Aristotle codified the rules of these dialectical jousts in his Topics.41 There were well-defined roles for both questioner and respondent in these argumentation exercises, and the rules of this intellectual fencing were rigorously defined.
It is not our task here to try to disentangle what may be properly "Socratic"
in the conversations reported by Plato; rather, we arc concerned to uncover the significance of Socratic irony as it was known to tradition, and the movements of consciousness to which it corresponds.
Otto Apelt48 has given a good description of the mechanism of Socratic irony: Spa/tung und Verdoppelung.49 Socrates splits himself into two, so that there are two Socrates: the Socrates who knows in advance how the discussion is going to end, and the Socrates who travels the entire dialectical path along with his interlocutor. Socrates' interlocutors do not know where he is leading them, and therein lies the irony. As he travels the path along with his interlocutors, Socrates constantly demands total agreement from them. He takes his partner's position as his starting point, and gradually makes him admit all the consequences of his position. This a priori agreement is founded on the rational demands of the Logos,50 or reasonable discourse. By constantly demanding assent, Socrates leads his interlocutor to recognize that his initial position was contradictory, and he thereby objectifies their common undertaking. As a rule, Socrates chooses an activity familiar to his interlocutor as the subject of discussion, and tries to define, together with him, the practical knowledge required to carry out this activity. For example, a general must know how to fight bravely, and a soothsayer must behave piously towards the go<Js. At the end of the road, however, the general turns out to have no idea of what courage really is, and the soothsayer docsn 't know what piety is. It is t hen that the interlocutor rcali7..cs that he doesn't really know the reasons for hiH actions Suddenly, his whole value-system seems to him without
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foundat ion . Up unt il then, he had, to a certain extent, identified with the v11luc..'-NYNtcm which hnd dictated to him his way of thinking and speaking.
l lt·m�cfort h , tu� i11 op1m11cd to it.
1 54
Figures
Thus, the interlocutor, too, is cut in two: there is the interlocutor as he was before his conversation with Socrates, and there is the interlocutor who, in the course of their constant mutual accord, has identified himself with Socrates, and who henceforth will never be the same again.
The absolutely essential point in this ironical method is the path which Socrates and his interlocutor travel together. Socrates pretends he wants to learn something from his interlocutor, and this constitutes his ironic selfdeprecation. In fact, however, even while Socrates appears ro identify himself with the interlocutor, and enter completely into his· discourse, in the last analysis it is the interlocutor who unconsciously enters into Socrates' discourse and identifies himself with him. Let us not forget: to identify oneself with Socrates is to identify oneself with aporia and doubt, for Socrates doesn't know anything; all he knows is that he knows nothing. Therefore, at the end of the discussion, the interlocutor has not learned anything; in fact, he no longer even knows anything. And yet, throughout the duration of the discussion, he has experienced what true activity of the mind is. Better yet, he has been Socrates himself. And Socrates is interrogation, questioning, and stepping back to take a look at oneself; in a word, he is consciousness.
Such is the profound meaning of Socratic maieutics. In a famous passage of the Theaetetus,51 Socrates tells how he practices the same trade as did his mother, who was a midwife, attending corporeal births. Socrates himself, he claims, is a midwife of the mind, and it is to the birth of minds that he attends. Socrates himself does not engender anything, since he knows nothing; he merely helps others to engender themselves. As Kierkegaard was well aware, Socratic maieutics stands the master-disciple relationship on its head:
to be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, & etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it. 52
The disciple is the opportunity for the master to understand himself, as the master is the opportunity for the disciple to understand himself.
When he dies, the master has no claim on the disciple's soul, no more than the disciple has on that of the master . . . The best way to understand Socrates is precisely to understand that we do not owe him anything. That is what Socrates preferred, and it is good that he was able to prefer this. 53
Here we touch upon one of the possible rncnningN of Socratcfi' cnigmat k declaration: "I only know one t hing: th111 iM, 1h111 I llun'I know 11ny1 him(." 1•
The Figure of Socrates
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This statement could be interpreted as meaning that Socrates did not possess any transmissible knowledge, and was unable to cause ideas to pass from his mind into that of others. As Socrates is made to say in Plato's Symposium, "My dear Agathon . I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed
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. . . from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty." 55
In Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates, Hippias tells Socrates that, instead of always asking questions about justice, he would do better simply to say, once and for all, whar justice is. Socrates replies: "If I don't reveal my views on justice in words, I do so by my conduct." 56 To be sure, Socrates was a passionate lover of words and dialogue. With just as much passion, however, he sought to demonstrate to us the limits of language. What he wanted to show us is that we can never understand justice if we do not live it. Justice, like every authentic reality, is indefinable, and this is what Socrates sought to make his interlocutor understand, in order to urge him to "live" justice. The questioning of discourse leads to the questioning of the individual, who must decide whether or not he will resolve to live according to his conscience and to reason. In the words of one of Socrates' interlocutors: "Anyone who enters into conversation with Socrates is liable to be drawn into an argument, and whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and round by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present and past life." 57 The individual thus finds himself called into question in the most fundamental bases of his action, and he becomes aware of the living problem he himself represents for himself. All values are consequently turned upside down, as is the importance previously accorded them. As Socrates says in Plato's Apology:
I care nothing for what most people care about: money-making, administration of property, generalships, success in public debates, magistracies, coalitions, and political factions . I did not choose that
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path, but rather the one by which I could do the greatest good to each of you in particular: by trying to persuade each of you to concern himself less about what he has that about what he is, so that he may make himself as good and as reasonable as possible. 58