Strauss on the Memorabilia: Xenophon's Socrates

CHAPTER 12 Strauss on the Memorabilia: Xenophon’s Socrates

Amy L. Bonnette

Leo Strauss devotes most of Xenophon’s Socrates to a detailed analysis of the Memorabilia, the longest, most complex, and most beautiful of Xenophon’s four Socratic works.1 By carefully compiling many short Socratic speeches and dialogues, Xenophon demonstrates in the Memorabilia that Socrates was a model teacher and human being who adorned his city by improving the peo- ple around him. The Memorabilia opens with a refutation of the two official charges against Socrates (impiety and corruption of the youth) and concludes with a glance at Socrates’ approach to his trial and a final eulogy. Xenophon begins and ends, then, by discussing Socrates’ trial—including attention to his controversial daimonion (which looks like fairly strong evidence against Socrates on the charge that he introduced new daimonia). This focus on Socrates’ daimonion is probably what prompts Strauss to observe that the work is an unusual piece of forensic rhetoric, in that it shows its vulnerabilities at the beginning and end, while placing in the (large) middle section its most publicly acceptable part, an account of Socrates’ benefactions (4, 58). In Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse, the first of his two volumes laying out his “complete” interpretation of Xenophon’s Socrates, Strauss explains why he begins with an examination of Xenophon’s dialogue on household manage- ment, the Oeconomicus, rather than with the Memorabilia (Strauss 1970, 85, cf. Strauss 1972, preface). There he argues that Xenophon limits himself in the Memorabilia to speaking about Socrates’ justice. Even if this were strictly speaking true (for the Memorabilia does discuss Socrates’ wisdom, among other virtues), the definition of justice under consideration in the Memorabilia

1 I thank Robert Bartlett and Timothy Burns for suggesting improvements to this essay. I am much indebted to Christopher Bruell’s work on Strauss and Xenophon (1984, 1994, 1998), especially his “Foreword” (1998) to the reprints of Leo Strauss’ final two books on Xenophon, Xenophon’s Socrates (Strauss 1972) and Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse (Strauss 1970). Translations of the Memorabilia are from my edition (Bonnette 1994), with occasional unnoted changes. For translations of Xenophon’s other Socratic writings I recommend Bartlett (1996). Further helpful commentary on the Memorabilia can be found in Buzzetti (2001), Lorch (2010) and Pangle (1994). References to the Memorabilia are to book and chap- ter (e.g., 1.2) or to book, chapter and section (e.g., 1.2.2). Unidentified page references are to Xenophon’s Socrates (Strauss 1972).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004299832_014 286 Bonnette is a broad one, focusing on Socrates’ benefactions to friends and not simply on his law-abidingness (1.6.11, 4.8.11). Thus, the Memorabilia must show some por- tion of Socrates’ benefits to his friend and student, Xenophon. We may reason- ably hope, then, that by reading the Memorabilia we too may be benefited—in other words, that we will not only be convinced of Socrates’ justice but also learn something by understanding Xenophon’s argument (29, 101, Strauss 1970, 85, 1.6.13, 4.1.1). Strauss’ opening assertion is very promising in this regard. He says that he expects to “transform into a certainty” his surmise, based on the title of the Memorabilia (“Recollections” or “Memoirs”), that Socrates was the model for Xenophon, or that Xenophon’s time spent with Socrates was the most memo- rable part of his very memorable life (3, Strauss 1970, 85). We can reason, then, that if Socrates was a model for Xenophon, he must have been a prudent man who understood how to conduct his own affairs. Additionally, because Strauss treats the Oeconomicus first—whereas Xenophon presents the Oeconomicus as a continuation of the Memorabilia—he makes us aware that the prudent conduct of one’s affairs must include the prudent management of one’s house- hold. Therefore, Strauss must have concluded that Socrates was a model household manager as far as Xenophon was concerned. But how could Strauss, or Xenophon, possibly arrive at such a conclusion? Socrates’ bad end would seem to raise doubts about his ability to manage his own affairs at all pru- dently. Even if we could accept Xenophon’s puzzling suggestion that Socrates preferred death in the given dire circumstances (4.8.1), how did he find him- self in such circumstances? That Socrates considered himself superior to other philosophers is clear from Xenophon’s differentiating Socrates from “the oth- ers,” on the grounds that they sought wisdom in divine matters before they understood the human things. Yet, other philosophers did not suffer Socrates’ fate. How could Socrates claim to have a superior knowledge of human things if he could not even protect himself from an ignominious death? To put it more generally, how can we believe that Socrates is any sort of model for a gentleman if he could not successfully navigate a peaceful existence among his fellow citizens in one of the most intellectually tolerant cities of his time? While Strauss himself does not raise these doubts at the opening of Xenophon’s Socrates, we must raise them for ourselves if we wish to under- stand the argument of his book, for Strauss’ treatment of the Memorabilia is difficult to follow without some prior idea of what the important questions are for us and for Socrates. In particular, we must remain aware of the importance of understanding the management of human beings for this famous founder of political philosophy. This awareness is difficult to maintain because, even though Socrates insisted that it is vital to understand the political things, he