Beversluis Socratic Definition

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American Philosophical Quarterly Volume ii, Number 4, October 1974

VIII. SOGRATIC DEFINITION JOHN BEVERSLUIS

"VT O reader of Plato's early dialogues can fail to be -*-^ struck by the centrality and the philosophical importance ascribed to definition1. Socrates is con?

stantly asking the What-is-X? question, constantly looking for that character or complex of relations common to a number of instances whose presence accounts for their being, and for our calling them,

X's. Wittgenstein has called this tendency "the

craving for generality" and holds that its correla? tive, "the contemptuous attitude towards the par? ticular case,"

has shackled philosophical investigation ; for it has not

only led to no results, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone

could have helped him to understand the usage of the

general term. When Socrates asks the question, "what

is knowledge?" he does not even regard it as a pre?

liminary answer to enumerate cases of knowledge.2

Plainly, there is one sense in which such a characterization of the Socratic attitude toward the particular case cannot be faulted. For Socrates

typically does reject out of hand every attempt to answer the What-is-X? question in terms of

examples, thereby manifesting his "contempt" for them. But there is another, and no less typical, strategy which he is wont to employ in the early dialogues; and the frequency of its occurrence renders Wittgenstein's characterization significantly

incomplete. That strategy consists in an appeal to

particular cases as counterexamples to a proffered definition, and whose function, as such, is to provide an apparently conclusive demonstration of the

necessity for amending or abandoning it. Such an

appeal betrays none of the contempt of which Wittgenstein speaks; on the contrary, insofar as it

implies that a compatibility with "what we would

say" is a necessary condition to be satisfied by any adequate definition, it appears to confer a nor?

mative status upon the particular case.

This extraordinary ambivalence on the part of Socrates cries out for clarification. Accordingly, in

this paper I wish to examine the traditional in? terpretation of the Socratic Theory of Definition. I

wish, on the one hand, to render epistemologically intelligible the sense in which Socrates does, in fact, dismiss the particular case, and thereby ex?

hibit the philosophical sources of the "craving for generality" peculiar to his methodology. On the other hand, I wish to show that his appeal to par? ticular cases is radically inconsistent with his simultaneous dismissal of them as irrelevant for answering the What-is-Jf? question. On the hy? pothesis that the traditional interpretation is a reliable explication of the texts, I shall argue that the Socratic Theory of Definition does not admit of a coherent formulation.

I. The What-is-X? Question: Logic and Metaphysics

Euthyphro provides a convenient point of de? parture. Like many interlocuters encountered by Socrates in the early dialogues, Euthyphro initially responds to the What-is-X? question by producing

what he takes to be an example of an X. Having been asked what Piety is, he confidently declares: "Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prose? cuting any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime . . ." (5e). As everyone

knows, Socrates is never pleased with such a reply. But what exactly is it that displeases him ?

It needs to be noted that Socrates' displeasure does not arise from any disagreement or doubt on his part as to whether the alleged example of X is, in fact, an example of it. Indeed, he typically con? cedes this point at once. Rather his displeasure arises from his dissatisfaction with the kind of answer which his question has elicited: instead of having addressed himself to the discovery of the eidos of Piety, Euthyphro has simply made ostensive reference to a particular action which he believes is pious. That is, he has confused definition with

331

1 This essay is a revised version of a paper read to the Tennessee Philosophical Association Nov. n, 1972. I wish to ac?

knowledge my indebtedness to my commentator, Martha Osborne of the University of Tennessee, and to C. Grant Luckhardl of Georgia State University and Anthony Nemetz of the University of Georgia. 2 The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford, 1958), pp. 19-20.



Sebastian Gertz

332 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

enumeration, thereby evidencing his misunder?

standing of Socrates' question. Two radically different accounts of how this

question is to be elucidated co-exist uneasily in the literature. Some commentators3 have supposed that, in asking the What-is-Z? question, Socrates is interested in discovering the meaning of a word.

According to their view, the request for an eidos need not be taken as carrying with it any ontological commitment; for the question: What is Piety? is reducible without remainder to: What is the

meaning of "piety" ? Other commentators4 bristle at this analysis. On

their view, the What-is-Z? question is to be con? strued neither as primarily nor even as importantly concerned with the meaning of a mere word. For it is a request for a real definition, a request, that is, for the eidos of the thing (pragma) Piety. According? ly, the ontological character of the question is to be

regarded as central and irreducible. It is sufficient for my purposes in this paper

simply to have mentioned these two quite dissimilar accounts. For I have thereby rendered harmless in advance one particular objection which might otherwise possess a certain cogency, namely, that

the What-is-Z? question is not analyzable solely in terms of a request for a definition; an objection

which some philosophers would want, and surely ought, to put forth against any thesis which depends upon so controversial an analysis. My thesis, how?

ever, is such that it does not matter which of these existing accounts one accepts. For it applies to both

with equal force. However the What-is-Z? question is elucidated, whether as a logical claim about

meaning or as a metaphysical claim about the eid?, there remains a more fundamental issue involving the relation of epistemological priority between a

knowledge of an eidos on the one hand and an

ability to recognize its instances on the other.

