EXAMINING THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS: AN AFFIRMATIVE SEARCH FOR MORAL TRUTHS In 1985, Donald Davidson asked, "Can philosophy

hope to transcend what is inherent in the beliefs and values with which it begins?" What role do these inhering beliefs play in the enterprise of uncovering truths? A modest philosopher might defend philosophy as a process that reveals inconsistencies, questions methodologies, reformulates questions, and problematizes domains that have not yet been problematized. This view proceeds from the assumption that the formulation of a problem can play a part in mystifying that problem, which is to say that reformulating a problem can demystify it. This is a defensible and apt account of philosophy, yet it's clear that many seminal philosophers have in mind a grander purview and a greater mission, that of revealing positive truth and making positive claims about what is good, right, just, true, and so forth. Plato takes the more ambitious road. It is clear that Plato aims to home in on truths, in particular moral truths, throughout the early dialogues. His focus is on systematizing the search for moral truths through dialectical exchanges between Socrates and various interlocutors. However, in an essay entitled Plato's Philosopher, Davidson suggests that while in the early dialogues Plato sees no apparent issue with his method for seeking truth, he goes on to question this method in the middle and late dialogues. Plato devises methodological revisions and alternative methods for seeking objective truth. Plato ultimately finds these alternatives modestly useful, but regards himself as having failed to derive an ideal method. He recognizes the myriad inadequacies with his methods, and is not confident he has arrived at a reliable way to search for objective moral truths. Yet, in Plato's late writings, namely in Philebus, he returns with renewed confidence to the system employed in his early dialogues, the Socratic elenchus [hereinafter "elenchus"]. What about the Socratic elenchus consternated Plato? Gregory Vlastos

traces Plato's relationship with the Socratic elenchus, and reveals the latent assumptions upon which Socrates' trust in the elenchus as a truth seeking method are predicated. I will put forward a modest critique of Vlastos' argument, which I generally find compelling. I. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SOCRATIC ELENCHUS First, what is troubling and fascinating about the elenchus is that strictly as a logical structure it is merely capable of revealing inconsistencies in a set of premises or beliefs, but is not positioned to show which belief, if any, is true. As a simple example, take this set of premises: A) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and B) Beauty is an objective truth We can be reasonably certain that A and B are facially contradictory; B is the negation of A. So, just as the elenchus is equipped to do, we have revealed a set with two contradictory premises. Yet, logically, this does not provide us with the ammunition to choose A over B or B over A. And, logically, the same result achieved by the elenchus can be achieved by merely negating the interlocutor's premise. In both cases, the method will reveal a set of inconsistent premises.

Socrates never expresses concern over this apparent limitation, and never exposes the elenchus itself to analysis as a method. He never uses the word elenchus, and never attempts to describe it in detail. He exclusively employs the elenchus in search of moral truths. It is not used to engage in meta-elenctic analysis, nor is it used to search for non-moral truths (e.g., in mathematics or productive crafts). Socrates affirms, in Gorgias, his confidence in arriving at moral truths and refuting the moral propositions of his interlocutors, something expressly further

than merely revealing inconsistencies in an interlocutor's beliefs. Yet, he also affirms confidence in his own ignorance, for instance, when he says, "For the things I say I certainly don't say with any knowledge at all" (Gorgias, 506a). Pushing back on scholars who have suggested that, perhaps, Socrates did not actually believe the elenchus could be used to reveal moral truths, Vlastos (among others, such as Richard Robinson in Plato's Earlier Dialectic and T.H. Irwin in Plato's Moral Theory) argues that the Socratic elenchus is a genuine search for moral progress that Plato's Socrates believes in.

Defining the Socratic elenchus has been, in the scholarly realm, somewhat contentious. Vlastos points out that elenchus does not appear as a proper name until the 1860s in George Grote and Lewis Campbell's writing. An unwashed reader such as myself would be tempted to casually describe Socrates' method as a search for moral truths through dialectical exchanges. For Vlastos, even scholars intimately familiar with the dialogues have hypothesized in overbroad terms about the unnamed search for truth employed by Socrates this even includes a selfdisavowal of Vlastos' earlier writing on the elenchus, a personality he goes on to refer to as "exVlastos." Ronald Hall in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes: "The Socratic elenchus was . . . a prolonged cross-examination which refutes the opponent's original thesis by getting him to draw from it, by means of a series of questions and answers, a consequence that contradicts it." This is wrong insofar as it suggests that Socrates gets the interlocutors to draw a contradictory consequence from their own initial premise. It is consistently Socrates who presents an alternative hypothesis, which he asks the interlocutor to agree with, and from this point of agreement he proceeds to question the interlocutor. As an alternative, Vlastos provides the following definition:

Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by question-and-answer adversary argument in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answer's own belief and is regarded as refuted only if its negation is deduced from his own beliefs.

