Prior to the onset of modern critical scholarship, Socrates was credited with a conversational method compounded of two elements, irony and induction.1 An early comprehensive account of Plato’s dialectic distinguished it accordingly from both Socratic and Aristotelian: where Socrates had chiefly employed induction, as Aristotle would syllogism, Plato cultivated a dialectic based on collection and division. In this account elenchos and hypothesis had only ancillary roles.2 This picture was modified during the second half of the 19th century, under the influence of a view that Plato’s works are best understood as falling into three distinct periods reflective of a developing personal philosophical outlook.3 Initially accepted ideas about the makeup and character of these periods underwent one significant change before settling into an assumption about Plato’s philosophical development that, over a century later, still serves as a postulate in numerous studies of ancient philosophy.4
Two corollaries of particular relevance here were developed during the first half of the 20th century. One was Julius Stenzel’s thesis that the Platonic method of collection and division was a defining feature of his late period; the other, Richard Robinson’s account of a complementary “earlier” dialectic of Plato, which he distinguished into a Socratic method he dubbed “the elenchus” and a Platonic “method of hypothesis” characteristic of a middle period.5 The resulting conventional history of Platonic dialectic holds that, after an early period in which he imitated Socrates’ negative elenctic style,6 Plato developed a quasi-scientific use of hypotheses with a view to arriving at positive results, but, finding himself without a means of verifying these conclusively, later took refuge in logical classifications anticipatory of the materials subsequently employed in Aristotelian syllogistic.7
Maintaining this developmental story requires ignoring or playing down observable instances of one or another method in dialogues judged to be of periods other than the ones of which they are held characteristic.8 In view of such phenomena, an alternative way in which to explore the question is to lay aside what are by now rather stale assumptions about Platonic development, so as to observe how all three styles may figure in various ways at any point throughout the corpus. This requires, in turn, an openness to understanding the terminology of elenchus, method of hypothesis, and collection and division as having significantly broader application than is implied by narrow formulations based on occurrences in arbitrary groupings of Platonic dialogues. This need is especially clear when trying to explain a singular method of hypothesis, inasmuch as even the three or four contexts chosen as embodying it seem to exhibit clear differences in the ways they conceive such a method.9
The present study forms part of this greater task, seeking to discern the extent to which a use of hypothesis can be said to have been an observable feature already in Socrates’ own dialectical practice. It can to this end stipulate that dialogues conventionally regarded as early Platonic productions (or questionable dialogues regarded as imitations of these) exhibit a dialectical practice quite likely resembling one that was employed by the historical Socrates. Corroboration for conclusions arrived at by examining mentions or uses of hypothesis in these will be sought in alternative versions of hypothetical reasoning depicted in Xenophon and Aristophanes. A few special problems of interpretation can be addressed by adducing further evidence of comparable usages of contemporaneous writers, notably Isocrates and Aristotle, and coordinate statements of rhetorical theory or philosophical explanation. The overall goal is a better appreciation of literary depictions of the rhetorical-dialectical practice in which so much that strikes later readers as theoretical views peculiar to some philosopher or school in fact occurs.
A noteworthy fact generally passed over or played down in conjectural views about Plato’s development is the way the main character of several supposedly early dialogues speaks explicitly of hypothesizing something as a basis for dialectical conversation with various interlocutors. Such mentions occur in the Euthyphro, Charmides, Hippias Major, Protagoras, Republic I, and the Rivals—the last is normally held to be of extra-Platonic authorship, but Socratic in character. It would appear that the Socrates of Plato’s early style of dialogue—ex hypothesi the “real” Socrates of conventional modern Platonic interpretation—is already familiar with dialectical reasoning based on hypothesis in some form or other.10 What form this is we will try to outline after some pertinent historical considerations.
