Xenophon's Socrates (review)

252 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY again, perhaps unconsciously or semi-consciously, sees his predecessor through the spectacles of his own system: Eased perhaps by the linguistic points we have suggested, the choice of adaptation was only natural and will have been virtually unconscious. The assumption that his Milesian predecessors must have been talking about causes would be at most a semi-conscious one, and from that to the assimilation of their primary substance to his own matter was a short step, easily taken by a man in a hurry--and who, seehag Aristotle's colossal achievement, doubts that he was in a hurry? (p. 61) Continuing his examination of the pre-Parmenideans, Stokes argues that in Xenophanes (Chap. III) we do not find any evidence that he thought the many to be one. At most he might have thought that the many came from one (Earth), but even this is not certain. In turning to Heraclitus (Chap. IV), Stokes argues against taking Fire as a substratum--i.e., that the many are one; and also against the interpretation that Heraclitus held a cosmogony in which the many came from the one. In Chapter V Stokes turns to an examination of Parmenides and Melissus----two thinkers whose thought differs very little. He argues that Parmenides was, after all, concerned primarily with the problem of non-being, change and differentiation, and only secondarily with the problem of unity in the many. In particular, Stokes argues against the common interpretation that Parmenides insisted that what is a unity cannot give rise to a plurality. Turning next to Empedocles (Chap. VI), he argues that it is doubtful that his plurality (the four "roots") was put forward in order to avoid Parmenides' supposed dictum that a unity could not give rise to a plurality. Empedocles' pluralism, the author says, can be accounted for by seeing that many elements are needed in order to meet Parmenides' dictum against becoming. But it is clear that there is no difficulty of one being many in Empedocles. In Chapter VII Stokes examines the thought of Zeno and argues that, in most cases, Zeno failed to draw any of the fundamental distinctions between the various meanings of "one" and "many" and therefore often fails to make sense. This chapter is critical of all recent interpretations of Zeno's thought and relies primarily on Plato's Parmenides. Finally, Chapter VIII is devoted to the Atomists. He argues that the Atomists insisted that one does not become many, and that this claim probably rested on their thesis of the indivisibility of the atom. But the prohibition on theoretical divisibility seems to imply also that the one cannot be many--it does not have (many) parts. Furthermore, all atoms are homogeneous---hence a unity of the stuff that makes up all things. Nonetheless, this homogeneous stuff is many-for , by allowing the void, the world of the Atomists consists of many (distinct) atoms. GEORGIOSANAGNOSTOPOULOS University of California, San Diego Xenophon's Socrates. By Leo Strauss. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972. Pp. 181. $8.50) This is the final and most difficult volume of Strauss' Xenophon trilogy. Only a Strauss could unravel its apparently simple but actually labyrinthic arguments. It includes interpretations of the Memorabilia, Apology of Socrates to the Jury and Symposium. Since these interpretations imitate Xenophon's deceptively bland style with its low-key humor, they probably are destined to suffer Xenophon's fate among men with a "complete lack of understanding of what irony is or requires" (p. 172). I discussed Strauss' interpretation of that fate in reviewing his Xenophon's Socratic Discourse in this Journal (IX [1971], 239243 ; hereafter cited as XSD). Strauss observes that joking "is a kind of being absent, namely from those who do not understand that what is said is not seriously or literally meant" (pp. 92, 144, 178). Strauss begins by suggesting that Memorabilia might mean "remembering one's grudge" BOOK REVIEWS 253 (p. 3) and ends by equating Socrates' Syracusan opponent in the Symposium with Themistogenes , the author of an Anabasis (p. 178). He remarks that Xenophon begins his Memorabilia by substituting "carrying in" (or "importing") for "leading in" (or "bringing in") in the official...