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1 All translations by the author. university of toronto quarterly, volume 71, number 3, summer 2002 A N D R E F U R L A N I The Sacred Fount in Plato’s Cave ‘And what kind of man am I?’ Socrates asks in Plato’s Gorgias. The kind who would gladly be elenchized if what I say were not true, and who would gladly elenchize if what one said were not true – I would not be less glad to be elenchized than to elenchize, for I myself believe it to be a greater good, in so far as it is the greater good to be oneself released from a great evil than to release others. For I believe there to be no worse evil for a man, than a false opinion concerning the discussion which concerns us now. Thus if you too say this to be so, let us talk. (Gorgias 458A–B)1 Socrates’ only condition to the discussion is that it proceed, like almost all of his discourses, by elenchus: scrupulous cross-examination of all points relating to the interlocutor’s truth-claim, with the attendant risk that, contradicted, the interlocutor must acknowledge his aporia and the refutation of his principles. What then is an elenchus, that it should dominate Socrates’ dialectic? Elenchos (W8g

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