BMCR 2009.03.20, Michel Narcy, Xe/nophon et Socrate. Actes du colloque

Michel Narcy, Alonso Tordesillas (ed.), Xe/nophon et Socrate. Actes du
colloque d'Aix-en-Provence (6-9 novembre 2003).  Bibliothe\que
d'histoire de la philosophie. Nouvelle se/rie.  Paris:  J. Vrin, 2008.
Pp. 322.  ISBN 9782711619870.  EUR 32.00 (pb).

Reviewed by David M. Johnson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
(Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
Word count:  3502 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

In 1988, when Donald Morrison published his bibliography on Xenophon's
Socratic writings from 1600 to 1984, it would have been difficult to
imagine that a supplement would be called for any time soon. But even
as Morrison wrote, his own polemic against Gregory Vlastos's
high-handed treatment of Xenophon was leading some to give Xenophon
another look.[[1]] Since then there has been a burst of interest in
Xenophon's Socrates, particularly in continental Europe, where study of
Socratics other than Plato has been rather more intense than in the
Platocentric Anglo-American world.[[2]] The current volume adds not
only a series of important French language essays on Xenophon's
Socrates, but a bibliography of the rather stunning 1384 items on
Xenophon's Socrates published since Morrison's cutoff date. The
bibliography is the work of Louis-Andre/ Dorion, editor, together with
Michele Bandini, of the splendid new Bude/ edition of the Memorabilia,
the first volume of which has been reviewed in these pages;[[3]] the
long-awaited second and final volume will soon be available. With the
help of Dorion's extensive introduction and notes on the Memorabilia,
his bibliography here, and this fine collection of essays, we are
better positioned than ever to appreciate what Xenophon has to teach us
about Socrates.

The present volume, edited by Michel Narcy and Alonso Tordesillas, is
the result of a conference on Xenophon's Socrates held in Aix en
Provence in November of 2003. The twelve essays are well arranged, and
we move smoothly from moral psychology to religion to method to
politics to economics. The Memorabilia is at the center most of the
time, save for the final two essays on the Oeconomicus. There is rather
little on Xenophon's Apology or his Symposium, but this is just as
well, as these works have enjoyed more than their fair share of
attention thanks to comparison with their Platonic namesakes. It is one
of the great virtues of these essays that they read Xenophon in his own
right, rather than simply as a poor relation of Plato.

The editors of our volume provide a concise introduction outlining the
approach which is now taken by most who study Xenophon's Socrates. A
more ambitious introduction could have pulled together the themes of
these varied essays. The almost complete lack of any cross-references
in the essays themselves is also unfortunate, if understandable in a
volume of proceedings. One sometimes encounters here entirely different
readings of the same passage, with no hint on how the authors would or
did react to each other. This lack of cross-referencing is most telling
in those essays that range widely over Xenophon's Socratica, presenting
something like a comprehensive view of Xenophon's Socrates rather than
an argument with a single, readily identifiable (and hence falsifiable)
thesis. Several such essays here left this reader somewhat breathless,
if also, without exception, with much food for thought. Ah, to have
been in Provence not only for the papers but for the discussion about
them!

In the emerging consensus view of Xenophon's Socratica, well sketched
by our editors, we begin with the premises that the Socratic writings
are fictional and that Xenophon and Plato are often irreconcilably at
odds, and conclude that the Socratic question is unanswerable. We are
thus freed from that tedious question, and can concern ourselves
instead with the immediate apre\s Socrate. As a matter of fact, though,
none of the pieces in this volume is particularly oriented toward the
study of the immediate reception of Socrates,[[4]] and a number of them
raise the officially bracketed question of the historical Socrates, a
question rather difficult to avoid, as it turns out. Many stress
differences between Plato and Xenophon, others find surprising
similarities; what all agree upon is that Xenophon's Socrates is a
figure coherent enough to warrant sustained philosophical scrutiny.
These authors demonstrate that we can approach Xenophon's Socrates
precisely as we approach Plato's. Why must we classify Xenophon's
Socrates as a subject for reception study, then? Why not just call the
study of Xenophon's Socrates a chapter in the history of philosophy?

