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

STRAUSS ON XENOPHON
<strong>Strauss</strong> seems to supply also the answer to our question of the connection
between the themes of philosophy and gentlemanship: "For,
as we know, Socrates was exclusively concerned with ethics and
politics, with virtue and the city, and `perfect gentlemanship' includes
in a manner all ethical and political themes" (129; cf. 83).
But in the immediate sequel, <strong>Strauss</strong> indicates the difficulty with
this answer and with the premise (as to Socrates' exclusive concern)
on which it is based. In the Oeconomicus at least, perfect
gentlemanship is approached or looked at from a rather
ungentlemanly point of view, "from a point of view which is rather
low: from the point of view of the question of how the perfect
gentleman earns his living . . ." (129). It is true that interest in this
question is not likely to have been the true or deepest reason for
Socrates' own concern with the perfect gentleman. But <strong>Strauss</strong>'s
remark leads us to wonder whether Socrates' reason was any the less
ungentlemanly than (if not as "low" as) the economic one. Surely
the dialogue as a whole makes clear that Socrates had and has no intention
of becoming a perfect gentleman (160-161, 185, 202-203).
But if Socrates' concern with ethics and politics, with perfect
gentlemanship, was not motivated by the desire to become a perfect
gentleman, we must be open to the possibility that his ethical/
political concerns do not exhaust or close the circle of his philosophic
concerns, that his ethical/political concerns must be understood in
the light of concerns which are trans-political. 8 To be open to this
possibility is not necessarily to doubt the significance, for Socrates
and the philosophic life generally, of that "unique event of his past"
which was "his discovery of what perfect gentlemanship is" (129),
but only to wonder about its character. <strong>Strauss</strong> underlines that
significance here, while reminding us of his discussion of Chapters
IV-V, by the remark already quoted: "After Socrates has made
perfect gentlemanship the theme, we understand better than before
why the Oeconomicus is the Socratic dialogue" (129; cf. 121). So far
as I observed, this is the first time <strong>Strauss</strong> uses the word "dialogue"
to refer to the Oecnomicus, having referred to it previously always
as a "discourse" (89, 90, 92, 112, 126; cf. 130).
8. Since perfect gentlemanship is not something visible or perceptible to the senses,
its discovery became possible only when Socrates turned away from the evidence of
sight to "take his bearings . . by hearing, by reputation" or by what is "universally"
said (128; cf. 118; cf. Plato Phaedo 99d4ff).
117