Despite their disagreement concerning the proper elucidation of the What-is-X? question, the two

positions do not differ concerning this epistemo? logical issue; their respective accounts are, in fact, identical. Hence I shall argue that, owing to this common epistemological thesis, the Socratic Theory

of Definition is incoherent on either account of the What-is-X? question.5

II. The Epistemological Priority Thesis

Given his wish to discover the X-ness common to those things which are X, there is something logically peculiar about Socrates' characteristic

rejection of particular examples as irrelevant for this purpose. For if it is the common character that he wishes to discover, how can he systematically disallow a concern with those very particulars to which it is common ? Far from being irrelevant, is not such a prior gathering of instances the necessary

starting-point of the inquiry ? The awkward fact is, however, that this pre?

sumably self-evident claim does not appear to have

impressed Socrates himself as being self-evident at all ; for his usual response to the production of an

example on the part of some interlocuter is that of a rebuke followed by a restatement, and often

painstaking elaboration, of his original question. But without recourse to particular cases and the

ordinary meanings of words, how is the inquiry even to begin ? More pointedly, what sense are we to attach to a request for that which all X's have in common which includes as one of its procedural stipulations that, in answering it, we are not to take into account any X's ?

The Socratic rejection of examples is, therefore, problematic. It can, however, be rendered more

intelligible once it is grasped that what is at issue is not simply the distinguishing of definitions from

examples, but the relation of epistemological priority which, according to the traditional in?

terpretation, Socrates believes to hold between them. At Euthyphro 6d-e he declares :

Tell me the nature of the idea of Piety and then (hina) I shall have a standard (paradeigma) to which I may look and by which I may measure actions . . . Then I

shall be able to say that such-and-such ... is pious and

that such-and-such ... is not.

And at Lysis 223b he muses:

O Menexenus and Lysis, how ridiculous that you two

boys and I, an old boy, who would be one of you, should

3 See, for example, R. G. Cross, "Logos and Forms in Plato," in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, ed. by R. E. ?Allen (London,

1965)* PP- 27-29 4 See R. S. Bluck, "Logos and Forms in Plato: A Reply to Professor Gross," in Allen, op. cit., pp. 34 ff; Sir David Ross, Plato's

Theory of Ideas (Oxford, 1951), p. 16; I. G. Kidd, "Plato," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards (New York, 1967), Vol. VII, p. 484.

5 ?Although it is misleading to speak of the What-is-Z? question as a request for a definition, I shall continue for two reasons to

use that term: (i) the precedent (however misleading) for doing so provided by the literature; (ii) the difficulty of hitting upon a linguistic alternative which is not equally misleading, even more obscure, and stylistically tedious as well (for example, the

"apprehension" of. . .).



socratic definition 333

imagine ourselves to be friends ... as we have not yet been able to discover what a friend is.

Concerning the relation of epistemological priority in question, W. K. C. Guthrie writes :

Socrates said that you cannot discuss moral questions like how to act justly, or aesthetic questions like

whether a thing is beautiful, unless you have previously decided what you mean by the concepts "justice" and

"beauty" . . . Until these are fixed, so that we have a

standard in our minds to which the individual actions and objects can be referred, we shall not know what

we are talking about . . .6

R. E. Allen has recently championed the same thesis :

It should be noted that neither in the early dialogues nor in the middle dialogues is our knowledge of Forms derived from recognition of similarities; for it is only through the use of the Form as a standard that we may

be assured that similarity in fact obtains . . . Without

knowledge of [the eid?], the moral life becomes guess? work, and guess-work marred by mistake.7

That is, a concern with examples is not tolerated by Socrates for the following reason. For him to allow that the investigation into what X is may begin inductively by means of a scrutiny of known

examples of X would be tantamount to his holding that we have already correctly identified them as

examples. The view of epistemological priority ascribed to him, however, is precisely the opposite. That is, the ability correctly to identify something as an instance itself presupposes that we know its eidos.