The elenchus varies in some important ways from other styles of dialectic, such as the eristic, in which the respective parties try to win the argument at all costs, rather than home in on moral truths. Socrates imposes a strict "say what you believe" requirement.
PROTAGORAS: It's not so absolutely clear a case to me, Socrates, as to make me grant that justice is pious, and piety just. It seems a distinction is in order here. But what's the difference? If you want, we'll let justice be pious and piety just. SOCRATES: Don't do that to me! It's not this 'if you want' or 'if you agree' business I want to test. It's you and me I want to put on the line, and I think the argument will be tested best if we take the 'if' out. (Protagoras 331c)

Against the legacy of dialectical exchanges, Socrates explicitly rejects the use of hypothetical premises Plato, incidentally, comes around to hypothetical premises later in his life when he is exposed to mathematical proofs. Vlastos provides three arguments for why Socrates imposes this requirement. First, as mentioned, he wants to distinguish the elenchus from the eristic, where a party says whatever they can to gain an advantage. Second, Socrates can confirm that the interlocutor is seriously engaged in a search for truth; by putting his own beliefs on the line, and subjecting them to Socrates' scrutiny, the interlocutor ups the ante and has a greater stake in the discussion. Third, the elenchus serves two objectives: (1) discovering moral truths, how every human being ought to live, and (2) figuring out whether the interlocutor is living as he ought to. The elenchus is both philosophical and therapeutic. Faking it to win the argument is strictly prohibited. In logical steps, the elenchus looks something like this: (1) The interlocutor asserts a thesis, p, which Socrates considers false and targets for refutation. (2) Socrates secures agreement to further premises, say q and r (each of which may stand for a conjunct of propositions). The agreement is ad hoc: Socrates argues from [q, r], not to them. (3) Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, that q & r entail not-p.

(4) Socrates then claims that he has shown that not-p is true, and p false. (This formulation is found on page 11 of Socratic Studies by Gregory Vlastos). The question now is how to justify Socrates' reliance on elenctic exchange as a method for arriving at moral truths when it seems to support only the revealing of inconsistent beliefs. The textual evidence that Socrates believes himself to be uncovering moral truths cannot be ignored.
SOCRATES: Hasn't it been proved that what was said is true? (Gorgias 479e) SOCRATES: . . . I affirm that to knock or cut me or my possessions unjustly is both more shameful and worse, and at the same time that to rob or enslave me or to break into my house or, to sum up, to commit any unjust act at all against me and my possessions is both worse and more shameful for the one who does these unjust acts than it is for me, the one who suffers them. These conclusions, at which we arrived earlier in our previous discussions are, I'd say, held down and bound by arguments of iron and adament. . . . (Gorgias 508e)

This is in reference to a discussion with Polus and Callicles, where p, what he claims he has proven true, is: to commit injustice is better than to suffer it. Polus agrees with Socrates that he has disproven p. However, since elenchus merely reveals inconsistencies, a Polus with more self-assurance might have said, 'Socrates, I concede that my initial belief (p) and the hypothesis you asserted with which I agreed (q) are inconsistent. I elect to remain confident in my initial belief, and disavow my agreeing to your hypothesis (q) from which point this conversation proceeded.' This is the problem of the elenchus, and Vlastos posits a solution to the riddle. Having closely traced Vlastos' argument up to this point, I will now describe Vlastos' solution and offer some points of clarification and disagreement. II. A CRITICAL LOOK AT VLASTOS' SOLUTION: SOCRATES' "TREMENDOUS" ASSUMPTIONS The solution relies on fleshing out two "tremendous" assumptions that Socrates makes about himself and his method. Socrates firmly believes, in Vlastos' view, that his interlocutors will fail if they try to retreat from [q, r] in order to save p. Socrates' assumption is:

