Plato's "Euthydemus": Analysis of What Is and Is Not Philosophy (review)

Book Reviews Thomas H. Chance. Plato's "Euthydemus": Analysis of What Is and Is Not Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 282. Cloth, $4o.oo. Dr. Chance's project is a straightforward one, "to treat the Euthydemus as it deserves to be treated, as a complete and finished work of art, a whole that makes sense both in terms of itself and in relation to its author's other compositions" (18). More polemically , in an attack on Vlastos's classification of the dialogue as "transitional," he cautions that "we must resist treating the Euthydemus as nothing more than a stepping stone from here to there, from this to that. In the Euthydemus our author has arrived" (~37)Much of the responsibility for the surprising neglect of the Euthydernus Chance lays at the door of the proponents of the developmental hypothesis; the dialogue's combination of"mature logic" (the phrase is Shorey's) with features normally regarded as more typical of"early" dialogues makes it a difficult one for them to place. (If driven to date the dialogue himself, Chance would side with Cherniss and place it "earlier than the Republic and roughly contemporary with the Meno," 228). Even where the dialogue has not been neglected, its interpretation has been adversely affected by "the fact that we have grown accustomed to encounter its eristic portions in a predominantly Aristotelian context" (7)- In Chance's view, Plato was not attempting to construct an elementary handbook of fallacious arguments which would find its realization in the Sophistici Elenchi; he had other aims. Or, rather, he had one particular dominant aim, which was to delineate, in eristic, not merely a simple contrast to dialectic, but its absolute antithesis: "Plato has used the occasion of the Euthydemus to fashion consciously and deliberately the antipode to his own philosophical method" 09). It is this conviction which gives the book its subtitle. Much as I welcome to the ranks of Euthydemus enthusiasts such an energetic recruit, I am not altogether convinced that Plato's purpose is as extreme as this. I do see that Chance's elevation of eristic to the position of chief rival to philosophy provides an answer to those who neglect the dialogue because they see the occasion as trivial. But eristic is by no means the only rival to philosophy; rhetoric (in its pejorative sense) is surely a major competitor, as is Protagorean relativism. Nor am I totally convinced of the baleful influence of Aristotle on Euthydemus studies. (Chance himself admits to the usefulness of Aristotelian analyses, and is liberal in his citation of Aristotle in the notes.) If the student of the dialogue ignores "the psychological riddles involved in any account of learning and knowing" (48), for instance, this is his fault, not Aristotle's. An attractive thesis argued with great energy by Chance is that of"the eristification of Ktesippus." The thesis is persuasive in that it suggests a neat contrast between the [127] 128 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:1 JANUARY 1994 improvement of Kleinias at the hands of Socrates and the corruption of Ktesippus at the hands of the two sophists. It also makes sense of the cryptic remark of Socrates at 297D, "But if my Iolaus should come, he would do more harm than good." On the other hand, the activities of Ktesippus could be regarded simply as revenge for the treatment of his favorite in the First Eristic Display, and also as an illustration of the warning issued to the sophists by Socrates at 3o4A "to be careful not to talk in front of a large group; the listeners are likely to master [the eristic technique] right away and give you no credit." Ktesippus is, after all, supporting the side of Socrates in attacking Euthydemus and Dionysodorus; he is not employing eristic to confound or corrupt the young. A striking point in Chance's favor is, however, tucked away in the notes: it is that at Ly.~ 211B-C Ktesippus appears as the teacher of Menexenus, and Menexenus is described as er/st//ms (269). Chance has here opened an intriguing discussion, in which, quite rightly, Repub//r 539B-D also has...