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

146 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
strictly understood-can be at the same time both "the political introduction
to philosophy" and "the core of philosophy, or rather `the
first philosophy.' "20
On Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One
In Chapter XXI, Ischomachos explains why, despite the fact that
"all men know equally well the things pertaining to farming," "some
farmers are very wealthy and others are very poor" (197). On the
basis of an earlier passage (V.18-20), <strong>Strauss</strong> suggests as one of the
reasons for this state of affairs "divine dispensation"; he then calls
attention to the fact that "Ischomachos does not have recourse to
that reason" (197). He does this in the first paragraph of his discussion
of Chapter XX. In the next paragraph (indeed in the next
sentence), he points out that for the most part Chapters XX and
XXI, "the two last chapters of the Oeconomicus," in contrast to
those makng up the immediately preceding section on farming, are
not in the form of a "dialogue between Ischomachos and Socrates"
(197). <strong>Strauss</strong> points this out here although he could have done so
elsewhere in his discussion of the two chapters-for example, after
he discusses the question (of Ischomachos) "that ruling over willing
subjects is clearly something divine" (207; cf. 208). Apparently, he
wished to link the non-dialogical character of these chapters with
the absence of the question of the gods rather than with its presence.
As <strong>Strauss</strong>'s remark on the form of Chapters XX and XXI indicates,
he does not understand them to comprise part of the section
on farming. Since they pursue questions which arise out of the farming
section, directly or indirectly, they could be said to constitute a
kind of appendix to it; but they serve also to conclude the
Oeconomicus as a whole. In this capacity, they convey the teaching
of the work in the most public, if not the most revealing, manner.
<strong>Strauss</strong>'s discussion, which relies heavily on comparisons with the
Hiero for this purpose (203-204, 205, 209), is designed to explain the
meaning of this conclusion as much as to follow the questions immediately
at issue. For example, while the last paragraph of his
discussion of Chapter XX explains, in terms of the particular question
at issue in Chapter XX, why the argument of Chapter XXI is
needed, the preceding paragraph h'as already explained this in terms
20. The quotations are from What is Political PhilosophyP (93-94; cf. "The Spirit of
Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon" 532) and The City of Man (20).