The Socratic elenchus: method is all

Abstract

In Plato's earlier dialogues – in all of them except the Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus – Socrates' inquiries display a pattern of investigation whose rationale he does not investigate. They are constrained by rules he does not undertake to justify. In marked contrast to “Socrates” speaking for Plato in the middle dialogues, who refers repeatedly to the “method” (μέθoδoς) he follows (either in general or for the special purpose of some particular investigation), the “Socrates” who speaks for Socrates in the earlier dialogues never uses this word and never discusses his method of investigation. He never troubles to say why his way of searching is the way to discover truth or even what this way of searching is. He has no name for it. λeγχoς and the parent verb λέ Χ (“to refute,” “to examine critically,” “to censure”), he uses to describe, not to baptize, what he does. Only in modern times has elenchus become a proper name. The “What is the F?” question which Socrates pursues elenctically about other things he never poses about the elenchus, leaving us only his practice to guide us when we try to answer it for ourselves. Lacking his definition of it, ours can only be a hypothesis – a guess. And we may guess wrong. I guessed wrong thirty-five years ago in the account of the elenchus I put into my Introduction to Plato's Protagoras and so have others before or since.