Socrates in the Agora

Abstract

We began with the central question of the Socratic problem, Who was Socrates? and have now examined the most influential solutions that have so far been proffered. Vlastos’s doctrinal claim—that Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates only what he, Plato, at the moment of writing sincerely believes—is a trap that causes a cascade of internal inconsistencies in the corpus that Vlastos’s solution cannot tolerate, even if `irony’ is invoked to plug the leaks. Stylometry, as we saw, offers no succor. Thesleff’s Socrates, built up carefully from the historical and biographical tradition, but without much regard for philosophy, is incidental to his Plato; Thesleff makes no claim, in fact, that he solves the Socratic problem at all. Havelock’s solution, pinned as it is to speculations about the cognitive implications of literacy, saddles Plato with a driving obsession to defeat the oral tradition, but Havelock’s solution conflicts with the dialogues as much as with the historical and anthropological record. His solution requires an unacceptably high tolerance for aberrations, especially outside the Republic. So we must ask now again at this new juncture, Who was Socrates?