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

STRAUSS ON XENOPHON
truth and those intended merely to produce agreement. This distinction
is related to distinctions called attention to by <strong>Strauss</strong> in the
farming section: between Ischomachos's teaching Socrates "by appealing
. . . to facts Socrates knows" and his teaching Socrates by
appealing "to plausibilities" (190); between what Socrates knows of
farming "from having seen" and what he "knows" "from having
heard" (190; cf. 180); and between agreement of Socrates and
Ischomachos based on their both possessing the required knowledge
and their agreement based on shared opinion (187; cf. 188). <strong>Strauss</strong>
casts further light on his remark on dialectics by reminding us in its
vicinity of Socrates' having called attention to the rhetorical
character of Ischomachos's teaching in one of its aspects (194; cf.
190). In his discussion of the earlier passage, <strong>Strauss</strong> spoke of
Socrates' interest in rhetoric; shortly before he had spoken of
Socrates' interest in theology (188; cf. 192). <strong>Strauss</strong> was to speak
again of rhetoric in his discussion of the Memorabilia passage he
refers to in his footnote here: "It makes sense to call the Odyssean
dialectics [those intended to produce mere agreement] rhetoric"; but
this rhetoric, or the Odyssean dialectics, must then be distinguished
from "dialectics strictly understood" (Xenophon's Socrates 123).
There appears to be a correspondence between the twofold
character of dialectics and the twofold character of Socrates' interests
(in rhetoric and "theology"). In other words, the "dialectics
strictly understood" would appear to be the Socratic approach to
"theology" (which we recall was a conversational approach), or the
Socratic replacement for theology. In the second paragraph of his
discussion of Chapter XIX, <strong>Strauss</strong> speaks not only of theology but of
what underlies Socrates' concern with it: his life-long interest in
nature or physiologia (cf. Natural Right and History 82-84). If the
dialectics strictly understood are the Socratic approach to
"theology," "theology" would constitute the link between dialectics
and physiologia; 19 moreover, one would be able to understand on
this basis how polical philosophy-in the form of the dialectics
19. Avery different account of this link, and of dialectics generally, was given on
147-148. <strong>Strauss</strong> refers to that passage too in the footnote to his remark on dialectics
which has already been mentioned. (He does so in a very unusual way; he says "see"
these pages: his merely corroborative references, so far as I have observed in this book
always have the form "cf.") The remark here seems to support the hesitancy I felt
when reading the account on 147-148 at accepting it as the whole of <strong>Strauss</strong>'s treatment
of dialectics. Cf. also "Plato" 43-44 in History of Political Philosophy (second edition).
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