The Socratic Dialogue and “Knowledge in the Making” in “Paradise Regained”

Abstract

ABSTRACT An examination of the dialogue form in Paradise Regained illuminates Milton's method of educating the reader by involving him as an indirect participant in a Platonic-Socratic dialectic between Christ and Satan. Plato's dialogues use (a) an oblique method of suggesting enigmatic answers that arise from surface contradictions; (b) riddles and questions that make the reader unable to distill a set doctrine from them; (c) myth, allegory, and fable to move toward poetic truths. The overall pattern of the dialogues is from darkness to light. In Paradise Regained, the debate between Christ and Satan follows the Platonic pattern. As Christ exposes Satan's definitions, the silent participant in the dialogue (the reader) gradually progresses from ignorance to awareness. That Paradise Regained is in dialogue form helps particularly to elucidate Christ's position in refusing Satan's offering of Athenian wisdom. Christ's sharp rebuff of the temptation is a barbed method of cautioning the reader against yearning for codified wisdom, an anathema to the dialectic process itself. The dialectic encourages us to distinguish between knowledge simply taken over and knowledge which is achieved through “much arguing” and “many opinions.” Involvement in the dialectic process helps us to separate falsity from truth in order to reach the ultimate joy of the good life: a glimpse of paradise regained for mankind.