The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato's Early Dialogues

5. The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern

5 The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern There are four natures, those of plants, of beasts, of humans, and of God—the latter two, which are rational, have the same nature, but they are distinguished in that the one is immortal while the other is mortal. Regarding these, then, the good of the one, God, is fulfilled by his nature, but the good of the other, the human , is fulfilled by concern (cura). —Seneca, Epistle 1241 Apprends à penser avec douleur.* —Maurice Blanchot, L’écriture du désastre In the closing lines of the Apology, standing now in the shadow of his impending execution, Socrates makes a striking request of his jurors as to their treatment of his sons after his death. He does not ask, as we might expect , that his sons be shown mercy, that they be spared retribution for their father’s perceived misconduct. Instead, quite to the contrary, he encourages those who see him as guilty of impiety and corruption to pursue vengeance and to do so relentlessly. He asks only that they avenge themselves on his sons in a particular way—“By paining (λυποῦντες) them in the same way I have pained (ἐλύπουν) you” (Ap. 41e). If we submit to the concentrated intensity of this moment, of this last public request, Socrates makes evident here that his philosophizing achieves its benefit by bringing lupē, ‘pain, grief, distress,’ for it is just this that he asks for on behalf of his loved ones. Our task is to determine the precise character of what must then be this requisite suffering, this pathos that belongs essentially to the Socratic philosophical project. *Learn to think with suffering. 93 94 The Ontology of Socratic Questioning in Plato’s Early Dialogues Elenctic Pain and Being Concerned by Virtue Each of us holds on to the doxa we already have of Ourselves, until we suffer (παθεῖν). —Solon, Prayer to the Muses (13.33–35) Surely Socrates’ public refutations often produce embarrassment, even humiliation , for those whom he subjects to questioning. However, so long as this remains superficial and has only to do with the one’s image or reputation , it remains far removed from the substance of what Socrates must want for his sons. In calling at this moment for them to be pained, Socrates the father must be asking for what will bring them nothing short of “the greatest good (μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν)” (Ap. 38a), which is of course precisely what he believes elenctic philosophical discussion accomplishes. And it does so, as we have seen, only and entirely by bringing its participants to acknowledge their own non-knowing of ‘what virtue is.’ Given what Socrates says here, however , it is clear that this “human wisdom,” which is the sole aim of Socratic philosophizing, cannot be understood on a merely epistemological register. Rather, the condition of acknowledged non-knowing with respect to virtue is itself this pain, this distress Socrates calls for, and this pain is nothing other than suffering the being of virtue as not known or questionworthy. This is the deeper and all-destabilizing sting of the gadfly (Ap. 30e). As strange as it may seem to us, it is in the pain of the elenchus’s negative or destructive moment, and nowhere else, that its positive moment resides. That is, as we shall see, it is with this pain that the epistemological failure of Socratic elenchus itself constitutes, in a sense, a pathological success. In order to determine precisely how this is so, we must attend to the vocabulary of meletē or ‘concern’ that Socrates employs in further directing his jurors’ vengeful pursuits. This peculiar vocabulary deepens and explains the elenctic pathos of pain and distress in its truthful positivity. He continues, And if they should appear to you to be concerned toward (ἐπιμελεῖσθαι) possessions or anything else more than virtue, and if they believe themselves to be something, being nothing (ἐὰν δοκῶσί τι εἶναι μηδὲν ὄντες), reproach (ὀνειδίζετε) them just as I have you, for their not being concerned toward (ἐπιμελοῦνται) those things that necessitate [concern] (ὦν δεῖ) and for their thinking themselves worthy (ἄξιοι), being worthy of nothing (οὐδενὸς). (Ap. 41e–42a) The Truthful Elenctic Pathos of Painful Concern 95 This passage is surely to be understood in stark contrast with Socrates’ earlier mention of Callias’s plans for the education of his own two sons (Ap. 20a–c). Whereas Callias, as we saw last chapter, wants his sons to acquire the sophistic technē of “human and political virtue” (Ap. 20b), and with it...