271a-272d: SOCRATES AND CRITO:
The omniscient (pa/ssofoi) brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whom Socrates has known to fight in armor and in the law courts (through speech writing), yesterday exhibited their marvelous accomplishments fighting in argument.
They can refute anything anyone says, whether it be true or false. 272d-275c: SOCRATES SETS THE SCENE:
272d-273b: In the Lyceum:
Socrates’ divine sign (daimo/nion).
Socrates is joined by the handsome young Clinias, the brash Ctesippus, Euthydemus, Dionysodorus, and many others.
273c-275c: Introducing Euthydemus and Dionysodorus:
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus have become teachers of virtue (a0reth/). Of their contemporaries they are the best at exhorting men to philosophy and the practice (e0pime/leian) of virtue.
Socrates requests that they exhort Clinias to love wisdom and virtue. 275c-d: SOCRATES AND CRITO:
After invoking the Muses and Memory for assistance, Socrates recounts the conversation.
275d-282e: ROUND ONE:
275d-277c: Two sophistical arguments:
1a) Euthydemus: not the wise but the ignorant learn (275d-276b). 1b) Dionysodorus: not the ignorant but the wise learn (276c).
2a) Euthydemus: those who learn learn not what they do not know but
what they know (276d-277b).
2b) Dionysodorus: those who learn learn not what they know but what
they do not know (277b-c). 277d-278e: Socrates intervenes:
The brothers are initiating Clinias into the sophistic mysteries (tw=n i9erw=n…tw=n sofistikw=n) by manipulating the meanings of words. This practice is mere play (paidia/…prospai/zein) and has nothing to do with the acquisition of true wisdom.
278e-282e Socrates’ exhortation to Clinias:
Everyone wishes to do well (eu] pra/ttein).
We do well through having many good things (polla\ ka0gaqa\).
The possession of good things will produce happiness (eu0daimoni/a) only if we use them correctly.
Only knowledge (e0pisth/mh) enables us to use our possessions correctly. Therefore, the possession of good things produces happiness only if accompanied by knowledge.
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bad (kaka/) if guided by ignorance (a0maqi/a) and good if guided by wisdom (fro/nhsi/j te kai\ sofi/a).
In sum: since everyone desires to do well, and since this is impossible without wisdom, everyone should love wisdom (filosofei=n).
But this is true only if wisdom can be taught.
282d-e: Socrates invites the brothers to say whether a man’s happiness and goodness (eu0daimonei=n…a0gaqo\n ei]nai) depends upon many types of knowledge (e0pisth/mhn) or only one, and what they (or it) might be.54
283a-b: SOCRATES AND CRITO:
Dionysodorus’ discourse was indeed an exhortation to virtue (parakeleustiko\j…e0p’ a0reth/n).
283b-290d: ROUND TWO:
283b-285a: More sophistical arguments:
1) Dionysodorus to Socrates: Socrates and the rest of Clinias’ friends wish
for the young man’s death (283b-d).
2) Euthydemus to Ctesippus: it is impossible to tell lies (283e-284c). 3) Dionysodorus to Ctesippus: in support of Euthydemus’ position
(284c-285a).
Dionysodorus and Ctesippus are getting angry. 285a-d: Socrates intervenes:
Let the brothers speak however they like.
If they want to call the process of making a bad man good “killing him,” let them—so long as they improve him.
285d-286b: Another sophistical argument:
Dionysodorus to Ctesippus: contradiction is not possible. 286b-287c: Socrates’ counter-argument:
If it is impossible to speak or think falsely, there can be no such thing as false opinion or ignorance.
If neither false opinion nor ignorance exist, it is impossible to be mistaken in word or deed.
But if no one can be mistaken in word or deed, then no one has anything to learn from Euthydemus and Dionysodorus.
Dionysodorus: Socrates is being evasive because he is unable to handle the argument.
Socrates: “unable to handle” must mean “unable to refute” (e0cele/gxai). But if no one speaks falsely, there can be no such thing as refutation. 287c-e: Yet another sophistical argument:
Dionysodorus: the sense of his phrase “unable to handle” could not be “unable to refute” because phrases, lacking soul, lack sense (287d-e). 287e-288d: Socrates’ reply:
If Socrates has made no mistake, then Dionysodorus will not be able to refute him.
If Socrates has made a mistake, then Dionysodorus was wrong to declare mistakes impossible.
54 In fact, the brothers do not address the topic. Socrates takes it up himself beginning at 288d. His investigation, however, fails, at which point he again asks Euthydemus and Dionysodorus for assistance.
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Thus do the brothers’ arguments turn against themselves. 288d-290d: Socrates’ second exhortation to Clinias:55
All men must love wisdom.
The love of wisdom is the possession of knowledge (h9…filosofi/a kth=sij e0pisth/mhj).
We must seek knowledge that benefits us (o0nh/sei).
Beneficial knowledge is knowledge of how to produce a thing and of how to put the product to use.
