5
The Third Eristic Display
Much of the material in the fifth and final episode of the Euthydemus may not be familiar even to the faithful. Those who are usually devoted to Plato's every word may have shied away from the descent we are about to undertake and preferred instead to take refuge in the more uplifting and familiar texts of the master. Although it is easy to sympathize with these loyal disciples, still it should be added by way of encouragement that Plato himself did not shirk from encountering, face to face, the ridiculousness that can come to reside within philosophy itself. For he recognized that a philosopher must consider both what philosophical method is and what it is not, or else risk losing sight of the positive side of that equation, which cannot exist in a vacuum completely isolated from its opposite. So without surrendering either pole or divorcing one from the other, Plato has united the pair, dialectic and eristic, in this singular dialogue in such a way as to hold the two together by a tension. And our minds, by working their way back and forth between the limits, can become better equipped to distingnish the valid from the fallacious, the true from its distortion. In this, our fifth and final chapter, we propose to continue our line-by-line analysis of the remaining evidence for this playful antipode to serious philosophical method so that, with this project completed, we can begin to form something like a final judgment on this pseudo-science of argument.
Part One (293 B 1-297 B 8)
Although Kleinias participated in the search for the supreme art, he is not the fitting interlocutor for the complete investigation. So Socrates issues an impassioned cry to the brother-pair, invoking them as if they were the divine Dioscuri, to rescue himself and Kleinias from the third wave of the argument. Here, for the final time, he importunes
them to reveal their serious side by demonstrating what that knowledge is which can guarantee the smooth course of an honorable life. But now, when the amateurs should step aside and the serious philosopher should come to the aid of the 
, now when Socrates would engage the brother-pair Glaucon and Adeimantus for the full account, Plato, the master craftsman of this dialogue, demonstrates the fine art of sinking in philosophy by having Euthydemus, the phi-losopher-comedian himself, answer Socrates' prayer.
Socrates Already Possesses the Sought-After Knowledge (E9) (293 B 1-E 1)
Shall I teach
you this knowledge, Socrates, about which you two have been so long perplexed, or shall I provethat you have it?
(293 B 1-2)
Can we discern in this trigger question a change that is something of a novelty for eristic, at least insofar as we have come to know it from our dialogue? In the eight arguments that we have encountered thus far, the brothers have attempted to refute their opponents through the instrumentality of a negative, purely destructive elenchus. But now Euthydemus appears to be on the verge of either teaching or proving something constructive. Are we to conclude that eristic possesses the flexibility to argue pro as well as contra? And what are we to make of this dichotomy between "teaching" and "proving?" Is it real?[1] Significantly, Socrates does not straightway opt for either alternative. Instead, he expresses genuine surprise at Euthydemus' boast: "My blessed man, is this in your power?" Here, with the honorific "blessed" 
, Socrates indicates what it means for Euthydemus to be able to dissolve his and Kleinias' long-standing aporia. Euthydemus couldn't very well make good on this promise to impart the science in question unless he himself had already acquired it; and for that, as Socrates has remarked (274 A 6-7), he would be more "blessed" than the Great King is for his empire. But if Euthydemus is going to teach the knowledge in question, that means Socrates would have to learn what he doesn't know, and learning is suffering, especially when it has to occur at the feet of an eristic master.[2] So Socrates wisely decides in favor of the latter alternative, which is after all, as he says, "easier" for
a late learner like himself. Before turning to the argument, we should reflect upon what it means to prove that Socrates already possesses the sought-after knowledge.[3] In the terms of this dialogue, it can only mean that he is going "to learn what he already knows or understands."[4] With just this first disjunctive question, then, implying as it does the already familiar dichotomies of the first eristic, we find Euthydemus criss-crossing back and forth over the subject matter of his philosophy, weaving the fabric of his discourse with the warp and woof of his eristic science.[5]
Come then, answer me, he said. Is there something you know?
Certainly, I said, many things
, but they are small.
Enough, he said. Do you believe that it is possible for anything not to be that very thing which it happens to be?
No, by Zeus, I do not.
Then do you, he said, know something
?
Yes I do.
Then are you a knower, if you know?
Certainly, of just that thing.
It makes no difference. But doesn't necessity
compel you to know all things, if you are a knower?
(293 B 7-C 4)
We have already passed in review more than half the content of this dialogue, and yet Euthydemus and Socrates have not confronted each other one-on-one. Earlier the sophist leveled two remarks at him (286 E 4-7), but there he was just trying to rescue Dionysodorus from an impending refutation.[6] Thus far, then, Socrates has only grappled in argument with the older and weaker of his two antipodes. So now, beginning in that tight-fisted manner of the eristician, Euthydemus engages him for the first time by asking whether there is something he knows; and to our surprise, Socrates, who has gained such notoriety in the history of philosophy for claiming not to know, acknowledges that he does indeed know many things. But no sooner does he meet this requirement than he undercuts it by limiting his knowledge to the small.[7] "Enough," responds Euthydemus, who chooses to ignore the qualification. For his second question the sophist leaps to a metaprinciple that appears to govern the immediate context in some way and asks: "Do you believe that it is possible for anything not to be that very thing which it happens to be?" At this rarified level of abstraction, it is
natural for Socrates to assume that the "thing" in question is what he just affirmed to know; as such it is not about to change its nature so as to be other than it is; after all, even the most trivial object of knowledge must be constant and invariable. So Socrates can deny with some emphasis that the thing in question can ever fail to conform to the principle. Next, creating the illusion of meticulously abiding by the strict procedures of his method, Euthydemus descends from this principle to repeat the substance of his first question: "Then do you know something?" Again, Socrates repeats his affirmation without hesitation. But then, from the fact that Socrates knows something, Euthydemus tries to establish that Socrates is a knower without qualification, and again, given the compactness of the reasoning, Socrates might easily answer "yes," assuming all along that the object of knowledge is still carried over in thought into this fourth question. But now, as if he were aware of some trick, Socrates scrupulously avoids any possible confusion by filling in the elided object: "Certainly, [I'm a knower] of just that thing," he replied. "It makes no difference," Euthydemus quips, again brushing aside the qualification. Now, on the condition that Socrates is a knower, Euthydemus springs to the next stage of the argument, asking him whether he is under the grip of necessity to know all things, as if somehow or other this were the unavoidable conclusion from the mere fact that Socrates has admitted to be a knower of something. But here Euthydemus does not receive the affirmation he wants, for Socrates not only denies the necessity of the conclusion but also gives a very good reason why it cannot hold:
No, by Zeus, I said, for there are many other things I don't know.
Then if there is something you don't know, you are not a knower.
Yes, my friend, of just that thing, I said.
Are you then any the less not a knower
? And yet just nowyou claimed to be a knower. And so you turn out to be the very person who you are, and then again you are not that person, in the same respect and at the same time.
(293 C 5-D 1)
Socrates emphatically denies his omniscience on the quite reasonable ground that there are many other things he doesn't know. But this response, however sound it may be, simply allows Euthydemus to
swing him to the other horn of the dilemma, from "knowing" to "not-knowing."[8] He concludes: "Then if there is something you don't know, you are not a knower." Undisturbed, Socrates repeats his qualification by reasserting the suppressed object: "Yes, my friend, [I'm not a knower] of just that thing." This time, however, Euthydemus doesn't even bother to dismiss the addition; he merely interjects rhetorically: "Are you then any the less not a knower?" and continues: "And yet just now you claimed to be a knower."[9] Finally, invoking his certain and indubitable principle, the very impossibility of one and the same thing not being what it is, Euthydemus substitutes Socrates himself for the "thing" in question and then concludes that his opponent is guilty of a grotesque violation of the "law of contradiction" by foolishly asserting at one and the same time the contrary predicates, knowing and not-knowing, of one and the same subject.[10] With these final remarks, we can now see clearly what the sophist's strategy has been. At first, he wanted Socrates to agree to know something, and then he intended to slide from this one thing to all things, without having to pass through the middle.[11] Socrates, however, blocked this acrobatic leap from one to all by limiting what he knew to the particular thing in question. He thus forced Euthydemus to retreat from the conclusion that he had hoped to establish arid instead to seek to gain his goal indirectly by proving Socrates' omniscience through the sheer absurdity of denying it. Socrates, however, allows Euthydemus to reveal only the contradiction, for he himself draws out all the implications that according to Euthydemian logic must follow:
Well done, Euthydemus, I said. As the saying goes, you've scored a point. How then do I know that knowledge which we were searching for? Obviously, in the sense that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be: If I know one thing, I know all; for I cannot be a knower and a not-knower at the same time. And since I know all things, I also possess that knowledge. Is that the way you state your proof, and is this your clever solution?
(293 D 2-8)
Here Socrates points to the eristic sense in which he knows all things: since it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, if Socrates knows one thing, he knows all; and since he has admitted to know one thing, he knows all things: If P, then Q. P, therefore Q. Thus, Socrates possesses the science of their inquiry. But after com-
pleting the argument for Euthydemus, Socrates continues: "Is that the way you state your proof, and is this your clever solution?" Euthydemus, of course, doesn't even stoop to respond to this question, and why should he? It was Socrates, after all, who had requested his help in the search for the knowledge in question, and, to his credit, the sophist has spun out a most elegant and economical proof to a problem that has proved to be most difficult and complicated. Had Socrates acquired the good sense to yield to the rigorous validity and crystalline purity of his Euthydemian logic, then, presto, the longstanding aporia would have been dissolved. But in a wholly irresponsible fashion Socrates deflected the line of argument from its appointed end by an irrelevant addition, thus forcing Euthydemus to prove his case indirectly. Then, to make matters still worse—if this is possible—Socrates has now advanced so far in his ignorance of argument as not only to articulate the sense in which he has already acquired the science, but also to state the very principle, the violation of which has caused him to uphold the untenable position of being both a knower and a not-knower. In an eristic universe of discourse, to suffer a refutation is bad enough, but when a disputant pulls the chair out from under himself, without even having to procure an adversary to do the trick for him, the event becomes the unpardonable sin of self-refutation, the ultimate eristic disgrace and the clearest possible sign of ignoratio elenchi . Euthydemus is incredulous. All he can do is exclaim: "Out of your own mouth, Socrates, you refute yourself."
Of what does this clever solution really consist? Even if it should be granted that Euthydemus has solved the aporia by showing "that" Socrates has acquired the knowledge in question, he still has not demonstrated "what" the science is—that is, what its real content is—without which, of course, it is of no value. Consequently, this solution is empty and banal; the whole thing is really a spoof on the sophist himself for his inability to prove what, in fact, Socrates has. But what gives to (E9) the full impact of its banality is the particularly significant place that it has come to occupy in the overall orchestration of Plato's design. By positioning this utterly absurd solution to this most serious philosophical problem just after Socrates and Kleinias have struggled in vain to capture the quarry, Plato has managed to create the broadest possible gulf between the true philosopher and the false, between the true method and its double, which clings to it as vice does to excellence. With this rapid descent from the Olympian heights of the Socratic
search for the supreme science into this great cloaca of eristic discourse, we begin anew, for the third and final time, to follow the 
of the brother-sophists, whithersoever it goes.
Turnabout is Fair Play (293 E 2-295 A 9)
To suffer an eristic refutation doesn't disturb Socrates. He has simply articulated what appears to be Euthydemus' position and then asked the sophist whether he has done so correctly. He has not refuted himself, but examined the 
. In fact, this very command "refute yourself 
," if properly conceived, may be construed as the Socratic maxim par excellence, the one way he found to know himself. This form of self-refutation is the continual cross-examination of 
so as to bring one's thought, speech, and action into conformity with those arguments which can withstand the test. What to Euthydemus is an embarrassing, argumentative disgrace is to Socrates the sine qua non of a life worth living. It is difficult to imagine how Plato could more sharply delineate the two conceptions of the elenchus.
But now, consistent with his notion of proper method, Socrates takes over the role of questioner and begins to test whether this argument, too, will collapse from within.[12] If, in the abstract, one examines the knowing subject in relation to what is known, then three logically exhaustive possibilities turn up (293 E 5-294 A 3): a subject knows either nothing 
, or some things and not others (
), or all things 
. Euthydemus has just cranked out a frozen piece of chicanery to prove that knowledge of one thing necessarily forces Socrates into the unqualified universal position. So now, taking the brothers themselves as the test case, Socrates seeks to discover where they stand amid this logical trinity. Beginning with the middle, that contradictory realm in which he finds himself, Socrates asks the pair whether they are partial knowers, a question that prompts from Dionysodorus an immediate denial. So Socrates moves to the extremes, to the poles outside the realm in which he experiences the opposing tensions of life and takes up first the possibility that the two know nothing. "On the contrary," Dionysodorus retorts, thereby leaving Socrates no alternative except to swing to the other limit, to the knowledge of all things. And once Dionysodorus humbly affirms their
knowledge of all things, he and his brother have thus avoided Socrates' fate, but must now endure their own: a universal omniscience both caused by and conditional upon their knowledge of a single thing.[13] Moreover, in the same breath in which he claims omniscience, Dionysodorus goes on to add an unparalleled act of eristic generosity by assuring Socrates that he, too, knows all things, if he knows one thing. But as Socrates immediately intuits, if the brother-pair are themselves omniscient and can extend all knowledge to another, then they should be able to extend omniscience to all humanity. So when Socrates inquires whether this is in fact the case, Dionysodorus at last comes forth with his truly democratic, truly eristic thesis (294 A 10):
All men know all things, he said, if they know just one thing.[14]
Not so very long ago Socrates fell into an aporia because he was unable to track down, much less capture, the science that could put an end to his and Kleinias' search. Now, courtesy of the eristic-duo, not only he himself but all humanity have become the possessors and users of this sought-after science. Finally, Socrates exclaims derisively, the brothers have come out from behind their comic masks to show us their serious side. But not allowing this feigned elation to distract him from cross-examining the 
, he continues to take the brothers themselves as the test case and asks them whether their omniscience extends all the way to shoemaking and carpentry (294 B 3-4). Now these two examples, we can be sure, have not turned up by chance. Plato has Socrates use them in order to recall that very part of the dialogue where the Socratic inquiry began to fall into serious difficulty; for the supreme science was supposed to make its citizens wise and good, but carpentry and shoemaking were too particular and too trivial for it to impart to all the citizens (292 C 4-9). So the questions naturally arose, what knowledge does kingship impart, and for what shall we use it? In trying to answer these questions, Socrates eventually slipped into the regress. But now, miraculously, the brothers have overcome that temporary setback. They have just used their eristic science not only to make the citizens wise and good, but to make all of them absolutely wise and good at absolutely everything.
It should be clear by now that the Euthydemus presents, in part, a consciously and deliberately crafted vision in which standard valua-
tions have been turned upside down, a kind of superinverted world in which appearance has come to dominate reality. In their latest manifestation our two sorcerers stand before us as the answer to the regress. They themselves solve the enigma by becoming its solution. As the possessors of all knowledge they have not only acquired the science that is responsible for happiness and correct action in the polis, but they have also demonstrated their ability to impart it to all the citizens. For just a brief moment then Plato allows us to imagine the two-headed philosopher-comedian at the helm, piloting the ship of state and rendering all things good and useful. And yet, behind this distorted image, in part grotesque, in part amusing, we can also see that everything the brothers appear to be is contradicted by what they are; that their pretentious boast to know all things just masks the fact that they know nothing of any real value; and that, in reality, they are driven by that all-too-sophistic urge to become the masters and shakers of the universe by implanting a bogus image of their own wisdom in other minds.
