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.