SOCRATES’ EFFECT/MENO’S AFFECT:
SOCRATIC ELENCHUS AS
KATHARTIC THERAPY 1
Chris Higgins
Teachers College, Columbia University
If there is one thing philosophers will agree on, it is that the Platonic dialogues are rich, multi-faceted texts. The dialogues lay out one of the most comprehensive and influential philosophical systems of all time, present a stirring portrait (in the character of Socrates) of a unique philosophic practice, and are at the same time carefully-crafted dramas which richly portray interpersonal and intra-personal encounters and transformations. While most philosophical interpreters make some gesture toward all three dimensions of the texts, they tend to explain this third factor, that is the dramatic quality of the dialogues, as merely a tool for achieving the second aim, and reduce that in turn to a mere illustration of the first.
Still, it is true that many commentators are sensitive to the conflicts between the three dimensions and that some look for unique philosophical insights in the interpersonal encounters that comprise the action of the “early dialogues.” These readers will acknowledge that an understanding of the form of the dialogues is indispensable to an understanding of their content, and that many of Plato’s philosophical commitments are most clearly demonstrated not in a series of abstract arguments, but rather in the example of Socratic philosophic practice. A typical account depicts Socrates as the embodiment of a certain vision of philosophy who uses his encounters with others to carry out his philosophic goals.
This view stresses Socrates’ adversarial relationship with his interlocutors (who are seen as foils, puppets, or grist for the mill of self-knowledge) and locates the purpose of dialectic in the advancement of Socrates’ philosophical agenda (for example, to reveal the hidden ignorance of others and to test the truth of his own convictions). Philosophy, then, is seen as a primarily solitary endeavor which becomes social only insofar as the philosopher can use others dialectically to advance a personal philosophic quest.
While this view seems to explain certain facets of the dialogues — Socrates’ extreme irony, scathing sarcasm, and failure to “reach” so many of his interlocutors — it does not seem to account for other elements which suggest the deeply social nature of philosophy in the Socratic tradition. Why are Plato’s portraits of certain interlocutors so psychologically rich if the interlocutors are unimportant? Why are Socrates’ philosophical discussions so often tailored to the particular nature of his interlocutor and why do they seem to arise as a response to a problem in the interlocutor’s soul? Why does Socrates employ so many non-logical tactics, and take such pains to set up certain interpersonal dynamics if his only goals are confirmation and refutation?
Many of Socrates’ dialectical cross-examinations lead to nothing if not a deeply felt psychological transformation in the interlocutor. A good interpretation of the dialogues, I would argue, should therefore not only capture their philosophical drama but should be able to account for their psychological drama as well. Readings which focus on the purely rational and cognitive implications of dialectic and gloss over the subtle emotional shadings and interpersonal dynamics in the text cannot be considered complete. The detailed, psychologically rich portrayals of the changes undergone by Socrates’ interlocutors suggest that a psychic transformation of some sort must be one of the goals of dialectic. By construing Socratic elenchus as a selfishly motivated, interpersonal side-effect of a more important intra-personal process, one rules out the possibility of seeing in these interpersonal encounters something of educational or therapeutic value.