Before resuming our line-by-line analysis, we should pause briefly to consider the serious paradigm against which Dionysodorus' thesis, "all men know all things, if they know just one thing," takes on force and meaning. The sophist doesn't specify the content of this "one"; for him, any indiscriminate particular will complete the trick.[15] For Socrates, however, the one he wants isn't just any old object of knowledge. As Friedländer has noted: "Does it not have a meaning for Plato's Socrates quite different from what Dionysodorus intends—if we think of the 'Idea of the Good,' which confers both the power of knowing to the thinker and the reality of being to the objects of cognizance (Republic 508 E)?"[116 Anyone who has acquired the knowledge of this one thing, the Good, would then possess both the knowledge of the relative value of all things and the standard by which to make citizens wise and good. It is "here somewhere" that the regressus in infinitum is completely and finally solved, even as the possibility of its existence and attainment renders this latest piece of eristic buffoonery meaningful.[17]]
Once Dionysodorus affirms that he knows both carpentry and shoemaking, Socrates proceeds to an even greater degree of particularity, asking the pair whether they are able to stitch gut, as if this were some distinct art of the superordinate science of cobblery. Unwavering, Dionysodorus asserts: "Yes, by Zeus, and to sew leather as well."
Shut out on the topic of crafts, Socrates passes to questions that have become proverbially unanswerable, such as the number of stars and grains of sand; theory cannot approach problems of this type, for they can be solved only by counting, which, of course, is impossible in these two cases. But Dionysodorus now shows his impatience with this line of questioning by responding: "Don't you think that we would agree?" Poor Socrates! He just can't seem to grasp that for eristic the mere act of saying makes it so.
Enter Ktesippus. What prompts him to engage the pair at just this moment?[18] The last time he was on the stage, he belligerently maligned the Thurian visitors for their driveling. On that occasion Socrates immediately defused the potentially hostile situation by advising him to take Menelaus as his model and to wrestle the brothers to the ground as if they were Proteus, the Egyptian wizard. Now Ktesippus translates that advice into action when he enters the fifth episode by demanding that the brothers produce some evidence for their pretentious boast to know all things. But what has prompted him to call for evidence? Here, too, we can observe Plato's strategy, if we reflect back upon the fourth episode where Socrates asked Kleinias to produce evidence for the rejection of the art of logic-production (289 D 1). To illustrate how carefully Ktesippus was attending to that discussion (as well as to everything else), Plato now has him bring forth the evidentiary criterion against Dionysodorus. But we must note the change in our young man's demeanor. Gone is his moral indignation.[19] Ktesippus has accepted the parameters of this science of how to do things with words and is now working from within to combat his adversaries. Yet he undercuts his call for evidence, reasonable by most standards, as soon as he requests each sophist to submit as proof of his omniscience the number of teeth the other has.[20] But dodging this question by submitting one of his own, Dionysodorus asks: "Aren't you satisfied to hear that we know all things?" Now apparently, not only does saying dominate the facts, but hearing what is said is supposed to suffice for verification. But Ktesippus will have none of this. He again undercuts his call for evidence by offering to pry open their mouths to verify their knowledge claims by counting.[21] Fortunately, this one example is all we need to grasp the gist. Socrates spares us Ktesippus' further requests for evidence by noting that he did not cease until he had asked whether the brothers' knowledge extended all the way to "the most shameful things."
In the immediate context of this argument, Ktesippus' demand for evidence is of critical importance, and not just because it exposes that undesirable element in omniscience, even if it were attainable—that the knowledge of all things, claimed so humbly by the brothers, would have to include knowledge of what no decent human being would choose to know. But also, by having Ktesippus call attention to the gross materiality of teeth and other such niceties, Plato suddenly transforms him, even as he calls for evidence, into that familiar Aristophanic type who deflates the abstract thought of the boastful by applying it to the common and vulgar. And how do the brothers react to this new challenge? They immediately recognize that they are being mocked, and they don't appreciate it. Our two jokers don't like to be the butt of jokes; they can laugh at others, not at themselves. When Ktesippus turns comedian, they counter by becoming serious and refuse to allow him to count their teeth. But this obstinacy, as Socrates observes, causes them to appear like wild boars driven to impale themselves on the spear (294 D 6-7). Ktesippus has followed Socrates' advice all right; he has wrestled the pair to the ground. But in demonstrating his ability to fight just as dirtily as the eristics themselves, he has also exhibited that tendency toward argumentative excess that will soon be given full exposure. Plato has designed this little scene, so telling for the development of Ktesippus' character, to form a bridge between his role in the third episode and his final encounter with eristic. For the present, then, we can conclude that Ktesippus has successfully passed from righteous indignation to acceptance of the game of eristic controversy , but at what price?
Drawn on by his incredulity at what has just taken place, Socrates is now compelled to reenter the debate and ask Dionysodorus whether he knows how to dance. "Certainly," comes the reply. Then Socrates caps this line of inquiry by asking whether he also knows how to do somersaults through knives and to whirl about on a hoop. "There is nothing that we do not know," the sophist retorts. So, having run the gamut from crafts and uncountables all the way to mere stunts that are so unbecoming that no one should choose to do them, Socrates finds himself completely shut out on the level of content.[22] Shifting to the problem of temporal universality, he continues the elenchus by asking: "Do you know all things only now or always?" "Always," comes the reply. Then Socrates specifies this temporal aspect more carefully: "And when you were children and as soon as you were born, did you
know all things?" This question, which pushes all their eristic buttons at once, causes both of them to answer "yes" at the same moment.[23]
The brothers' claim to everlasting omniscience has finally proved too much for the group. Socrates and the others cannot help but express disbelief. Then, in the true spirit of eristic controversy, Euthydemus quickly turns this situation to his advantage by offering to dissolve the seeming paradox; and the sophist can gain much by doing so. The incredulity of the group, which he himself engendered, has created the need for him to demonstrate that his claim is only apparently paradoxical; it is a matter of indifference to Euthydemus and his brother whether they refute an obviously true thesis or beguile an opponent into accepting an utterly absurd falsehood, so long as they remain the masters of the 
. So, regaining the role of questioner, Euthydemus offers to prove that even Socrates himself agrees to these marvels, provided, of course, that he is willing to answer.[24] For his part, Socrates is jubilant. He is aware that he knows many small things, but that what he wants to know is a science that is truly great. Euthydemus, on the other hand, has just promised to prove that he has already acquired the desired object and in fact has always known it. So there can only be one possibility. The fact that he has acquired the science in question must have escaped his detection up until this very moment. All he has to do is submit to the eristic elenchus, and this master of the science of questioning and answering will cause him to recollect the sought-after knowledge of which, at present, he is unconscious. This eristic proof for his everlasting omniscience will continue, after numerous digressions, until Socrates himself terminates the first half of the fifth episode by making a conscious choice to flee from the clutches of the eristic duo.
Socrates Knows All Things Always (E10) (295 A 10-206 D 4)
Answer
, [Euthydemus] said.
Ask
, and I will answer
Are you, Socrates, he said, a knower of something or not?
I am.
Then do you know with that by which
you are a knower or by something else?
With that by which I am a knower. For I assume you mean the soul
. Or don't you mean this?
Aren't you ashamed, Socrates? he said. When you are asked a question, do you counter with a question?
(295 A 10-B 6)
All the components of this magnificent satire, this grand inversion of dialectic, are in place once the first two lines establish the roles of the speakers. Euthydemus will be the questioner 
, Socrates the responder 
, and eristic, that technique of argument which can purge the conceit of knowledge from a boastful interlocutor, is about to become the instrument by which Euthydemus will demonstrate that Socrates, despite his persistent failure to respond correctly, not only knows all things but knows them always. What is Socrates to do when the very person who is exercising the eristic art is precisely the one most in need of undergoing the purifying benefits of the elenchus?
Euthydemus' first question reveals the link between (E9) and (E10): neither argument can get off the ground unless Socrates is a knower of something. Then, for the second stage of (El0), the sophist asks: "Do you know with that by which you are a knower or by something else ?" As he did in (E9), Euthydemus has dropped the object of knowledge and retained the knower, but he has also added a crucial new element, the "by which" we know. But what is the nature of this "by which"? Is it the "instrument" by which we know, so that the "by something else" refers to something other than that instrument? To say the least, Euthydemus' question is open to interpretation because he does not specify the character of the "by which"; consequently, the "something else" must remain equally obscure. Even by eristic standards this question is not up to par.[25] But Socrates does have a partial grasp of his meaning and so opts for the first alternative, the "by which" he knows, and then adds: "For I assume you mean the soul 
. Or don't you mean this?" Euthydemus' question, then, which has directed Socrates' attention to the instrument by which he knows, has caused him to recollect the soul, but when he asks the sophist whether this is what he means, whether he is in fact inquiring about the soul, Euthydemus immediately quashes the counterquestion by implicating him in the shameful act of asking the questioner a question.[26] No sooner does the eristic hear that dreaded word "soul" than he accuses Socrates of a procedural miscue, as if his only objection were to the inappropriateness of the question itself and not to the content.
Here a critic unsympathetic to eristic might want to say: "Euthydemus is a fine one to talk about shame." But if we remember to attend to the sophists perspective, we can see the basis of his objection. Euthydemus has just established that he is the questioner and Socrates the answerer, yet after only the second question Socrates has failed miserably to perform his role in the game. In the sophist's view, then, this failure is just another example of ignorance of argument, for which Socrates, if he had any sense of (eristic) shame at all, should blush or fall silent.[27] But it is worth noting why Euthydemus takes refuge behind a procedural foul at precisely this moment. Our analysis of the second eristic has shown that the brothers fall back upon the "procedures" or "rules" of argument whenever they perceive some real threat to their position as masters of the game.[28] Therefore, we can conclude that this flight behind rules is just another eristical dodge employed ad hoc in order to avoid that awful word soul , which causes dread and anger in all eristics.[29] But not ashamed of his counter-question, Socrates even goes on to ask the master eristician for instruction on how he is supposed to behave in argument, an unexpected turn of events that interrupts the second stage of (El0) and ushers in a brief excursus on the proper method of questioning and answering:
Fine, I said, but what should I do? For I'll do as you bid. When I don't know what you are asking, do you bid me to answer anyway and not to question you in return?
Yes I do, he said, for I'm sure you understand
what I'm saying in some sense, don't you?
Yes I do.
Well then, respond to the sense in which you understand it.
But what if you put your question, intending it in one way (
), and I take it in anotherand then I respond to this: are you satisfied if I don't respond to the point at issue?
Yes I am, he said, but, I suspect, you're not.
Well then, by god, I'm just not going to respond, until I inquire.
You're not going to respond, he said, to what you understand on each occasion
, because you continually talk driveland are more antiquatedthan is called for.
(295 B 7-C 11)
From the beginning, it has been the brothers' strategy to construct an artificial environment of words such that nothing can refer outside or penetrate within the context of their own devising. But just now Socrates has released the soul within that narrow enclosure, and so Euthydemus had to react quickly to contain the damage. But the trick he has used for this purpose, the suppression of the counterquestion, reveals something quite perverse about eristic. It is normal to think of dogmatists as people who have answers to the perplexing questions of existence, and it may be correct to do so. But here Plato is examining another side of dogmatism, caused not by having the answers, but by possessing the questions. Through controlling what can and cannot be asked, our two tyrants of discourse try to determine what answers are possible just as dogmatically as any despot who demands the party line from his followers.
If questioning the questioner is verboten , what is Socrates to do? For he swears that he'll do as he is told. Euthydemus instructs him to answer to what he understands to be the sense of each question. In effect, the sophist actually wants Socrates to respond on the basis of only a partial grasp of his questions; that is, he wants Socrates to be between the poles of ignorance and knowledge, without a full grasp of the real import of what is being asked. Otherwise, Euthydemus couldn't engineer and so exploit that "misunderstanding" between their minds which allows him to manufacture refutations. On the other hand, Socrates views his counterquestion as a way of minimizing the gap between his mind and the other. Assuming that he is supposed to follow in the tracks of the 
that the questioner is establishing, he wants to be certain of the "way 
" Euthydemus intends his questioning, so that he can respond on the basis of that understanding. Such clarity, on the procedural level at least, can produce satisfactory answers that are directed to the point at issue. But when Euthydemus frankly acknowledges that he is satisfied with miscommunication, Socrates for the first time in this dialogue digs in his heels and refuses to answer until he is permitted to inquire. But, as is to be expected, our wizard of wrangling has the antidote for recalcitrance: verbal abuse. Poor Socrates! In his folly he keeps on debating how the ceremony of questioning and answering is to be conducted. He just can't seem to grasp that the eristic masters have themselves already established the "way" and, what is more, the eristic clique is present with its rowdy voice to enforce that method. Not the
method but the display of the method is under review, and by his exegetical remarks on procedures Socrates continues to produce, as Euthydemus so delicately puts it, the endless twaddle of an old duffer.[30]
Momentarily we shall consider why Socrates must knuckle under to this latest demand to answer in accord with what he understands on each occasion. But first we should try to imagine what would happen to philosophy if its practitioners, either deliberately through guile or inadvertently through lack of ability, should repeatedly send other minds down a path that is different from the one they travel. What, in short, would philosophy resemble, if misunderstanding were to become a central feature of the systematic application of its method? The brothers have already given us a vivid picture of such an illogical world, but from this moment on the whole situation is irrevocably altered. For Euthydemus has finally instructed those "other minds" on the eristic rule that governs the answers of the responder; hence, Socrates and Ktesippus can now take full advantage of it for their own purposes. By way of anticipating the results, Plato will allow misunderstanding to increase to such a degree, especially in the answering antics of Ktesippus, that eristic will finally attain its 
in comic logomachy. In this way Plato reduces eristic quite literally to absurdity by revealing it as a star instance of the ridiculous 
, a species of the ugly 
.
I noticed he was angry with me for poking holes in his argumentation, because he wanted to trap me in a net of words and then hunt me down. Then I recollected that Connus too became angry with me every time I refused to yield to him, and thereafter he paid less attention to me on the assumption that I was ignorant. And so, since I had intended to study with him, I thought I should yield, lest he might consider me retarded and so not accept me as a pupil. So I said: Well, if you think I should act in this way, Euthydemus, then I must do so. For there is no doubt, I'm sure, that you know how to discourse better than I do, since my art of conversation is that of the ordinary man.
(295 D 1-E 3)
Socrates' psychological penetration into Euthydemus' anger and frustration, coupled with his own recollection of Connus, turns this event into a deeply significant scene.[31] If we now conceive of Socrates' encounter with Euthydemus as a relationship between a teacher and a
would-be student, then we can uncover yet another dimension to this fantastic inversion of dialectic. Socrates is the ignorant student, who has come to learn what he doesn't know from the wise master, who has already acquired knowledge of eristic. In his examination to determine whether this would-be pupil is a fit subject for instruction, Euthydemus has asked a question that Socrates couldn't fully understand. But instead of being overjoyed when his student requests more information on the real meaning of his question, Euthydemus angrily berates him for driveling and being too old to learn. This harsh instruction then causes Socrates to recollect similarly unpleasant treatment from Connus, another stern teacher, who became angry with him for refusing to submit to his musical expertise; as a result, Connus paid less attention to him, on the ground that he was ignorant. Such, it seems, is the timeless plight of those who want to learn; from teacher to teacher the exasperated student gropes.
