Strauss on Xenophon's Socrates Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An ...

112 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
important gloss on his remark that Socrates "proves" in Chapter V
that "piety is good" or necessary (124; cf. 114). In the same context,
<strong>Strauss</strong> may have gone even further by suggesting that Socrates
regarded the earth, which he called "a goddess" (123), as
"something natural" (124). But we are concerned not merely with
Socrates' views, but with how he established or proved those views,
the views that he held as distinguished from those he presented to
Kritoboulos. Having heard that Socrates' "method" is "dialectics"
(148; cf. City and Man 20, Natural Right and History 124), we are
drawn especially to the following remark of <strong>Strauss</strong> on the two
chapters before us: "The case for farming that Socrates makes
without any regard to the Persian king is more didactic or rhetorical
and less dialogical than the case he makes with regard to the Persian
king" (121, my emphasis). Our consideration of <strong>Strauss</strong>'s discussion
of Chapters IV and V must be devoted then to trying to understand
this remark.
The connection between household management and farming
which is established in Chapters IV and V is not established on the
basis of a concern with money-making "regardless of the quality of
the pursuit or pursuits through which . . . [one] makes his money"
(113). (cf. 121: ". . . `increase of the household' is now flanked and
hence limited by two other ends. The qualification of increase of the
household by another consideration was begun in the preceding
chapter . . .") Nor is the basis for the choice of farming the Socratic
life: Socrates praises farming in the strongest terms in these chapters
without ever having engaged in farming and without having the
slightest intention of engaging in it. The principles or concerns
which qualify money-making here and thus lay a basis for a commitment
to farming are supplied by, or with a view to, Kritoboulos.
They cast no direct light, therefore, on Socrates (but cf. 121); our attention
must be directed rather to Socrates' willingness to adapt
himself or bow to them or to the way in which he develops
arguments which, while in themselves defective, are impressive to
Kritoboulos (see, for example, especially 117).
Kritoboulos' concern with "the noble, in the sense of the resplendent,
vulgarly famous or of high repute, or the pompous," leads
Socrates to suggest in Chapter IV that "they" should imitate the Persian
king (116). But the example of the Persian king does not speak
clearly in favor of the dignity of farming. Hence, <strong>Strauss</strong> points out
at one point, "the reader ought to wonder whether the way in which
Socrates proves that the king devotes himself vigorously to farming is