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

104 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
implies)?
Whatever may be the case, then, with this explanation of why
Socrates teaches an art, the fundamental difficulty of understanding
the manner in which he "transcends justice" remains unsolved. This
may be connected with the fact that <strong>Strauss</strong> goes out of his way at
this point to show that Xenophon was aware of Aristophanes' treatment
of Socrates in the Clouds: that treatment too was based on the
premise (see the debate between the Just Speech and the Unjust
Speech) that Socrates "transcends justice."
On Chapter One
Toward the beginning of his discussion of Chapter I, <strong>Strauss</strong> raises
the question, as one still unanswered, "why Xenophon chose
Kritoboulos as the interlocutor of Socrates in the Socratic discourse"
(92) . Kritoboulos's being the son of a friend is not then a sufficient
answer to this question. Perhaps it is not in any simple way the
answer to the related question of why Socrates would teach or attempt
to teach him. This suspicion is confirmed by the fact that it is
Socrates, as <strong>Strauss</strong> emphasizes, who leads the discussion of Chapter
I toward the conclusion "that for a man who knows how to use his
friends for his benefit, the friends are money . . . " (95) It seems
that we were correct in resisting the temptation to conclude that it is
in the direction of friendship that Socrates allegedly transcends
justice. But how then does he "transcend justice" and how is the suggestion
that "friends are money" intelligible as a Socratic suggestion,
as a thought belonging to or compatible with the Socratic life?
It surely cannot mean that excessive concern with wealth is a
characteristic of the philosophic life: Kritoboulos, not Socrates, suggests
that the aim of household management should be increase of
wealth (93); "according to Socrates, the wise man needs very little
for himself" (97), a view to which Socrates' whole life bears witness.
Its meaning must be indicated, rather, by the reflection (on the relation
between knowledge and possession) of which it is a part, a
reflection on the basis of which <strong>Strauss</strong> suggests that Socrates
transcended justice in the sense of legality. In particular, Socrates
disregarded in principle, if not in practice, the legal definition of
property, or the distinction between mine and thine as that is
established by law: to this extent, he "looked at things from the
point of view of the good as distinguished from that of justice"
(96-97),