But the bizarre picture of Connus attempting to instruct someone as notoriously unmusical as Socrates should not divert our attention from the significant way in which music and eristic differ. Teachers of music can usually determine without difficulty who is musical and who is not, even before their pupils reach adolescence, so clear are the criteria for establishing, at the beginning at least, what are the proper moves in the science of music. From this fact we can observe both the wisdom of exposing Kleinias and the other children to a music teacher at the same time they learn their letters (276 A 5), and the sheer folly of an old gaffer like Socrates still trying to learn music at his advanced age (272 C). By contrast, no such exact standards exist in the art of stand-up controversy, although when it suits their purpose, the brothers try to cling to the illusion that the rules are clear even when it is obvious that they are making them up as they go along. Thus, Socrates' recollection is a superb way of establishing the incongruity between the appropriate anger felt by an expert, who teaches a quite concrete science of how to perform a specific task, and the wholly unjustified anger of a philosophaster, who must have his way in argument as if he too possessed an exact science of how to question and how to answer. But even more importantly, there is a significant respect in which both cases are not incongruous. If Socrates fails to keep pace with the way these moderns are doing philosophy, then he may, in fact, face the frightening prospect of being expelled from school. And irony aside, this is a serious threat. For
whether the boys are learning the new music of Connus or the new ars rixandi of these neoterics, Socrates must be present to shield unsuspecting youth from being stalked by these paid hunters of the attractive sons of wealthy Athenian parents.[32] So, brushing aside Euthydemus' insults and cheerfully yielding to the demand to answer on the basis of his partial understanding, Socrates urges Euthydemus to renew the 
:
So ask
again from the beginning.
Then answer
again, he said: Do you know by somethingwhat you know or not?
Yes, I said, by the soul
.
Again he has answered more
than is asked. For I'm not asking by what, but whether you know by something.
I answered with more than was called for under the influence of my poor education. So please excuse me. For now I'll answer simply that I know by something what I know.
(295 E 3-296 A 5)
The transition from the excursus back to the second stage of (E10) is effected by the reassignment of roles: Euthydemus will question, Socrates will answer. In his new beginning the sophist tries to overcome the inadequacy of his earlier question by asking one which calls for a simple yes or no answer, or so he thinks. But to his surprise, his muddleheaded student, though this time without asking a question, replies with the substance of his earlier remark: "Yes, by the soul." Again, with only a partial grasp of his teacher's question, and foolishly answering to what he assumes to be the point at issue, Socrates has dared to give the question a content, a meaning, a reality. In fact, he has dared to give it the very same meaning that prompted the excursus in the first place. So we may suspect that Euthydemus should have shown more care in his selection of students, and that he must now qualify his original boast, "to teach anyone who is willing to learn," by excluding dim-witted boobies like Socrates. But most careful not to reveal that he is offended by the hideous word soul , Euthydemus again objects on a procedural level, although this time he censures the miscue of "answering more than is asked"; for, as he goes on to explain: "I'm not asking by what , but if you know by something. " Now it is not enough for Socrates to respond in accord with what he under-
stands on each occasion; he must also guard against answering more than is asked. But what, pray tell, constitutes "more"? In this case, the answer is obvious. The soul, the very entity that allows us to bridge the eristic antinomy between learning and knowing, between ignorance and wisdom, is again forced out of (E10) by this concept albino who cannot permit the "by which" to assume a content. Otherwise, he might have to treat his interlocutor as a living, breathing human being and not as an object that he can capture in a net of words and beat senseless with the 
. But for his part, Socrates graciously complies with this latest demand of his stern taskmaster.
[Do you know, he said] by this same thing always (
), or are there times when by this, and other times by something else?
Always, whenever I know
, by this.
Won't you please, he said, put a halt to your superfluous speech
?
But I'm afraid this word always may cause us to stumble.
Certainly not us, he said, but if anyone, you. So continue to answer. Do you know always by this?
Always, I said, since I'm required to remove
the "whenever."
Very well then, you know always by this (
), and since you always know, do you know . . .
(296 A 5-B 4)
The third stage of (E10) is a graphic example of deviousness. With his opening disjunctive question, Euthydemus attempts to create the illusion that he is continuing in his meticulous manner to probe the character of the instrument by which we know. Having forced Socrates to agree to know "by something," he now appears to be asking whether that something is one, self-same instrument, or two or more instruments; that is, whether there is or is not an identity to that instrument on every occasion of our knowing. Since Socrates has already admitted that he knows "by the soul," it would seem that he must select the first alternative. But it has not escaped his attention that Euthydemus has also injected the temporal indicator "always" into the question. And so, after several disruptions the sophist has finally returned to the key item that originally provided the occasion for this dispute (294 E 6-11).
Earlier Socrates had asked the brothers: "Do you know all things only now 
or always 
?" When Dionysodorus affirmed "always," Socrates removed any ambiguity surrounding this term by submitting two occasions that must be covered: the moment of birth, and when they were children. He thus made it perfectly clear that by "always" he intended an unqualified reference to time in direct contrast to that single moment expressed by "now." Consequently, if Euthydemus is going to attain the thesis of (E10), he must prove that Socrates' omniscience holds for this sense of "always," for absolutely all times. But when the sophist injects the term "always" into this combination of words, he slyly alters the sense of the earlier antithesis; he replaces "now," which Socrates used to oppose "always," with 
, which signifies, not one discrete moment in time, but now one occasion, and now another;[33] and instead of using "always" to refer to all times, he so constructs the context that here the word must refer to "each and every occasion" of our knowing. Why he has done so will become clear momentarily, but for now we must see that, in the mind of the sophist at least, his question is perfectly set for the simple, unadorned answer, "always by this."
This sample of eristic legerdemain is most instructive for revealing a feature of Euthydemus' method. He is fully aware that he is not going to trick Socrates into admitting baldly, "I always know." So he tries to slide indirectly to this goal by leading his opponent to agree first to "[I know] always by this." To this end, he takes the term 
, which has at least two lexical meanings, and, without specifying which meaning he intends (for that would prevent him from exploiting the equivocation), he cleverly juxtaposes 
alongside other terms, which then force it to assume the meaning he wants through its relation to those other terms. But Socrates immediately detects this attempt at beguilement and so comes back with the rib-tickler: "Always, whenever I know, by this." With this response, not only does he quite literally separate the items Euthydemus wants to unite, but he also specifies without ambiguity that "always" covers each and every occasion of his acts of knowing. Thus, denied the simple, unqualified answer "always by this," Euthydemus must again resort to complaining about the sheer inappropriateness of Socrates' superfluous speech.
With the introduction of the word 
, we confront the kind of difficulty that will continue to challenge anyone who tries to convey the sense of this dialogue into another language. For ex-
ample, a recent translator has rendered the Greek thus: "I must ask you again, he said, not to qualify your answers."[34] Supported in this rendering by no less of an authority than Liddell-Scott-Jones, he has not translated
, but interpreted it. To Socrates, the "whenever I know" is indeed a qualification, but only misunderstanding of this passage could lead anyone to fancy that Euthydemus would grant the exalted status of a "qualification" to his opponent's superfluous speech. To him, Socrates has just introduced a fortuitous and incidental remark that has no bearing on the question at hand. But what to him is just misdirected noise is to Socrates a crucial distinction without which the argument cannot assume force and meaning. Here the two forms of speech, eristic and dialectic, diverge in a most illuminating way. Euthydemus asked a question, intending it in one way, and Socrates took it in another and answered to what he understood to be the point at issue: the result, a misunderstanding that is both a gag on the sophist and a sine qua non of the argument.
The divergence continues. Socrates defends his qualification by expressing the fear that "this word always may cause us to stumble." But this piece of Socratic nonsense forces Euthydemus to correct him: "Certainly not us, but if anyone, you." Poor Socrates! He is still assuming that they are conducting a joint dialectical inquiry 
into the truth of a question that concerns both of them equally. So Euthydemus must remind the nincompoop that if he doesn't learn how to perform his role in the elenchus pretty soon, he'll self-destruct again. Then, as he did before, the sophist reshapes the failed question into one that demands a simple "yes" answer: "Do you know always by this?" "Always," responds Socrates, eager to obey, and then he goes on to announce that he is removing the offending word "whenever."[35] So at last Euthydemus can state the conclusion that he wants in this unadorned way: "You know always by this 
."[36] But in the very process of shifting to the fourth stage of (E10), this slippery snake finally reveals why he has been toying with the word "always." Prefacing his trigger question with a subordinate clause (
), from which he has subtracted the instrument of knowing 
, Euthydemus smoothly links "always" and "knowing" without any intervening qualifications. By shifting from "always by this" to "always knowing," Euthydemus has shrewdly drifted to the unqualified reference to time everlasting that he needs in order to attain the first half of his thesis. The game continues:
Very well then, you know always by this, and since you always know, do you know some things with this by which
you know and some things by something else, or all things by this?
All
, at least what I know, I said, by this.
Here it comes again, he said, the same superfluous remark
.
Well then, I said, I'll remove
the "at least what I know."
Nay, he said, don't subtract a single thing. I make no request of you. Just answer me: Could you know all
if you didn't know all things?
That would be monstrous, I said.
Well then, go ahead now and add
what you want, he said, for you admit to know all.
Apparently, I said, since the "what I know" has no force (
), and I know all things.
(296 B 3-C 7)
The fourth stage of (E10) begins by mirroring the trickery of the third. Creating the illusion that he is asking whether there is one or more than one instrument involved in every act of knowing objects, Euthydemus appears to have set a question that demands the answer: "All things by this." But Socrates breaks up this combination by adding the qualification "at least what I know," another hilarious joke on the sophist that illuminates at the same time an essential ingredient of the argument. Exasperated, all Euthydemus can do is complain: "Here it comes again, the same superfluous remark." These three qualifications, "the soul," "whenever I know," and "at least what I know," each recollected by Socrates as a result of Euthydemus' cross-questioning, each a significantly different response to what he assumes to be the point at issue, have introduced the unexpected into the rigid line of eristic questioning, and each, in turn, has been quashed by Euthydemus, and in fact must be quashed by him if he is to advance along the narrow chain of his deductions.[37] To the sophist, each addition is just the same old addition, the same old superfluous noise that prevents him from proving Socrates' everlasting omniscience.
So to please his interlocutor, Socrates generously offers to withdraw this qualification too, but Euthydemus doesn't require him to co-
operate; the way he deals with contentious babble is to ignore it. Instead, for the third time he reformulates his unsuccessful question into one that demands a simple "yes" answer. This time sequestering both the instrument of knowing and the addition "at least what I know," he asks: "Could you know all 
if you didn't know all things 
?" Here, it is possible that by "all" Euthydemus means "everything together" and by "all things" everything separately, so that in effect he is arguing that Socrates, who has just admitted to knowing the whole 
, must also know the parts 
;[38] but it is also possible that the sophist is merely making a distinction without a difference. At any rate, what is important to him at this moment is simply to place a question that guarantees an affirmative answer. Since Socrates has already used "all" to cap "all things" without any discernible difference in meaning at 296 B 5, Euthydemus can confidently use both terms to form an (empty) hypothetical question that will achieved the unqualified "yes."[39] Once Socrates gives him that simple affirmation, Euthydemus has the agreement he wants to the fourth stage of the argument. So he triumphantly badgers his opponent with the taunt, "Go ahead now and add what you want," because Socrates is at the moment powerless to derail the conclusion with his qualifications; for, as Euthydemus adds by way of emphasis, "You admit to know all."[40] Euthydemus' hypothetical question, then, turns out to be just another device which he has used, on this occasion, to join the act of knowing to its objects without any intervening additions, just as above he used a similar trick to link "always" and "knowing."[41]
Socrates humbly accepts the likelihood of his omniscience and then goes on to explain how the sophist has pulled off this hoax. Through his control over the questioning, Euthydemus can determine which answers have force and which do not. Here, by ignoring the qualification "what I know," while attributing full force and meaning to the mere words "I know all things," the sophist has "apparently" attained the second half of the thesis he wants to establish.[42]
Before continuing, we must note another feature of (E10) that demonstrates the precision with which Plato has depicted this inversion of his own method. Socrates regularly allows his interlocutors to add to or subtract from their positions before he begins the cross-examination of the 
, and he even permits them to shift positions in midstream, provided they do so openly. Here, in (E10), Euthydemus has grossly perverted this dialectical courtesy by suppressing
qualifications until he attains the conclusion he needs, and then, after it no longer matters, he rudely invites Socrates to add whatever he wants; and this too, while it is patently clear to us that he himself has surreptitiously subtracted the "by which" we know from stages three and four of the argument.[43] This champion of the art of controversy has perfected the ability to wipe out distinctions that need to be made, and to unite kinds that should be kept apart.[44]
In the fifth and final stage of (E10), Euthydemus has two objectives: First (296 C8-10) he must confirm the "truth" of what Socrates is imagined to have stated in stages three and four, namely that he "always knows" and "knows all things";[45] and then (296 C 10-D 4) he must combine these two admissions in order to "prove" that, out of his own mouth, Socrates has agreed to the astonishing thesis that "he knows all things always." That the sophist is able to do so is probably not as interesting at this point as the quasi-religious ecstasy that he experiences in the act of pronouncing this triumph.[46] Returning to the two examples that Socrates introduced, childhood and birth (294 E 9), Euthydemus adds to this list both the moment of Socrates' conception and the generation of heaven and earth as instances that are covered by his everlasting omniscience. Presto, the incredulity of Euthydemus' opponents is dissipated, the paradox dissolved. But there is a catch. Socrates will remain omniscient only so long as this tyrannical father of the 
permits it: 
.[47]
It would be hasty to assume that if Socrates and therefore the rest of humanity know all things always, they would no longer require Euthydemus as their teacher, and he, in turn, would be without anything to teach. For that judgment would severely underestimate the power of this sham-science. In fact, it would be to repeat something like the kind of mistake that Crito made when interpreting Kleinias' progress under Socrates' questioning. Profundity such as Euthydemus has just demonstrated is constantly in danger of being forgotten, and so we will always need an eristician to exercise his science of questioning and answering so as to prompt our recollection of this fairest argument. In spite of recent research and the analysis here presented, there will still be those who persist in reading the Euthydemus as earlier than the Meno .[48] For them, Plato's teaching on reminiscence cannot provide the deeper background for (E9) and (E10). Without it, however, we may only wonder what account they may offer for these pages of Plato's text. At any rate, inasmuch as there is no conclusive proof that the
Euthydemus antedates the Meno in such a way that nothing in the latter can be presupposed in the former, we have felt justified in scrupulously avoiding the attempt to control the meaning of this portion of the dialogue by clinging to a hypothesis that precludes, at the outset, the possibility of discovering what in fact we have found to be there. In this way the philosophical burlesque has been elucidated, and Plato's purpose made evident. Using the theory of recollection as the serious model from which this eristic travesty could deviate, Plato has shown how his very own teaching, which is designed to make us dogged workers and committed seekers after truth,[49] can be warped by a philosophical mutant into an eristic 
that can, in turn, obliterate all the benefits made possible by anamnesis .