If this interpretation is correct, it follows that Socrates must be taken as denying the apparent truism of which G. E. Moore spoke when he

asserted that we may

know quite well, in one sense, what a word means, while at the same time, in another sense, we may not know what it means . . . [owing to the fact that] we are quite unable to define it.8

For the contradictory of Moore's claim consists

precisely in the assertion that it is not the case that

someone might be competent to recognize instances

of X (and know, in that sense, what it means) while lacking a knowledge of its definition (and not know, in that sense, what it means).

It is no part of my purpose to determine which of these views is the more philosophically plausible.

My purpose is simply, given the traditional interpre? tation, to call attention to the fact of disagreement and to explore some of its implications for the Socratic Theory of Definition.

III. The Philosophically Offensive Corollary

If the Socrates of the early dialogues does hold that the eidi, present and perceived, are themselves the sole standards by reference to which their in? stances can be recognized, it should hardly come as a surprise to find him disallowing appeals to in? stances as a preliminary to the investigation into

what X is. For it would, of course, be self-contra?

dictory were he to countenance such an appeal. Given this account of epistemological priority, however, Allen's conclusion (that in the absence of a knowledge of the eid?, the moral life becomes

"guess-work marred by mistake") is too weak. For

lacking such knowledge, one would be wholly ignorant not only of what X is, but of what things are X as well. And if, as the early dialogues make clear beyond all doubt, no one has such definitions, it follows as a necessary corollary that everyone is

ignorant in this twofold sense. The tradition of Platonic commentators from

whose writings I have been constructing a Socratic Theory of Definition has not taken the full measure of this extraordinary inference. For it incontro vertibly commits them to the view that, for Socrates, there is a radical dichotomy between

knowledge and ignorance. That is, in the pre~Meno dialogues there neither is nor can be any state of

mind which the later Plato called "true belief": the state of mind which may justifiably be ascribed to anyone, who, though lacking a definition of X, is

6 A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), Vol. Ill, p. 352. This passage is itself an acceptably clear and representative statement of what I am calling "the traditional interpretation." However, to avoid the appearance of employing this descriptive label too loosely, as denoting an allegedly real but insufficiently identified consensus of Platonic scholarship, I offer the additional

(by no means exhaustive) corroborative data: H. F. Cherniss, "The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas," in Allen, op. cit., pp. 2-3; Richard Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic (Oxford, 1953), p. 51 ; P. T. Geach, "Plato's Euthyphro: An Analysis and Commentary," The Monist, vol. 50 (1966), p. 371; R. E. Allen, Plato's Euthyphro and the Earlier Theory of Forms (London, 1970), pp. 72, 116; A. E. Taylor, Plato (New York, 1956), p. 47; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines (London, 1962), p. 57; Norman Gulley, The Philosophy of Socrates (New York, 1968), p. 9.

7 Plato's Euthyphro, op. cit., p. 48. 8 Some Main Problems of Philosophy (London, 1953), p. 205.




yet able to manifest a recognitional ability of its instances. For it is precisely this phenomenon which their account of epistemological priority precludes.

The later Plato had, of course, attempted to account for the occurrence of true belief, the state of mind "midway" between knowledge and ig? norance, by invoking the Theory of Recollection. It was by an appeal to the eidos as the "

dimly "

perceived standard, which this theory introduced, that he both acknowledged and attempted to account for such genuine perceptions of reality as

men have. But the Theory of Recollection is wholly absent from the pre-Meno dialogues. While the fact of its absence is well-known, the epistemological consequence for those committed to the traditional

interpretation has not, to my knowledge, been made

fully explicit. It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that the foregoing account of epistemological

priority, taken in conjunction with the fact that the

Theory of Recollection is absent from the prt-Meno dialogues, jointly entail that in those dialogues there can be no consistent account of the state of mind known as "true belief." The Socratic dichotomy between knowledge and ignorance must, conse?

quently, be sharply distinguished from the view of the later Plato, a view with which it is too often confounded.

Accordingly, the intended state to which one is to be reduced by Socratic dialectic must be taken to be that of acknowledged ignorance, real and total. For in the absence of both knowledge and true belief, the attempt to live the good life proves abortive at its very inception. Hence the inter

locuter's presumed, but premature, confidence

must be undermined; everything must be thrown into question. Indeed, the dialectic is not to be

regarded as having run its full course until the interlocuter has been brought to see that he "can? not say a word" in reply to Socrates. On any other

account its cutting edge is blunted, and the moral

urgency attaching to its aporetic, and purportedly therapeutic, character is trivialized beyond recog?

nition.

