4. Wrestling With Socrates

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Notes

1. Following scholarly convention, the Socrates I discuss in this chapter is the character depicted in Plato's ‘early’ or ‘skeptical’ dialogues (Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Meno, Protagoras, and Republic I). References to ‘later’ or ‘doctrinal’ dialogues are made primarily for evidence of athletic metaphor. The obvious exception is Theaetetus, in which the extensive athletic metaphor and reflection on Socrates' educational role are important and relevant to my thesis.

2. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are presented as pankratists who can fight not only in the arena, but also in the law courts, and now in eristic argument. Says Socrates: ‘Not a single man can stand up to them, they have become so skilled in fighting in arguments and in refuting whatever may be said, no matter whether it is true or false’ (Euthydemus 271c–272b).

3. The gymnasia in question are the Academy and the Lyceum, and the new wrestling school is identified by Miller (2009, 48) as the Palaestra of Mikkon.

4. This is noticed by Miller 2009, 48 n.122

5. Gymnasium culture will be discussed in the next chapter.

6. See, for example, Diogenes Laertius III.4: ‘And he learnt gymnastics under Ariston, the Argive wrestler. And from him he received the name of Plato on account of his robust figure. … Others again affirm that he wrestled in the Isthmian Games.’

7. According to Drew Hyland (1978) all athletic competition is a form of friendship for similar reasons.

8. For an excellent discussion of these terms and ideas, see Snell 1982, 8–22.

9. For more on ancient understanding of athletic beauty and its relation to the soul, see Chapter 5.

10. This and all translations are taken from the Hackett edition of Plato's dialogues, listed in the bibliography.

11. An apparently common expression, repeated at Laws 751d.

12. Theaetetus 169b; the explanation is from Cooper's edition, 188, n. 18.

13. This is the central thesis of Burckhardt (1998), who influenced Nietzsche among others. Although his theory has been much debated in the details, the importance of agonistic spirit in ancient Hellenic culture is almost universally recognised.

14. Since there were no official non-athletic contests at Olympia (except those to select heralds and trumpet-players for the games), Hippias must be speaking of an unofficial struggle to impress the people with his wisdom.

15. Indeed some of Socrates' conversations with sophists and orators can be seen as a competition between philosophy and sophistry; Aristophanes' debate between the newer and older arguments in Clouds is quite explicitly that.

16. In attempting to distinguish true refutation from the ‘sophistical’ variety based on fallacies, Aristotle lists five aims of competitive debate: refutation, falsity, paradox, solecism or babbling: Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 165b.3.

17. See Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 165a15–25. Aristotle warns that these tricks may make the winner of the argument seem wise and the loser seem unwise, although the reality is quite different. He therefore sets out in Sophistical Refutations to expose the logical tricks lest his readers run afoul of them

18. This function is masterfully explained by the midwife analogy at Theaetetus 149 f.

19. I am assuming the thesis espoused by many, i.e. Penner (1992) that Socrates identifies virtue with knowledge

20. The ‘say what you believe’ rule and the contradiction criteria of the elenchos are observed by Vlastos (1992) p. 139, who follows Aristotle's distinction between ‘peirastic’ and dialectical arguments at Sophistical Refutations 165b.2.

21. This method is generally found in middle and later dialogues such as Republic.

22. Liddell and Scott 1940.

23. Plato is quoting Hesiod, Works and Days 287–9, with some modification.

24. This is an important part of what is sometimes referred to as the ‘problem of the elenchos’.

25. At Apology 37a, he states: ‘I never willingly wrong anyone.’ Elsewhere he argues that it is better to suffer injustice than to inflict it.

26. Since friends are by definition those who seek the benefit or improvement of their friends, the competitor's challenge is a form of friendship. See Hyland 1978.

27. Those who seek true wisdom must reach beyond refutation and reputation. The tricks Hippias teaches Socrates to keep a hypothetical interlocutor from refuting him fail because the opponent is more interested in truth than reputation (Hippias Major 287a ff.). This hypothetical opponent turns out to be Socrates himself (289c) – a trick Socrates pulls on Hippias to get him to focus on issues rather than personalities. Indeed it is the examination of the issues at hand, beyond the relativistic refutation of the opponent, that makes this agōn Socratic.

28. It makes particular sense that Plato should have portrayed Socrates defeating rival educators in Athens. After all, Plato had his own Academy to promote.

29. For examples of the health analogy see Charmides 174b, Laches 198d, Meno 72de and 87e.

30. See Miller 2004, 233: ‘Perhaps the most important contribution of athletics, at least in my opinion, was its creation of the concept of equality before the law, isonomia, the foundation on which democracy is based.’

31. Theaetetus, ed. Cooper 1997, 188 n. 17–18.

32. I have written elsewhere (Reid 2009, 41) that the use of performance-enhancing drugs distorts both the impartiality of the contest and the validity of the results that the contest is designed to produce.

33. See Herrmann 1995, 104 and n.54, where he references Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos VII, 60.

34. Prodicus clearly distinguishes debate of the issues from eristic, saying ‘Friends debate each other on good terms; eristics are for enemies at odds.’ He goes on to distinguish the respect earned by sincere debaters from the more shallow praise earned by eristic contestants, and the well-founded ‘cheering’ of the audience as contrasted with the simple pleasure watching a partisan fight: Protagoras 337b

35. In Lysis, Socrates describes Hippothales' wooing of Lysis in terms of conquest and criticises his love poetry as the writing of a victory ode for himself before he's won. Socrates point is that Hippothales shouldn't flatter the boy, but challenge him to make him better (205d–206a).