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Socratic Irony*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Gregory Vlastos
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Extract

‘Irony,’ says Quintilian, is that figure of speech or trope ‘in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood’ (contrarium ei quoddicitur intelligendum est). His formula has stood the test of time. It passes intact into Dr Johnson's dictionary (‘ mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words’ [1755]). It survives virtually intact in ours:Irony is the use of words to express something other than, and especially the opposite of, [their] literal meaning (Webster's).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 79 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1 Institutio Oratorica 9.22.44. Much the same definition at 6.2.15 and 8.6.54.

2 The samples in Muecke, D. C., The Compass of Irony(London, 1969), pp. 15–19, several of them perfect gems, include no pure specimen of this variety. Neither in this nor in that other excellent book, The Rhetoric of Irony,by Wayne C. Booth (Chicago, 1974) is this dimension of irony noticed, far less explored.Google Scholar

3 On as Schimpfwortin its common use in the classical period see the groundbreaking paper of O. Ribbeck, ‘Über den Begriff des Eiron’, Rhein. Mus.31 (1876), 38Iff. [hereafter ‘Ribbeck’]: it has not been superseded by later studies which I shall not undertake to review in the present essay.

4 In his invaluable edition of the Clouds(Oxford, 1968).

5 In his reference to Socrates in the N.E., E.E.,and MM.,but perhaps not in the Rhet.,where is reckoned a ‘disdainful’ trait , 1179b31–2).

6 ‘Such men are more to be avoided than adders’ (I, sub fin.).

7 ‘He pretends not to have heard what he heard, not to have seen what he saw, to have no recollection of the thing to which he agreed’ (1.5).

8 ‘He will praise to their faces those he attacks behind their backs’ (1.2). I find it astonishing thatFriedlander(plato, 1 [English tr., New York, 1938], p. 138) should remark that Theophrastus (‘the moral botanist’) portrays, but ‘does not evaluate’, irony: could there be a more emphatic Evaluation than the remarks quoted in this and the two preceding notes? By leaving Socrates out of it, Theophrastus feels free to vent on the the scorn he well deserves in the common view.

9 Bloom and Grube take this to be the sense of both . Shorey too takes ‘irony’ to be the sense of (referring to Symp.216e: to be discussed below); but he shifts to ‘ dissemble’ for the latter, offering no explanation for the shift. I suspect he is confused about the meaning of the English word ‘irony’, taking itto mean ‘dissembling’. (Translations and commentaries to which I refer by name of author only are listed at the end of the paper.)

10 For correct translation consult Cornford (‘shamming ignorance’), Robin (‘feinte ignorance’). That‘ shamming’,‘ feigning’ isthe sense should be completely clear from the context.

11 BurnetadPlato, Apol.38al: ‘The words (in Plato) are only used of Socrates by his opponents, and have always an unfavourable meaning.’ He is not overlooking at Apol.38a1 (taking it, quite rightly, to mean ‘regarding this pretence as a sly evasion’; the same sense in R. E. Allen's translation, ‘I am being sly and dishonest’). But he is ignoring (or misunderstanding?) both of the notable uses of the word in Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium(to be discussed below).

12 Platon(3rd ed., 1948), p. 451 n. 1: ‘Wo [die Ironie] dem Sokrates beigelegt wird [im Platon] geschieht es immer als Vorwurf, auch von Alkibiades, Symp.216e.’ Neither he nor Burnet (preceding note) takes any notice of Ribbeck's discussion of Rep.337a, which captures exactly the sense of here.

13 ‘ In Plato it retains its bad sense, in the mouth either of a bitter opponent like Thrasymachus or of one pretending to be angry at the way in which Socrates deceives everyone as to his real character (Alcibiades at Symp.216e, 218d)’, History of Greek Philosophy(Cambridge, 1969) [hereafter ‘HGPh’]m, p. 446. He is taking no notice of Gorg.489d-e (to be discussed directly in the text above) and assumes that in Rep.337a above has the same sense as does in Symp.218d and in Symp.218d6.