The early dialogues, then, must be read as

demonstrating this again and again : Charmides is

ignorant concerning Temperance, Euthyphro con?

cerning Piety, Laches concerning Courage. Not even Friendship emerges intact. As outrageous and

implausible as it may seem, the Socrates of the early dialogues must be interpreted as holding that, if you cannot define Friendship, you cannot know what a friend is. Nor whether you have any. Nor how to be one. The logic of the position admits of no other alternative.

IV. The Contradictory of the Thesis

and its Corollary

I mentioned earlier that Socrates' typical re? sponse to the production of examples on the part of some interlocuter is that of a rebuke followed by a restatement of his original question. Occasionally, however, this procedure is set aside in favor of a very different one. In Laches, for example, he de? viates from his customary policy by allowing the enumeration of particular instances of Courage, including those courageous in war, amid perils of the sea, pain, and in overcoming their own desires ; and having done so, asks for "that common

quality which is the same in all these cases, and which is called fi

Courage ' "

(191 d-e). It is passages such as this one which account for

W. K. C. Guthrie's observation that

the first stage [in the Socratic quest for knowledge of

X] is to collect instances to which it is agreed by both fellow-seekers that the name ["X"] can be applied.

Then the collected examples . . . are examined to discover in them some common quality by virtue of which they bear that name.9

How this puzzling gloss is to be brought into har? mony with Guthrie's previously cited remarks is far

from clear. For one cannot simultaneously affirm

(a) that known instances of X are to be scrutinized for the purpose of discovering the eidos common to them, and (b) that one cannot recognize something as an instance of X unless one already knows that

eidos. Indeed, these contradictory claims exhibit in strikingly limpid form the incoherence of the traditional interpretation. According to (a), the eidos common to a number of instances is, in prin?

ciple, discoverable inductively. Such a view pre? supposes, of course, that we are capable of gathering known instances of X while lacking a knowledge of their eidos. To grant this, however, is to deny the relation of epistemological priority affirmed by (b).

8 The Greek Philosophers (New York, 1950), p. 77. See also F. M. Cornford's similarly "Aristotelian" remark: ". . . from ob? servation of individual cases, an act of insight discerns the universal latent in [particulars] and disengages it in a generalization"

Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1950), p. 185. This despite his own earlier recognition of "Plato's break with all theories

deriving knowledge by abstraction from sensible objects ..." (p. 4), and his subsequent warning that "... no satisfactory account of Platonic Forms can be given in terms of Aristotelian logic" (p. 268).



SOGRATIC DEFINITION 335

But it is precisely that relation which is said to be constitutive of the philosophical methodology underlying the What-is-X? question.

The question we need to ask, therefore, is not

simply how it is that the interlocuter, while lacking a knowledge of the eidos, can be expected to gather a number of its known instances ; the real question is : how, while remaining in such a state, can he be expected to gather even one ?

It will, nevertheless, be recalled that when

Euthyphro responded to the question: What is Piety ? with an example, Socrates rebuked him for

having produced only an example of a pious action, instead of a definition of Piety. But, given the fore? going analysis, this is surely a curious objection on Socrates' part. For if it is the case that

(i) one's having a definition of X is epistemo logically prior to, and a necessary condition for, the ability to identify something as an instance of X.

and

(ii) Euthyphro has not produced a definition.

then

(iii) since there are two, and only two, states of mind with respect to X, knowledge and ig? norance, and since, owing to his failure to

produce a definition, Euthyphro's state of mind cannot be that of knowledge,

it follows that

(iv) no one, including Socrates himself, since he, too, disclaims having such knowledge,10 could possibly be in a position to determine

whether Euthyphro has correctly identified an instance of a pious action or not.

Traditional commentators agree that (i), the epistemological priority thesis, is the Socratic view.

Their respective elucidations of the claim that one can recognize instances (I) only if one is in posses? sion of a definition (D), admit of a common formal ization, namely,

which, by a few elementary logical moves, yields

~(~D&I). That is, the epistemological priority thesis entails

that it is not the case that any one can possess a

recognitional ability without a definition. At the same time, however, Socrates grants that Euthyphro has identified an instance of a pious action despite the fact that he has no definition of Piety. That is, Socrates grants the truth of ~D & I. But in simul? taneously affirming

(~D&I) and ~(~D&I) he contradicts himself.

