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111 111 5 Homeric Mevqodo~ in Plato’s Socratic Dialogues Bernard Freydberg Does Socrates have a method? Does Plato have a method in the deployment of his “Socrates become beautiful and new”?1 These are urgent questions not only to those of us who are concerned about how the names of these founders of our philosophical enterprise have become misapplied, used in a context they clearly would have found appalling— in training lawyers, for instance. “The Socratic method” has become a cliché that refers to hard-hitting question-and-answer exchanges quite apart from the concerns with truth and justice that animated Socrates. Further, even the elenctic activity of Socrates comprised only one of the ways he practiced philosophy, and often not the predominant one. For example, the Republic, although it recounts a conversation in which there occurred much question and answer, is a very long narration culminating in a great myth. For another, the Theaetetus includes many long speeches. Further, the Parmenides finds Socrates on the other end of the exchanges. Surely not least, the Timaeus and the Sophist find Socrates making significant remarks at the beginning, then falling silent. Can any of these properly be called “methods” in the modern sense of the word? In other words, does the very word “method” do violence to both the letter and the spirit of the dialogues? Indeed, Socrates uses the word mevqodo~ on very few occasions and never, or perhaps only obliquely, in reference to his own practice. ‘Elegco~ is never called a mevqodo~. There are, however, many casual references: at Phaedrus 269d6– 8 Socrates says, “But insofar as there is an art of rhetoric, it does seems apparent to me that the mevqodo~ for acquiring it is not to be found in the manner that Lysias and Thrasymachus have pursued it.” The only mevqodo~ by which the art of rhetoric can be genuinely acquired is that by which one comes to know “the nature of the whole” (270c2), whereby both the souls and the bodies of others would be known.2 This knowledge is impressive indeed: 112 B E R N A R D F R E Y D B E R G Isn’t this the way to think [dianoei`sqai] about the nature of anything? First, it is necessary for us to consider whether the object regarding which we would become experts [tecnikoi;] and capable of transmitting our expertise is simple [a Ô ploun] or complex [polqeidev~]. Then, if it is simple, we must investigate its power: What things does it have what natural power of acting upon? By what things does it have what natural disposition to be acted upon? If, on the other hand, it has many forms [ei[dh], we must enumerate them all and, as we did in the simple case, investigate how each is naturally able to act upon what and how it has a natural disposition to be acted on by what. (Phaedrus 270c10–d7) But no one, of course, is in possession of either this knowledge of the whole of the world or of the mevqodo~ by which one could acquire it. If one were to claim that this method of determining the nature of things is a scientific or systematic ideal of some kind, it is nevertheless clear that Socrates makes no claim that he possesses it. Such a method yielding such knowledge would surely be worth having, but this contradicts Socratic ignorance. In the case of rhetoric, Socrates ridicules it in the Gorgias, calling that so-called art that persuades by lovgo~—rhetoric— not an art (tevcnh) but a “knack” (ejmpeiriva) and a “massage” (tribhv).3 Thus, the conversation in the Phaedrus, which takes place under the false supposition that there is such an art, has a striking effect upon the mevqodo~ spoken of in its aforementioned context: this mevqodo~ locates itself on the outside of philosophy. This “only proper method,” a method that would enable one to know the souls of others, would make its possessor wise. Examples of other casual uses of the word mevqodo~ can be found at Phaedo 79d2–e5 and Theaetetus 183c2. In the former, Socrates asks Cebes a question concerning the comparison of the soul and the body with respect to their orientation toward “things that are of the same kind.” By virtue of this orientation, “its experience then is what is called wisdom.” Cebes answers, “I think, Socrates . . . that on this mevqodo~, even the dullest would agree that the soul is altogether...

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