Thoughts on Euthydemus

 

            The next dialogue that I will comment upon is Euthydemus. It definitely has some pearls of wisdom in it, and I would recommend it, with some reservations though. This dialogue is not a failure on the part of Plato, in fact I think he wrote it quite well and it was a topic that necessarily had to be addressed. The only problem is the nature of the subject – it is beyond annoying, but that is not Plato’s fault, it’s just the nature of the beast and not even his monumental intellect and stylistic artistry could help things along much. A couple of themes adumbrated here are by now well-known: whether virtue can be taught, what the key to a happy life is, wisdom as the greatest gift God could bestow on man, etc. Also dealt with is the ambiguity of language, something I haven’t seen Plato address since Phaedrus, so I enjoyed that as well. The overarching topic though is to beware of fools who only pretend at being truth seekers, but really just love playing foolish games. This is epitomized by the two jackass brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus.

            The scene opens with Crito informing Socrates that he met two brothers who are so smart and virtuous that they have mastered every physical and mental discipline under the sun in a single year. They even know how to refute the truth itself (272b)! I hope alarm bells are going off in your head because this is obvious bullshit. Curiously, though, Socrates daimonion encouraged him to listen to them. I do not think it was because they had something to teach, but so that Socrates could see what folly foolishness leads to. Throughout the dialogue Socrates shows the patience of a saint with these two idiots, although at times I suspect he is being sarcastic, but I’m not sure. His first meeting with them seems to be one of these times. When they inform him that they can easily teach virtue, he says they should be revered as gods (273e). They tell Socrates they can even teach virtue to those who don’t even want to learn it and so Socrates asks them to convince his young friend Clinias to pursue the philosophical life.

            Their first question to the young man is, unsurprisingly, a trick question. They ask him whether the wise or the ignorant are learners and Dionysodorus confides in Socrates that his answer doesn’t matter, they will refute both. If Clinias says it is the ignorant who learn, Euthydemus will bring up the example of the wise children in class who always participate being the ones who learn the most. If he answers that it is the wise who learn, they will show that you can’t learn something if you already know it. Socrates, being exceedingly patient, calls this a hazing initiation ceremony, even though this is probably just their normal mode of operation. He explains to the naïve Clinias that they were able to pull off this trick by using the word “learn” in two very different senses. Sometimes we use the word learn to indicate when we start off with no knowledge in a subject and then gain some. At other times the word “learn” is used when we have knowledge already but use that knowledge to examine some other topic in that discipline. Even though these fools are just playing games that won’t lead to knowledge, they have unknowingly taught Clinias a good lesson about the ambiguity of language. We should pay close attention to how we use words and how others take them, precision is the goal here.

            Socrates demands that the brothers start being more serious and as a gesture of good faith, he gives them an example of how to properly pursue a philosophical discussion and proceeds to drop a plethora of knowledge on them. He asks Clinias if anyone wishes to do badly in life. He correctly answers that all people, at their core, want to do well. Socrates then tries to examine what constitutes a good life. What they find is that always doing everything correctly and never making a mistake is key – which comes from wisdom. “Wisdom everywhere makes men to have good fortune. For wisdom, I suppose, could never make a mistake, but must always do right and have right fortune, or else it would not be wisdom any longer” (280a). To live a good life, we not only need to have good things, but we also need to use them. Even beyond that it doesn’t matter if we use them so much as if we use them CORRECTLY. As arcane and abstract as Plato can get, I try to show people that all of his doctrines are grounded in simple common sense. Take the example of getting to work. Most people need a car to get to work, but it is not enough to just own the car, you have to know how to use it, and more than that, how to use it correctly. Using things incorrectly is worse than not using them at all. Again, think of the car. It would be better to not own a car at all than to smash it into a wall and lose maybe your life and definitely tons of money. What we need is intelligence and knowledge, ignorance is the enemy.

“If ignorance leads them, they are greater evils than their opposites, inasmuch as they are more able to serve the leader which is evil; but if intelligence leads, and wisdom, they are greater goods, while in themselves neither kind is worth anything at all” (281d).

All of us should try ty to be as wise as possible and reduce our ignorance as much as we can if we want to be happy. Happiness isn’t the pursuit of vain, idle, and transient pleasures like eating, sitting on the beach, frolicking in a meadow, drinking and smoking, or other things of that sort. In the final analysis, “Wisdom alone in the wide world makes a man happy and fortunate” (282d). If someone asks why you prefer working so hard to gain knowledge over taking it easy, the obvious reply is that you want to be happy and what most people consider happiness really is not – and that shows, because it fades. Knowledge and wisdom last forever.

            After this beautifully adroit demonstration, Socrates hands off the discussion to the so-called wise and virtuous brothers and asks them to examine if the knowledge we need to be happy is just a single type of knowledge or if we basically need to be omniscient. Dionysodorus sidetracks the discussion instantly by means of a sophistical reply. He says that since Clinias is not wise and Socrates wants him to be, he is basically asking for Clinias to be destroyed and be replaced by someone else (283d). This may seem like an utterly stupid and fatuous argument, but I’ve seen it before and by a scholar with a PhD, no less! Recently, due to David Bentley Hart’s defense of the salvation of all things, there has been a lot of hubbub in Christian circles on this topic. One of the people who disagreed with Hart used basically this same argument. He said if someone died a sinner and God took away their sin and made them new, he was basically killing them and creating a whole new person. I was shocked! Do these people even believe in Heaven at all? Socrates response is the only rational one possible and one I can’t express enough agreement with. “Let him destroy me, boil me too if he likes, only let him turn me out good” (285c). Amen, brother!

            What follows is an annoying and boring recapitulation of the idea that falsehood is impossible and the stupid and irrational consequences of holding such a stupid and irrational idea. I think this was handled far better in Sophist and Cratylus so I will not bother spelling it out here. It is enough that it all boils down to the brothers claiming that everyone must therefore know everything, and what’s more, must have known everything since they were infants. It would also entail that if anyone is a father he is the father of all things, etc. Stupid nonsense. This is obviously absurd.

 One thing I did find interesting here is that Socrates didn’t claim to be ignorant of everything, that would just be silly. He only claimed to be ignorant of that which he truly was ignorant of. As I’ve mentioned several times, he claimed to have knowledge of love and of the fact that he was sure knowledge was more precious than true belief. Here he claims to know many things, but just small ones of little consequence, he is uncertain of all the big topics (293b). That’s comforting since I feel the same way. The overall message of this dialogue is that know-it-alls and jackasses who are hellbent on playing around and not being serious are extremely hard to reach and persuade, best not to engage with them at all. But this is tempered by compassion. Socrates says that we shouldn’t be too hard on them or even be angry with them – he really was a saint. I got pissed just reading about them, if I had to actually deal with them, I’d probably be frothing at the mouth. But he is right, there is something wrong with them and they need healing which flows forth from love, not condemnation and judgment. I’m convinced I can see Christ’s teaching in Plato’s work – the Logos pervades all things and truly is the light that enlightens all men.

Crito was also very discouraged by this display; he fears for his children’s education. He wanted them to become philosophers but is scared they might end up like these two buffoons. Socrates gives him touching and sage advice, as he usually does: “My dear Crito, don’t you know that in every line of life the stupid are many and worthless, the serious are few and worth everything” (307a). He leaves him with some parting words that echo George MacDonald to me. We should leave behind everything that detracts us from our goal and pursue only that which helps us: “Examine the thing itself well and carefully and if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, ‘both you and your house’” (307c). If we do this, we may just see more beauty and goodness in the world that was always there waiting for us to see it.