(a) At 17c Socrates says that he will defend himself with "things spoken at random." Two questions arise. (i) Is this phrase supposed to contrast with the accusers' "embroidered and stylized phrases" (17c), some other standard way of speaking in court (perhaps suggested in 17d), or both? (ii) The 'random' here is Grube's rendering of εἰκῇ, which the LSJ says has a primary meaning of "without a plan," and which the LSJ also says appears at Protagoras 326d. It would be interesting to sort out the connection Socrates sees between speaking justly (or being just, or having the whole truth) and being able to speak without a plan.
(b) At 20a-b we get an identification of human excellence on the analogy of the sort of excellence in a horse one would expect to get from a horse-breeder. NB that the question is raised whether training by sophists conduces to development of this kind of excellence, and that Socrates speaks of it as a matter of "excelling in their proper qualities."
Happy reading, everyone.
Just checking in tonight with no comments. I did the reading.
ReplyDeleteNate: Interesting point about Socrates and "things spoken at random." Sophistic argumentative strategies are not infrequently presented by Plato as canned, easily memorized tropes (and the Sophists, by extension, are at best "teachers" of pre-fab arguments).
ReplyDelete(Also, re: your second point, "horse breeder" is either a mistranslation, or Socrates didn't know much about horses. Breeders, as such, only plan which mares to impregnate by which stallions. Horse *trainers* train horses to excel at various things, everything up to and including fancy battle techniques that would have been very important to the Athenian army. In fact, it wouldn't be at all out of line to suggest - a la Vicki Hearne - that one job of a horse-trainer is to train the horse into a certain kind of virtue (courage) in the face of danger. In any case, getting a horse to "excel" at its proper qualities seems to me more the business of a trainer than a breeder, and a trainer would make a better parallel with the Sophists (I assume!).)
Just one further note on the text itself:
I'm not entirely convinced by Cooper's claim that "this is not really a dialogue" (17). I suppose one could interpret Socrates' claim at 18d that he will have to "fight with shadows" as a claim that there is no real contest or dialogue here at all. But I don't think that's what the metaphor means. Socrates goes on to say that "one must ... make one's defense and cross-examine when no one answers." This suggests that he *does* conceive his speech here as, importantly, a dialogue of sorts - even if it is a dialogue with shadows. Cooper may have meant that the "Apology" is not strictly in dialogue form; but that doesn't mean it isn't a dialogue!
In fact, I wonder if conceiving of the "Apology" as a genuine Platonic dialogue would get it more scholarly attention. I have the general impression that this piece is usually referenced in the manner of a quasi-religious text, but not dissected and analyzed in the way that other dialogues are. It's kind of a shame, really.
Alrighty.
ReplyDelete17c: I think that the stylized arguments are contrasted with the things expressed 'in the first words that come to mind'; I reckon that this might be meant as an indication that Socrates has not paid an expensive orator to write out a legal speech. (That's what, e.g., Antiphon of Rhamnus did for a living.) So I think that the contrast is not between Socrates and the sophists, but between Socrates and the orators, focusing on the legal setting. (Of course, orators and sophists can be hard to tell apart.)
"... almost nothing that [S's prosecutors] said was true": does this mean that some of the things said were true?
18b: Two sets of accusers, and two sets of accusations. None of the accusations of the earlier accusers are true: "that there is a man called Socrates, a wise man, a student of all things in the sky and below the earth, who makes the worse argument the stronger".
19b: Another set of charges: "[S] is guilty of wrongdoing in that he busies himself studying things in the sky and below the earth, he makes the worse argument into the stronger argument, and he teaches these things to others". This sounds like the old accusation, with the addition that S teaches--but, presumably, if he does not actually hold the beliefs ascribed to him by his old accusers, then he will not teach those beliefs. (Perhaps not the safest assumption in the world.)
19e-20a: Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Callias--that's about half the characters named in the 'Protagoras'. Evenus is mentioned in the 'Phaedo' and also in the 'Phaedrus', according to Nails' "Prosopography", and in a generally complementary way. Nails also mentions that the five minas is equal to the cost of all of S's worldly goods, as assessed in Xenophon.
21c: S thinks that the oracle does not lie, but he sets out to refute it. Does this strike anyone else as just not cricket? Who is the public man who S approached? Surely an Athenian.
22c: Poetic inspiration, cf. Ion 534c.
22d: So we now have three classes of individual having been examined and fond wanting: politicians, poets, and craftsmen.
23b: S states that he undertook his mission at the god's behest. S portrays himself as doing the service of the god, and so not acting in a public capacity (cf. Ap. 17d-18a).
Pryio: Thanks for the note about Socrates and the orators. I hadn't thought of that before.
ReplyDeletePryio--that makes a lot of sense, re: Socrates and legal speeches.
ReplyDelete