Socrates' one Little Question (296 D 5-297 B 8)
Socrates is willing to accept his everlasting omniscience, but first he wants the brothers to explain how he can claim to know a proposition of this type: that good men are unjust (
). "Do I know this, or do I not?" he asks Euthydemus. Since the sophist has just proved Socrates to be omniscient, he must embrace the positive horn of the dilemma: "Of course you know it," he replies. But when Socrates asks him to specify what it is that he knows, Euthydemus is in serious trouble. Not with a partial grasp of Socrates' question but with a full understanding of the threat it poses to his argument, he doesn't respond to the point at issue, but by sleight of hand tries to weasel out of the trap by slipping "not" into his reply, an addition that converts the statement into something which can be known: that good men are not unjust 
. But this "eristic addition" is precisely what Euthydemus claimed the Socratic qualifications to be, merely "misdirected noise." For his part, Socrates accepts the addition as if it did express real content (a content, in fact, the truth of which he claims to have known for a long time) and, in conscious imitation of one of Euthydemus' testy remarks, replies: "But that is not what I'm asking; rather where did I learn that good men are unjust?"[50] The tables are now being turned on Euthydemus, and so his enantiomorph comes to the rescue. "Nowhere 
," quips Dionysodorus. Thereupon Socrates immediately shifts to the other side of the dilemma and concludes: "Therefore, I do not know this." Into this eristic line of argument, Socrates
has sneaked the very real probem of how, when, or where we "learn" and so come to "know" a falsehood. When Dionysodorus hears the problem so formulated, he slips into a familiar groove and just responds in accordance with his eristic training; there can be no place or time or way Socrates could have learned "that which exists nowhere."[51] In the present context, however, his apparently correct answer has the real effect of destroying (E9) and (E10); for, as Euthydemus informs his brother, Socrates is now both a knower and a not-knower. There is only one genuine response for an eristic who has thus ruined an argument: Dionysodorus blushes.[52] But not satisfied with this end to the inquiry, Socrates returns to Euthydemus and continues to press the questioning: "What do you mean, Euthydemus, don't you think your brother, who knows all things, speaks correctly?" Since Dionysodorus is omniscient, he can't very well speak falsely. So perhaps he is speaking the truth when he claims that this falsehood exists "nowhere"; at any rate, Socrates is more than willing to take up the problem with Euthydemus. Now it seems that Dionysodorus' defeat is about to bring down Euthydemus too.[53] Socrates has not only divided but is about to conquer the pair. The situation calls for immediate and desperate action. So, seizing upon the trigger word brother , Dionysodorus makes an unconscionable leap to an inescapable question that prefigures the quibbles on family relationships.[54] But when Socrates objects to this gross disruption of his conversation with Euthydemus, Dionysodorus takes refuge in the "rules" of argument and automatically indicts Socrates for "flight 
," an unacceptable failure to perform his role as answerer.[55]
Here any falsehood would have proved adequate for the trick. So why has Socrates submitted this one? Is the statement "Good men are unjust" false simply because the "good" men whom we encounter in our experience are not unjust? No doubt there would be radical opposition to this claim. So maybe Socrates is trying to suggest something more complicated. Perhaps he doesn't want to learn that good men are unjust. Is he instead implying that the terms good and unjust are incompatible predicates? Have they combined in a false statement because their forms, goodness and injustice, do not blend or mix in some way?[56] What, in short, is wrong with saying: "Good men are unjust?" Socrates really wants instruction on this problem, but he is not about to receive it in an eristic context.[57] At this point it suits Plato's purpose to submit a false statement that obviously refers to something
and conveys meaning to its hearers, as is evidenced by the fact that Euthydemus immediately intuits the danger that it presents to his argument. To an eristic, a falsehood certainly can "refer" to something and have "meaning" if it threatens to destroy his argument.[58] But now, rather than bicker again with Dionysodorus over questioning procedures, Socrates moves into the realm of myth in order to gain some distance from the immediacy of his entanglement with these two monsters.
Transitional Interlude: The Hydra and the CRAB (297 B 9-D 2)
Dionysodorus' charge of flight points to a breach in the eristic demand that the answerer respond to the questioner. Failure to answer can in itself be construed as a defeat in eristic controversy, or so the sophist assumes. But not worried about such things, Socrates justifies his retreat by introducing a mythical exemplum that qualifies the action of the dialogue in a particularly apt way. Granting that he is weaker than either of the two eristics, Socrates frankly acknowledges the reasonableness of flight; after all, he is just following the precedent of Heracles, who refused to fight against two. But as he unfolds this well-known tale, we suddenly find ourselves out of eristic pettifoggery and into an elaborate simile that directs our attention to the second labor of Heracles.
In the myth, Eurystheus, king of Argos, commanded Heracles to kill the Hydra because she was causing the disappearance of unsuspecting travelers who drew too near her unfathomable swamp. This female demon, the portentous offspring of the god-hated Typhon and Echidna, had a doglike body, innumerable heads, poisonous blood, and such venomous breath that a single whiff could kill. So, careful not to inhale the fetid odor, Heracles tried to bash in her various heads, only to discover that for every head he bashed, two more would spontaneously spring up. To make matters worse, Hera conjured up support for the Hydra in the form of a Crab, which challenged Heracles by nipping at him with six pairs of jaws. Caught in this dilemma, Heracles hailed his chariot driver and nephew Iolaus to come to his aid. Setting a corner of the marsh on fire, Iolaus heated tree limbs in the blaze and seared the roots of the Hydra's severed heads to check their proliferation and stop the flow of their deadly blood.[59]
In unfolding these details, Socrates characterizes the Hydra as a "she-sophist 
," a label that immediately strikes us as straining the limits of literary allusion.[60] When, moreover, he continues to inform us that the heads of the Hydra are heads of argument 
,[61] and that the Grab, another sophist 
, annoyed Heracles by "arguing 
" against him on the left (see 271 B 7), then we are forced to recognize that Socrates has here passed beyond the realm of mere image and story into a fantastic conceit that compels us to identify the Hydra and the Grab with Euthydemus and his brother.
From the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates has been under the command of his daimon to protect the guileless Kleinias from being devoured by the forces of corruption. But in carrying out this labor, he has been drawn into direct combat with Euthydemus. And just when he finally succeeded in getting a firm hold on this slippery eristician by pressing him on the problem of falsehood, Dionysodorus sidled up to him in order to deflect the argument. Now, when Socrates would like to summon support in this deadly combat, he must pause and reflect: "But if my Iolaus should come, he would do more harm than good." Yet this remark, a reference to Ktesippus who will soon come to the aid of the 
, has not always been seen for what it is.[62] In fact, in the recent failure to see Ktesippus as Socrates' Iolaus, we can trace a pattern of misinterpretation that uncovers a persistent inability to appreciate the role of Ktesippus in his upcoming logomachy. For Socrates' remark foreshadows what in fact "his" Iolaus is going to do, once he has been transfigured into the distorted image of a helper;[63] he will lop off the heads of the eristic dilemmas and then cauterize them with his own firebrands in a boyish attempt to check the logorrhea of this slimy watersnake and spineless crustacean. At any rate, we can safely conclude that Plato has here juxtaposed the incongruous acts of clawing and arguing, of chopping off the heads of a she-demon and refuting the fallacious arguments of paradox-vendors, in order to portray eristic as a violent, sophistic intrusion into speech that erupts from subterranean swamps to pollute the atmosphere of our philosophic discourse.
Part Two (297 D 3-303 A 9)
The first part of this episode has managed to attain some coherence because Euthydemus presided over most of the questioning and the
problems of omniscience and its acquisition remained the central topic. But now every semblance of coherence begins to dissipate, as eristic sinks to a new level of haphazardness. Yet here too, behind the apparent randomness of all the action, the skillful hand of Plato does not fail to preserve the structural pattern of his work. By linking together increasing absurdity with increasing profundity in such a way that as eristic becomes more comical, its perversity becomes more threatening, Plato continues to present for our inspection a pure image of what philosophical method should not be. But in order to bring this final part of the fifth episode into the light of conceptual clarity, we must now push our descent even deeper into this seemingly inextricable maze of argument. And so we extend our apologies to the reader at the outset for the infinite minutiae that we are about to encounter. But the only way to track down and capture our quarry is to engage the enemy more closely with our painstaking line-by-line analysis.
On Family Relationships (D11) (297 D 3-298 B 3)
In the transition from the mythic exemplum to the inescapable question, we again observe that vast gulf between the two techniques of argument. Indulging in that freedom and leisure of the true philosopher to range in all regions of discourse, Socrates has just distanced himself from the immediacy of combat through an imaginary flight of fancy that consciously employed language that did not mean what it said. But his small-minded adversary, intent upon the mere ipsa verba , has clasped in his various jaws four items from Socrates' tale (Iolaus, Heracles, nephew, and "mine," converting it to "yours") and now returns to the attack with that persistent and tyrannical demand to answer:[64]
Now that you have sung this aria, said Dionysodorus, answer. Was Iolaus any more Heracles' nephew than yours?
(297 D 3-5)
Ridiculous on the face of it, this disjunctive question anticipates the obviously correct answer: "Heracles'." Yet Socrates goes on to add to this response, "mine in no way whatsoever," and thereby eliminates the possibility of a tertium quid ;[65] for in this case his family history proves decisive: "My brother Patrocles," Socrates says, "was not his fa-
ther." So to the attack again, Dionysodorus asks: "Is Patrocles yours?"[66] Unable to answer this question without a qualification, Socrates notes that Patrocles is his by the same mother 
, but not by the same father 
;[67] that is, Patrocles is qualifiedly his by virtue of the fact that they share the same mother. Then, thrilled by this response, as if he suddenly had his opponent in the jaws of some necessity, Dionysodorus immediately snaps: "Therefore, he is your brother and is not your brother."[68] But with like quickness, Socrates repeats the sense in which he is not his brother: "Not by the same father"; that is, Patrocles is qualifiedly not his by virtue of the fact that they have different fathers. Then, undisturbed, Socrates continues to unfold more details of his family tree, still responding to the sophist as if he were seeking real information: "Chaeredemus was his [Patrocles'] father, and Sophroniscus mine." Recovering from his temporary setback, Dionysodorus now tries to operate on the two fathers by asking: "Is Chaeredemus different from a father 
?"[69] But Socrates instantly qualifies: "[Different] from my [father]"; that is, Chaeredemus is qualifiedly not a father by virtue of the fact that he is a different father from Sophroniscus. Cut off again, Dionysodorus must retreat.
Thus far we have observed the Crab creep up, now here, now there, trying desperately to secure a position from which to launch his attack. But Socrates has successfully warded off each sally by qualifying his answers. So, forced to alter his strategy, Dionysodorus now places a disjunctive question that may at first appear to contain a non sequitur:
Was Chaeredemus a father, though different from
a father, or are you the same
as a stone?
(298 A 2-3)
To philosophers engaged in real discourse the second limb of this question is not an apparent, but a true non sequitur. But in eristic discourse it performs a genuine function by providing Dionysodorus with the opportunity to balance "different from" with "same as" and eventually to wring an unqualified sense of "is not" out of the equivocal 
. For an obvious reason Socrates doesn't respond to the first limb; he has already admitted that Chaeredemus is both a father and different from his father. So, responding only to the second, he counters the strict sense of sameness, which has him be identical to a
stone, by voicing his fear that under the influence of this sophist he may soon appear to be as dull and stupid as a stone.[70] But still he admits, in all truthfulness, that he is not the same as a stone. Shifting from sameness to difference, Dionysodorus renews the attack: "Then are you different from a stone?" Again, Socrates replies truthfully: "Of course [I'm] different 
." Finally, then, Dionysodorus has snared his victim, for he has at last forced Socrates to use 
in the unqualified sense of absolutely "is not" a stone. From here Plato allows this clown of his own devising to carry out a satiric version of (eristic) epagoge against Socrates himself. First, he supports the conclusion he wants with two parallel cases (298 A 6-9):
Socrates is different from a stone; therefore, he is not (a stone).
Socrates is different from gold; therefore, he is not (gold).
Dionysodorus then submits the third and crucial case:
Chaeredemus is different from a father; therefore, he is not (a father).
In this final instance, 
should not mean "different from" in the unqualified sense of "is not" a father, but simply "another" father, who is different from the father Sophroniscus; after all, the gentlemen are two different fathers. But by putting his final exemplum alongside the other two, Dionysodorus has created the illusion that all three cases are parallel, thus inducing Socrates to respond: "Apparently, he is not a father."[71] Then, incapable of resisting the opportunity to add another reason why Chaeredemus is not a father, Euthydemus remarks: "Yes, obviously, for if Chaeredemus is a father, then the situation is reversed; Sophroniscus, since he is different from a father, is not a father and so you, Socrates, are unfathered (
)."[72] To the rudeness of this reductio ad absurdum —hilarious if it were delivered on the comic stage—Socrates does not respond, thereby creating a vacuum so that Ktesippus, that distorted image of the helper, can now come to the aid of the 
.
The Eristification of Ktesippus (298 B 4-300 D 9)
The six arguments that Ktesippus is about to help orchestrate have inspired almost no scholarly comment beyond perfunctory character-
izations such as "zany" or "absurd." There seems to be a general reluctance to state what authorial intention may be governing this part of the dialogue. But we must do better, if only to provide a ventilation of the problems. Broadly speaking, this section is a magnificent farce on what in sophistical literature came to be called knockdown arguments.[73] Yet within the dialogue as a whole, it is only the third and final phase of a movement that is designed to transform Ktesippus into an eristic warrior. In his first confrontation with the brothers he learned that there was nothing to be gained from directing his attention toward how things really are (283 E-284 E); from Dionysodorus, in particular, he learned that he must uphold the 
against the attacker, that he must always be prepared to contradict his opponent, and that, above all, he must never be reduced to silence (285 D-286 B); and from the dose of the third episode he was able to glean that he could utter all manner of senseless babble and even be soundly refuted, and still not suffer any serious consequences for such behavior (288 A-B). Then, in his last encounter with the pair, he learned that it was pointless to try to force them to meet a criterion of evidence, since the simple act of "saying" makes it so and merely "hearing" what is said suffices for verification (294 C-D). Now, therefore, having been schooled in these eristic preliminaries, Ktesippus can step down into the ring and confidently engage his adversaries in this mock battle of eristic giants. Let the games begin.
A Father Is the Father of All (K12) (298 B 4-D 6)
And then, having taking over the argument
, Ktesippus said: Doesn't your father in turn undergo this same experience? Is he different from
my father?
(298 B 4-5)
In these opening remarks we see the changing of the guard. By depicting Ktesippus taking over the eristic 
from Euthydemus, Plato alerts us that a transition is under way, that the initiate is about to enter upon the higher mysteries of eristic, and that this foreign wisdom will soon find a new avatar in Athens.[74] Now, not as answerer but as questioner, Ktesippus closes upon his adversary.[75] The very wording of his first question unmistakably recalls a mode of argument used earlier in this episode when Socrates turned the eristic 
back upon the brothers themselves in order to determine whether they too would suffer self-refutation.[76] In that context, however, he wanted above all to test the consequences of (E9) for his inquiry into the supreme science. But here Ktesippus wants to test not the 
, but Euthydemus himself, and in his first two questions he reveals his plan of attack. Having learned that an eristic argument can knock itself down even as it knocks down others, Ktesippus is preparing to launch a counterattack by arguing: since Euthydemus' father is different from Ktesippus' father, he is not a father; ergo , Euthydemus is unfathered.[77] In just his initial words, then, the young man shows that he has a remarkable talent for assimilating argumentative techniques and for converting them into weapons for verbal combat.