That the historical Socrates was familiar with some such method as well seems likely in view of the account of Plato’s contemporary Xenophon, who has something to say about Socrates’ cognizance and use of dialectical conversation.11 Since Schleiermacher first formulated a modern view of Socrates’ philosophical significance, Xenophon’s Socrates has normally been held to be of less interest than Plato’s character. Without going into the arbitrary and anachronistic reasons for this estimate, we may note that a well-known later description of Socrates as the philosopher who brought philosophy down from the heavens into the lives of men seems to recall primarily Xenophon’s account.12 Xenophon mentions and illustrates argumentative types found also in Plato’s dialogues, while tending to present these within the categories of ancient rhetorical theory—a fact that must be borne in mind in order to appreciate his account.13
Xenophon’s Socrates is primarily a practical philosopher, and sees a practical purpose for dialectical conversation, which Xenophon first mentions in a chapter he announces as explaining how Socrates made his companions “more skilled in the realm of action” (πρακτικώτεροι), where we see him employing a combination of precept and example. Socrates, he says, thinking self-control a good quality of one intending any fine action, first showed himself (αὐτὸς φανερὸς ἦν) to his companions as one superlatively self-disciplined, and second in the course of conversing would exhort (διαλεγόμενος προετρέπετο) his companions above all to self-control (Mem. 4.5.1). Xenophon proceeds to report such a conversation between Socrates and Euthydemus, which ends with Socrates’ summary conclusion:
Only for the self-controlled is it possible to consider (σκοπεῖν) matters of the greatest moment, and, by sorting them out in both word and deed in accordance with kinds (καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ διαλέγοντας κατὰ γένη), prefer the good things and reject the bad.14
Xenophon’s own summary statement follows: “And in this way, he said, men became best and happiest, and most capable of conversing (ἀρίστους καὶ εὐδαιμονεστάτους … καὶ διαλέγεσθαι δυνατωτάτους).” In explanation of an apparent play on words, he adds that Socrates offered an etymological account to the effect that the verb “converse” (διαλέγεσθαι) itself refers ultimately to the activity of those in companionship deliberating in common as they sort out practical matters according to kinds (κατὰ γένη). It was therefore requisite [sc. Xenophon reports Socrates as saying] that one endeavor to prepare oneself as ready as possible relative to this and to cultivate it most of all. For it is from this that men come to be best, most leaderlike, and most adept at conversation (διαλεκτικώτατοι).15
Xenophon’s summary statement serves also to introduce the subsequent chapter, which elaborates how Socrates rendered his companions more skilled in conversation (διαλεκτικώτεροι). As Xenophon tells us, Socrates thought that while (a) those knowing what each of the things that are is (τί ἕκαστον εἴη τῶν ὄντων) could also explain this to others, (b) it would be nothing surprising if the ignorant trip up both themselves and others—for which reason he never ceased considering with his companions what each of the things that are is (σκοπῶν σὺν τοῖς συνοῦσι τί ἕκαστον εἴη τῶν ὄντων 4.6.1). Before reporting a series of conversations along these lines, Xenophon allows that, whereas it would be a great task to go through everything in the way he would make distinctions (πάντα … ᾗ διωρίζετο), he will recount so many as he thinks clarify the manner of his inspection (ὁ τρόπος τῆς ἐπισκέψεως). We are in this way prepared for a series of typical definitional conversations or teachings, of which we are given seven: on piety, justice, wisdom, the useful, the beautiful, courage, and the several forms of government (kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, plutocracy, and democracy). In all but the last case, which simply reports Socrates’ own teaching, the conversations reported feature a by now compliant Euthydemus in the role of Socrates’ interlocutor.
Having reported these, Xenophon appends a case illustrating Socrates’ technique when confronted with an uncooperative interlocutor who contradicted him about some matter, having nothing clear to say, but making some claim without supporting demonstration—an assertion that someone was wiser, more skilled in the art of politics, more courageous, or something of the kind. Socrates would in such cases “draw the entire discourse up toward its hypothesis” in a manner he proceeds to illustrate (4.6.13: ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἐπανῆγεν ἂν πάντα τὸν λόγον ὧδέ πως). His example features an unnamed interlocutor claiming that a man he praised was a better citizen than one Socrates did, to whom Socrates animatedly urges that they first submit to scrutiny the question, what the task of a good citizen is (14: Τί οὖν οὐκ ἐκεῖνο πρῶτον ἐπεσκεψάμεθα, τί ἐστιν ἔργον ἀγαθοῦ πολίτου;).16
An inductive series of particular illustrations—finance, war, diplomacy, public speaking—shows how via such “arguments being drawn up...
