18 I have in an earlier chapter (ch. viii. vol. i. p. 406) cited the passage — “Philosophiam multis locis inchoasti: ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum”. This is the language addressed by Cicero to Varro, and coinciding substantially with that of Kleitophon here.
19 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 28 E, 29 D-E, 30 A-E. 30 E: προσκείμενον τῇ πόλει ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ὥσπερ ἵππῳ μεγάλῳ μὲν καὶ γενναίῳ, ὑπὸ μεγέθους δὲ νωθεστέρῳ καὶ δεομένῳ ἐγείρεσθαι ὑπὸ μύωπός τινος· οἷον δή μοι δοκεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἐμὲ τῇ πόλει προστεθεικέναι τοιοῦτόν τινα, ὃς ὑμᾶς ἐγείρων καὶ πείθων καὶ ὀνειδίζων ἕνα ἕκαστον οὐδὲν παύομαι τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην πανταχοῦ προσκαθίζων. Also pp. 36 D, 41 E.
20 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 21 D-22 D, 33 A: ἐγὼ δὲ διδάσκαλος οὐδενὸς πώποτ’ ἐγενόμην.
21 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 23 A, 28 A.
The same defects also confessed in many of the Platonic and Xenophontic dialogues.
Moreover, it is not merely in the declarations of Sokrates himself before the Athenian Dikasts, but also in the Platonic Sokrates as exhibited by Plato in very many of his dialogues, that the same efficiency, and the same deficiency, stand conspicuous. The hearer is convicted of ignorance, on some familiar subject which he believed himself to know: the protreptic stimulus is powerful, stinging his mind into uneasiness which he cannot appease except by finding some tenable result: but the didactic supplement is not forthcoming. Sokrates ends by creating a painful feeling of perplexity in the hearers, but he himself shares the feeling along with them. — It is this which the youth Protarchus deprecates, at the beginning of the Platonic Philêbus;22 and with which Hippias taunts Sokrates, in one of the Xenophontic conversations23 — insomuch that Sokrates replies to the taunt by giving a definition of the Just (τὸ δίκαιον), upon which Hippias comments. But if the observations ascribed by Xenophon to Hippias are a report of what that Sophist really said, we only see how inferior he was to Sokrates in the art of cross-questioning: for the definition given by Sokrates would have been found altogether untenable, if there had been any second Sokrates to apply the Elenchus to it.24 Lastly, Xenophon expressly tells us, that there were others also, who, both in speech and writing, imputed to Sokrates the same deficiency on the affirmative side.25
22 Plato, Philêbus, p. 20 A.
23 Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 9-11.
24 We need only compare the observations made by Hippias in that dialogue, to the objections raised by Sokrates himself in his conversation with Euthydêmus, Xen. Mem. iv. 4, 2, and to the dialogue of the youthful Alkibiades (evidently borrowed from Sokrates) with Perikles, ib. i. 2, 40-47.
25 Xenoph. Memor. i. 4, 1. εἰ δέ τινες Σωκράτην νομίζουσιν, ὡς ἕνιοι γράφουσί τε καὶ λέγουσι περὶ αὐτοῦ τεκμαιρόμενοι, προτρέψασθαι μὲν ἀνθρώπους ἐπ’ ἀρετὴν κράτιστον γεγονέναι, προαγαγεῖν δὲ ἐπ’ αὐτὴν οὐχ ἱκανόν — σκεψάμενοι μὴ μόνον, &c.
See also Cicero, De Oratore, i. 47, 204, in which Sokrates is represented as saying that concitatio (προτροπὴ) was all that people required: they did not need guidance: they would find out the way for themselves: and Yxem, Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, pp. 5-12.
Forcible, yet respectful, manner in which these defects are set forth in the Kleitophon. Impossible to answer them in such a way as to hold out against the negative Elenchus of a Sokratic pupil.
The Platonic Kleitophon corresponds, in a great degree, to these complaints of Protarchus and others, as well as to the taunt of Hippias. The case is put, however, with much greater force and emphasis: as looked at, not by an opponent and outsider, like Hippias — nor by a mere novice, unarmed though eager, like Protarchus — but by a companion of long standing, who has gone through the full course of negative gymnastic, is grateful for the benefit derived, and feels that it is time to pass from the lesser mysteries to the greater. He is sick of perpetual negation and stimulus: he demands doctrines and explanations, which will hold good against the negative Elenchus of Sokrates himself. But this is exactly what Sokrates cannot give. His mission from the Delphian God finishes with the negative: inspiration fails him when he deals with the affirmative. He is like the gadfly (his own simile) in stimulating the horse — and also in furnishing no direction how the stimulus is to be expended. His affirmative dicta, — as given in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, are for the most part plain, home-bred, good sense, — in which all the philosophical questions are slurred over, and the undefined words, Justice, Temperance, Holiness, Courage, Law, &c., are assumed to have a settled meaning agreed to by every one: while as given by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, they are more speculative, highflown, and poetical,26 but not the less exposed to certain demolition, if the batteries of the Sokratic Elenchus were brought to bear upon them. The challenge of Kleitophon is thus unanswerable. It brings out in the most forcible, yet respectful, manner the contrast between the two attributes of the Sokratic mind: in the negative, irresistible force and originality: in the affirmative, confessed barrenness alternating with honest, acute, practical sense, but not philosophy. Instead of this, Plato gives us transcendental hypotheses, and a religious and poetical ideal; impressive indeed to the feelings, but equally inadmissible to a mind trained in the use of the Sokratic tests.