But immediately recognizing the force of this attack, Euthydemus deflects its threat by denying any difference between their two fathers. Whereupon Ktesippus flips him, in eristic fashion, to the other side of the antinomy and asks whether their two fathers are the same 
, an absurdity that the sophist easily accepts. Then, revealing that he, too, has become dizzy with disjunctive madness, Ktesippus asks: "Is he my father only or [is he the father] of others as well?"[78] But without so much as the slightest twinge of conscience Euthydemus responds "Of others" and then proceeds to justify his answer in the form of a question:
Or do you suppose that the same man who is a father is not a father?
I certainly did think so, replied Ktesippus.
But then do you suppose, he said, that what is gold is not gold or what is man is not man?
Perhaps, Euthydemus, you are not sewing like with like, as the saying goes.
(298 C 2-6)
Clinging to his own version of the law of noncontradiction as if it were some principle of argumentative salvation, Euthydemus is steadfastly maintaining that a father is a father, just as gold is gold and a human being, a human being; for a father cannot be a father of one and not a father of others; there cannot be a partial father anymore than there can be a partial brother or a partial knower; a thing either is what it is or is not: Non datur tertium . But far from overwhelmed by the sheer logical force of this indubitable principle, Ktesippus imme-
diately exposes the fallacy of unlike cases with a reference to the proverb "not sewing like to like," and then continues to attack Euthydemus on his own level.[79] Earlier the sophist had used his law of noncontradiction to argue that a knower of something is a knower of all. Now Ktesippus shows that if Euthydemus wants to remain consistent with that lemma, he must also argue that a father of someone is the father of all, and a mother, the mother of all.[80] And again, without feeling the worm of conscience, Euthydemus agrees.[81] Having thus goaded his opponent into accepting the extreme position, Ktesippus now proceeds to remind him of what absolute parenthood entails: (1) his mother is the mother of sea urchins; (2) he is the brother of bait-fish, puppies, and piglets; and (3) his father is a dog.[82] And yet each time he does so, the sophist reminds his quick-witted disciple that the same conclusion applies to himself as well.[83] Although not, in the strict sense, having attained an eristical refutation in this argument (for how can he reduce Euthydemus to absurdity when the sophist embraces it so willingly?), Ktesippus has at least wrestled his opponent to a draw.
Ktesippus Beats His Father, the Dog (D13) (298 D 7-299 A 5)
Inspired by the weighty conclusion of (K 12), Dionysodorus promptly snatches away the role of questioner and prepares to exact, in another way, the same absurd agreement from his adversary. After fastidiously establishing that Ktesippus possesses a dog, that his dog has a litter of puppies, and that his dog is their father, he spins out an admirable specimen of Dionysodorian logic; in a tight, almost syllogistic way he passes from (1) the dog is yours, to (2) the dog is a father and yours, and finally to (3) the combination of "yours" and "father" in the conclusion: "The dog is your father and so you are the brother of puppies." In fact, the charm of (D13) even cast its spell on Aristotle, who incorporated it into his Sophistici Elenchi (24.179 A 34-35), and subsequently this sophism has passed into logic handbooks as a permanent model by which Aristotelians illustrate what they call the fallacy of accident.[84]
But once Dionysodorus has attained this conclusion, he knows that his adversary has a ready response. Ktesippus can mimic Euthydemus (298 D 3-6) and counterattack with: "So is yours and so are you." To prevent him from reversing the argument in this fashion, Dionyso-
dorus maintains his position as questioner and closes with the eristic version of that one little question 
, which turns out to be the banner one for (D13). He asks: "Do you beat this dog of yours?" Touché! Dionysodorus is now about to convict Ktesippus of father-beating, perhaps the star instance of impiety.[85] Yet, far from being indignant at what this question implies, Ktesippus even advances into the trap knowingly and with a laugh.[86] Undisturbed by the falseness of this conclusion (for he has learned that eristic conclusions are not binding), he just shrugs it off with a jab at Dionysodorus for how many goods their father, the father of puppies, has enjoyed from the wisdom of his wise sons.[87]
On the Need to Possess Many Goods (E14) (299 A 6-C 7)
Taking Ktesippus' concluding remark as if it affirmed the desirability of possessing "many goods 
," Euthydemus now challenges him with a seeming paradox: "But neither does he need many goods, Ktesippus, nor do you." But instead of affirming the need to acquire many goods, as the sophist hopes he will, Ktesippus exhibits that mechanical urge to seize the role of questioner by trying first to entice his opponent into committing himself on the topic. For his part, Euthydemus gladly accepts the paradoxical thesis that no one has need of many goods, but then cleverly moves to regain the guardianship of the 
by attacking Ktesippus as if he were in fact bound to the commonsense thesis:
Tell me, Ktesippus, whether you deem it good for a sick man to drink a drug whenever he needs it, or does it not seem good to you? Or whenever a man goes into war, do you deem it better for him to go with arms rather than without?
Yes I do.
(299 A 9-B 4)
With his "yes" answer, Ktesippus is now committed to two seemingly reasonable positions:
1. It is good for a sick man to drink a drug, whenever he needs it; and
2. It is good for a man to have weapons, whenever he goes into war.
Now, with a single question Euthydemus attempts to reduce the first to absurdity:
Since you have agreed that it is good for a man to drink a drug, whenever he needs it, shouldn't he drink as much as possible (
) of this good, and will it turn out well in this case, if someone crushes and mixes into the drug a wagonload of hellebore?
(299 B 5-8)
From the "many" goods Euthydemus has selected one, the act of drinking a drug whenever a man needs it. Then, expanding "this good" into the unreasonable act of drinking "as much of it as possible," Euthydemus has apparently refuted his adversary by causing his position to appear ludicrous. But Ktesippus at once conjures up a scenario in which the massive consumption of hellebore proves plausible, namely if the drinker is as large as the statue at Delphi. Presto! Euthydemus' unreasonable case becomes reasonable, and the young man successfully lops off the first head of this 
. So the sophist shifts to the other, but this time he shows more caution in the formulation of his attack:
Then, since it is good to have weapons in war, he said, should a soldier have as many spears and shields as possible
, since it is good?
Most definitely, replied Ktesippus. Or don't you think so, Euthydemus, but do you suppose that he should have one shield and one spear?
(299 C 1-5)
Although still trying to swing his opponent to the outermost edge by injecting the unlimited qualifier "as many as possible" into the "good" act of carrying weapons, Euthydemus wisely keeps in his pocket the extreme case by which he hopes to cause the excessively armed soldier to appear ridiculous. In this way he forces his opponent to agree without, at the same time, giving him any place from which to launch a counterattack, or so he thinks. But in a move reminiscent of Socrates' at 295 B 4-5, Ktesippus not only agrees, but retaliates by asking the questioner a question in such a way as to dangle before Euthydemus what is precisely the "reasonable" position that underlies this attack, namely that a soldier has need of only one shield and one spear. Then, when the younger and generally more astute of the soph-
ists takes the bait and answers affirmatively, Ktesippus immediately crushes him by submitting another bizarre counterexample, the monsters Geryon and Briareus, who are famous for their many-handed combat. Presto! Euthydemus' reasonable case becomes unreasonable, and Ktesippus decapitates the other head of the 
.
By creating two contexts, one medical, the other military, in which due measure is far exceeded, Euthydemus has sought to produce the illusion that Ktesippus is foolishly committed to the position of excess while picturing himself as the noble defender of the 
.[88] To this end, he has used the consensus omnium on the desirability of possessing "many goods" as foil for an (eristic) defense of the principle that "nothing in excess" is good for man. But careful not to violate the principle, Ktesippus has outsophisticated the sophist by altering the standard to which it applies. Rejecting "man" as the measure, he has submitted the statue at Delphi, and Geryon and Briareus, standards that have correspondingly altered what is and is not excess.[89] By thus reshaping each context in such a way that it could be a "good thing" to drink a wagonload of hellebore and to carry a vast amount of weapons, Ktesippus has not only rallied support for both positions but even managed to bathe them in "eristic" plausibility. Then, as if it were not enough just to defeat his opponent, he gives proof of his ever-increasing skill in eristic debate by slipping in a parting shot at the pair reminiscent of the one Dionysodorus delivered against him at 283 D 6-8. Mocking Euthydemus and his comrade for failing in this argument to exercise their mastery of hoplite warfare (that realm in which they should have been least likely to err), Ktesippus leaves no doubt with this playful banter that he is well on his way to becoming an affable and cheerful professor of eristic.
On Having Gold "in" Oneself (D15) (299 C 8-E 9)
After Euthydemus proved unable to dodge either of his adversary's counterattacks, he complied with the eristic rule that governs such ignorance of argument and fell silent.[90] Coming to the defense of his brother's topic, Dionysodorus continues to question Ktesippus on the desirability of possessing many goods.[91] With machinelike precision, he induces his opponent to agree: (1) that it is a good thing to have gold; (2) that he ought to have good things always and everywhere 
;[92] and finally (3) that gold is a good thing. Now obviously there is no profit to be gained from drinking too much (good) medi-
cine or bearing too many (good) weapons, but gold may appear to be something different. It can be acquired and stored away seemingly without limit and so provide a defense against the vicissitudes of fortune. In short, one might want to possess as much of it as possible always and everywhere. Taking advantage of this commonsense view of the role of wealth in the happy life, Dionysodorus now appears ready to knock down Ktesippus:
Then shouldn't a man have it always and everywhere, and as much as possible in oneself
? And would he be most happy, if he should have three talents of gold in
his belly, a tallent in
his skull and a stater in
each eye socket?
(299 D 6-E 3)
The Greek 
, rendered into English by "in oneself," is one of those expressions guaranteed to torment translators of this dialogue. For here 
, really carries the sense of "under one's control or power." But it is impossible to use this translation because this first use of 
turns out to be foil for the second, when Dionysodorus uses the same word in a different sense. And unfortunately for the translator, the whole force of this argument requires the use of the same English word to cover both meanings of the Greek. If we translate its first use by "under one's power" and the second by "in" the belly, then we lose the sameness. But if we compromise and translate 
by "in oneself," then the very awkwardness of the English calls attention to the equivocation too soon in the process of thought and so weakens the force of the joke. In the original language, however, the argument works to perfection. For the instant the Greek ear picks up the word "belly," Dionysodorus' strategy becomes clear, the equivocation manifest, and the joke funny. For at that moment we find the sophist trying to reduce his opponent to absurdity by altering gold, the quintessential exterior good, into an interior good by putting it, quite literally, in the belly, in the skull, and in each eye socket. Should we call (D15) an eristical refutation or a joke? We capture Plato's meaning, I think, when we experience the due tension between the two, without surrendering either.[93] Both are revealed in the process of transition, when the single word, working in consort with other elements of the argument, exhibits its power to pass from one of its meanings to another. To all appearances, then, Dionysodorus seems to have pulled off the refutation which just escaped his brother.[94]
But the wily Ktesippus has not been caught unawares.[95] Having lis-
tened intently to both questions in order to be able to recollect, as soon as possible, any answer that will ward off the impending refutation, Ktesippus brings forth the topical exemplum of the Scythians, who are superlatively happy if they should be so fortunate as to gild the heads of their enemy and so have much gold in "their own" skulls. But unlike the brothers, he cannot allow his trick to remain hidden. Acknowledging that he is just toying with "their own" in the same way Dionysodorus did with "yours," Ktesippus exposes the fallacy even as he employs it consciously for his own contentious purpose.[96] Then, continuing to play on the notion of the interior several times over, he adds: the Scythians drink out of their own gilded skulls, they see down inside them, even as they hold their own skull in their hands. In sum, the Scythians have gold everywhere
.[97] Both (E14) and (D15) cast significant light on the development of Ktesippus' character. They indicate that he has made no effort to grasp the truth content of Socrates' protreptic, since he doesn't reject the need to acquire many goods for the happy life (281 D-E); and, in particular, he accepts gold without dispute as a good (288 E). But inasmuch as he has come to learn that all value in this language game is linked to victory, why should he direct his attention toward truth? His confrontation with eristic has taught him that to attain verbal victory he need attend to only those aspects of argument that he can convert into verbal weapons and then apply for the purpose of knocking down the opposition.
On Things Capable of Sight (E16) (300 A 1-A 8)
From Ktesippus' startling finish to (D15), Euthydemus seizes upon two items for his next argument: "the Scythians" and "to see down 
." Expanding the former into a universal subject "the rest of men" and dropping the prefix 
from the latter in order to obtain "see" and "sight" from the bare infinitive 
, Euthydemus returns to the attack: "Do Scythians and the rest of men see 
what is capable of sight 
or what is incapable 
?" Familiar now with the vacuum in which inescapable questions function, we must at once bring to light the ambiguous elements of this disjunction:
1.What is capable of sight can mean:
a. things which can see; or
b. things which can be seen.
2. What is incapable of sight can mean:
c. things which cannot see; or
d. things which cannot be seen.
With his emphatic response "Obviously what is capable of sight (
)," Ktesippus indicates that he is eager to defend the first limb of this dilemma` Consequently, for Euthydemus the game will consist at least in contradicting him on this position and, if possible, establishing a sense in which the other limb can hold. So certain of his eristic challenge, Euthydemus begins the sortie by asking Ktesippus whether he, too, sees what is capable of sight; and, of course, he must agree. Next, submitting their own apparel for the objects of Ktesippus' vision, Euthydemus asks: "Then, do you see our cloaks 
?" And again Ktesippus must answer "yes," for these objects are obviously an instance of (lb), things which can be seen. Thus far, then, Euthydemus has orchestrated an eristic paradigm of near syllogistic perfection.
Satisfied with having established the preliminaries to (E16), the sophist now closes upon his adversary: "Then, are these capable of sight 
?"[98] Here, by explicitly linking together "cloaks" and "capable of sight," Euthydemus fancies that he has at last set a trap from which there is no escape. For his opponent cannot answer "no," because then he could immediately flip him to the second limb of the disjunct and conclude: "Therefore, you see things incapable of sight," since the cloaks of the brothers are an instance of (2c), things which cannot see. So, to avoid this consequence, Ktesippus must answer affirmatively, which he does with "Quite clearly 
." Then Euthydemus promptly comes back with "But what? 
," demanding thereby that Ktesippus tell him "what" their cloaks can see quite clearly.[99] By thus creating a context in which the equivocal "things capable of sight" must assume the active sense of (la), things which can see, Euthydemus imagines that he has now duped his opponent into defending the "obviously" untenable position that their cloaks do possess the active power of sight and so can see. But Ktesippus is far too experienced in this game of controversy to be punched out by this middling trick. Knowing that any response to the sophist's question will decapitate the 
, he answers:
[They see] Nothing
. But perhaps you don't fancy that they are capable of sight; you're so amusing. But I think, Euthy-
demus, though not sleeping, you've just nodded off, and if it is possible for what speaks to say nothing, you're doing that, too.