14 My translation follows Croiset-Bodin. Woodhead's ‘you are ironical’ is acceptable in [a], where the mockery isironical: it takes the form of saying something contrary to what the speaker believes to be true, but not at [b], where this is not the case. Irwin's ‘sly’ will not do: there is nothing particularly ‘cunning, wily or hypocritical’ (O.E.D.for‘ sly’) in the tone or content. We must also reject Ribbeck's understanding of the sense at [a]: inexplicably, he reads ‘chicaniren’ into at [a]. But there is nothing wrong with his gloss on at [b] (‘Art der Verhohnung durch nicht aufrichtig gemeinten, unwahres Lob’), rightly connecting the use of here with Pollux 2.78, and the sillographer Timon's reference to Socrates (fr. 25d, ap.D.L. 2.19), Ribbeck remarks aproposof [b]: ‘so muss der gangbar Begriff des ein weiterer gewesen sein, als man gewohnlich annimmt’ (loc. cit.) He should have specified more definitely this ‘wider’ use. That it is to express mockery pure and simple without any insinuation of deceit Ribbeck does not seem to have grasped clearly, else why ‘chicaniren’ as the sense at [a]?

15 Long attributed to Aristotle (included in the Berlin edition of Aristotle's works), this treatise then came to be ascribed to Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a contemporary of Theophrastus (see the introduction to the treatise by H. Rackham in his translation of it in the Loeb Classical Library: Aristotle, Problemsn and Rhetorica ad Alexandrum[London, 1937], pp. 258ff.). The ascription is far from certain, but its date cannot be much later. Its linguistic and political ambience is that of fourth-century Athens, echoing Isocrates’ Techne Rhetorike.Eight fragments of the treatise turn up in a papyrus dated by its editors in the first half of the third century (Grenfell &Hunt, Hibeh Papyri,Pt i, No. 26, pp. 114ff.).

16 Cope, E. M. (in his Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric[London, 1867], pp. 401ff.) describes the form of persuasion recommended by the treatise as ‘ a system of tricks, shifts and evasions, showing an utter indifference to right and wrong, truth and falsehood’.Google Scholar

17 Should the reader be reminded that the occurrence of ironical speech-acts is independent of the availability of a description of them as such in the speaker's language? The use of irony, as distinct from reflection upon it, is no doubt as old as the hills. We can imagine a caveman offering a tough piece of steak to his mate with the remark, ‘Try this tender morsel’

18 For Burnet, Wilamowitz, Guthrie see, respectively, nn. 11, 12, 13 above.

19 Cf. his gloss on Symp.216e4: (unlike "irony") is "mock-modesty", "pretended ignorance"; in Rep.337a Thrasymachus speaks (in no friendly tone) of ‘Socrates’ accustomed ".‘ He is assuming that is used in the same sense in both passages.

20 If we translate dissimulationhere by ‘dissembling’ (as we may, with good warrant from the dictionaries), we should bear in mind that deceitfulconcealment, normally conveyed by the English word, is completely absent from the figure of speech Cicero has in view. Deceitful speech would not be what he calls‘ urbanedissimulation... where the whole tenor of your speech shows that you are gravely jesting (severe ludens)in speaking differently from what you think’ (loc. cit.).

21 Though not perhaps in that of their Greek contemporaries, as Professor Fred Ahl pointed out to me when I presented this essay at Cornell. How soon the change came to be shared by the Greek rhetoricians, whose diction was likely to be governed more strictly by classical models, is a topic calling for special research which falls outside the scope of the present study.

22 A change so drastic as to eclipse the original meaning of the word from Cicero's and Quintilian's view. The occultation seems total: from what they say about ironiawe would never guess that in texts they knew well its Greek original had been a Schimpfwort.The authority of the Socratic paradigm becomes so definitive for Cicero that he is content to understand by the word simply ‘ that ironia…found in Socrates, which he deploys in the dialogues of Plato, Xenophon and Aeschines’ (Brutus292). And when Quintilian remarks that ‘ironiamay characterize a man's whole life’ he refers (only) to Socrates (Inst. Or.9.2.46).

23 Though he does not himself inculcate crooked argument, he panders to the demand for it. He keeps both the and the on the premises and the client has his choice.

24 The portrait is now appreciably different: outside the Thinkery (else the question of an ordinary Athenian picking a seat next to him [1491–2] would not arise), no longer a sinister figure, Socrates is still a quibbler whose hair-splitting solemnities ( 1496–7) engulf his interlocutors in tasteless triviality. No hint of irony in this pretentious idler's chatter.

25 359, in Arrowsmith's amusingly inventive translation.

26 Kierkegaard (The Concept of Irony[Eng. tr. 1965: to be cited hereafter only by the author's name], pp. 58–9 and 64) notes flashes of irony in the dialogue with Charicles (1.2.36) and Hippias (4.4.6).

