![]() The conversation between Socrates and Euthydemus makes us wonder: Must political action always proceed on an incomplete sense of justice? Is the hallmark of a philosophic nature the extent to which one accepts such partial information? Is education-the replacement of partial with correct understanding-necessarily unending, and what are the consequences for political action? The treatment of Euthydemus in the Memorabilia is a prominent example of how Xenophon elicits essential philosophic themes from surprising, or counterintuitive sources. Still, Xenophon implies that the starting point for all Socratic education is this political ambition-the desire to know for the sake of political action. Euthydemus’ complacency helps to stimulate thought in the less complacent. It is doubtful that better students, and better readers, would be as easily satisfied. The easy-going Euthydemus accepts that he knows enough about justice to engage in political action. And he further believes that one cannot be good at political things without being just. Euthydemus, we see, wishes to learn things in order to engage in politics. But Xenophon uses this conversation, in the last book of the Memorabilia, to point to a kind of common denominator shared by all students, at least at the beginning of their education. ![]() Xenophon’s only explicit portrayal of Socratic education occurs not in a dialogue between Socrates and a promising young student, but between Socrates and the slow-witted, easy-going Euthydemus. ![]() While the Platonic Socrates usually (though not always) converses with the best and the brightest, Xenophon’s Socrates almost always talks with ordinary folk. Xenophon wrote four works about Socrates: the Memorabilia, the Oeconomicus, the Symposium, and the Apology of Socrates. What immediately distinguishes these Socratic writings from those of Plato is the more plebian character of their interlocutors. Whether a wayward Socratic or not, for us Xenophon provides a great example of how to be philosophic while “out in the world.” Socratic Writings With supreme artfulness and taste, Xenophon’s writings reveal how philosophic questions emerge directly from life. Whatever the case may be, philosophic and Socratic themes are never absent from Xenophon’s writings. Does Xenophon offer us an example of the brilliant but wayward student, someone who, because of some character flaw, was unable himself to pursue the kind of life he nonetheless divined to be best? Or perhaps Xenophon, like Plato, concluded that the way of Socrates, however much an example of the best kind of life, could not and perhaps should not be perfectly imitated-and that there might be a variety of ways to be “Socratic.” The generals and common soldiers with whom Xenophon had to deal were not philosophic. How, then, was Xenophon a follower of Socrates? Socrates enjoyed leisurely discussions with philosophic or potentially philosophic men. Apparently against the advice of Socrates, Xenophon became a mercenary, joining a Persian army led by Cyrus the Younger, an experience he would later memorialize in the Anabasis. Yet, unlike Plato, who stayed in Athens and founded a philosophical academy, Xenophon chose a more active life, political and military. ![]() It is primarily from the writings of Xenophon and Plato that we learn of the speeches and deeds of Socrates. And as he did not know, he said, ‘Follow me, then, and learn.’ And from this time forth, Xenophon became a follower of Socrates.”īorn around 430 BCE and dying around 354 BCE, Xenophon did indeed become a “follower” of Socrates. And when he had answered him, he asked him again where men were made good and virtuous. “They say that Socrates met him in a narrow lane, and put his stick across it and prevented him from passing by, asking him where all kinds of necessary things were sold. In his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius reports how Xenophon came to be associated with Socrates.
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