After nearly half a century of neglect, the past few decades have witnessed a revival in Socratic studies. While this revival is certainly welcome for both Classicists and students of Socrates alike, Socratic studies are notoriously difficult. In addition to problems relating to the historical Socrates and the status of the literature dealing with him, there is the further and more pressing concern that works hoping to stand out amidst the latest milieu of Socratic studies and make even the smallest contribution in large companions or volumes face the challenge of coming up with new and original ways of examining Socrates, and the sometimes problematic works that purport to present him.
This volume grapples with these challenges valiantly. The editors, who have been pioneering this recent interest in Socratic studies, distance the volume from other companions and grant it a unique focus by selecting chapters on the basis of intertextuality (pp. 3–5). This means, for the first time, approaching Socrates not merely through the works explicitly devoted to him, but also through passages in which Socratic themes are implicitly referenced; exploring the conceptual and intertextual links between the different sources of Socratic literature handed down to us; and placing Socratic literature in context, by which the editors mean, considering the broader context that our Socratic works respond to and consciously engage with. These fresh perspectives eschew certain drawbacks associated with traditional methods in Socratic studies and are certainly the missing links worth pursuing.
The volume is ambitiously large, comprising 40 chapters in over 850 pages. The obvious danger of this size is that not everything will turn out to be particularly relevant or exciting for all readers, and with so many chapters to read through one must be necessarily selective. If anything, however, the length of the volume has the advantage of conveying the variety of Socratic literature and giving due attention to some forgotten and often disregarded aspects of Socrates as exemplified in the works of sidelined authors, while simultaneously showing the breadth of influence Socrates and the Socratic dialogue manifested in antiquity. This variety is finally represented in the international panel of scholars making up the volume, each bringing their own expertise in Socratic studies to the table.
Owing to the size of the volume and obvious space constraints, I must select the chapters that I personally found most illuminating, or which I thought would capture best the oeuvre of the volume and thus fulfil the aims set out by the editors at the outset. Part 1, whose aim is to demonstrate the polemics against both Socrates and his companions ‘from outside’ (p. 4), contains three chapters on Old Comedy, one on Isocrates’ interaction with the Socratics and one on the origins of the Socratic dialogue. J.A. Bromberg sharpens the rhetorical and literary context surrounding Socrates’ depiction in Old Comedy, showing that the trend of satirising intellectuals was common but not necessarily rooted in sinister intentions. The dialogues of Plato and Xenophon would, in turn, uphold Socrates as a paragon of virtue and goodness in contrast to comic depictions. This is especially the case in Plato, whose selective memory and characterisation of Socrates act as a clear rebuttal of Aristophanes’ damaging presentation. Thus, the picture of Socrates we find in the dialogues of later authors is rooted more in intertextual and contextual relations than is usually recognised.
A. Capra, conversely, offers a fresh take on the commonly held view that Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates had a largely negative effect on the presentation of Socrates in later literature, suggesting instead that Plato consciously selected and appropriated characterisations of the Aristophanic Socrates where it helped vindicate rather than lampoon Socrates, such as when Plato takes on the picture of Socrates as Silenus but suggests he has divinity within, or when he reverses the picture in the Clouds of Socrates despising the sun to show Socrates instead praying to the sun in the Symposium. The message is clear: it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand certain Platonic or Xenophontic characterisations of Socrates in isolation from their Aristophanic and comic counterparts.
J.M. Redfield's ‘The Origins of the Socratic Dialogue’ closes Part 1 and helpfully provides a transition to Part 2, whose focus is the dialogues of Socrates’ closest associates excluding Plato and Xenophon. Redfield's chapter is ideally suited to the project of the volume. It suggests that the Socratic dialogue was an inventive literary creation, spurred by Socrates’ characteristic method of philosophising, by authors whose varied aspects of Socratic thought show us the different ways in which his followers could interpret and want Socrates to be remembered. These are ‘true’ representations of Socrates in so far as they reflect the authors’ own memory of Socrates and the particular effect he had on them.
Part 2 proceeds to shed new light on neglected testimonies from members of Socrates’ immediate circle, such as Antisthenes, Aristippus, Euclides, Aeschines of Sphettus and Phaedo of Elis. Whether it is the positive role rhetoric may play in Socratic dialectic (V. Suvák), the Aristippean view of pleasure and freedom, which, while deviating from the thought of his teacher, still bestows strong associations with Socratic teaching (K. Urstad), the attractiveness of Aeschines’ dialectical approach of evoking a mental shock through erôs not for the sake of higher ontological inquiry but for spiritual healing itself (C. Mársico), or the close association of the historical Phaedo's thought with certain fundamental tenets of Socrates’ ethical outlook such as the assumption of an independent rational soul over the physical phenomena associated with the body (D. Di Lanzo), these chapters reveal the extent and variety of influence that Socrates held on his immediate circle. It is refreshing to see such attention being paid to these authors in their own right, sometimes clashing with the Platonic Socrates but no less worthy of consideration as interesting sources for Socrates’ thought.
