Are Those Who Learn the Wise or the Ignorant?

(E1)

Trigger question : Are those who learn, the wise or the ignorant?

Thesis : The wise are those who learn.

Antithesis : The ignorant are those who learn.

Then Euthydemus said: Do you call some men teachers or not?

He agreed.

Are they teachers of those who learn in just the same way that the lyre master and grammar master were teachers of you and of the other children, and you were learners?

He assented.

Is it the case that, when you were learning

, you did not yet know

what you were learning (

)?

We didn't know, he said.

Then were you wise

, when you didn't know these things

?

Of course not, he said.

Then if not wise, ignorant

?

Certainly.

Then in learning what you didn't know, you were learning, when you were ignorant.

The young man nodded.

Therefore, the ignorant learn, Kleinias, and not the wise, as you suppose.
     (276 A 3-B 5)

Euthydemus begins his first attack with a familiar question formula; Socrates, too, frequently asks his interlocutors whether they call something by some name, in order to secure agreement on the terms

employed and on the reality corresponding to them. By the mere use of this formula, then, the sophist immediately invites us to compare his questioning procedure with that of Socrates.^[12] But to grant, as Kleinias does, that he calls some men teachers is also to prepare the way for another admission. There cannot very well be teachers without subjects who are taught. So in his second question Euthydemus moves to establish this necessary link between teachers and students. As yet, however, he has not delivered a knockout punch. At this point he is just beginning to construct the context for his refutation. But observe how, beginning with the subordinating clause in his second question, the sophist slyly shifts the argument into past time, specifies the teachers as lyre master and grammar master, and casts Kleinias and his fellow pupils in the role of learners.^[13] Now he can play directly on the past experiences of the boy.

In his third question Euthydemus injects the two activities of knowing and learning into his argument. Here he is treating learning as an activity in which the children were engaged while they were under the tutelage of their teachers. Knowing, on the other hand, is something that the boys have not yet attained . Still further, the activities of learning and knowing are linked by an unspecified "what" or subject matter, which refers in a vague way to what they were learning but did not yet know . Importantly, by negating the activity of knowing with the temporal indicator "not yet," Euthydemus establishes that knowing is something different from and occurring later in time than learning, while at the same time he manages to create the appearance that learning can eventually end in knowing; this much, at any rate, is built into the syntax of this third question. But the appearance of future knowledge is an illusion, for the sophist is here treating learning and knowing as mutually exclusive opposites: that is, he does not allow for a middle ground or continuum between the two. Consequently, learning denotes the process of which knowledge is the unattainable result . So a subject is either knowing or learning but cannot possibly bridge the gap between the two activities by "coming to know" objects of knowledge.^[14]

The full argumentative force behind treating learning and knowing as exclusive antinomies is revealed in the fourth question when Euthydemus begins to concentrate upon "the wise," the subject term of Kleinias' thesis. But now his question does not concern the wise abstracted from a context, but the disposition of Kleinias himself and his

fellow students when they did not yet know the subject matter of their instruction. In the context thus created, Kleinias cannot acknowledge that he and his schoolmates were "wise" in relation to objects that were as yet unknown. For at that time they were merely learners in the act of gathering knowledge about what was being taught. Consequently, when Kleinias denies, as indeed he must, that they were wise in relation to what they were just beginning to learn, he has unknowingly destroyed the original thesis. So the sophist is now free to establish the contrary thesis. In his fifth question Euthydemus shifts the focus from the wise to the ignorant, the key term of the antithesis. Since Kleinias has just granted that they were not wise , Euthydemus simply flips him to the other limb of the disjunct and asks whether they were ignorant .^[15] And just as the boy destroyed the thesis with his answer to the previous question by denying that they were wise in relation to unknown objects, so too now, by affirming that they were ignorant in relation to them, he has in effect granted the antithesis of the thesis.

Although it may be tempting to ask why Kleinias grants concessions that so easily overturn his position, we should remember that, within the dramatic frame of the dialogue, it is Plato's intention to portray him as unfamiliar with this agonistic form of questioning, a consideration that alone can account for his apparent failure. Nor is there any reason to wonder why Euthydemus succeeds in bouncing him from one term to another so effortlessly. In the Symposium , for example, Diotima corrects Socrates himself for a similar mistake when he too fails to grasp the middle ground between wisdom and ignorance, and she is not trying to deceive him.^[16] But in this context the sophist has intentionally laced his argument with ambiguous terms. That learn is equivocal cannot be denied, for Socrates himself will soon expose the two senses of the verb operative in this eristic show-piece. And as if this factor were not enough, additional equivocations have been detected in the terms wise and ignorant , each having two denotations that correspond to the two uses of ; the strong sense of wise (knowledgeable or all-knowing) operative in (E1) is incompatible with the weak sense of learn , to gather knowledge, whereas the weak sense of ignorant (unlearned or uninformed) is here referring to a subject who is in the very process of gathering knowledge; and this further insight into equivocal terms does indeed help to clarify (E1). But even closer inspection reveals that all key terms of this argument are never satis-

factorily clarified.^[17] We have, rather, a sliding scale of meaning where terms fluctuate back and forth between poles, between strict and loose, between refined and unrefined senses.^[18] In this first argument, Kleinias selects "the wise" for the subject term of the thesis. This choice fixes him on one side of that scale. Then, through his line of questioning, Euthydemus topples the thesis by constructing a context in which "wise" can no longer be predicated of those who learn. This maneuver is not accomplished by the use of a single equivocal term or even by a string of equivocal terms, as is usually suggested, but by an entire network of argumentative techniques orchestrated by Euthydemus;^[19] for the shift in the meaning of learning or, for that matter, of both wise and ignorant could not be accomplished without the addition of the activity of knowing, the subject matter that the boys were attempting to learn, and the context of Kleinias' primary education. It is for this reason that a study of fallacy directed solely toward individual terms has not provided and cannot provide an adequate account of the eristic sections of the Euthydemus . It can be helpful, to be sure, but it is not sufficient. For the application of the Aristotelian treatment of fallacy to the sophistical refutations of Plato's dialogue crowds the fullness of each argument into some minor portion of the whole. Instead, we must picture the entire environment of words if we want to achieve a more satisfying picture of eristic activity.