26 The explanation of Justice given by Plato in the Republic deserves to be described much in the same words as Sokrates employs (Repub. i. p. 332 C) in characterising the definition of Justice furnished by (or ascribed to) the poet Simonides:—
ᾐνίξατο, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὁ Σιμωνίδης ποιητικῶς τὸ δίκαιον ὃ εἴη.
The Kleitophon represents a point of view which many objectors must have insisted on against Sokrates and Plato.
We may thus see sufficient reason why Plato, after having drawn up the Kleitophon as preparatory basis for a dialogue, became unwilling to work it out, and left it as an unfinished sketch. He had, probably without intending it, made out too strong a case against Sokrates and against himself. If he continued it, he would have been obliged to put some sufficient reason into the mouth of Sokrates, why Kleitophon should abandon his intention of frequenting some other teacher: and this was a hard task. He would have been obliged to lay before Kleitophon, a pupil thoroughly inoculated with his own negative œstrus, affirmative solutions proof against such subtle cross-examination: and this, we may fairly assume, was not merely a hard task, but impossible. Hence it is that we possess the Kleitophon only as a fragment.
The Kleitophon was originally intended as a first book of the Republic, but was found too hard to answer. Reasons why the existing first book was substituted.
Yet I think it a very ingenious and instructive fragment: setting forth powerfully, in respect to the negative philosophy of Sokrates and Plato, a point of view which must have been held by many intelligent contemporaries. Among all the objections urged against Sokrates and Plato, probably none was more frequent than this protest against the continued negative procedure. This same point of view — that Sokrates puzzled every one, but taught no one any thing — is reproduced by Thrasymachus against Sokrates in the first book of the Republic:27 in which first book there are various other marks of analogy with the Kleitophon.28 It might seem as if Plato had in the first instance projected a dialogue in which Sokrates was to discuss the subject of justice, and had drawn up the Kleitophon as the sketch of a sort of forcing process to be applied to Sokrates: then, finding that he placed Sokrates under too severe pressure, had abandoned the project, and taken up the same subject anew, in the manner which we now read in the Republic. The task which he assigns to Sokrates, in this last-mentioned dialogue, is far easier. Instead of the appeal made to Sokrates by Kleitophon, with truly Sokratic point — we have an assault made upon him by Thrasymachus, alike angry, impudent and feeble; which just elicits the peculiar aptitude of Sokrates for humbling the boastful affirmer. Again in the second book, Glaukon and Adeimantus are introduced as stating the difficulties which they feel in respect to the theory of Justice: but in a manner totally different from Kleitophon, and without any reference to previous Sokratic requirements. Each of them delivers an eloquent and forcible pleading, in the manner of an Aristotelian or Ciceronian dialogue: and to this Sokrates makes his reply. In that reply, Sokrates explains what he means by Justice: and though his exposition is given in the form of short questions, each followed by an answer of acquiescence, yet no real or serious objections are made to him throughout the whole. The case must have been very different if Plato had continued the dialogue Kleitophon; so as to make Sokrates explain the theory of Justice, in the face of all the objections raised by a Sokratic cross-examiner.29
27 Plat. Repub. pp. 336 D, 337 A, 338 A.
28 For example, That it is not the province of the just man to hurt any one, either friend or foe, Repub. p. 335 D.
Thrasymachus derides any such definitions of τὸ δίκαιον as the following — τὸ δέον — τὸ ὠφέλιμον — τὸ λυσιτελοῦν — τὸ ξυμφέρον — τὸ κερδάλεον, Repub. i. p. 336, C-D.
These are exactly the unsatisfactory definitions which Kleitophon describes himself (p. 409 C) as having received from the partisans of Sokrates.
29 Schleiermacher (Einleitung, v. pp. 453-455) considers the Kleitophon not to be the work of Plato. But this only shows that he, like many other critics, attaches scarcely the smallest importance to the presumption arising from the Canon of Thrasyllus. For the grounds by which he justifies his disallowance of the dialogue are to the last degree trivial.
I note with surprise one of his assertions: “How” (he asks) “or from what motive can Plato have introduced an attack upon Sokrates, which is thoroughly repelled, both seriously and ironically, in almost all the Platonic dialogues?”
As I read Plato, on the contrary: the Truth is, That it is repelled in none, confirmed in many, and thoroughly ratified by Sokrates himself in the Platonic Apology.
Schleiermacher thinks that the Kleitophon is an attack upon Sokrates and the Sokratic men, Plato included, made by some opponent out of the best rhetorical schools. He calls it “a parody and caricature” of the Sokratic manner. To me it seems no caricature at all. It is a very fair application of the Sokratic or Platonic manner. Nor is it conceived by any means in the spirit of an enemy, but in that of an established companion, respectful and grateful, yet dissatisfied at finding that he makes no progress.
END OF VOL. III.
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