(300 A 5-8)
Having carefully guarded himself with each of his replies by making expert use of eristic brevity, Ktesippus has lain in ambush, waiting for his opponent to slip up and provide an opening for a counterattack. Now, when Euthydemus finally presents that opportunity, the young rogue gives a quasi-existence to the dreaded "that which is not" by hypostatizing "nothing" as an object of vision for the brothers' cloaks and thus again crushes Euthydemus in argument. But not content with merely conjuring up a scenario that derails the refutation, Ktesippus continues to press the counterattack by mocking Euthy-demus on the ground that he has foolishly come to hold the second limb of the disjunct, that their cloaks are incapable of sight.[100] In fact, the sophist's overall performance in argument has become so amateurish that the young man even feels called upon to explain his elder's failure: (1) though not sleeping, Euthydemus has nodded off; and (2) though speaking, he has said nothing. Here, with his keen-sighted analysis of error, Ktesippus not only pricks the sophist for what cannot exist in this illogical universe of discourse, namely false speech caused by ignorance; he also cracks one of the best jokes of the dialogue.[101] By calling attention to the fact that the eristic master is both sleeping and not-sleeping and speaking and not-speaking at the same time and in the same respect, Ktesippus consciously and deliberately fingers Euthydemus himself for a gross violation of the Euthydemian law of noncontradiction.
Speaking of the Silent and Silence of the Speaking (D17 and E17) (300 B 1-D 2)
Ktesippus finished (E16) by poking fun at Euthydemus for speaking but saying nothing. Reshaping this remark into an antinomy between speaking and silence, Dionysodorus now generates a twofold argument-pair designed by Plato to provide a fitting climax to the eristification of Ktesippus:
What? Am I to understand, said Dionysodorus, that there can be speaking
of what is silent
?
In no way at all, said Ktesippus.
Then can there not even be silence
of what speaks
?
Still less, he said.
(800 B 1-3)
Owing to Dionysodorus' willful exploitation of syntactical ambiguity in both trigger questions, which allows "what is silent" and "what speaks" to denote either the accusative subjects or objects of their respective infinitives, we must reformulate this attack so as to make unambiguously clear what is at issue:
(D17) Speaking of the silent can mean:
a. Is it possible for what is silent
b. Is it possible to speak
(E17) Silence of the speaking can mean:
c. Is it possible for what speaks
d. Is it possible to be silent
When Ktesippus hears Dionysodorus formulate his two questions, he understands both in their usual senses; that is, he takes "what is silent" and "what speaks" for the accusative subjects of their respective infinitives. So with his two denials he firmly rejects the possibility of (a) and (c). Consequently, the strategy of the brothers will be for Dionysodorus to lead the attack and for Euthydemus to follow him with a sortie of his own in such a way as to conjure up arguments that dupe Ktesippus into affirming first (b) and then (d), which are, of course, the same as (a) and (c) in word , but different in meaning .
For his part in the dispute Dionysodorus tries to topple his adversary through the skillful placement of a single question:
But whenever you speak of rocks and wood and iron, aren't you speaking of what is silent
?
Certainly not, [Ktesippus] said; at least not if I'm visiting a blacksmith's shop, where they say iron shouts out and speaks most loudly, whenever someone handles it.
(300 B 3-6)
Here, by picturing a context in which Ktesippus himself performs the act of speaking, and rocks, wood, and iron are the "silent" objects of
his speech, Dionysodorus appears to have flipped his opponent from (a) to (b) and thus delivered a knockdown argument. But Ktesippus is not Kleinias, and we have come a long way since the sophist punched out the boy with just one question (276 C). Countering Dionysodorus' query by conjuring up a context in which iron is not silent, but can be idiomatically said to speak, Ktesippus quite effectively chops off the first head of this 
.[102] So having crushed Dionysodorus on this one, he calls for the defense of the other 
, a challenge that Euthydemus immediately accepts:[103]
Whenever you are silent, said Euthydemus, aren't you silent on all things?
I am.
Surely then you are silent on things which speak (
), if they are to be included among all things.
(300 C 2-4)
Whereas Dionysodorus introduced Ktesippus as the subject who "speaks of what is silent," Euthydemus now transforms him into the subject who is "silent on all things." Then, when Ktesippus answers affirmatively to this move, Euthydemus brings forth "things which speak" as objects that form part of all things. The conclusion, therefore, appears unavoidable: Ktesippus is silent on what speaks. So it seems that Euthydemus has flipped his opponent from (c) to (d) and thus attained the eristic triumph that escaped his brother. But then Ktesippus takes over the role of questioner:
But what about this? said Ktesippus. Aren't all things silent?
Of course not, said Euthydemus.
Well then, my good man, do all things speak?
Yes, certainly, at least those which speak.
But I'm not asking that, he said, but do all things speak or are they silent?
Neither and both, Dionysodorus blurted out.
(300 C 4-D 1)
To complete his trick, Euthydemus had to make "things which speak" a part of all things. Immediately discerning the weakness of this ploy, Ktesippus counterattacks: "Aren't all things silent?" If so, then this fact would necessarily exclude "things which speak" from inclusion among all things. Fully aware that if he answers affirmatively his conclusion will be overturned, Euthydemus tries to preserve his apparent
victory by denying that all things are silent. Accordingly, Ktesippus flips him to the other horn: "Well then, my good man, do all things speak?" If all things speak, then there cannot exist a subject, including Ktesippus himself, who is silent on all things. So in a desperate attempt to escape this trap, Euthydemus is forced to qualify his answer by limiting the "all" to "at least" those things which speak, implying, of course, that there are other things among the "all" which do not speak.[104] Induced, therefore, to give the correct answer in spite of all his efforts to avoid it, Euthydemus has committed the peccatum originale of eristic. He has slipped out of this exclusive antinomy between speaking and silence only to find himself in the middle, in that contradictory realm of "is" and "is not," where some things speak and others don't, where some are silent and some aren't. With his opponent pinned and wriggling, as it were, in the realm between opposites, Ktesippus mercilessly applies the finishing touch. In language that unmistakably recalls one of Euthydemus' remarks (296 A 1-2) and Socrates' parody of it (297 A 1), Ktesippus denounces Euthydemus for a violation of the rules: "But I'm not asking that, he said, but do all things speak or are they silent?" It can be only one or the other, and whichever way Euthydemus answers, he will be refuted.[105]
Blurting out, "Neither and both," Dionysodorus tries to prevent his brother's defeat by responding to all four possibilities at once. But with this answer he, too, violates proper eristic procedure and so goes down to defeat. Ktesippus is exalted in victory. Crushing both Euthydemus and Dionysodorus on both limbs of this argument-pair, he has successfully reversed the defeat of his favorite, Kleinias, who is now called back for a curtain call. But perhaps most disturbing of all in this finale is Ktesippus' eerie outburst of laughter, for it signals that Plato is at last bringing to a close his portrait of the eristic as a young man. And the precision with which he has completed this conversion cannot be more aptly demonstrated than by Ktesippus' use of 
(300 D 5), that very trigger word which first impelled him into the debate (see 283 D 6). Now, with good-natured eristic laughter, he, too, can playfully tell Dionysodorus that he has "perished."[106]
Conclusion
In this sequence of six arguments, we finally observe the full flowering of the eristic pseudo-science. Gone for good is whatever advantage the brothers might have gained from the concealment of their conten-
tious purpose. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus have done everything in their power to trap Ktesippus, and he in turn has done everything he could to avoid being trapped, while delivering as many counter-punches as possible. Adopting the argumentative style of his opponents and concentrating his attention upon their mere words, Ktesippus has taken his rightful position alongside his likes in order to bring this comic logomachy to its fulfillment. In Plato's imaginative portrayal, then, eristic and the ridiculous have become one and the same. Yet, behind this grand satire, we cannot fail to discern our author's deeper seriousness. Almost as if he were conducting a controlled experiment in which he planted a noble seed in a shallow and worn-out soil, Plato placed Ktesippus in an eristic context at the beginning of the third episode. For their part, the brothers wasted no time in seeking to eradicate his love of truth and correspondingly his contempt for falsehood. Then they gradually began to channel his other philosophical qualities, especially the keenness of his memory and the quickness of his wit, toward the illiberality and pettiness of eristic accuracy and away from the truly liberal discipline of philosophy.[107] Meanwhile, on his own Ktesippus began to gather knowledge about eristic, and, through the course of the action itself, he has successfully come to an understanding of it. Especially significant in this regard are those scenes in which he did not participate, but during which he had the opportunity to absorb what the brothers had to teach. In a word, what Ktesippus has learned from the day's proceedings is the ability to collect a large number of argumentative techniques, which he has picked up indiscriminately from Socrates and the brothers, and then to harness them behind a single purpose, the attainment of verbal victory at any cost. Now finally, at the end of his participation in the dialogue, expressions of that learning, like heads from the Hydra, are virtually exploding from his mind. And Plato has left no doubt as to the stages of this conversion: from the third episode to the fifth, Ktesippus has passed from righteous indignation at falsehood to a general acceptance of the rules of the game, and finally to a warm embrace of the very spirit of eristic itself.
In Plato's vision, eristic compasses a broad spectrum of individuals who have attained varying degrees of proficiency along that path. At one end, he has presented the brother-pair, the extreme caricature of the type; at the other, Ktesippus, who in the course of the dialogue itself has left no doubt that he is destined to become a full professor of eristic.[108] Although Socrates advised him to take Menelaus as his
model, he has ended up by imitating the brothers themselves. So to no one's surprise, his "educators" have proven to be the immediate cause of his corruption. They have taught him how to do things with words as quickly and skillfully as Socrates taught Kleinias how to hunt down and capture realities. Here, then, in contrast to the first eristic episode, where we found that comic sense in which the brothers betrayed virtue best of men and most quickly, we have now come upon the tragic sense in which they actually live up to their boast of imparting it. It is as if the eye of Ktesippus' soul has undergone the initial phases of the eristic conversion, which is, by implication, a rejection of the true dualism of Socrates, a turning away from the veritable, vertical antinomies that guide our reorientation, in favor of a turn toward the horizontal antinomies of contentious debaters, who have the cheek to imagine that they alone have attained the truth, that nothing is secure in word or object.
Although Plato realizes that the full analysis of this eristic conversion requires nothing less than a complete pathology of the young philosophical soul, here in the Euthydemus he is satisfied with merely projecting upon an objective canvas a concrete representation of it.[109] We can, I think, safely conclude that Plato has used Ktesippus as a dramatic symbol to illustrate how eristic discourse intoxicated Athenian youth, who then delighted like puppies in pulling about and tearing with words all who approached them.[110] In the bittersweet aristeia of this aggressive young man, already given to hubris before his encounter with eristic, we confront that disturbing, disconcerting element which bestows upon the Euthydemus the seriousness of tragedy. Through the role of Ktesippus, Plato has granted us privileged access into how this foreign wisdom assisted the other manifestations of sophistry in demoralizing the sons of the marathon-fighters, a privilege we might not have had. Later philosophers would have obliterated this pseudo-technique of argument beyond recognition, after they had incorporated it into their own logical treatises, had it not been for the wisdom of Plato, who has preserved it for us by transfiguring it into his negative paradigm.
Eristic in the Treatment of the Forms (D18) (300 E 1-301 C 5)
Although silent, Socrates has spoken. By remaining speechless throughout the exhibition in which Ktesippus demonstrated his po-
tential for becoming the best of the eristics, Socrates not only affirms the philosopher's need for silence in certain contexts (see Phaedrus 276 A); he also voices the loudest possible protest against what has just taken place. But when Ktesippus emphatically announced that Dionysodorus had "perished," Kleinias, pleased by his friend's histrionics, could not restrain his giddy laughter. And so, as one might expect, the return of Kleinias brings with it the return of Socrates, who cannot remain indifferent when this boy's welfare is at stake. Apparently on the verge of launching another protreptic to probe what Kleinias finds so funny about these puzzles, Socrates asks: "Why are you laughing, Kleinias, at what is so serious and beautiful?" Immediately intuiting that to permit the boy to respond to this question would be to forgo a singular opportunity, Dionysodorus commandeers the trigger word beautiful and quickly initiates an argument that turns out to be one of the most fascinating disputes of the dialogue:
What are you saying, Socrates? said Dionysodorus. Have you ever seen anything beautiful
?
Yes I have, Dionysodorus, I said, many
.
Are they different from the beautiful
or the same as the beautiful?
Then in desperate trouble
, I wavered and thought I had rightly earned my suffering for having opened my mouth. Nevertheless I said they are different fromthe beautiful itself, yet some beautyis present witheach of them.
If then, he said, an ox turns up beside you
, are you an ox, and because I'm now present with you, are you Dionysodorus?
Hush, I said.
(300 E 3-301 A 7)
Had we not already reviewed seventeen eristic arguments, we might suppose that when Dionysodorus asks Socrates whether he has ever observed anything beautiful, he is seeking to discover real information about his interlocutor's everyday life. Experience, however, teaches us otherwise. For as soon as Socrates admits to having seen a plurality of such beauties, Dionysodorus instantly releases the inescapable question: "Are they different from the beautiful or the same as the beautiful?" Taking Socrates' response "many" as if it were af-
firming the claim "many things are beautiful," Dionysodorus is now launching an attack designed to undermine the possibility of predicating "beautiful" of these many instances of beauty. His chief stratagem for this trick is the antinomy between sameness and difference.[111] Taking advantage of the fact that Socrates' claim presupposes both sameness and difference between the subject and the predicate, Dionysodorus wants first to anchor Socrates on one side of this dilemma so that he can then engineer a sophistical refutation.
Socrates' immediate reaction to this wily question, a momentary pause to reflect on the overall justice of his desperate predicament, should not lead anyone to conclude that he is unfamiliar with the type of attack now under way. His carefully worded, carefully qualified response indicates that, far from being at a loss, he is all too familiar with the sophist's current strategy. Socrates' aporia arises not from the lack of an answer, but from the tragic situation itself. However much he might want to, he can't just leave, for that would be to abandon Kleinias to the clutches of these two monsters. But to stand his ground means that he must continue to have the fullness of his humanity eclipsed by the presence of this Crab, who wears the mask of a jovial colleague. Socrates' aporia, then, is not verbal but real, and highlights the fact that as the true bearer of the philosophical thyrsus he must on occasion suffer such painful encounters with his antipodes. But since he has been snookered into this trap, he now responds that the many beautifuls are "different from the beautiful itself, yet some beauty is present with each of them."[112] Beauty itself is neither the same as (absolutely identical to) nor different from (absolutely other than) the multiple instances of beautiful things. Neither sameness nor difference, conceived strictly, can account for the true relationship that holds between the many beauties and beauty, because this relationship demands that there be a third thing, a tertium quid , which mediates between the antinomous poles. For this third thing Socrates submits "beauty 
", and suggests that the mediating relationship can be explained by "presence 
".
Since beauty 
is present with its instances, beauty itself is both qualifiedly the same as and qualifiedly different from the many beauties. At the very least, beauty itself and its instances have the same name, or that third thing which Socrates here represents by 
, the visible form that is present with beautiful things and named after
the characteristic beauty. Consequently, since beauty itself and the beautifuls share something, they cannot be absolutely different. Nor is the sameness so great as to swallow up the difference between the two and thereby to produce total identity. Beauty is one , the beautifuls many . In short, Socrates' answer to this eristic disjunction is "neither" and "both 
," the very answer that just caused Dionysodorus to perish at the hands of Ktesippus.[113] At any rate, the true sense of this solution, which Socrates has here offered to the eristic dilemma, cannot begin to emerge until we take into account the manifold senses of sameness and difference, and we need not anticipate that Dionysodorus is going to allow such an inquiry to arise in discourse.