The first contribution to our volume comes from Donald Morrison, who
employs the logical distinctions so prominent in the Anglo-American
analytical approach to Socrates in order to better understand the moral
psychology of Xenophon's Socrates. Morrison notes that, despite
Xenophon's emphasis on the importance of self-mastery (enkrateia),
control over one's non-rational desires, Xenophon also provides us with
a clearer statement of psychological egoism, the doctrine that all
people always act in what they regard as their own best interest, than
any found in Plato (Memorabilia 3.9.4). Morrison goes on to suggest how
we might address various apparent contradictions between psychological
egoism and other views Xenophon attributes to Socrates. Xenophon says
that one who knows what he ought to do always does it (Mem. 4.6.6), but
the 'ought' here (<greek>dei=n</greek>) may be prudential (cf. 4.6.11)
rather than deontological. Xenophon admits that akrasia, the absence of
self-mastery, can lead one to act contrary to one's usual view of what
is in one's interest. But this slight diachronic weakness of will is to
be distinguished from the graver, synchronic weakness of will, Medea
killing her children while knowing full well how wrong it is to do so.
Finally, Morrison notes that while the standard view of Plato's
Socrates denies the presence of any non-rational desires, and hence has
no place for the self-mastery that Xenophon's Socrates emphasizes, some
influential scholars have argued of late that Plato's Socrates also
recognizes non-rational desires, clearing the way to resolving one of
the largest apparent conflicts between Xenophon and Plato.[[5]] Some
have gone as far as to claim that this must have been the view of the
historical Socrates, but Morrison will not join them. One problem with
such a historical construction, as Morrison points out, is that, if
Plato's Socrates also admits the presence of non-rational desires, we
need to address why he never deigns (in the early dialogues) to mention
enkrateia, the pride and joy of Xenophon's Socrates.

Michel Narcy's contribution begins with his suggestion, first mooted
elsewhere,[[6]] that the "dearer (girl-)friend" (<greek>tis
filwte/ra</greek> Mem. 3.11.18), the one Socrates may prefer to the
glamorous hetaira Theodote, is his own soul. This suggestion strikes me
as decidedly implausible. The standard view, that Socrates is joking
about his male friends, the presence of one of whom would lead him to
neglect the beautiful Theodote, makes far better sense of the immediate
context. The girlfriends at issue need to be feminine in keeping with
the heterosexual (sic!) banter of the passage, and their presence
"within" (<greek>e)/ndon</greek>) is not some hint toward psychology
but due simply to the fact that neither Theodote nor Socrates (who is
also mixed up in the prostitution business, at least metaphorically:
Symposium 4.55-64, 8.4-6) is a streetwalker who will turn tricks
outside. The fact that Socrates has plural girlfriends (3.11.16) would
seem to be a difficulty with Narcy's view (in which Socrates has only
one dearer friend, his soul), but Narcy makes it the springboard for an
insightful reading of Socratic psychology, in which the soul does
indeed have something like parts, with pleasure playing an important
role. Socrates' self-mastery, as Narcy argues, does not enable him to
deny pleasure in pursuit of some higher end, but does allow him to
enjoy at least the best sorts of pleasures. We have, then, a sort of
hedonistic calculus, reminiscent of Plato's Protagoras; but it is
complicated, as Narcy notes, by the fact that Xenophon's Socrates does
seem to recognize different sorts of pleasure (as at Mem. 1.6.8). For
if some other criterion allows you to choose between pleasures, that
other criterion must be part of what you are after, and you are no
longer an uncomplicated hedonist. So is Xenophon's Socrates a hedonist?
We reach here, it seems to me, a question Xenophon may not address for
us, whether due to his reserve in discussing hedonism (out of
pedagogical or apologetic grounds) or because he--or perhaps even the
historical Socrates--had simply not thought the matter through.

>From psychology we turn to two pieces on religion. Toma/s Calvo
Marti/nez devotes most of his essay to showing that the religion of
Xenophon's Socrates is every bit as conventional as Xenophon claims it
is in Memorabilia 1.1-2. Calvo Marti/nez argues that Xenophon's
Socrates, like Apollo, praises moderation and self-knowledge and,
unlike other figures of the sophistic enlightenment, never critiques
traditional representations of the gods in myth, even when discussing
the affairs of Zeus in his speech against carnal love in Symposium 8.
But Socrates' etymological defense of Zeus' relationship with Ganymede
there is eminently sophistic, it seems to me, making him no more a
defender of traditional religion than is Tiresias in Euripides'
Bacchae. Calvo Marti/nez himself recognizes something more than
conventional in the providential world order of Memorabilia 1.4 and
4.3, and nicely notes how Xenophon exploits the ambiguity of the neuter
daimonion to obscure the difference between traditional polytheism and
his less conventional conception of a singular divine craftsman. Calvo
Marti/nez leaves us with an unresolved tension between conventional and
unconventional religious views. I suggest that Xenophon emphasizes the
conventional side of Socrates' religious views while also revealing
that they are in fact rather unconventional; as the most pious of men,
Socrates' piety goes well beyond the conventional.

