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

134 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
On Chapters Twelve Through Fourteen
According to <strong>Strauss</strong>, "The mere fact that the discussion of
stewardship [Chapters XII-XIV] follows immediately the confrontation
[in Chapter XII] of the two ways of life (the Ischomachean and
the Socratic) could induce one to consider the possibility that the
discussion of stewardship continues and deepens that confrontation"
(176). In making this suggestion, <strong>Strauss</strong> seems to have in mind first
the following reflection: "the account of the stewards is an account
of Ischomachos's educating his stewards, just as the account of the
wife was an account of Ischomachos's educating his wife" (167); the
emphasis on Ischomachos's activity as an educator appears to point
to that activity as "an important line" between Ischomachos and
Socrates, who "regarded himself later as an expert on education and
only on education" (167); yet, "This is not to assert" that Socrates
"was an expert on the education of wives and stewards" (167); indeed,
"It is obvious that Socrates is in no way engaged in educating
human beings to stewardship" (176). Ischomachos's educating activity
establishes in this case then a link not with Socrates, but with
his own stewards (167), i.e., with slaves (173). The depth of this link
is suggested by the fact that, "The perfect gentleman Ischomachos is
able to educate at least some of his stewards so that they have
become perfect gentlemen" (175). In other words, freedom is not an
essential ingredient of gentlemanship "in the Ischomachean sense."
But Ischomachos himself was of course free: therefore, "One would
go too far were one to assert that there is no difference whatever between
the perfect gentleman in Ischomachos's sense and the perfect
steward. It suffices to remember Ischomachos's account of this activity
as the citizen of a commonwealth" (176; cf. 161). Or does
<strong>Strauss</strong> intend us to remember this together with his observation on
the fact that the chapters on the education of stewards are "silent on
piety as an objective or ingredient" of that education (171): "The
powerful presence of the human master makes the recourse to divine
masters less necessary than it otherwise would be" (170, my emphasis;
cf. 123 on the difference between Chapters IV and V)?
Ischomachos's freedom, as citizen of a commonwealth, consisted
precisely in the (relative) absence of human masters. In the course of
stressing the kinship between Ischomachos and his stewards, <strong>Strauss</strong>
finds occasion to say that "a perfect gentleman in the Ischomachean
sense differs profoundly from the perfect gentleman in the Socratic
sense. A perfect gentleman in the Socratic sense is a man who knows