Socrates cannot, therefore, consistently hold that a knowledge of the eidos is epistemologically prior to a recognitional ability of its instances, and at the same time allow that Euthyphro, while lacking the former, has somehow managed the latter. The logic of his position entails that he simply acknowledge that neither he nor Euthyphro is in a position to know whether the alleged instance is, or is not, a

genuine one. Yet, Socrates does not acknowledge this. Indeed, he allows that Euthyphro has identi? fied an instance of a pious action.11 His complaint that it is only an instance does not alter the fact that, by his own admission, it is one. Socrates claims, or at least implies, that he knows this. But, given the truth of his own theory, how can he know it?

But there is a second, and far stronger, reason for

holding Socrates' procedure to be self-contradictory. This reason emerges most clearly once it is noticed that Socrates himself, while professing ignorance of some general term, is nevertheless able quite con?

fidently to come forward with examples of it. As a

counterexample to Cephalus' definition of Justice as "rendering to every man his due," Socrates

produces the celebrated case of returning a weapon to its mad, though rightful, owner; a case which every one present unhesitatingly agrees is unjust.

On the strength of this single counterexample Cephalus' definition is instantly rejected. But how do they know ? How, that is, can every one so con?

fidently agree that the action in question is zwjust 10 Some readers may appeal to Socratic irony here. But this diversionary maneuver overlooks the fact that the honorific term

"irony" is by no means the only possible description of the "he-knows-but-he's-not-telling" phenomenon. Other commentators have not been nearly so flattering. Richard Robinson has appraised Socrates' behavior as "insincere," as involving "persistent hypocrisy," and as evidencing "a negative and destructive spirit" (op. cit., p. 22). Gregory Vlastos, too, has raised searching questions about Socrates' "limited and conditional" care for the souls of his fellows. See his "The Paradox of Socrates," in Socrates, ed. by Gregory Vlastos (New York, 1971), pp. 7-8, 16.

11 That such a concession to Euthyphro on the part of Socrates is not a mere inadvertance of which I am taking unfair ad? vantage is borne out by the fact that he makes similar concessions to others. See, for example, Laches, 191a, c-e, 193a, 196c; Charmides, i57d-e.




while Justice remains undefined ? There is a curious, and wholly unjustified, reversal of epistemological priority in evidence here, a reversal which the traditional interpretation does not, and cannot, explain.

The Theory of Definition ascribed to Socrates by that interpretation requires that a knowledge of the eidos is a necessary condition for the ability to

recognize instances of it. An attentive examination

of the proceedings, however, reveals that a com?

patibility with instances already recognized itself constitutes one of the criteria in terms of which the

adequacy of a proffered definition is to be assessed. What this means is that a proffered definition is

sometimes12 rejected by virtue of its being in?

compatible with those things already recognized as genuine instances. But if the Socratic refutation of a proffered definition depends upon an appeal to

particular cases whose function is to demonstrate its

incompatibility with "what we would say," the

indisputably normative character of such an appeal is sufficient to contradict any view according to

which a knowledge of the eidos is itself prior. For

surely it cannot be argued simultaneously that a

knowledge of the eidos is a necessary condition for the ability to recognize instances and that being compatible with instances already recognized is it? self a necessary condition to be satisfied by any adequate definition. If Socrates is consistently to hold the former, he must be fully prepared to ignore discrepancies, whether apparent or real, between what X is and those actions which are convention? ally said to be instances of X. Why, then, does he so often appeal to these same conventional views as a

basis for rejecting a proffered definition? That is, how can part of the application of the elenchus to a definition consist in showing that it is at variance

with conventionally held views about Piety and Justice, and hence unacceptable, if it is the very function of knowledge of the eidos as expressed by the definition to constitute the sole criterion by reference to which those same views can be truly assessed ?

The following dilemma can, therefore, be con? structed. Either Euthyphro, without his definition, can identify instances of Piety or he cannot. If he cannot, why does Socrates himself acknowledge that he can ? If, on the other hand, he can, why does he need a definition?

Butler University Received August 21, 1973

12 Sometimes, but not always. For occasionally the criterion provided by the ordinary meanings of words is not only inex?

plicably ignored, but scornfully rejected. At Republic 420 if we are briskly assured that the guardians are really happy, although the ordinary man (here disparagingly referred to simply as part ofthat undifferentiated mass known as "the multitude") would

not say so. But if the ordinary man can so unproblematically be pronounced ignorant concerning the nature of happiness, how can the mere appeal to his opinion at Republic 331c be sufficient in itself to discredit Cephalus' definition of Justice? Why is not the same sort of appeal sufficient to discredit any definition which is incompatible with "what we would say" ? How important, after all, is the compatibility requirement? ?And by appeal to what further criterion are we to determine when it is to be applied and when not ?



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