Alessandro Stavru studies Xenophon's account of unwritten law in
Memorabilia 4.4 via unpublished work by the great German scholar of
Greek religion, Walter Otto. After a full and valuable account of other
scholarship on this passage, Stavru shows how Otto addressed a
fundamental feature of the unwritten laws, the fact that all who break
them are inevitably punished. For Otto this is not a matter of natural
law but reflects a faith that the order of things is somehow just;
Xenophon's Socrates is not a utilitarian avant la lettre but a believer
in a harmonious world-order in which it always pays to do the right
thing. Otto found numerous passages in Plato based on this same belief,
as Socrates' puzzling remark that it is not permitted for a better man
to be harmed by a worse (Apology 30c). Here we have a fascinating study
in the reception of Socrates, albeit one of his reception by Otto and
other modern scholars rather than his reception by Xenophon.

In the next three essays we turn to method. Alonso Tordesillas argues
that the implicit methodology and content of the tale of Herakles at
the Crossroads (Mem. 2.1.21-34), which Xenophon's Socrates says he has
adapted from Prodicus, are Prodicean enough, at least in spirit. A
central point of his argument is that, if we are after Prodicus, we
must strive to reconcile our evidence outside this passage, which
overwhelmingly connects Prodicus with the study of synonyms, with the
ethical focus of our passage. Prodicus, like Socrates, was interested
in defining terms, and, like Socrates, stuck mainly to ethical and
political topics; it is natural enough, then, to expect Prodicean
influence on Socrates. Tordesillas takes the numerous references to
Prodicus in Xenophon and Plato to reflect that influence (rather than
as ironic put-downs of a sophistic rival). The passage about Herakles
does not obviously reflect Prodicus' interest in terminology, but it
offers not so much a choice between two paths as one between two
speakers, Virtue and Vice: the passage is, for Tordesillas, as much a
defense of rhetoric as a defense of virtue. There has been an outburst
of interest in whether or not Xenophon's version of Herakles at the
Crossroads accurately reflects the original work of Prodicus.[[7]]
While the Socratic question may be passe/, the Prodicean one, despite
our dearth of evidence, apparently is not.

Livio Rossetti argues that a careful reading of Aristippus' attempt to
refute Socrates (Mem. 3.8) can show us much about the rules of Socratic
dialectic--and how Socrates breaks them. Aristippus here plays
Socrates, and Socrates takes a tack similar to one tried by some of his
interlocutors elsewhere by refusing to name anything good or beautiful
(kalon) tout court, insisting instead on naming many things that are
good in one respect but bad in others (cf. Protagoras 334a-c). For
Rossetti, Aristippus is an overconfident student who needs to be
brought back into the fold by his master. While Aristippus recognizes
that Socrates cheats by failing to give a definition of the good, he
cannot take advantage of this point and is instead made the recipient
of a Socratic sermon. Rossetti does not, to my mind, adequately explain
why Socrates cheats. Xenophon confirms that Socrates breaks the normal
rules of debate when he tells us that Socrates chose to forego
maintaining a consistent position on the good in order to benefit his
companions and get rid of an annoying interlocutor (Mem. 3.8.1-2). I
suspect that Aristippus, a hedonist, thought that the only defensible
unitary definition of the good would be the pleasant. Socrates, who may
well have known of no better definition for the good than the pleasant,
chose to wiggle out of Aristippus' questions in order to avoid
supporting an avowedly hedonistic teaching in front of his
impressionable companions. Aristippus is not, then, a wayward student
who needs to be brought back into the fold but a rival with a dangerous
hedonistic position.

Hugues-Olivier Ney studies the intersection of dialectic and politics,
and finds the two meeting at a vanishing point of sorts. Xenophon says
that Socrates made his students more dialectical and more capable of
ruling in one fell swoop (Mem. 4.5.12). In Xenophon, unlike Plato,
there is no divide between philosophical dialectic and the mere
rhetoric of politics. The ability to rule consists above all in the
ability to convince others that one is worthy of rule. Where Plato
ultimately discovers a transcendent subject matter, mastery of which
makes philosophers the ideal rulers, but struggles to maintain a
connection between philosophy and politics, Xenophon's Socrates never
separates philosophy from politics. A problem for Xenophon's Socrates
is his inability to identify any subject matter for politics beyond
dialectic expertise. Despite certain appearances to the contrary,it is
not, in Ney's view, knowledge of troop strengths and similarly
technical matters which disqualifies someone like Glaucon from rule,
but his inability to convince others that he is worthy even when he
does have the relevant expertise (Mem. 3.6.14-15). Rulers show
themselves worthy of rule by convincing others that they are worthy of
rule. Thus Socrates is incapable of saying what it is that politicians
need to know. We have paradox and circularity here aplenty, but for Ney
the circle is not vicious. Socrates' political teaching is left
unspoken not because he didn't have any (or because was hiding it,
Straussian style--though there is much in Ney's article reminds one of
Strauss), but because Socrates wants us to become our own masters.

