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

116 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
city spoke against money-making in any form ..." (119). But
beyond this, " money-making" may masquerade as "the art of arts"
or be "an image of the art of conversing or reasoning," i.e., of
philosophy (106 and 126). What <strong>Strauss</strong> may mean then is that an
adequate praise of philosophy necessarily implies, or requires, a
critique of "Sparta" or the city.
On Chapter Six
<strong>Strauss</strong>'s discussion of Chapter VI confirms in two ways the impression
conveyed by his discussion of the earlier chapters that this
issue of piety or the gods is of paramount importance for him. First
he stresses Kritoboulos's expansion of Socrates' statement on the need
for piety-i.e., he stresses the limited character of Socrates' own
statement, of even Socrates' explicit statement (cf. 125 with 124).
Secondly, he reflects on the different claims of the art of divination,
on the one hand, and the art of conversing or reasoning, on the
other, to be the art universally needed, the art of arts (125 and 126).
This may be as close as <strong>Strauss</strong> comes in this work to stating outright
what he regards as the fundamental issue: in the last resort must our
reliance be on the divine or on our own reasoning (cf. Natural Right
and History 74)? <strong>Strauss</strong> considers the possibility that "the art of
money-making is an image of the art of conversing or reasoning": if
this is so, "it would not be surprising that the Socratic discourse is
devoted to the art of increasing one's wealth" (126). But precisely in
Chapter VI, "Socrates brings about a shift from `household
management' to `perfect gentlemanship'; the question is no longer
what the work of houshold management is but what the work of the
perfect gentleman is" (128). Moreover, according to <strong>Strauss</strong>, "After
Socrates has made perfect gentlemanship the theme, we understand
better than before why the Oeconomicus is the Socratic dialogue"
(129). Is it philosophy then (the art of conversing or reasoning) or
gentlemanship which is the theme of the Socratic dialogue? Or to
what connection between the two themes does <strong>Strauss</strong> wish to call
our attention?
Perfect gentlemanship has been mentioned without being discussed
or explained in the discussion of Chapers IV-V (as well as in
that of Chapter II). In remedying that deficiency now (128-129),