Part 3, devoted entirely to Plato, begins with a chapter entitled ‘Plato and the Socratics’. L. Brisson sets the tone of this section by reviewing all the available evidence conveying Plato's attitude towards the other Socratics, by which he is able to demonstrate the various ways in which different Socratics interpreted Socrates and put his philosophy to use. Plato, in constant interaction and competition with other Socratics, was one of the most original thinkers among these inasmuch as he inherited from Socrates certain principles that he took to a ‘logical extreme’ (p. 265), like the hypothesis of separate intelligible Forms as an answer to the definitional question ‘what is X?’.
I. Jordović's chapter serves the aims of the book well by revealing how Socrates’ distinction between two lives in the Gorgias was rooted in the Athenian dichotomy between a life of polupragmosunê versus apragmosunê in the polis as evidenced in Pericles’ funeral oration. Again, the chapter takes the view that one cannot truly understand Socrates’ choice of life without an awareness of the polarisations governing Athenian democratic life. Socrates, however, at least in Plato's account of him in the Gorgias, inverts the traditional distinction between lives by transmuting politics into the domain of theoretical philosophy. This serves to highlight the magnitude of Socrates’ philosophical mission.
While recent years have seen an increasing interest in Xenophon's Socratic and non-Socratic works, the editors offer in Part 4 an updated picture of Xenophon with four chapters dedicated to each of the Memorabilia's four books. Moore contributes a chapter that gives us, for the first time, an overview of Xenophon's unified Socratic curriculum. Unlike Plato, Xenophon explicitly demarcates an order of Socratic teaching that rests on the study of certain fundamental ‘Socratic’ virtues such as justice or moderation. This chimes well with Xenophon's desire to accentuate the ‘usefulness’ of Socratic philosophy. An understanding of education along these lines, Moore claims, ‘broadens the register of discussion about the Socratic legacy’ (p. 519).
The final two chapters in this part follow a recent trend in Xenophontic scholarship that admits Socratic motifs in the non-Socratic works. N. Humble does exactly that, reviving a view prevalent in the Renaissance, which maintained that Socrates’ influence over Xenophon is shown throughout the entire Xenophontic corpus. Despite the appearance of seemingly non-philosophical topics in Xenophon, and despite Socrates’ absence in many of these works, that even the non-Socratic works betray a philosophical undercurrent should be seen from the fact that many of them include distinctly Socratic elements such as the value of dialectical inquiry for truth, being useful to others, and the recognition of one's ignorance so as to spur self-examination.
The closing half of the volume contains just one part on the later reception of Socrates. More attention is given to the previous section since these later receptions rely on all the available testimonies we find in first generation Socratics. As the editors concede, some important receptions are missing, but there are critical chapters on Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics and Proclus.
The second editor of the volume, Stavru, makes his contribution by following a recent proclivity to rescue Aristoxenus as a worthy source for Socrates. Stavru suggests that Aristoxenus’ Life should be taken seriously since he may have relied on first-hand, albeit oral accounts of Socrates. This is perhaps why, unlike the authors of Socratic dialogues, he moves away from idealised portraits of Socrates towards a more balanced account, where both the positive and the negative aspects of Socrates’ personhood are highlighted. This is interesting, and while Stavru's attempt to form a coherent picture of the historical Socrates from Aristoxenus is impressive, a few things should be noted. The evidence that Aristoxenus, and in turn Stavru himself, relies on to create a ‘rich and impressive picture’ (p. 658) of Socrates is conflicting and scanty at best. Any desire to reconstruct the personality of the historical Socrates stems from our own curiosity and fantasy, but our results will often seem what is most plausible or attractive to us coming from highly problematic evidence. This may, for the editors, have the undesirable consequence of actually losing touch with Socrates himself.
The chapters that do well in this section establish a philosophical connection between later receptions and Socrates, just as J.E. Heßler's fresh look shows that, despite doctrinal dissimilarities between Epicureanism and Socratic philosophy, Epicurus ultimately shared a philosophical method consistent with Socrates. This is demonstrated through certain features of resemblance between Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus and Socratic protreptic writings generally, both of which have the same goal of ‘Healing through Philosophy’, as the title of the chapter reads.
The variety of literary genres exhibited in this latter section (biography, comedy, philosophy) through which one may undertake Socratic studies is suggestive of how helpful the volume as a whole may be for different students of the ancient world. This volume will surely contain something interesting and helpful for anyone looking to understand Socrates and his influence on later generations better.