Vana Nicolai+dou-Kyrianidou argues that the successes of the Cyrus of
Xenophon's Cyropaedia show the limitations of Xenophon's Socrates.
Nicolai+dou-Kyrianidou denies any divide between philosophy and
politics, rather as Ney does, but she does not identify dialectical
skill--a skill we might particularly associate with the philosopher--as
the essence of political power. Successful leaders are those who put
all their advantages to good use: not only wisdom, but good looks and
high birth are to be utilized to their full extent. Where the ugly
Socrates attempts to argue his way to a victory in the beauty contest
against the beautiful Critobulus (Symposium 5), Cyrus takes great care
to make himself appear more beautiful (Cyropaedia8.3.13). Xenophon's
Socrates has no access to a world of ideas beyond the city or any
philosophical lifestyle wholly separate from the life of the city.
Hence his success, for Nicolai+dou-Kyrianidou, pales before that of
Cyrus. Yet Xenophon would apparently attribute Socrates' failings, and
his particular forms of success, to the special circumstances of
Athenian democracy, a regime that neither man found terribly
congenial.The idealized Persia of the Cyropaedia needed no Socrates,
and could make good use of a Cyrus. This is a rich article, but perhaps
assumes too readily that Xenophon idealized Cyrus as well as Socrates:
contrast the end of the Memorabilia, where Xenophon fulsomely praises
Socrates' continued ability to inspire his followers, with end of the
Cyropaedia, Xenophon's bitter critique of the Persian decline that
commenced immediately upon the death of Cyrus.

Domingo Pla/cido boldly breaks with the party line of the volume by
directly addressing the Socratic question in his contribution, "The
Historicity of the Figure of Socrates in the Oeconomicus of Xenophon."
He provides a political reading of the Oeconomicus, arguing that the
historical Socrates, as Xenophon, argued that Athens should abandon
radical democracy for a regime based on the hoplite class and run by
well-educated aristocrats. Socrates, thanks to his service as a hoplite
and his mixing with aristocrats, was ideally suited to unite the
hoplites and aristocrats.Agriculture, a main topic of the Oeconomicus,
is another factor which unites these two classes against the artisans.
The aristocratic rulers are masters of the royal art; as both Plato and
Xenophon attribute a version of royalist politics to Xenophon, Socrates
himself must have had some affinity for monarchy. Pla/cido is certainly
right to note the presence of monarchical language in Xenophon's
discussion of Socrates' politics, and to consider how such ideas would
have been perceived in contemporary Athens. But I see little basis for
any notion of a "hoplite class" in the Oeconomicus or elsewhere in
Xenophon's Socratica. And while there is much of political importance
in the Oeconomicus, I do not see how one can base a reading of
Socrates' politics on this dialogue.

Louis-Andre/ Dorion directly addresses the central problem of the
Oeconomicus, whether the gentleman-farmer Ischomachus is compatible
with Socrates, and argues that the two provide different but
complementary views of oikonomia. Ischomachus doesn't replace Socrates
as a spokesman due to Socrates' lack of expertise or interest in
economics. While Xenophon never explicitly says that Socrates is
oikonomikos, numerous passages imply as much, and Socrates' disavowal
of such knowledge in the Oeconomicus (2.10-13) isn't to be taken at
face value. Socrates teaches his interlocutor, Critobulus, much about
oikonomia before introducing Ischomachus, and by reporting his
conversation with Ischomachus to Critobulus, rather than just sending
him off to Ischomachus (as he sends others to other specialists),
Socrates lays implicit claim to some relevant expertise. Socrates'
economic skill is based on his self-control; as his desires do not
outrun his resources, he is not, despite appearances, a poor man.
Ischomachus, like Socrates, emphasizes the importance of self-control,
and while, unlike Socrates, he understands oikonomia to consist of
increasing one's estate (rather than ensuring that one's desires do not
outrun one's resources), Ischomachus' pursuit of wealth allows him to
benefit his friends and the city, making the city virtuous. Xenophon's
Socrates teaches both politics and economics, but practices neither, at
least in any conventional sense. The Oeconomicus thus defends Socrates
by showing that his views are entirely compatible with those of the
conventional Ischomachus, but perhaps succeeds too well. Ischomachus
had no need of Socrates, so what need have we? After all, Dorion notes,
Xenophon himself chose a life more in keeping with Ischomachus than
with Socrates.