The art of speech writing (logopoiikh\n te/xnhn) does not qualify. Clinias: the art of generalship (h9 strathgikh/) does not qualify, for it is comparable to the art of hunting men. But the hunter does not necessarily know how to use his prey properly—he turns the prey over to the
statesman.
290e-293a: SOCRATES AND CRITO: 290e-291a: Clinias’ words are astonishing.
Some superior being (tij tw=n kreitto/nwn) must have uttered them. 291a-292e: The next phase of the conversation:
The art of the king (h9 basilikh\ te/xnh) and the art of the statesman (h9 politikh\ te/xnh) are the same, and it is to this art that the general submits his prey for proper use.
What does the royal art produce?
It must be something useful (w0fe/limon) and something good. But nothing is good but knowledge (e0pisth/mh).
Therefore, the statesman will make his citizens happy (eu0dai/monaj) only if he provides them with knowledge.
Therefore, the royal art must produce knowledge. But what sort of knowledge?
Perhaps the knowledge to make others good.
But in what will they be good, and in what respect useful? Again, the only good is knowledge.
292e-293a: Now they were repeating themselves and Socrates was at a loss (e0n…a0pori/a|).
Socrates appealed yet again to the brothers to identify the knowledge with which one will live well (kalw=j).56
293b-303a: ROUND THREE:
293b-303a: Many sophistical arguments:
1) Euthydemus: Socrates knows everything or nothing (293b-e). 2) Dionysodorus: everyone who knows anything also knows everything
(293e-295a).
3) Euthydemus: Socrates knows all things and always has (295a-296e). Socrates wonders whether he knows that the good are unjust. Where did
he learn that (296e-297a)?
Euthydemus rebukes Dionysodorus for his reply of “nowhere,” which
55
This takes up where his previous exhortation left off (at 282e).
56 In this section (at 293a3) Socrates requests the brothers to save them from the “third wave of the argument” (sw=sai h9maj…e0k th=j trikumi/aj tou= lo/gou). Compare Republic 472a4.
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implies that Socrates is not knowing, and hence knowing and not knowing simultaneously.
Socrates prods Euthydemus: is Dionysodorus making a mistake
(297ab)?
4) Dionysodorus: Socrates’ brother both is and is not his brother. (297b-e) 5) Euthydemus: Socrates’ father is not his father (297e-298b).
Ctesippus notes that Euthydemus is in the same position with respect to his father (298b).
6) Euthydemus: (a) the brothers’ father is the father of Ctesippus and all of
all other humans and animals; (b) the brothers’ mother is the mother of all humans and animals, and the same goes for Ctesippus’ mother; (c)
Ctesippus’ dog is Ctesippus’ father, and the dog’s puppies are Ctesippus’ brothers (298b-e).
7) Dionysodorus: Ctesippus beats his father (298-299a). 8) Euthydemus: no man has need of good things (299a-c).
9) Dionysodorus: a man should have gold inside his body (299c-e). 10) Euthydemus: cloaks can see (300a).
11) Dionysodorus: there is a speaking of the silent (300b). 12) Euthydemus: there is a silence of the speaking (300c).
Ctesippus laughs when Dionysodorus claims that all things both speak
and are silent, and that they neither speak nor are silent (300d).
Socrates rebukes Clinias for laughing too, and thereby making light of serious and beautiful things (spoudai/oij…kaloi=j) (300e).
13) Dionysodorus: if beautiful things are beautiful by the presence of
beauty, then Socrates, who is in Dionysodorus’ presence, is Dionysodorus (300e-301a).
Socrates argues that the different is the different because it differs from the same (301a-c).
14) Dionysodorus: whoever cooks a cook, hammers a blacksmith, or turns
a potter on a wheel is doing the proper business (301c-d).
15) Dionysodorus: Socrates possesses Zeus and the other gods and has the
right to sell them and treat them however he pleases (301e-303a). 303b-307c: SOCRATES AND CRITO:
303b-304b: Socrates’ ironical evaluation of the brothers’ performance:
Most men understand these arguments so little that they would be more ashamed to employ them to refute others than to be refuted by them. 304b-d: Crito on the brothers:
Crito is one of those who would rather be refuted by such arguments than to refute others by means of them.
304d-306d: Crito on the stranger:
A man who thinks himself very wise (oi0o/menoj pa/nu ei]nai sofo/j) and who is clever (deinw=n) at composing legal speeches disparaged the brothers display.
The stranger and Crito both seem to classify the display as philosophy. The stranger criticized Socrates’ willingness to participate in the brothers’ antics.
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Socrates analyzes the stranger’s type and concludes that such men are neither philosophers nor statesmen, and are inferior to both.57
306d-307c: Education:
Crito has no confidence in those who profess to be educators of youth. Socrates advises Crito to think seriously about philosophy itself. If it seems valuable, he should pursue it in company with his sons.
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EUTHYDEMUS