27 Here Kierkegaard's taste, usually faultless, deserts him. He finds the episode ‘disgusting’ (pp. 61–2).

28 For shrewd appreciation of irony in this work see the comments on the goings-on at the drinking party in Higgins, W. E., Xenophon the Athenian(Albany, N.Y., 1977), pp. 15–20. Full discussion of the same material also in Emma Edelstein, Xenophonlisches und Platonisches Bild des Sokrates(Berlin, 1935), pp. 11–12, though curiously enough she does not perceive it as irony.Google Scholar

29 HGPh3, p. 446.

30 See n. 19 above.

31 Symp.182a-e, 183c, 184a-b, on which see K. J. Dover, ‘Eros and Nomos", B1CS11 (1964), 31–42, and Greek Homosexuality[hereafter ‘GH’](London, 1978), ‘Pursuit and Flight’, pp. 81–91.

32 Cf. W. Ferguson in the Cambridge Ancient History,5 (1935), p. 263:‘ Arrestingly handsome, he received from men in Athens the recognition and privileges ordinarily given in other societies to extraordinary beauty in women; and his insolence he draped in such charm of manner that, when he showed respect for neither gods nor man, age nor authority, guardian nor wife, the outrageousness of the act was often forgotten and only the air of the actor remembered.’

33 Cf. p. 86 above.

34 So Guthrie: n. 29 above.

35 References in Dover, GH,pp. 1545.

36 This physical intimacy, so explicit in the text of the Phaedrus,is seldom noticed in accounts of Platonic erōs.It is ignored in comment on the passage where we would most expect it: Wilamowitz (n. 12 above), pp. 368–9; Guthrie, HGPhiv pp. 404–6. Earlier translations blunt the force of Plato's words: in Jowett becomes ‘embrace’, ., ‘when they meet together’.

37 In Xenophon, Socrates′ fear of physical contact with an attractive youth is obsessive (to kiss a pretty face is‘ to become forthwith a slave instead of a free man’, Mem.1.3.11; a momentary contact of his nude shoulder with that of the beautiful Critoboulos affects Socrates like ‘the bite of a wild beast’, his shoulder stings for days, Symp.4.27–8). There is nothing so extreme in the Platonic portrait; Socrates there shows no terror of skin-contact with a beautiful body (wrestling in the nude with Alcibiades happens ‘often’ on the latter's initiative [Symp.217c] and makes no dent in Socrates′ resistance to the youth's advances); but neither is there anything in Plato to suggest that Socrates would ever encourage physical endearments from any of the youths he ‘loves’.

38 Cf. Xen. Mem.2.6.22: Socrates counsels ‘those who delight in the sexual charms of boys in bloom’ () to resist the attraction ‘in order to cause no distress to those who should be spared it ’.

39 See ‘Additional Note’ below.

40 Charmides155d-e: ‘And I thought how well Cydias understood the ways of eros;giving advice to someone about a beautiful boy, he warned: Don't bring the fawn too close to the lion that would devour his flesh.’ Phdr.241dl: ‘As wolves are fond of lambs, so lovers love a boy.’

41 Xen.Symp.8.19: the man ‘reserves the pleasure for himself, the most shameful things for the boy’. 21 (translation, in part, after E. C. Marchant): ‘the boy does not share, like a woman, the delight of sex with the man, but looks on, sober, at another in love's intoxication.’

42 It is so pictured in both Plato's and Xenophon's Socratic dialogues. Nor does the reference to Socrates’ erosfor Alcibiades in the eponymous dialogue by Aeschines Socraticus (fr. 11, Dittmar) tell a materially different story. Though there is a suggestion here of greater intensity in Socrates′ sentiment for the youth than there is in Alcibiades′ narrative in Plato, neither is there any call for blowing it up into ‘fine frenzy’ as in A. E. Taylor's fanciful interpretation of the fragment (Philosophical Studies[London, 1934], 15). His reading of part cof the fragment has lost track of what was said just before in its parts aand b.If so read, it will be seen that Taylor misunderstands the point of the comparison with the bacchantes in part c.It is not said there that Socrates is like them in being made by his love for the youth, but that just as they achieve wonderful results (‘draw milk and honey from wells where others cannot even draw water’) by divine possession (hence not through art or science), so too Socrates hopes to achieve the improvement of Alcibiades (a wonderful result) not through art or science (whose possession he disclaims by suggestion at aand by explicit denial at c)but by love .