Using the Meno as a case study, I will seek an interpretive framework that is attentive to these concerns, one that tries to understand Socratic elenchus in terms of the aporia it brings about, and to develop a psychological account of the interlocutor’s aporia which does justice to the richness of the imagery with which it is described. To do this, I will argue that the type of education or therapy offered by Socrates is kathartic in nature, and will attempt to develop a Platonic account of katharsis.2 In the end, though, while I hope to establish that the concept of katharsis is capable of generating a compelling account of what might be educational about Socratic cross-examination, the Platonic understanding of this concept will need to be supplemented. While Plato nicely portrays kathartic transformations, his self-understanding of these transformations (as I have garnered it from later dialogues) is insufficiently rich as it stands. It remains tied on the one hand to the medical metaphor of purgation and on the other to the religious metaphor of purification, and furthermore rests on an inadequate conception of the emotions.3
Before attempting to determine what type of education or therapy Socratic elenchus might comprise, let us see if a close reading of the text indeed reveals elements best explained along lines of an educational or therapeutic model. The first thing we ought to notice about the Meno is its title. Aristotle would have called it “On Virtue,” but Plato does not. The title suggests that this dialogue is about Meno, about his soul and its changes, and not about virtue, nor even about Socratic dialectic per se which, after all, is a constant throughout the early and middle dialogues. Perhaps it is more illuminating to say that the dialogue portrays the uniquely crafted encounter between Meno, a character representing a particular frame of mind or state of soul, and the particular tactics employed by Socrates to help Meno undergo some sort of transformation. The title, then, is our first indication that an interpretation of the Meno ought to locate a good deal of the action and importance of the dialogue in Meno, that is, in his experience and his transformation.
Meno opens the dialogue with a question: how is virtue acquired, or more specifically, can virtue be taught? It is not clear what is behind this question of Meno’s, whether, for instance, he is genuinely curious, and if so, whether he is more curious about virtue’s teachability or about Socrates’ reputation. Meno expresses a desire to learn from Socrates, but mixed in with this desire is a hint of challenge. One might argue that Meno cannot be genuinely interested in learning something new about virtue as he later admits to having held forth on this subject hundreds of times. He persists, however, in his interest in his particular question even throughout his difficult run-in with Socrates (for example, 86d). While Meno’s exact motivations are impossible to infer from the text, it is safe to say that he engages Socrates with a concern of his, and that he is interested in hearing Socrates’ views on the subject, or in exploring it jointly.
Socrates has a different idea, though, and while ordinarily content to explore any philosophical topic, he rejects Meno’s proposed question and suggests another in its place. Why does Socrates refuse to let Meno set the terms of the discussion? The question “what is virtue?” must have priority, Socrates says, because one cannot not know the attributes of a thing before one knows what the thing is in itself. Socrates’ arguments for this claim are dubious and furthermore do not seem to be his true motivation for refusing to answer Meno. Rather than attempting to engage Socrates in an argument over essences and accidents, though, we ought simply to note that Socrates later accedes to Meno’s second request to discuss virtue’s teachability rather than its essence (at 86d) even though they have come no closer to determining the nature of virtue.
This suggests that Socrates’ argument concerning the logical priority of questions and his claim to know nothing about virtue are smoke screens for his real agenda: that Meno answer questions rather than Socrates. By changing the question, and redirecting it towards Meno, Socrates refuses to take-up the role of answerer and assumes, instead, his familiar stance of critique and cross-examination. With the provocative statement that he has never met anyone who knew what virtue was, Socrates entices Meno into defending an account of virtue.
Still preferring to hear Socrates’ views, Meno then asks whether Socrates thought that Gorgias knew what virtue was. The exchange that follows is illuminating:
SOCRATES: I’m a forgetful sort of person, and I can’t say just now what I thought at that time. Probably he did know, and I expect you know what he used to say about it. So remind me what it was, or tell me yourself if you will. No doubt you agree with him.Responding to Meno’s question directly and honestly would have required that Socrates admit that he did not accept Gorgias’ concept of virtue and would have required that Socrates put forward either his own more accurate conception, or the reasons for his rejection of Gorgias’. Instead, he skillfully changes the subject from the views of Gorgias to those of Meno, and again manipulates Meno into the role of answerer. It is also important to note that Socrates’ insistence (in this example and elsewhere in the dialogues) on considering only those views actually held by someone participating in the discussion suggests that dialectic is not merely a sifting of disembodied views but rather an essentially interpersonal and intra-personal process.MENO: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: Then let’s leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here. What do you yourself say virtue is?4
Thus, the traditional relation between Socrates and his interlocutor is established by 71e. It is significant that Plato did not begin the dialogue here, but chose first to reveal the manipulatory aspects of Socratic dialectic. The standard reading supposes that Socrates approaches those who pretend to have knowledge and then humbles them. In this way, it is thought, Socrates verifies his Delphic message, sharpens his own thought, and leaves his interlocutors in a better state than before, even though they might not feel very good about it. Plato could have begun the dialogue with the following: “One day Meno was holding forth that virtue was such and such and Socrates stopped him in the Agora and said….” Plato’s actual opening to the Meno casts Socrates in more of a sophistic light, as one who tricks people into making claims they cannot defend, rather than as one whose own humility and argumentative acumen automatically forces others to abandon their pretensions to knowledge.