Yet, by mediating between the two possibilities that were offered in the disjunctive question, Socrates has at least blocked the formation of the thesis that the sophist had hoped to foist upon him. So, to counterattack, Dionysodorus interprets that mediation in the worst possible light. By shifting the context of the argument and equivocating on presence, he delivers perhaps the most memorable joke of the dialogue: "If then, he said, an ox turns up beside you, are you an ox, and because I'm now present with you, are you Dionysodorus?"[114] In the mind of the sophist this clever piece of eristic chicanery produces a refutation, for the negative answer that the question demands reduces Socrates' solution to absurdity. Socrates can become neither an ox nor Dionysodorus by simply being present with or beside an adjacent object. Carefully ignoring the characteristic "oxness" or "manhood" as present with Socrates, as he should not have done if he were inclined to recognize the real distinction that Socrates submitted, Dionysodorus has instead deliberately and grossly materialized that mediating relationship so as to conceive "presence" as holding between two physical objects and, thus, as justifying an identity or absolute sameness between two obviously dissimilar entities.[115] Not, however, choosing to defend his solution at this juncture, Socrates simply bids him to refrain from such inauspicious speech, as if the sophist were uttering unholy words before the sacred. As a result, Dionysodorus is left without a cue for his next question, and he would have done well to complain about this fact. Instead, he moves to justify the seeming inappropriateness of his joke by reformulating it in such a way as to demonstrate, once and for all, that his attack is not only appropriate but inescapable. In a considerably more abstract way, he asks:
But just because something
has turned up beside another entity
, he said, how can that entity be the other (
)?
(301 A 8-9)
When we apply this question to the exempla that it is most obviously intended to explain, it translates: how, because an ox has turned up beside Socrates, can Socrates be an ox; or how, because Dionysodorus is now present with Socrates, can Socrates be Dionysodorus? By forming his attack against presence in this way, Dionysodorus imagines that he has finally refuted his opponent. For there obviously cannot be the requisite identity or sameness between Socrates and the ox, or between Socrates and Dionysodorus, for the one (different ) entity to be the other (different entity ) 
.[116] In this way, then, Dionysodorus imagines that he has demolished Socrates' solution to the relationship between beauty itself and the many beautifuls. But when we apply his attack to the original problem regarding the many instances of beauty, we see how much confusion he has allowed to creep into his argument by shifting from plural instances of beauty 
to the singular entity 
and by refusing to acknowledge that third thing 
, which Socrates introduced to mediate between the poles. Had Dionysodorus retained Socrates' tertium quid and the plurality of beautiful things, the question would read: "How, because beauty has turned up beside beautiful things, can beautiful things be beautiful?" To this question Socrates could legitimately respond: "Because beauty itself 
is present with beautiful things 
, beautiful things are beautiful 
"; that is, beauty 
can be predicated of or present with beautiful things 
, for the particular instances have what beauty is (
) and so can have the eponym beautiful, which is named after beauty itself 
. Thus, Socrates could have saved such statements as "Many things are beautiful." But he does not allow any such development of his position to emerge. So why, we should ask ourselves, does Socrates suppress the substantive Idea at precisely this moment and begin, as he says, to imitate eristic wisdom?[117]
Are you troubled
by this? I said. (Finally I was trying my hand at imitating the wisdom of the pair, since I was eager to possess it.)
Of course I am
, he said, how can I and all other men not be troubled by what is not?
What do you mean, Dionysodorus? Isn't the beautiful beautiful, and the ugly ugly
?
Yes, if I think so, he said.
Then do you think so?
Yes, certainly, he said.
Then isn't both the same same and the different different (
)? For surely the different is not (the) same, but I thought even a child couldn't be troubled by this, that the different is different (). But, Dionysodorus, you deliberately passed over this sense, for in other respects, just like craftsmen, for whom it is fitting to ply their trade, both of you seem to me to polish off your dialectic with remarkable beauty.
(301 B 1-C 5)
In a display of good sense, Socrates did not answer Dionysodorus when he asked how the one (different) entity could be the other (different entity) by presence. Instead, he has now put a question to the questioner, seeking first to discover whether Dionysodorus himself is troubled by his own question. And when the sophist affirms that not only his but everyone's aporia can be traced to "what is not (
)," Socrates has his cue; for Dionysodorus has clearly revealed that his own difficulty is again rooted in the problem of "unreality" or "what is not." Since the particular beautiful thing is different from universal beauty or the idea beauty, it is not (beauty itself); and vice versa, since beauty itself, whether the universal or the idea, is different from a beautiful thing, it is not (the particular beauty). And since both are different from or other than each other, they cannot be the same.[118] Accordingly, one can say along with Antisthenes that "Man is man" or "Good is good," but not "Man is good," for the one entity "man" is different from the other entity "good," and vice versa (see Sophist 251 C). So now, having firmly tied Dionysodorus to the thesis that "the one (different) entity cannot be the other (different entity)" or, more literally, that "the different cannot be different," and, what is more, having uncovered the basis of this thesis in the dreaded "that which is not 
," Socrates has clearly established his task. To refute the refuter, he must find a positive sense in which the different can be different 
.
Beginning with a question that preserves the same grammatical form as that of Dionysodorus' thesis, Socrates asks: "Is the beautiful beautiful and the ugly ugly?" At this point several commentators have grasped at straws in order to explain Dionysodorus' curious response: "Yes, if I think so." Here, attempting to fill an imagined lacuna in the text, they have supposed that the sophist might be temporarily torn between his Parmenidean and Protagorean loyalties.[119] But we need not travel so far back into the history of Greek philosophy to find a solution. The problem disappears once we recognize that Socrates has just reshaped his question in terms of that other limb of the inescapable question: "Are the many beautiful things the same as the beautiful 
?" Only now the subject is not the plural "many beautiful things," but the singular "the beautiful." Now obviously the ambiguity in the grammatical structure of Socrates' question "Is the beautiful beautiful" allows for the possibility that the subject, the beautiful 
, refers to the particular beautiful thing 
, the class of beautiful things 
, or the idea itself (
).[120] But the nature of the subject is not the critical issue, for the refutation turns not on the subject, but on the predicate, "is beautiful 
." Dionysodorus, however, hedges at precisely this moment because he cannot determine on which side of his own dilemma Socrates is operating, whether the predicate "is beautiful" is different from or the same as the subject "the beautiful"; in short, whether this claim is predicative or tautological.
But when, under pressure, the sophist finally answers affirmatively, Socrates can spring his trap. He asks Dionysodorus whether he is also committed to the analogous proposition, that the same is same and the different different. Not, however, allowing him to respond, Socrates continues to explain why, in fact, he is committed to affirm this question as well. For obviously, he points out, the different cannot be [the] same, its opposite, any more than, say, the beautiful can be ugly. Only at this moment does it become clear that Socrates has shifted away from a predicative claim about a particular "beautiful thing (
)" or about a particular "one of two things 
" to a simple statement of identity, so simple, in fact, that not even a child could be troubled by it.[121] Dionysodorus treated "difference" or "otherness 
" as a relation holding between two individuals, for example, between a beautiful thing and beauty, between an ox and Socrates. Socrates, on the other hand, demolished that distinction by
altering "the different" in such a way that it became a relation referring to itself without any reference to individuals. He changed "present with" to simply "is" and collapsed the predicative claim "the different is different" into one of identity.[122] So, just as he set out to do, Socrates has established a sense in which "the different is different 
."
To evaluate this argument properly, we must not forget that Socrates is consciously imitating eristic. Dodging Dionysodorus' questions in such a way as to entice him into exposing a thesis, Socrates finally discovers a basis from which to launch an attack. Then, shifting the context so as to allow only a partial grasp of his meaning, Socrates forms a question on which the sophist has to hedge. When urged to respond, he provides Socrates with "enough 
" for a refutation. Then, toying with 
, the key item of Dionysodorus' thesis, Socrates soundly defeats his opponent. Not attempting to direct him toward how things are, but remaining only on the level of words, Socrates pulls the chair out from underneath his adversary by differing over terms. And though accomplishing precisely what he intends to accomplish in this refutation, Socrates does not, in eristic fashion, taunt his fallen victim, but ironically praises him for intentionally passing over this sense in which the different is different. For, in other respects, as Socrates says: "Both of you seem to me to polish off your dialectic with remarkable beauty."
In conclusion, eristic wisdom does indeed prove to be "present with" Socrates when he really desires it. Rather than elaborate upon his mediating response to this real philosophical problem in which the ideas would have come into view, Socrates adopts a defensive strategy. Converting the eristic of the brothers into a weapon of his own for warding off Dionysodorus' attack against presence, Socrates illustrates thereby how a dialectician can preserve eristic by sublating it into a higher technique of argument.[123] And even though eristic cannot be a serious philosophical instrument for establishing truth, it can, as Socrates has just clearly demonstrated, still have value as a means for protecting higher wisdom from becoming the plaything of polemical buffoons. It is of some significance that Plato has chosen the Crab, and not the Hydra, to launch this attack. The older and weaker of the two is the ideal representative of a type with which Plato was all too familiar: the enemies of the forms. These bottom feeders abstract his thought from its context, juggle it about in a historical and philologi-
cal vacuum, bring against it a logical procedure that is foreign to its spirit, and then try to manufacture an illusory victory that they hope to cash out into profit and prestige for themselves.
It is Fitting to Cook the Cook (D19) (301 C 6-D 8)
It has been suggested that in (D 18) the sophists "have come nearest to being philosophers," that here they show "an instinct for a genuine philosophical problem."[124] But just because Plato found the presence of the idea with its phenomenal instance to be worthy of his philosophical attention, we should not conclude that the brothers have a similar instinct. It has been said before, but it bears repeating: to eristics, all philosophical topics are of equal value, all are grist for their logical operation, and whether they grind that operation on the Idea itself or on the unfathered Socrates is a matter of indifference to them. The problem of presence sprang into prominence after the accidental surfacing of the trigger word beautiful , and it now passes away again with just as little fanfare, owing to the fact that Dionysodorus is about to secure another place from which to launch an attack:
Then do you know, he said, what is fitting
for each craftsman? Do you know, first of all, for whomit is fittingto forge?
I do. The smith.
And to work with clay?
The potter.
And to slaughter, to skin, and, after chopping up meat
into small pieces, to boil and to roast it?
The cook.
Then if someone does what is fitting
, he said, won't he act correctly?
Most certainly.
(301 C 6-D 2)
To soften the defeat of (D18), Socrates concluded his refutation by comparing the brothers to expert craftsmen for whom "it is fitting to ply their trade." With his unrivaled ability to bring the inessential into prominence, Dionysodorus discovers the trigger "it is fitting" in that subordinating clause of comparison which Socrates used to help illustrate the essential, and now returns to the attack: "Do you know what
is fitting for each craftsman?" Not waiting for a response, he continues: "Do you know, first of all, for whom it is fitting to forge?" Socrates' answer "the smith," as well as his next two, "the potter" and "the cook," are programmable, requiring that he simply isolate and so name the agents who perform their respective activities. And once he performs his role properly and identifies three straight craftsmen, Dionysodorus leaps to a higher principle that is supposed to govern the particular cases in some way. He asks: "Then if someone does what is fitting, won't he act correctly?" Can we discern in this acrobatic leap another act of eristic folly? Clearly, the sophist has catapulted too far, too soon, without adding a qualification. At the very least, it would seem that the context requires him to ask first: "Then if someone does what is fitting in his own particular craft , won't he act correctly?" Furthermore, Dionysodorus has also left it quite unclear what relation he is trying to establish between "doing the fitting thing" and "acting correctly," whether he intends the two expressions to be synonymous or one to be a step on the ladder to the other. But since both correct action and what is fitting are required of the cook and the potter, no less than of the just and courageous man, Socrates can at least answer affirmatively. Already at this stage of (D19), Plato's purpose is not unclear. By depicting the enumeration of craftsmen and their crafts as premises or springboards to a superordinate generalization, he is obviously constructing a Dionysodorian parody of a type of argument familiar to all students of Socratic 
. And now, to complete this farce, Plato is going to show us that Dionysodorus can descend from his higher principle just as gracelessly as he did when he ascended to it.[125]
Fine, and
isn't the fitting thing for the cook (), as you say, chopping and skinning? Did you agree to this or not?
I agreed, I said, but please forgive me.
Well then, clearly, he said, if someone slaughters and cuts up the cook and then boils and roasts him, he will perform what is fitting. And what is more, if someone hammers the smith, and turns the potter into a pot, he, too, will do what is fitting.
(301 D 2-8)
Assuming that he has cleverly concealed his eristic trick in the minor premise, Dionysodorus now commits what is usually regarded as the fallacy of the argument: "Isn't the fitting thing for the cook , as
you say, chopping and skinning?" At a glance, we can tell that the cook can be either the subject or object of the chopping and skinning, but have we really solved this argument by uncovering this fact? Is this just another simple case of amphiboly, as some have assumed?[126] By limiting the noun cook
with the article 
, Dionysodorus gives every indication that he wants Socrates to take the cook as the accusative subject of the impersonal verb.[127] In fact, he actually wants Socrates to take his words in their normal sense and to supply in thought the meat 
for the chopping and the skinning, so that in his final move he can transform the cook from the subject to the object. In this way Dionysodorus hopes to floor Socrates with a completely unexpected punch. Therefore, it is obvious that this instance of amphiboly in the minor premise becomes one only by hindsight, after the ear hears the sophist unambiguously convert "the cook" into the object of the skinning and chopping.
But to expose Dionysodorus' strategy in full, we need to reexamine his second question: "Do you know for whom
it is fitting to forge?" From our present perspective, we can see that the interrogative 
is wholly ambiguous, and so the word can also be translated: "Do you know what things
it is fitting to forge?" or "Do you know whom
it is fitting to forge?" But earlier, when Dionysodorus asked this question, Socrates heard "for whom" and so answered "smith." He thus responded in the way he understood the question and, we should add, in the way Dionysodorus wanted him to respond. Consequently, the syntactical ambiguity was already present in (D19) as early as 301 C 7, and if this argument were just another simple case of amphiboly, Dionysodorus could have turned his trick immediately after Socrates answered "smith." More generally, the sophistical refutation or, if one prefers, the joke, doesn't consist in a simple amphiboly, but in the incongruity created by subsuming under the concept of fitting action, and so of correct action, the obviously incorrect and unfitting act of cooking the cook and potting the potter. In this ruse the sophist has indeed employed syntactical ambiguity to help establish that incongruity, but of course this trick is not his only trick. In fact, if we continue to focus on Plato's broader purpose, this argument too can be seen aright. By having Dionysodorus introduce three examples from the crafts, leap to and descend from a higher principle, unmistakably signal the transition to the minor premise with 
, in short, by having him ply the eristic method in the manner of a bad
butcher, Plato has again captured the essence of the satirical by having this clown manufacture another joke elenchus against the master of the elenchus himself.[128] To the doer it has been done, and Socrates has become the victim of just retribution, as only eristic can dish it out. Is this argument the witticism of a prankster or the perversion of a scavenger who delights in deconstructing the serious philosophical thought of others? Plato wants us to see that it can be both at the same moment.
