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

STRAUSS ON XENOPHON 139
By his treatment of the divisions of the work, <strong>Strauss</strong> seems to suggest
that however fundamental in itself is the distinction between art
(or knowlege) and what is not art (or knowledge), Ischomachos's
art, or his manner of possessing that knowledge, is compatible with
stewardship, with being a steward or slave.
The chapters on farming, like those preceding them on stewardship,
belong to the part of the discussion between Ischomachos and
Socrates which takes place after Socrates has indicated that he has
"learned everything about perfect gentlemanship that he wished to
learn" (167). But <strong>Strauss</strong> does not suggest regarding the farming
chapters what he had suggested regarding the stewardship discussion
proper, that it "continues and deepens" the confrontation between
"the two ways of life" (176). He does not lead us to expect
from these chapters, or his treatment of them, any extension, and
deepening, of what has already been brought out. Their
significance-understandable only in light of the extreme terseness
and difficulty of Xenophon's text (and <strong>Strauss</strong>'s commentary) thus
far-may consist then chiefly in this: that what is brought out there,
in some ways more fully than before, is only what we are already
supposed to have learned. <strong>Strauss</strong> may indirectly refer to the indirectness
of his procedure as well as Xenophon's when he says that
"it appears that Socrates knew more about casting the seed than this
philosopher might be thought to know . . ." (189). Shortly before,
he had called attention to the care or economy with which the term
"philosopher" is used by Xenophon (185). His own use of the term
here may be explained by his later remark that "the art of farming in
particular may well be used as a likeness of the art of rhetoric" (192),
an art exercised by Socrates (191). A speaker or writer who
understands his task to be the casting of seeds does not feel obliged,
perhaps not even entitled, to elaborate his thought fully (cf.
Xenophon's Socrates, Preface); he does or must content himself with
letting the hints which he has planted, or their juxtaposition or
order, lead the listener or reader to that elaboration on his own.
In the first paragraph of the first chapter of his discussion of the
farming section, <strong>Strauss</strong> had called attention to "the division of the
Ischomachos section into a part devoted to gentlemanship and a part
devoted to farming" (178). Only in the second paragraph does he tell
how Socrates leads Ischomachos to speak of farming. <strong>Strauss</strong> emphasizes
two points. First, while Socrates had "learned" from
Ischomachos that the steward must be (among other things) "just,"
when speaking of the quality in question in his summary of the