15 Jacob Howland University of Tulsa in Order to Understand the Statesman One Must Begin by Noting Its Central Position in the H

15 THE ELEATIC STRANGER'S SOCRATIC CONDEMNATION OF SOCRATES Jacob Howland University of Tulsa In order to understand the Statesman one must begin by noting its central position in the heptalogy Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist, Statesman, Apology, Crl.tQ, and Phaedo, a dramatically and substantively unified series of dialogues that depicts the last days of Socrates. 1 Socrates' encounter with the Eleatic Stranger occurs on the day following the preliminary proceedings of his public trial. While Plato leads us up to these proceedings in the Euthyphro, he substitutes the Sophist and Statesman for the judicial hearing that takes place inside the Stoa of the King Archon. This narrative substitution confirms Socrates' initial suspicion that the Stranger has come to condemn him (SQpll 216a-b). Yet Socrates himself invites a philosophical version of the public indictment by asking the Stranger to speak about the natures of the sophist, statesman, and philosopher (~ 216d-217a). In the Sophist, the Stranger sets out to substantiate the intertwined accusations of bad theorizing and bad citizenship that together constitute the charge of sophistry he brings against Socrates.z The ensuing philosophic drama is not without twists and turns. In the Statesman, the Stranger seems to retract the accusation of bad theorizing in the course of formulating that of bad citizenship. This retraction is connected with changes in the manner or method of his inquiry that serve to establish his own Socratic character. Most important, the Stranger mirrors Socrates' impure and prophetic dialectics in reorienting the process of diaeresis with a great myth that emphasizes phronisis 16 and the concept of due measure. Yet the Stranger's acknowledgment of his philosophical kinship with Socrates does not amount to acquittal on the charge of sophistry. The Stranger's final position seems to be that the philosophical goal of phron.sis is accessible only through Socratic inquiry, but that Socrates' own practice is deficient in phron.sis precisely to the extent that his unrestrained devotion to inquiry unravels the bonds of political community. The Stranger's verdict is thus disturbingly ambiguous. Socrates turns out to be a sophist just to the extent that he embodies pure philosophic zeal. Put another way, the most perfect available instance of the eidos or genos "philosopher" is no longer a philosopher. Conversely, the genuine philosopher falls short of the perfection of his own eidos by suppressing his own philosophical nature: he forgoes the full acquisition of phronlsis in the name of phronlsis itself. The philosopher is thus a radically paradoxical being: he is the being whose proper understanding of his own nature leads him to retreat from his own nature, or who becomes what he is only in being less than what he is. The Stranger's philosophical parricide of Parmenides (~ 24ld), which was deemed necessary to capture the sophist, seems also to have anticipated the essential negativity whereby the philosopher evades eidetic definition. I Who, or what, is Socrates? The heptalogy frames its focal question in political, religious, and theoretical terms. Socrates begins the Theaetetus by identifying himself as a patriot who feels care and friendship for his fellow Athenians .

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