Socrates succeeds, then, in switching the roles and, almost immediately, Meno is thrown onto the defensive, offering in succession seven different accounts of virtue through 78b, only to find himself “forced” to admit contradictions in each account. In his usual manner, Socrates refutes Meno glibly, rudely, and somewhat condescendingly. Hardly a model of joint inquiry, at this point, Socrates and Meno barely humor each other, with Meno sarcastically acquiescing and Socrates offering false compliments. Socrates’ responses seem designed to frustrate Meno. First, Socrates chides him about the form of his answers. Later, having finally coaxed Meno into giving an answer in the correct form, Socrates refutes the answer Meno gives and tells him to start from the beginning. At this point (80a), Meno’s frustration finally gets the best of him and his demeanor changes abruptly in a moment he himself characterizes as aporetic.
The standard reading of the elenctic dialogues would explain this progression as follows: Socrates (who reportedly has no wisdom other than the knowledge of his own ignorance) forces his interlocutors through cross-examination to recognize in a moment of difficulty (or aporia) that they do not know what they thought they knew. Thus, Socrates becomes a mirror through which his interlocutors grasp that they are not in harmony with themselves, that their various beliefs conflict and contradict each other. This account, however, portrays Socrates in far too passive a manner, as one in whose humility interlocutors perceive a reflection of their own perplexity. It ignores Socrates’ active role in bringing about this state of perplexity.
While it may be true that Meno believed he knew things about virtue that he was not able to defend, it is also true that Meno came to Socrates, not to lecture him on virtue, but rather to discover Socrates’ opinion about its teachability. Socrates puts Meno on the defensive for his own purposes. To understand this maneuver as purely self-interested would be to view Socrates as motivated by the desire to humiliate Meno, to save his own pride at the expense of Meno’s, for Socrates does not seem to have much reason to expect any new moral insights to emerge from Meno. Socrates seems rather to be carefully manipulating an experience for Meno, in response to a flaw in Meno’s character. Socrates has gone out of his way to engender a state of perplexity. After Meno has grown perplexed, Socrates proposes a joint inquiry, suggesting that his motive all along was to learn with Meno, but that he first had to bring Meno into a state that was ripe for learning. This account squares with the idea that Socratic discussions are first and foremost for Socrates; Socrates can either philosophize on his own (for example, in one of his introspective lapses) or with others if he first brings them up to speed. The rest of the dialogue, however, does not bear this out. Their “joint inquiry” is hardly any more joint than before and the discussion, after contradicting itself several times, leads only to the half-heartedly suggested conclusion that virtue is a gift of the gods. Even after Meno’s aporia, the discussion seems to be some sort of exercise for Meno. An interpretive framework is needed that captures the sense in which Meno’s experience with Socrates is not only for Meno, but beneficial for Meno; in other words, that this encounter is somehow educative or therapeutic.
The search for an interpretive framework in which Socratic elenchus can be viewed as a form of education need not take us outside the Platonic dialogues. In Plato’s late dialogue, the Sophist, we find dialectical cross-examination described as a form of education. In an attempt to enumerate the many arts commanded by the sophist, the interlocutors (Theaetetus and a “Stranger”) come across one art which falls most generally under the heading of separation, in the class of arts, that is, which deal with discernment and discrimination through division. Within this general class there is the division of like from like, and the division of better from worse. This latter type, if it also aims at a removal of the worse and preservation of the better, is called purification (katharsis). There are purifications of the body and of the soul; and further, purifications of the soul aim either to remove vice when the soul is discordant, or ignorance when it is deformed. The worst sort of ignorance, we finally learn is the ignorance coupled with arrogance, and the art which “confutes the vain conceit of wisdom”5 is that form of instruction known as education.