To bring his refutation to a close, Euthydemus connects the ignorant explicitly with the process of learning. The wise cannot be candidates for those who learn because they already have the objects in question, but the ignorant can, for they are just beginning to gather knowledge about the as-yet-unknown subject matter. For his conclusion Euthydemus emerges from past time into the present in order to state generally and formulaically both the antithesis and the thesis. He even adds a personal touch by addressing Kleinias with the vocative and reminding him that the outcome of this argument is not as he supposes, additions that should alert us to the fact that Euthydemus has not directed his argument toward truth but against Kleinias himself, forcing the boy to knuckle under to his superior argumentative skill.^[20]

(D1)

Thesis : The ignorant are those who learn.

Antithesis : The wise are those who learn.

And even before the youngster could duly catch his breath, Dionysodorus took over the argument and said: What about when the grammar master was dictating to you, Kleinias, which of the children were learning what was being dictated (), the wise or the ignorant?

The wise, said Kleinias.

Therefore, the wise learn and not the ignorant, and so just now you did not answer Euthydemus correctly.
     (276 C 1-7)

When Dionysodorus hears his brother close (E1), he has his cue for action. Seizing the opportunity before Kleinias can fully recover from his first defeat, the sophist launches another attack.^[21] Following Euthydemus' lead, he introduces a temporal clause that, given its past general form, again shifts the context of the argument into some indefinite time during Kleinias' primary education; he brings back a teacher, this time selecting the grammar master for closer attention, and again casts Kleinias and his schoolmates in the role of learners. But when Dionysodorus slips the new expression "what was being dictated" into his disjunctive question, we see at once that he has replaced those vague, unspecified "things" of (E1) with considerably more specific objects of learning. At the very least we are m imagine an activity in which a schoolteacher recites letters or even a whole lesson of some sort, and the pupils repeat the letters orally or perhaps write them out in some exercise. What we have here is that entrenching process by which the fundamental elements of knowledge are drilled into the minds of children. Whatever else this activity of dictation may mean, it allows for a shift in the sense of learn from its weak (to gather knowledge) to its strong sense (to understand). As long as in (E1) the objects of learning were not specified, and the activity of learning was opposed to knowledge, the term wise could easily be held in reserve for subjects who already possessed knowledge, whereas the word ignorant could be predicated of those who were in the process of gathering knowledge. But now, since Dionysodorus has subtly dropped the distinction between knowing and learning and has altered the objects of learning into dictated letters or a repeated lesson of some sort, Kleinias can truthfully answer this disjunctive question by "the wise," because, in the context thus created, there was indeed a sense in which the clever among the boys already understood the sub-

ject matter of dictation. Dionysodorus follows up Kleinias' single response "the wise" by stating the conclusion of (D1) in such a way as to mirror the very language that his brother used to polish off (E1), save, of course, for transposing the subject terms "the wise" and "the ignorant." Obviously, then, we can see what Dionysodorus' strategy was. Seizing upon the antithesis of (E1) as if it were a new thesis that Kleinias was supposed to maintain, the sophist has sought, by only one well-timed and brilliantly delivered question, to dupe the boy into reaffirming the original thesis of (E1). Such theatrics cannot help but create the overall impression that the brothers are performing a well-rehearsed routine in which their teamwork has reached near perfection. Dionysodorus even imitates his brother by adding a personal reminder with "just now you did not answer Euthydemus correctly." The stress here on failing to answer correctly once again emphasizes that Kleinias has not yielded to the self-evidence of truth but to Dionysodorus' verbal superiority.^[22]

But suppose that, under the influence of (E1), or even through a stern resolve to thwart Dionysodorus' line of attack, Kleinias had answered the disjunctive question not by "the wise"—which then provided the sophist with his easy refutation—but by "the ignorant." It is not difficult to imagine how Dionysodorus would then alter his line of questioning. He would begin to exploit the possibilities in his new expression, "what was being dictated," in the same way that Euthydemus will exploit the term letters in his next argument. Then Dionysodorus' verbal assault would take the shape that it will in (E2), though of course he would argue his case on the subject-side rather than the object-side of the dilemma. But at this point it is not Plato's intention to have Dionysodorus push (D1) so far that it begins to encroach upon (E2). Such a move would disrupt the symmetry that the argument-pairs are designed to exhibit as a unit, and any resistance on the part of Kleinias would detract from that simplicity of character which is designed to make this eristical triumph seem so gratuitous. Instead, by falling naively into this carefully laid verbal trap, Kleinias spares the sophist the trouble of having to extend the first argument-pair. Midway through this eristic showpiece, then, we find that the tables have been turned on Kleinias twice. Both alternatives offered in the disjunctive question, "the wise" and "the ignorant," have been successfully predicated of those who learn, and both have been rejected.

It can now appear to Kleinias that neither the wise nor the ignorant learn, or both.^[23] From the side of the subject, learning can appear to be either impossible or very easy to accomplish.