We come at last to the still more fundamental question of whether
Xenophon was a true follower of Socrates or only held up Socrates as
one of many paradigmatic figures suitable for emulation. Those thinking
that there was something special about Socrates for Xenophon may
perhaps take a certain ironic comfort in noting that Ischomachus,
Xenophon's chosen exemplar of conventional kalokagathia, ended up
impoverished, and that his innocent bride, Chrysilla, ended up in a
scandalous affair with none other than Callias, the apparent exemplar
of conventional pederasty in Xenophon's Symposium. Socrates, by
contrast, ended gloriously--or so Xenophon insists. We chair-bound
scholars can too readily assume that anyone who knew as much about
farming, horses, and warfare as Xenophon did cannot have known much
more. Xenophon was, after all, not your average gentleman farmer; he
was, as these essays so well show, a writer, and one not only of great
breadth but of considerable subtlety.

Table of Contents

Donald R. Morrison: Remarques sur la psychologie morale de Xe/nophon.
Michel Narcy: Socrate et son a^me dans les "Me/morables."
Toma/s Calvo Marti/nez: La religiosite/ de Socrate dans Xe/nophon.
Alessandro Stavru: Socrate et la confiance dans les "agraphoi nomoi"
(Xe/nophon, "Me/morables", IV, 4): re/flexions sur les "socratica" de
Walter F. Otto.
Alonso Tordesillas: Socrate et Prodicos dans les "Me/morables."
Livio Rossetti: Savoir imiter, c'est connai^tre : le cas de
"Me/morables," III, 8.
Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: La dialectique de Socrate selon les
"Me/morables."
Franc,ois Renaud: Le "Gorgias" de Platon et les "Me/morables": e/tude
comparative.
Hugues-Olivier Ney: Y a-t-il un art de penser ? La "techne" manquante
de l'enseignement socratique dans les "Me/morables."
Vana Nicolai+dou-Kyrianidou: Autorite/ et obe/issance. Le mai^tre
ide/al de Xe/nophon face a\ son ide/al de prince.
Domingo Pla/cido: L'historicite/ de Socrate dans l' "E/conomique."
Louis-Andre/ Dorion: Socrate "oikonomikos."
Louis-Andre/ Dorion: Les e/crits socratiques de Xe/nophon : supple/ment
bibliographique (1984-2008).
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Notes:


1.   Bibliography of Editions, Translations, and Commentary on
Xenophon's Socratic Writings (1600--Present). Pittsburg, 1988. "On
Professor Vlastos' Xenophon" Ancient Philosophy (1988) 7: 9-22.

2.   The grandest product of that interest is Gianantoni's Socratis et
Socraticorum Reliquiae (Naples, 1990). Noteworthy also is another
collection of essays devoted solely to Xenophon's Socrates: Dorion,
Louis-Andre/ and Luc Brisson, eds. 2004.  Les e/crits socratiques de
Xe/nophon (= Les E/tudes philosophiques 2004.2, pp. 137-252. Updates on
the recent international work on the Socratics can found on the
Socratica (http://www.socratica.eu/)  website.

3.   Dorion, Louis-Andre/ and Michele Bandini, eds. 2000. Xe/nophon:
Me/morables. Tome I. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, reviewed in  Bryn Mawr
Classical Review 2005.05.03
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-05-30.html/) .

4.   For the reception of Socrates, see now the two volumes edited by
Michael Trapp: Socrates from Antiquity to the Enlightenment and
Socrates in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Aldershot, 2007).

5.   Devereux, Daniel T. 1995. "Socrates' Kantian Conception of
Virtue." Journal of the History of Philosophy 33, 381-408.

6.   Narcy, Michel. 2004. "La meilleure amie de Socrate: Xe/nophon,
Me/morables III.11." 213-234 in Dorion and Brisson 2004 (note 2 above).

7.   Most recently (and with references to prior work): Dorion,
Louis-Andre/. 2008. "He/rakle\s entre Prodicos et Xe/nophon."
Philosophie antique 8: 85-114.