The practitioners of this type of education:
cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectic process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle toward others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation. For as the physician considers that the body will receive no benefit from taking food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first and made to think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.6In this passage, the Stranger seems to be describing Socratic elenchus, and describing it as a educational process. It would seem then safe to conclude that Plato viewed dialectic as a type of educational purification. There are, however, two reasons to hesitate before accepting this conclusion. First, there is the curious fact that this art arises in a discussion of sophistry, something from which Socrates vehemently distanced himself. In addition, one must consider that Socrates, in the Apology and elsewhere, claims not to be a teacher. The first problem can be answered by noting that this educative art is attributed not to the Sophist but to the Sophist “that is of noble lineage,” that is, the Socratic philosopher.7 How can I, some might ask, liken Socrates to any sort of Sophist, noble or otherwise? Throughout the dialogues, one finds the idea that Socrates differs from the Sophists less in terms of method than in terms of aim and purpose. So, while this educative art is, properly speaking, found amongst the arsenal of the Sophist, it becomes the province of the philosopher insofar as it aims at the purification of the soul.
There still remains, however, the problem of describing Socratic philosophizing as educative in light of Socrates’ claim that he does not teach. This problem is diminished as one looks into it. Socrates’ main statement that he does not teach is presented in the context of his defense against the charge of corrupting the Athenian youth. Socrates explains that he does not solicit students, promise to improve them, or charge a fee and thus cannot be properly construed as a teacher, negligent or otherwise. We should grant to Socrates this point concerning his professional status and liability while insisting that his manner of conducting himself with others is, in some broad sense, educative. But, Socrates says, he not only never promised to teach anything, but also never “imparted any teaching to anybody.”8 Even this statement is reconcilable with the notion that Socrates’ influence was, broadly speaking, educative. In the Sophist, the interlocutors distinguish between mere instruction, meaning the imparting of skills and information, and education, which sets itself the task of removing ignorance. By disowning teaching, Socrates disowned only instruction; he would not deny engaging in the educative work of “confuting the vain conceit of wisdom.”
In the passage above, the educative work of dialectic is familiarly described as a public refutation in which the learner is convicted of his inconsistencies in a manner that is “amusing to the hearer.” The method is meant to tame a person who, on account of his conceit and “great prejudices,” is aggressively confident and poses either a threat or annoyance to others. Dialectic humbles this menace by turning his anger in upon himself and making him “gentle towards others.” This explains what happens to the recipient of dialectic but it does not explain in what sense it is for him. According to this same passage, cross-examination is not only beneficial to the onlookers, but “produces the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the operation.” This benefit to the recipient of the refutation, the only benefit, by the way, which makes the process worthy of being called educational, is described as a type of katharsis or purification.
Plato uses the term katharsis figuratively. He is trying to describe a philosophical and psychological process by using an analogy with medicine. In this analogy, the “patient” is said to be purged of certain bad elements which have “obstructed” his taking in of sustenance, or in other words, the good. The obstructions correspond to the false beliefs, prejudices, or contradictions of the philosophical patient who before the procedure was unaware that he possessed them. When viewed strictly in terms of epistemology, particularly Platonic epistemology, the analogy breaks down somewhat. What corresponds to purging in the medical metaphor is simply awareness of one’s contradictions in the epistemological. What corresponds to the taking in of sustenance corporally is presumably the recollection of true knowledge. The desire to recollect, however, can be said to be obstructed by the lack of awareness that one’s knowledge is inadequate.
