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

124 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
hints. Toward the end of the first chapter of his discussion of the section
on the wife, he contrasts or distinguishes "dialogical" from
"theological" teaching (138). In discussing Socrates' teaching about
"the god's oikonomein," <strong>Strauss</strong> generally, as we have seen, refers to
that teaching as a "teleotheology" (148, 149, 150). But when he
raises the question of its connection (or non-connection) with the
"What is . . ." questions, <strong>Strauss</strong> refers to it as "Socrates' theology"
(149). Then, shortly afterwards, when referring to Socrates'
dissatisfaction with and possible rejection of it, he refers to it as a
"teleology" (149). He thus forces us to wonder whether the rejection
of teleology and the turn, which according to <strong>Strauss</strong> is coeval with
it, to the "What is . . " questions, to "dialectics" as explicitly
discussed, also disposes of all "theology." (According to an indication
he gives in this context, it is possible to regard "the gods as at
least as much disturbers of the philanthropic order as its
supporters" 149.) In other words, <strong>Strauss</strong> wishes us to wonder
whether the Socratic physics sketched here (150) as compatible with
"dialectics" is more than hypothetical, or whether "dialectics" as explicitly
discussed is perhaps incapable of settling theoretically all
questions regarding the gods and for that reason incapable even of
establishing the very possibility of a physics (account of a fixed,
unalterable nature). Surely in his discussion of this section, <strong>Strauss</strong>
goes beyond his previous account of Socrates by admitting and
stressing Socrates' concern with "the nature of all things" and thus
raising the question of the connection of this concern with his interest
in the "human things."
On Chapters Seven Through Ten (Part Two)
We have seen that according to <strong>Strauss</strong> what interests Socrates
most, in the section on the wife and even in the Oeconomicus as a
whole (132), is Ischomachos's education of his wife. Toward the end
of his discussion of this section, <strong>Strauss</strong> admits "that Socrates is at
least as much interested in Ischomachos's report about his wife's virtue
as in that virtue itself" (154, my emphasis), and he points out
that the reason is not likely to be that Ischomachos is a particularly
good interpreter of his wife's virtue. In fact, Ischomachos is deficient
not only as an interpreter of his wife's virtue, but also as
educator of his wife to virtue or her duties. It is possible-Xenophon
does not let us know for sure-that Ischomachos's wife turned out