Socrates can Sell or Sacrifice His Zeus (D20) (301 E 1-303 A 3)
We have observed the brothers crossing and recrossing now this path, now that, confronting us here with multiple choices and there with deceptive bifurcations. From one end of this seemingly endless maze to the other, we have been able to follow their routine, owing in large measure to the thread which Plato has left behind to guide us: the structural pattern of his work. And as we draw near to the end of our encounter with eristic, that artistic form is stir discernible. Having allowed the eristic disputes to undergo a rapid deterioration from (D11) to (D19), Plato now reveals another dramatic function by bringing upon the stage a long, slowly developing 
that covers almost two pages of Burnet's text. The deliberate pace of (D20) is designed, therefore, to arrest the insane, downward movement to absurdity by building gradually to a crescendo so that (D21), ending as it does so abruptly in only six lines, not only provides the due sense of completion to the fifth episode, but also allows for a smooth yet quick transition to the dialogue's mock epinician ode.[129] But in addition to its proper place in the overall structure, this argument is of course a gem in its own right. From the beginning of the Greek tradition the Olympian gods occupied a favored position at the top of a hierarchical view of the world. Beneath them were a host of minor deities and heroes, then ordinary mortals, and stir further below them the lower animals. Now, in the ultrasophisticated context of eristic, Plato shows how this vertical ordering of reality can be playfully transformed into pabulum for a joke-refutation. After all, what eristic would be worth his salt if he couldn't bring the battering ram of his method against popular lore?
Overwhelmed by the startling conclusion to (D19), Socrates exclaims in mockery: "Will this [wisdom of yours] ever turn up beside me so as to become my own 
?" Whatever else he may mean by
wanting this eristic wisdom to become "his own," Socrates certainly doesn't intend his word 
to be taken in its literal sense; yet this is precisely what Dionysodorus is about to do. Concealing at first his real target, the sophist now manufactures a smooth series of slight equivocations in order to slide to his goal: (1) "Would you recognize it, Socrates, when it became your own 
?" (2) "Do you suppose that you know your own things 
?"[130] (3) "Do you regard those things which you can rule and use as you please to be yours 
?"[131] And finally, concretizing Socrates' "things" with cows and sheep, he asks: (4) "Would you regard those things which you can sell, give away, and sacrifice to any god you please to be yours 
?" Growing impatient with the Crab, Socrates assents to each move.[132] So, continuing the attack, Dionysodorus places two more questions that exact from Socrates the required agreements: (5) "Do you call those creatures which have life 
living beings 
?" And finally, (6) "Do you agree that of living beings only those over which you have the license to do everything I just now mentioned are yours 
?" Here, the most dazzling feature of the sophist's method is perhaps the remarkably skillful way he has used the example of cows and sheep to give force and meaning to this series of questions: Cows and sheep are living beings 
, which have a Fife force 
; they can be sold or sacrificed by their master, as he sees fit; their owner can know and recognize them as his own 
; and they can in fact turn up beside and be present with Socrates. In just six steps Dionysodorus has driven Socrates from wanting wisdom to become "his own" to having license to sacrifice "his own things" to any god he pleases. Now, pleased with himself for having snared his victim, Dionysodorus halts momentarily and then springs his trap:
Pausing quite ironically
as if he were pondering something significant, he said: Tell me, Socrates, do you have an ancestral Zeus?
Because I suspected that the argument would arrive where in fact it ended, I began straightway to twist about desperately, trying to escape, as if I had already been caught in a net. But I said: No, Dionysodorus, I do not.
(302 B 3-8)
We have reviewed numerous ways in which the brothers present a distorted image of the philosopher, and now we come upon another that calls for attention. Just imagine, the "ironical" eristic! Why not?
Everything else in this world has been turned 
. Dionysodorus is now turning Socratic irony, a posture well suited for undercutting the bombast of sophists, into a mannerism by which he mocks Socrates.[133] Again, to the doer it has been done, and the result is another brilliant tour de force by which Plato contrasts the phantasm with the original. Whether this clown smiles, or blushes, or ponders ironically, we see, with unimpeded clarity, the outward characteristics of the imitator and can infer the inward emptiness of the charlatan. Clear, too, is the sophist's strategy; but how is Socrates to escape from this 
, once he has been lured into the net?[134] Foreseeing with the mere mention of "ancestral Zeus" that if he answers affirmatively, he gives enough for a refutation, Socrates tries desperately to wriggle out of the trap with a denial.[135] Dionysodorus then counters his recalcitrance by foisting upon him the extreme thesis. If Socrates doesn't have Zeus 
, then he can't very well have the race of Olympians 
fathered by Zeus. So the sophist immediately concludes that Socrates is an utter wretch and not even an Athenian, since he is without ancestral gods, shrines, or anything else beautiful and good. Now to a casual observer this conclusion might appear to be another cruel and shameless hoax; but in an eristic context it is simply an excellent move by which Dionysodorus attains his eristic purpose of forcing Socrates to clarify his stance and eventually to reveal a sense in which Zeus, Apollo, and Athena are "his." And that's enough 
for the sophist. With that pettifoggery so characteristic of the eristician, Dionysodorus now forces Socrates to agree: (1) that these gods are his; (2) that since they have a life principle, they are living beings; and finally (3) that since they are "his" and "living beings," he can sell or even sacrifice his Zeus and the rest of his gods the same way he can his other possessions.
Dionysodorus has keenly observed that although we have never seen and cannot adequately conceive of God, in our representations we fashion him as a living being 
that consists of a fusion of soul 
and body 
(see Phaedrus 246 C-D). So, taking advantage of this partial sense in which our household gods are like our household animals, Dionysodorus has manufactured a funny, yet irreverent refutation. As we should expect, this argument, too, can be easily reversed. If the gods of the higher order can be equated with the livestock of the lower and then sold in the open market or even butchered as their owner sees fit, then why not the other way around? Through a different act of jugglery, Dionysodorus could demon-
strate, for example, that Socrates should honor and worship his ox the same way he does his Zeus. In this topsy-turvy world of eristic, the only standard that remains fixed is that all-too-sophistic animal, man, who has placed himself at the center of discourse.[136]
Is Heracles Puppax? (D21) (303 A 4-9)
Once again Ktesippus, that distorted image of the helper, hastens to defend Socrates, who now lies speechless, almost as if he were beaten unconscious by the sheer force of this eristic 
.[137] Prefacing his reentry into the debate with the interjection "Puppax" and the vocative "Heracles," Ktesippus appears poised and ready to commence the offensive. But like a machine timed to react when the sensor is tripped, Dionysodorus plugs both items into the disjunctive formula and comes out with: "Is Heracles Puppax or Puppax Heracles?" How is Ktesippus to choose between these alternatives? At least his own utterance had a discernible meaning, even if it only expressed something like a confluence of surprise, pleasure, and mock admiration. But now Dionysodorus has managed to expunge even that thread of meaning. The result is another instance of sophistic jabberwocky. But one thing is certain: whichever alternative Ktesippus chooses to defend, Dionysodorus will try to contradict him, even as he attempts to flip him to the other limb of the disjunct.
In this ludicrous finale two points are worth stressing. By demonstrating, in such a brief exchange, so many features that we have come to identify with eristic—the quick attack, the smooth removal of trigger words from their context, the automatic release of the inescapable question, the sheer emptiness and stupefying effect of the question itself—Plato wants to suggest that Euthydemus and his brother plan a long stay in Athens during which they will continue to star in multiple performances of this charade.[138] Moreover, although eristic discourse is an intrusion into speech that is without beginning or end, Plato must nevertheless bring it to an end in order to complete his dialogue. Therefore, Ktesippus follows Socrates' withdrawal and stands aside.[139]
Conclusion
To concentrate our analysis upon the Euthydemus itself, we have mostly treated eristic in isolation from the historical process of which it played a part. So, to close our study of the fifth and final episode, we
can perhaps profit by glancing briefly at a passage from Aristotle's Sophistici Elenchi of more than casual interest to historians of these matters:
The training of those who have earned a salary from eristic argumentation was something similar to that which emanated from Gorgias' school; for both camps handed over arguments for thorough memorization, the one rhetorical speeches, the other conversations in the form of question and answer, in which both sides imagined that they had for the most part included their rivals' contributions. Accordingly, the instruction of those who were studying with them was swift, but unscientific; for their instructors were assuming that they could educate by imparting the goods of their craft, without having to trouble with science.
(34.183 B 36-184 A 4)
Comparing the training of paid professors of eristic to that of Gorgias, Aristotle criticizes them for being under the delusion that they could impart a science of contentious argument by simply handing over representative samples of it to their students for memorization; such training was swift, as he notes, but unsystematic. That systematic basis for all argument he himself sought to establish in his own logical treatises, and he has combed the Euthydemus in particular for evidence for the final part of that logic, the systematic analysis of fallacy; and the Sophistici Elenchi is itself clear evidence that Aristotle, too, tried to prevent this pseudo-science of argument from insinuating itself under the mantle of the genuine article. In fact, our tradition generally and modern scholars in particular have consistently preferred his treatment of eristic to Plato's, owing, no doubt, to a prejudice in favor of his more systematic, more logically rigorous approach. But Aristotle's achievement can no longer overshadow Plato's contribution to these matters, for the overall purpose and general features of his Euthydemus are no longer unclear.
Having surveyed the field of contentious debate, Plato in part discovered and in part invented twenty-one representative samples of eristic argument. Fully aware of the tediousness of these cavils, he sought to relieve it by arranging them in a most intricate, tripartite structure that, in its sum, forms a comprehensive unity. For the possessors and users of this method he again surveyed the field and came up with the brother-pair to personify this two-edged sword of para-
dox. Slanting his portrayal of both the activity itself and its two-headed representative into an image of the ridiculous, Plato then incorporated that image within the ethical framework of the protreptic. Once having contained eristic in this fashion, he had Socrates recall from memory and deliver its wisdom in a definite order.
In the first eristic episode Plato showed what results the brothers could achieve after they had acquired a thorough grasp of their routine and encountered no resistance from Kleinias, who could not spoil their sport by injecting disruptive qualifications into their arguments. In the second display-piece he had the brothers parade before us, with varying degrees of success, six model disputes that revealed a tendency to come somewhat unraveled, owing partly to pressure from Ktesippus and Socrates and partly to their own incompetence and the inherent weakness of the method itself. Finally, in the third and longest exhibition, Plato treated us first to a grandiose satire on stand-up controversy by having Euthydemus ply the eristic method against Socrates himself in order to demonstrate that he is, was, and always will be omniscient. Then, transfiguring the brothers into the Hydra and the Crab, Plato permitted these two monsters to sweep Ktesippus into their vortex of words and complete his eristification. In the four concluding arguments he had the Crab regain the role of questioner and sidle his way to the finish.
In the course of unfolding this apotreptic discourse, Plato allowed the arrangement of the verbal disputes to become so haphazard and the philosophical content so absurd that in the end he revealed these fighters-in-words for what they are, the two-headed philosopher-comedian. At the same time he pursued this goal, so expertly causing the routine of the brothers to disintegrate and finally to turn disturbingly comic, Plato also worked out his hidden philosophical purpose by gradually unmasking this illogical logic for the very antithesis of his own method. That he was able to conceive of and to execute dramatically this model of otherness so contrary to his own logic should not be surprising; Plato gave no little thought to how not to proceed in philosophy. But what is surprising (and what must be credited to his inimitable powers of invention) is that all those grotesqueries which he has used to characterize the abuse of, and ultimately the antithesis to, his own dialectic—the misuse of verbal triggers, the devious employment of ambiguous words and syntax, incomprehensible talk, non sequiturs and sophisms, even radically abrupt transitions, insults and
slanders of every description, eristical dodges, puns—are precisely the signs that point to the discourse of actors on the comic stage, except that our Tweedledum and Tweedledee are not practicing with a chorus of Aristophanes' but have the effrontery to strut about Athens alleging to be professors of conduct. The incongruity thus created by this masterly interpenetration of the serious and playful has produced a disconcerting yet extraordinary tragicomedy.
As for eristic itself, it is a one-dimensional procedure that treats all soul as the same, a point that Plato makes with some emphasis by displaying its use against three very different souls, Kleinias, Ktesippus, and Socrates. It posits bogus questions and expects other minds to recall predetermined answers, and we do not find in this method any attempt to redirect other minds toward the real or to assist them in the discovery of truth. It is a procedure, moreover, that picks over dry and stale topics that have exhibited the power to generate verbal controversy and then demonstrates no concern for consistent or coherent patterns of reasoning upon them, except insofar as each particular topic demands it. In fact, eristic assumes at the outset that a stable correspondence between word and object is impossible. It does help to promote eristic activity, however, if its opponent works on the unsophisticated assumption that 
has the power to articulate objective reality. What is more, since eristic is an agonistic, contentious, and adversarial form of argument in every sense, it cannot attain any meaningful agreement with its opposition. One is either on the side of eristic or against it, a member of the guild or an opponent: non datur tertium . So without subjective agreement or objective correspondence, eristic is left with a single criterion of success, victory over the opposition, and the longer it can sustain this victory the better. But even its victory is illusory because within the protreptic context this standard for measuring success becomes the cause of its undoing. Every time eristic succeeds in defeating the opposition, it loses in the serious game of exhorting others to pursue wisdom and to avoid ignorance. In effect, Plato has turned the tables on eristic by confining it in such a way that every illusory victory it attains is at the same time a real protreptic defeat.
As for eristics themselves, it is not right to call them "Eleatics," for they are not committed to "a metaphysics and a logic that is incompatible with change."[140] They are not committed to anything but themselves. If they produce Eleatic arguments, that is the result of
historical accident, not philosophical commitment. They are not "eclectics" either, for they show no urge to paste together a workable philosophy from a judicious culling of opinions from the many and the wise. In terms of Plato's imagery, eristics are scavengers, who from time to time can be seen amid the mainstream of serious philosophical activity, if perchance some high tide impels them up and out of their familiar swamps where they normally delight in their dirty work. But to project the problem of eristic into a modern context, we can take a clue from Paul Shorey and others and conclude that eristics are misologists or logical skeptics in the special sense that they are haters of all 
that strive to articulate objective truth.[141] Lovers of error, not wisdom, these skeptical controversialists are on a mission to destroy whatever they regard as weaknesses in the arguments of others. But in their ignorance of how to question and how to answer, they thrust to one side any consideration of the intention that informs the thought of others and are content with exercising a logical procedure that they hope will refute or at least derail any account that their opponents may offer. In this, their own proper work, eristics are aided by the fact that, on the surface at least, nothing serious appears to depend upon the outcome of their playful controversy, a fact that helps to defuse the hostility of their victims. A rowdy host of camp followers can also assist their cause. With their endless logomachies and badinage, eristics then and now produce a certain likeness to the philosopher, but in reality they are entirely different.
In Plato's vision, eristic and the brother-pair symbolize that measure of what philosophy and philosophers are in danger of becoming on those unfortunate occasions when they are at their worst. To Plato, the problem of eristic is not historical, nor is his treatment of it historical. In the Euthydemus he has treated the decline of philosophy itself, and his dialogue can be instructive any time, any place philosophy begins to resemble its opposite.