Meno’s aporia relates to this account in interesting ways. After Socrates has refuted Meno for the seventh time, Meno interrupts the flow of the investigation with the following speech:
Socrates, even before I met you they told me that in plain truth you are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity. At this moment I feel you are exercising magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me under your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness. If I may be flippant, I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like the flat sting ray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing that you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to you. Yet I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well too, or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what it is. In my opinion you are well advised not to leave Athens and live abroad. If you behaved like this as a foreigner in another country, you would most likely be arrested as a wizard.9As described by the Stranger in the Sophist, Meno begins to doubt that he knew what he thought he knew and thus grows somewhat more modest (“and very well too, or so I thought”). On the other hand, Meno does not become gentle towards Socrates but insults him and threatens him. Interestingly, though, while he tries to lash out verbally, he also describes himself as helpless. In the section following this passage, Meno completes his transformation, and grows entirely docile towards Socrates. This final change in Meno is effected when Socrates refuses to respond in kind to Meno’s sting ray simile but instead simply compliments Meno’s handsomeness. Meno makes one last disputational effort to ensnare Socrates and escape his perplexed state when he suggests that one can not look for something one does not already know (80e). With this ploy Meno denies the dawning recognition of his ignorance, refuses Socrates’ offer of joint inquiry, and contradicts the Socratic doctrine that you can only truly “look” for something when you have realized that you do not know what it is.
Socrates completes Meno’s transformation not with another logical refutation of this new argument but with the dramatic presentation of religious mysteries and poetry about the soul. This non-dialectical tool works perfectly to capture Meno’s curiosity and to placate his opposition once and for all. From this point on, Meno is open, cooperative, eager, curious, non-adversarial, sincere, and malleable.
We might account for the curious success of this non-dialectical strategy in two ways. In the first place, poetry in the Greek tradition is first and foremost, music. Music in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions is given a place of high importance because of its ability to communicate directly to the soul and to elicit certain sympathetic states. This is one of the main reasons poetry comes under such close scrutiny in the Republic and why for Aristotle tragedy is so important. The use of music at this point in the elenchus is an implicit admission for Plato that music, while dangerous, can also be used to good effect.
The subject of the religious myths and poetry, namely the soul, is a second reason for the strategy’s success. By asking Meno to consider his soul, Socrates continues the process of turning Meno’s attention inward. Just as the Stranger described turning the refuted one’s anger in upon himself, Socrates has forced Meno, through his refutations, to take stock of his own soul. Meno’s inwardness during his aporia is exemplified by his “literal” numbness; he is, in other words, attending only to that which arises from within and is numb to the stimuli of the external world.10 His desire to avert his attention from his perplexed soul toward the outside is illustrated by his initiation of an exchange of descriptive similes. When Meno says, “I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like,” he reveals his wish to dwell again on outward appearances and not in those other unnamable realms. Socrates’ reply, “I’m not going to oblige you,” sends the message that he will not let Meno avert his inward gaze.
Meno’s gain in inwardness marks an improvement in his outward behavior but brings with it another problem. Meno seems temporarily stuck at the point where he has acknowledged his lack of knowledge, but has no confidence that he can recollect any knowledge to fill the void. In this light, we can also see Socrates’ poetico-mythic example as an attempt to give Meno something to fill up, as it were, some of the empty numbness of the aporia. Making Meno feel empty and thus desirous of knowledge was the goal of the dialectic, but too much emptiness can lead to despair. A correct opinion (that is, a “falsehood in words”) such as the religious doctrine is recommended by the pragmatic argument that certain correct opinions produce “energetic seekers after knowledge” while others produce “lazy weaklings.”11
Socrates’ other antidote to Meno’s lack of confidence in his ability to recollect the truth of recollection is a live demonstration with one of Meno’s slave boys. This demonstration is offered as a proof of the truth of the doctrine of recollection, as a means of helping Meno to recollect that truth, but it also serves, I would argue, as a means of helping Meno to view himself from the outside. The slave boy is clearly a stand-in for Meno. When he comes to doubt his geometrical assumptions, Socrates describes him in such a way as to recall the words (“Yet I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well too, or so I thought,” 80a.) Meno had used in his moment of aporia and to draw an explicit parallel between the two figures:
Up to now he thought he could speak well and fluently, on many occasions and in front of large audiences, on the subject of a square double the size of a given square12Recognizing himself in the boy, Meno continues to focus his attention on his soul, but does it now in a more detached manner. Through this demonstration, Socrates provides Meno with, as it were, distance from himself.13 By offering Meno the “in-sight” to examine his own relationship with himself, Socrates purifies Meno by enabling him to gain a certain type of self-knowledge.