43 Michael Ignatieff, in his review ofFoucault, M., Histoire de la Sexualite(vols. 2 and 3) in the Times Literary Supplement,28 Sept. 1984, p. 1071.Google Scholar

44 This fundamental feature of Socratic erōshas been missed in all accounts of it known to me, from Kierkegaard, whose romantic fancy reads‘ passionate turmoil’ into it (88), to Foucauit, whose highly discerning discussion of‘ le véritable amour’ in Plato reveals its residual blind-spot in the hyphenated expression, TErotique socratico-platonicienne’ (op. cit. vol. 2, p. 225) by which he refers to it.

45 Cf. p. 86 above.

46 Admitting the allegation that he has been ‘chasing’ Alcibiades′ bloom (standard metaphor for pederastic courting), Socrates proceeds to smother it in irony (Prot.309al-d2).

47 ‘Socrates tricks Protagoras out of every concrete virtue; by reducing each virtue to unity, he completely dissolves it; while the sophistry lies in the power through which he is able to accomplish this. Hence we have at once an irony borne by a sophistic dialectic and a sophistic dialectic reposing in irony.’ (96).

48 Whose contribution to our understanding of Socrates is sidetracked because the author, misapplying the use of irony in the Socratic dialogues, is prepared to jettison some of Socrates′ most fundamental doctrines. Thus, if at Prot.352d4 means the contrary of what it says, the whole Socratic doctrine of the impossibility of acrasiagoes down the drain; to cite its Aristotelian attestation would be useless: it would be met by the retort that he too missed the irony.

49 Most recently in Charles Kahn, ‘Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2 (1984), 75ff. He speaks of‘the trickery’ by which Socrates rebuts Polus (Gorg.474dff.). I would not accept his description of my analysis of the argument (AJP88 [1967], 454ff.) as ‘Socrates tricks Polus’ (90); I argued againstthe suggestion that Socrates’ argument is intentionally fallacious.Google Scholar

50 276 et passim.His treatment of Socratic irony is hopelessly perplexed by this dazzling mystification. It seduces him into finding in the Platonic texts he purports to be glossing the vagaries of a romantic novella: ‘ the disguise and mysteriousness which it [irony] entails,... the infinite sympathy it assumes, the elusive and ineffable moment of understanding immediately displaced by the anxiety of misunderstanding’ etc. (p. 85).

51 My guess at the riddle is stated and argued for in ‘Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge’ (Philosophical Quarterly35 [1985], Iff.).

52 The demographic facts should not be overlooked: bloomers are to potential bloom chasers as are the within a five-year age-group to most of the adult males. Of the scarcity of the within their own age-group we get some sense in the opening scene of the Charmides:droves of youngsters in the palaestra and one all eyes on him, ‘ gazing on him as at a statue’ (154c).

53 ‘Praying, entreating, supplicating, vowing upon oath, sleeping at the door, willingly enduring slavery worse than any slave's’ (Symp.183a4–7).

54 Dover, GH,pp. 103–4: ‘By assimilating himself to a woman in the sexual act the submissive male rejects his role as a male citizen’ and chooses ‘ to be the victim of what would be, if the victim were unwilling, hubris’.

55 He is misrepresented in Martha Nussbaum's account of his view (The Fragility of Goodness,Cambridge, 1986, p. 188): ‘But two things [the boy] will not allow, in the works of art and the literary testimonies[my emphasis] that have come down to us: he will not allow any opening of his body to be penetrated’ etc.

56 I would not concede that this verse of Aristophanes is an exception. There is no textual evidence for the supposition (GH,p. 98) that the word used here, , was ‘almost certainly’ the original term for intercrural copulation or that it ever meant anything but genital intercourse with females or anal with males, as it uncontroversially does in Zeno Stoicus (H. von Arnim, SVF250 and 251, ap.Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyp.3.245, Adv. Math.11.190). Its three earliest literary occurrences are in the Birds.In 1024 it refers unambiguously to vaginal copulation, as Dover recognizes. I submit that it must refer likewise to the usual type of intercourse in the other two occurrences as well: Euelpides, declaring, (699), could hardly be lusting after ersatzgratification. And if it were agreed that the word is used to signify phallic penetration in 699 and then again in 1024, as it is by Zeno in the Stoic fragments cited above, we would have no good reason for supposing that in 706 Aristophanes has shifted to a different sense which is never unambiguously attested in a single surviving Greek text and is not required by its immediate context: no reason is discernible in the text why the birds’ vaunted power to fulfil men's longings should accord to their favourites something less than the usual thing.