The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

3. The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse

3 The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse Socrates had no need of going elsewhere. . . . He remained at home, investigating contentiously together with others in conversations—not in order to win over their opinion for himself, but in order to experience the searching out of truth. —Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers What if truth were monstrous? —John Sallis, Double Truth We turn now to take up directly the Socratic philosophical project as it is portrayed throughout the early dialogues of Plato. Here in the three chapters that comprise part 2, we are interested in the notion of Being that is at work in Socrates’ posing of his fundamental question, ‘What is human virtue ?’ We will approach this via a consideration of the proper comportment toward the being of virtue that Socrates seems to believe his philosophizing is successful in bringing about. In the preceding chapters, we found good reason to set aside the dominant presupposition of an objective ontology in Plato’s early works. Namely, it obstructs an otherwise compelling avenue for resolving the Socratic paradox, i.e., for finding in the ostensibly frustrated Socratic search for a definition of human virtue a nonetheless positive and truthful relation to ‘what virtue is’ and thereby accounting for the supreme benefit Socrates seems to claim in both word and deed for his peculiar philosophical activity. Furthermore, we wish to keep in mind the trace indications of something like phenomenal being that we identified in our discussion of the etymology of the term doxa. If in the coming chapters we can remain open to an alternative (and for us perhaps quite foreign) understanding of Being, we may see the Socratic 35 36 The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato’s Early Dialogues paradox with which we began resolve itself through the transformation of our own perspective. The Indefensibility of Philosophy in Plato’s Apology of Socrates Welchem Selbstdenker hat jemals dieses sein “Wissen” genügt, für welchen hat in seinem philosophierenden Leben “Philosophie” aufgehört ein Rätsel zu sein?* —Edmund Husserl, “Bestreitung der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie” In Plato’s Apology, Socrates undertakes the defense of an essentially indefensible philosophical project. This is what generates the great tension of the work and establishes the parameters of his defense. Socrates’ philosophizing, which has generated widespread animosity and has in the end led to his being brought up on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth of Athens, is presented in the Apology as nothing other than a “testing out (exetasis)” of the presumed wisdom and virtue of his fellow human beings (Ap. 22a).1 He summarizes, “Even now I go around searching and examining both citizens and strangers who seem to me wise. And if they then do not appear so to me, I come to the god’s assistance and demonstrate that they are not wise” (Ap. 23a). This is clearly nothing but the method referred to as the elenchus or ‘refutation,’ whereby, as we have already discussed, Socrates secures an attempted definition of an ethical term from his interlocutor, then solicits a few other opinions, the consequences of which he proceeds to reveal as contradicting his interlocutor’s own initial definition. It ends, thus, in the purest demonstration of non-knowledge with regard to human virtue or excellence (aretē), on behalf of both Socrates and his interlocutor. This, Socrates states here quite directly, is the central mode of his philosophizing—endless questioning , relentless searching after virtue, without ever arriving at knowledge. It should be noted from the outset that, as such, this project admits of no real philosophical justification. Indeed, its unjustifiability is the great and substantive “difficulty” that Socrates faces in his defense, on which he explicitly remarks numerous times (Ap. 19a, 35e–36b, 37a–b, 37e–38b) and which he implicitly acknowledges throughout by the, as we shall see, unorthodox approach he must take to defend himself. His philosophizing is per definitionem unjustifiable for the *For what self-sufficient thinker has this ‘knowing’ of his ever been enough? For whom, in his philosophizing life, has the term ‘philosophy’ ever ceased to be a riddle? The Excessive Truth of Socratic Discourse 37 simple reason that, in order to justify it, one would have to argue that this activity or way of life is virtuous or excellent, or at the very least, not unvirtuous , vicious, or bad. However, any such argument would require the very knowledge of virtue that...