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

122 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
Ischomachean sort (148), he is not likely to have learned from
Ischomachos. Accordingly, in his final statement here on the
"Ischomachean" origin of the philosophizing peculiar to Socrates,
<strong>Strauss</strong> puts "Ischomachean" in quotation marks (150).
It seems then that <strong>Strauss</strong> has led us on a wild goose chase or in a
great circle. But that circle has the merit of describing a large hole or
gap in our knowledge or of pointing to a question. If it was not
dialectics in this sense that Socrates learned from Ischomachos, what
did he learn from him that was of such importance that their conversation
could be said to have "made an epoch in his life" (161)?
<strong>Strauss</strong>'s procedure has the additional merit, which we have already
seen, of indicating that the answer to his question must be used to
modify or supplement the explicit account of Socratic philosophizing
or dialectics that has been given. The answer to it still clearly
available in <strong>Strauss</strong>'s discussion of the section on the wife-the
"human things"-is insufficient or incomplete for the following
reason. It fails to make clear why-in the context of what consideration,
to answer what question-Socrates turned to the human things
(cf. 164). For, as we have seen, <strong>Strauss</strong> rules out early on and
repeatedly the most obvious reason for Socrates' seeking out
Ischomachos, a reason Socrates himself suggests: that he wished to
learn what he must do in order to become a perfect gentleman. l °
Toward the beginning of his discussion of the last chapter of the
section (i.e., shortly after his discussion of "dialectics"), <strong>Strauss</strong> suggests
that "Xenophon regarded his reproduction of Socrates' virtue
for more than one reason as inferior to that virtue itself, one reason
being that in publicly presenting Socrates' virtue he could not
assume that he was speaking only to friends" (154). In a footnote to
this reference to Xenophon's reticence, to the incompleteness of
Xenophon's account of Socrates, <strong>Strauss</strong> calls upon us to compare a
passage in the Memorabilia, which speaks of Socrates' adapting the
expression of his thought to the different natures of his interlocutors
(Xenophon's Socrates 122-123 and 92-93), with the passage in the
Oeconomicus in which Socrates states to Kritoboulos in the presence
of the others his reason for seeking out Ischomachos. <strong>Strauss</strong> calls
upon us, that is, to read the latter passage in the light of the former.
He thus underlines the insufficiency of Socrates' explanation of his
seeking out Ischomachos, as well as of his own treatment of that ex-
10. 132, 160-161, 163, 165, 185; of. 129. Socrates suggests this to Ischomachos (XI.8;
but of. XI.7).