles Burnyeat, Jim
Dybilcowski, Michael Ferejohn, Alvin Goldman, Charles Kahn, Iar Kidd, Richard Kraut,
Jonathan Lear,Alexander Nehamas, Richard (oty, Jery Santas, Friedrich Solmsen. My grct-
est debt by fa is to Burnyeat fo a discussion which enabled me to cla ly the rgument i Sect.
lII. But Deither he rior any of the aforenamed should be presumed to agree with any ot the
views I have expessed,
6 Onthe Euthydemus, writes Guthrie (,4
Iirtory of Grcek Philosoph!, iv.266),'the prevait-
ing opinior lreviewed in H. Keulen, Untersuchunten zl Plonb Euthydemus (Kla,ts. Philol.
* Sfud., xxv (wiesbadetr Hanassowitz, 1971)l is that [it], like the Meno, was written afte the
earlier Socratic dialogues and the Poa8odr, but before tbe great centrl group'. On the )s,s,
see esp. the sefl eview of work oD this dalogue in V Schoplick, De p latonische Dialog Lysis
(Augsburg: Blasaditsch, 1969; diss. Freibug, 1968), supporthg the conclsipn that the )rr is
closely related to the Ethydemus ar'd $obabl! comes belore the Meno but after the Go8ir.
The cse for the lppis MJol as a transitional dialogue is argued strongly by John Malcolm
('OD the Place of the Hippias Major h fhe Development of Plato's Thought', ,4rcliv fr
Geschichte der Philosophe,so (1968),189ft) and by Paul Woodruff (Plafor Hippias Majo,
17s-9).
*
 GREGoRY vLASTos
THE SOCRATIC BLENCHUS 63
62
ditches the elenchus. It is a reasonable conjecture that it is Plato himself who has
Euthydemus now lost faith in the elenchus and extricates his Socrates ftom it, allowing him to
elenctic,refutation
Preveted bv the eristic clowning of the two sophists fom.usitg move out of it quietlf without commeIt, without sayitg that he is doing so, aIld a
in a Protreltic dis-
ilffi th";, s;t ". ttitut uusinesi of the dialogue fortor witho.u,t explaidng why,
lli."- '^ ^'i"" cr"inis.In this discourse the only theses investigated by Soclates
bv himself in the didactic stvle
#i'":dil:;i"-ti'"4' - amended
ask questions
i:,i;,wiere the intelocutor is a ves-man'who mav
#"ti;;;i-;;* tjections,but never puts up ustainedresistance to asocratic
;i:ilffiil;tue tte interiocuto, a teenagr' is docilitv itseli when e does
it is to anticipate the very
iriuJ'iti!i,ii! i'' o*n 1to "n"'vone's urprise.'
oi
(290b-d). A fufhersay in which
t L"-f,"i, round out SocareJ' rhought
i;;ili:ih """" rl" ,*uriti"t or to $ound his doctrine
"r"nctic-argument.s
for haDDiess-which he presents as uncon-
i" pt"piit*"-,e unive$al desire
and'senseless'
"
testable in PrinciPte: to questton tt, he says' *ould be'ridiculous'
ii"i-sl. dtlrt i .ove ii never made in ny preceding dialoguel there evervthing
is contestable.

Lysis
ever..p-ro- forma and
Hee asain there is no elechus at all against anybody-not
ii'i^1],ri-r " . nil"t uop'Il n the (he initial ncounter with Hippothales
rro thesis) but
;";h" I;;;;;;;d youtn !tt it noi
"
tefutation has
wav
Proposed
scrates proposes all the
; ;il;;:;;*;. \t/hJn the Tnvestigation gets under
ir'ilt i'ri"l' iil'"J i.dt"t uuitte theses which are
teenagers
refuted
(whose
rhere
strong
is no
poitt
;.\il;-S-ocr;ieslroposes a thesis the amiable
it tbey
i" and sotd iooks, nor brains) go along;when he tums agaist
",'.,a -.nn"r, in wiih socrates' new move and tas
;",iili;;)ii Ji*"iut"lv'rll
along.67

Hppis Major
is lost.on the sophist'
After regalig HipPias with fulsome compliments whose iony
with Hippias' ludicrouslv
iilil;;is ;i;tion is sprung. socrtes makes sport
in the corpus) while trying to
i"-". ti*i,* t,itv are thd goo--f,est definitions the cashiers
"i-'i" "*t,*ftt is calledior in a definition (cl above, n 20) andThe.definitions
"h;T;;;;;i";i*",iu un"""t' to the'\ryhat is ?'.question
(293dff) 'the uselul'
;id".;'"";td";'"nio u",ut.n '" ouslv-'the ttns' (297ell)-are all
irqi.fil 'thut wi"h pl.ase. through eyesigbt or hearing'
::t;iJ;'iT; i;;;;i"{ "*"ni"'i"e"no resisiance from Hippias' and are reruted
i;'#J^i;;;.-;;-ti'ie"t, ubristic 'reladve' oI his' who terrorizes him
tht"ueo"-to thash him for his stupidity lt is as il Plato were savrng:
^J"v"o
mv socrates has now come ,o ,"" ihut elenctc rifutation of others is not worth
to make pfogress towafds rhe
ii"lrr, iirri' rhat he must meet
truth. "r"ri_"i"ir-
Thusinthesetheeworks,allofwhichmustprecedeheMeno'tornoneofthem socrates
iiiLp^rt-iprtysica' epistemological, a;d methodological novelties'

6?Cf.PaulShorev,l'yiaPldoSdid(Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress'19331'490'onLy'
and the
ttei;"o-ur;; i';."auess wit ,"nic iirlocutors acept whatSocrales suggesr\
are dashed by his discovery of new objections'