Thus, we see that Socratic elenchus comprises a form of katharsis, but one quite different from the medical metaphor of purgation presented in the Sophist, one with important affinities to the Aristotelian theory of katharsis in tragedy. Aristotle’s emphasis on the role of sympathy and distance in bringing about a katharsis of the tragic emotions is perhaps better suited to explain the role of the slave-boy and Anytus in Meno’s transformation. Supplementing this developing account of philosophical katharsis with the Aristotelian insights into that process and into the nature of the emotions generally would lead to a view of katharsis not as bodily discharge, but as a mental and emotional unification and clarification.14 This further elaboration, however, leads beyond the current discussion and suggests a topic for another investigation.
For a response
to this essay, see Kerdeman.
1. I would to like to thank my advisor, René Arcilla, who first led me to the educational dimensions of the Platonic dialogues, and with whom I have had many fruitful discussions of the Meno; I would also like to thank Professor Richard Kuhns whose lectures on tragedy and its relation to philosophy were equally formative of this project.
2. By spelling “Katharsis” with a “k” I mean to refer to the transliteration of the original Greek term as opposed to the English word “catharsis” which derives its meaning from a particular interpretation of the Greek concept and thereby obscures some of the important significations present in the original Greek.
3. In future work, I hope to expand the notion of philosophical katharsis by drawing on Aristotle’s view of tragic katharsis and the psychoanalytic conception of kathartic therapy.
4. Plato, Meno, 70c-d, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, trans. W.K.C. Guthrie, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 354. All future references to the Platonic dialogues will draw on this edition; I will therefore cite only the dialogue, Greek page, and translator.
5. Sophist, 231b, trans. F.M. Cornford.
6. Ibid., 230b-d.
7. Ibid., 231b.
8. Ibid., 33b.
9. Meno, 80a-b.
10. The numbness can also be explained by another Platonic doctrine. In the Phaedo, Socrates tells those surrounding his deathbed that philosophy is essentially preparation for death, that while the soul is immortal, it suffers in its bodily incorporation. Thus, Socrates warns, one ought to pay more attention to immaterial wisdom than to bodily concerns lest one’s soul become overly attached to one’s body and contaminated by it. According to Socrates, philosophy loosens the bonds between one’s soul and body, purifying the soul and safeguarding its release and immortality upon death. If we subscribe to this view, Socratic dialectic becomes cathartic in another sense, purifying those who participate in it by separating their good souls from their not-so-good bodily appetites and senses. In this account, Socrates would be seen as a sort of spiritual midwife giving birth to souls. Under this conception, Meno’s numbness would symbolize his soul’s detachment from his body and his corporeal senses.
11. Meno, 81d-e. See also 86c.
12. Ibid., 84b-c.
13. A similar analysis could be conducted of the incident with Anytus. Meno watches Socrates interrogate Anytus just as he had been interrogated. Anytus grows angry with Socrates but Socrates allows him to leave angry as Meno’s transformation is his real goal. In this way, Anytus provides Meno with a negative example, a counterpart to the slave boy, who unlike the slave boy leaves with his unclear state of soul intact.
14. As Martha Nussbaum points out in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 388-91, there is evidence to suggest that the base meaning of the family of words from which katharsis comes is clarification, and so when used in epistemological contexts, katharsis can be thought of as a clearing of the vision of one’s soul, or illumination.