The διccοὶ λότοι

There are several passages in Plato which show us that the type of the contentious ἐριστικός of whom Aristotle had so bad an opinion, was, or was assumed by Plato to be, in existence before the death of Socrates, and that the opinion that the “eristic men” of whom we hear both in Aristotle and in the later dialogues of Plato are Megarians or Cynics contemporary with Plato’s manhood, who owed their existence to the popularity of Socrates’ own particular art of “dialectic,” must be correspondingly modified. Thus in the Phaedo, when Socrates utters his warning against μισολνγία, he observes that it is precisely those who have been most occupied in the construction of antinomies who are most in danger of ending as sceptics and misologists. καὶ μάλιστα δὴ οί περὶ τοὺς άvτιλογικοὺς λόγους δια-τρίψαντες οὶσθ’ ὅτι τελεντω̑ντες οἴονται σοφώτατοι γεγο-νέναι καὶ κατανενοηκέναι μόνοι ὅτι οὔτε τω̑ν πραγμάτων οὐδεvός οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς οὔτε βέβαιον οὔτε τω̑ν λόγων, άλλά πάντα [ὄντα] άτεχνω̑ς ὥσπερ ἐν Eύρίπωι άνω κάτω στρέϕεται καί χρόνον οὐδένα ἐν ούδενὶ μένει (90 c). And he goes on immediately to say that his own attitude towards the λόγος of the immortality of the soul, which seems at the moment to be endangered by the criticisms of Simmias and Cebes, differs in one little point from that of an άντιλ&γικός; his concern is not to talk for victory, but to arrive at truth, καὶ ἐγώ μοι δοκω̑ ἐν τω̑ι παρόντι τοσοῦτον μόνον ἐκείνων διοίσειν’ οὐ νὰρ ὅπως τοῖς παροῦσιν ἃ ἐγὼ λέγω δόξει ἀληθῆ είναι προθύμησομαι, 92 εἰ μὴ εἴη πάρεργον, ἀλλ᾽ ὅπως αύτω̑ι ἐμοὶ ὅτι μάλιστα δόξει οὕτως ἒχειv (91 a). It is obvious that constructors of άντιλογικοί λόγοι, antinomies, which aim merely at victory, are here alluded to as a well-known contemporary class, and that it would be absurd to suppose that Socrates means his allusion to touch two friends who are both, according to the dialogue, among the audience, Euclides and Antisthenes. ἀντιλογία then, Plato assumes, is a well-known trick in the age of Socrates, and certainly does not originate in a perversion of the Socratic elenchus by Euclides or Antisthenes. We meet the same set of persons again at the opening of the Sophistes, where we are told of the stranger from Elea that “his family is of Elea, and he is an associate of Parmenides and Zeno, but a very genuine philosopher” (μάλα δὲ ἄνδρα ϕιλόσοϕον). The very expression singularly reminds us of Boswell’s “Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it,” and distinctly suggests that you would not immediately suppose that a person of the antecedents specified was μάλα ϕιλόσοϕος unless you were expressly told so. ¹ What you would expect may be gathered from the following sentences. Socrates is afraid that a pupil of Zeno will prove a “very devil in logic-chopping” (θεὸς ὤν τις ἐλεγκτικός) far above the level of the present company, until Theodorus reassures him by the information that the newcomer is more reasonable to deal with than the enthusiasts for controversy (μετριώτερος τω̑ν περὶ τὰς ἒριδας ἐσπονδα-κὸτων, 216 b). Plato thus definitely connects the rise of Eristic not with the elenchus of Socrates but with the antinomies of Zeno. It is in the same spirit that he speaks of Zeno in the well-known passage, Phaedrus 261 d, as the “Yea-and-Nay of Elea” (τὸv ᾽Ελεατικὸν Παλαμήδην, where the commentators should point out that the jest lies in a hinted derivation of the name from πάλιv and μήδομαι ² ), 93and Aristotle was only repeating what was evidently the Academic school tradition when he said that Zeno was the originator of Dialectic. As every one knows, Plato has drawn a lively satiric picture of a couple of the περὶ τὰς ἒριδας ἐσπουδακότες in his Euthydemus, and, as usual, the attempt has been made to find the omnipresent Antisthenes behind the satire. But if Plato is correct in assuming that men of this sort were a recognised class before the end of the fifth century, there is really no need to suspect the presence of Antisthenes whenever one comes on the traces of one of those wonderful άντιλογικοί who maintained ὅτι οὐκ ἒστι ψευδῆ λέγειν. It is fortunate, therefore, that we should still possess a large portion of a work by an “Eristic” which may be even earlier than the death of Socrates, and from which we see that Plato’s assumption as to the comparatively early origin of the άντιλογικοὶ λόγοι is historical. What I propose to do in the few pages which follow is to show that we have in the δισσοὶ λόγοι such a specimen of early eristic which exhibits at once signs of Eleatic origin and of considerable Socratic influence. I hope by its aid also to throw a little additional light on the famous exordium of Isocrates’ Encomium of Helen.