The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

4. The Sheltering of Technē versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom

4 The Sheltering of Technē versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” We focused our attention last chapter on Socrates’ emphatic commitment to a deinos or excessive form of alētheia or ‘truth, unconcealment,’ not only in his defense speech, but more importantly in his philosophizing itself. Plato’s early Socrates is indeed one who can say with conviction, “Nothing pleases me, unless it happens to be true (εἰ μὴ τυγχάνει ἀληθὲς ὄν)” (Euthphr . 14e), but the truth he is speaking of should not be understood too quickly. A relevant passage presents itself in the Gorgias, at a moment when Socrates is attempting to convince his interlocutor to carry on with their elenctic discussion to its end and not leave it unfinished. Which is to say, this is a moment when Socrates is urging his interlocutor to continue despite the difficulty in order to fulfill the promise of Socratic philosophical conversation . That promise is truth. Socrates says, I think it is necessary (χρῆναι) that all of us are contentiously disposed toward knowing what is true (φιλονίκως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ εἰδέναι τὸ ἀληθὲς τί ἐστιν) concerning those things about which we speak (περὶ ὧν λέγομεν), and what is false (τὶ ψεῦδος). For it is a good common to all (κοινὸν γὰρ ἀγαθὸν ἅπασι) that this come to be apparent (φανερὸν γενέσθαι). (Grg. 505e–506a) 59 60 The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato’s Early Dialogues First, Socrates begins from the necessity (chreos) that human beings seek alētheia and that they do so philonikōs, ‘contentiously, with a love of victory.’ With this term, Socrates is appropriating for his own philosophical purposes a trait elsewhere associated with eristic, that “fighting with words (ἐν τοῖς λόγοις μάχεσθαι)” (Euthd. 272b, see also Prt. 360e) which sophists or rhetoricians would practice and teach. Unlike such verbal combat, however, which would disregard truth and seek only victory in debate (or perhaps also the glory, power, and wealth that might accompany victory),1 Socrates identifies a fundamentally human philonikia that aims at alētheia. For Socrates, it seems, no matter their situation, in their basic task of making themselves at home in their world and in carrying out their various projects, all human beings hold dear (philein) the winning out (nikē) of the true (alēthes) and the false (pseudos), concerning that which they gather together and thereby bring to light in discourse (legein). Of course, we do dissimulate and misdirect when it suits our purposes, but even when we do so it seems that we wish to and even usually presume to have distinguished the true from the false for ourselves. Insofar as doing so constitutes a nikē, however, a ‘victory’ for which we must struggle against some basic resistance, it would seem that in the way our world presents itself to us first and for the most part the true and the false are indiscriminately mixed. In our everyday attitude, we do not properly mark or observe the distinction between the two. Note however that, and this is crucial, Socrates explains this fundamentally human victory as the marking of the true and the false, or letting what is unconcealed and what is concealed shine or become apparent (phaneron), bringing these to light (phōs) as such. He does not propose the elimination of all concealment, but instead aims at a certain comportment toward unconcealment through which it would emerge in its distinction from, but also then in its proper relation to, concealment. Socrates puts forth and secures his interlocutors’ implicit agreement that letting this come to light, i.e., letting the true and the false in their distinction and relation present themselves to us, is a good (agathon) common to all human beings. Indeed, in the Charmides’ search for a definition of sōphrosunē or ‘soundmindedness ,’ Socrates employs very similar language when he states the purpose of his philosophical activity. Responding to Critias, who has become defensive after his first attempts at definition have been refuted, Socrates pledges that his centrally elenctic activity is not motivated by an eristic desire merely to win an argument or to humiliate his interlocutor. He continues, The Sheltering of Technē versus the Exposure of Human Wisdom 61 [T]his then is what I say that I am doing now—examining the logos most of all for my sake, but also perhaps for the sake of my friends. Or do you not think it something that is, I dare say (σχεδόν), a good common (κοινὸν . . . ἀγαθὸν) to...