Socratic Irony and Aristotle's "Eiron": Some Puzzles

Abstract

IN NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 4.7 Aristotle discusses, as part of his analysis of specific virtues as means between extremes, the truthful man and his opposites, the alazon and the eiron. Though he rarely offers illustrations of his moral types, he explicitly names Socrates in connection with eironeia; and further, he points not to a Socratic doctrine (cf. 3.8, 6.13, 7.2) but to Socrates' actions. The eirones, he says, disown especially qualities which are highly esteemed, otov KXLi ( KpT1 at the same time, little detailed attention has been paid to the way in which the argument of E.N. 4.7 proceeds. I hope to show that in several respects Aristotle's analysis and evaluation of eironeia are puzzling, as is his invocation of Socrates; and to argue that the best explanation for the chapter's revalued eironeia lies in Aristotle's attitude to Socrates, who is the controlling model for the analysis rather than an innocuous example. We may begin by setting out our expectations about Aristotle's treatment of truthfulness and its opposites. Given his doctrine of the mean, we find two vices at the opposite poles of truthfulness: alazoneia, playing up the truth, and eironeia, playing it down. This scheme is set out clearly for the reader near the end of E.N. 2 (1108a19-22; cf. the chart in E.E. 2.3, and M.M. 1.32), then taken up in 4.7. In more than one place Aristotle attaches to both vices the notion of pretense (irpoa?roilarLs, E.N. 2.7, 1108a21; 4.7, 1127a20; E.E. 2.3, 1221a25). The pretense takes opposite forms, of course: