Socrates, Knower

My dissertation is an investigation of Socrates and his method, the “elenchus,” in Plato’s dialogues, especially the Gorgias. I argue that what marks the man and his method is the self-appropriated conception of oneself as a knower—that is, a conception of oneself as someone who can and does know things, where the meaning of “know” is supplied by one’s self-conscious attention to, and ownership of, one’s own acts of understanding. This interpretation pushes against the common conception of Socrates as the man who knows only that he doesn’t know. True, there are many things Socrates doesn’t know; but there is one very important thing he does. He knows what it means for him to be a knower.

My first chapter contextualizes the dissertation by giving the lay of the scholarly land with regard to the academic study of Socrates and his method.

My second chapter contrasts my account of Socrates with Jonathan Lear’s. Where Lear considers the distinguishing mark of Socrates and his method to be the disruption of self-conceptions, I argue that Socrates in fact has a self-conception of his own, and one that is not vulnerable to disruption: the self-appropriated conception of himself as a knower.

My third chapter responds to three separate charges to the effect that Socrates either fundamentally misunderstands the nature of human knowledge, or does not sufficiently attend to the way knowledge functions in human living, or both. The unsavory consequence if these charges hold is that Socrates would be guilty of double-ignorance. In reply, I argue that Socratic knowledge construed as understanding can avoid these charges.

My fourth and final chapter focuses on Socrates’ elenctic method, specifically whether it is essentially destructive, as many interpreters of Plato have thought. I use Socrates’ exchanges with Polus and Callicles in the Gorgias as evidence to argue that, while Socrates does destroy false self-conceptions and highlight inconsistency of beliefs, he also facilitates his interlocutors’ awareness of their own acts of understanding, and encourages them to embrace the deliverances of those acts. Consequently, Socrates’ method can be seen as positive.