[A] Whoever has a false moral belief will always have at the same time true beliefs entailing the negation of that false belief. Socrates is confident that any other premise which might substitute for q will also entail negation of p, such that an interlocutor disclaiming his earlier support for q will always fail some other surrogate q will arise that will also prove not-p and refute p. The second component to Vlastos' solution is: [B] The set of elenctically tested moral beliefs held by Socrates at any given time is consistent. While Socrates apparently did not feel compelled to test the elenchus with meta-analysis throughout the dialogues, Vlastos points to a set of obiter dicta, textual evidence in Gorgias, which finally reveal these assumptions that laid dormant and tacit in the earlier dialogues. This suggests a revelation by Plato of these powerful assumptions, [A] and [B], upon which the elenchus' viability as a method for revealing objective truth is predicated. In Gorgias, Plato presents Socrates with this "present," and then later, after moving away from elenchus in Lysis, Euthydemus, and Hippias Major, presents Socrates with "a further, still more lavish, present," the theory of recollection, an interesting and astonishing theory beyond the purview of this essay. By Vlastos' textual interpretation of Plato, Socrates has, by way of inductive reasoning, confidence in [B] because in no instance has Socrates encountered someone capable of proving an inconsistency in his set of beliefs. Logically, it makes sense that if Socrates believes [q, r] and proceeds from assumptions [A] and [B], he can be confident that showing inconsistency by way of [q, r] entailing not-p proves that not-p is correct. First, I question whether, simply because Socrates is able to find premises that consistently are able to refute the interlocutor's p, that there is internal consistency amongst the various iterations of [q, r] which crop up in each conversation. It is true that, in each employment of the

elenchus, Socrates is able to select q, something which both he believes and he can get the interlocutor to agree to sans argument, which proves the falsity of p. Socrates, in each instance, believes q and not-p, while the interlocutor finds himself with inconsistent beliefs in both q and p. Yet, how do we determine consistency across Socrates' q's with different interlocutors? Socrates relentlessly peppers his interlocutors with questions, demanding at every step their assent to his propositions. He is able to reveal eventually that the mutually agreed upon set, [q, r], entails not-p, bringing the interlocutor around to show that his set of beliefs is inconsistent. However, his interlocutors do not subject Socrates propositions to this scrutiny. For instance, Socrates claims that, "the degree of enjoyment and pain that good and bad men feel is pretty much the same." (Gorgias 498c). In Protagoras, Socrates sums up that he and Protagoras have agreed that "each thing . . . can have an opposite, there is only one opposite, not many" (Protagoras 332d). These statements are part of two respective sets of [q, r], which Socrates gets his interlocutors to agree to, and from which he proceeds to demonstrate not-p. However, these two statements are never tested against each other. Each is tested against a p, one belonging to Callicles and the other to Protagoras. [B] suggests that Socrates elenctically tests all of his moral beliefs and understands them to be consistent, but there is no mechanism by which the continuity of Socrates' [q, r] in Gorgias with the [q, r] in Protagoras is confirmed. I may be demanding too much from Vlastos' solution, though. Even if we cannot textually determine that Socrates tests his distinct instantiations of [q, r] against themselves, he seems confident that, as the mouthpiece of philosophy, his beliefs across different dialogues will be consistent.
SOCRATES: For [philosophy] always says what you now hear me say, my dear friend, and she's far less fickle than my other beloved. As for that son of Clinias, what he says differs from one time to the next, but what philsophy says always stays the same. . . .

SOCRATES: . . . I think it's better to have my lyre or a chorus that I might lead out of tune and dissonant, and have the vast majority of men disagree with me and contradict me, then to be out of harmony with myself, to contradict myself, though I'm only one person. (Gorgias 482a-b)

It is not necessary to prove that Socrates' set of moral beliefs remain consistent, rather that Socrates was confident that the beliefs he employs in order to demonstrate not-p are consistent. If he believes them to be consistent, and each of his interlocutor's sets of beliefs can be proved inconsistent, then so far as he knows, Socrates possesses the only set of beliefs that has yet to be proven inconsistent, and the only set of beliefs that can be counted on to demonstrate moral truths, presuming that [A] is accurate. From [A] and [B], we can infer that Socrates at any given time holds a set of moral beliefs that are true, as otherwise any false belief, given [A], would be revealed through internal inconsistency. However, even if I grant this to Vlastos, his wording of [B] still leaves something to be desired. He refers to Socrates' set of elenctically tested moral beliefs. It is not clear to me that Socrates' beliefs are tested by his method. The elenchus is not a two-way street, something that tests both Socrates and the interlocutor's beliefs with equivalent rigor. Socrates subjects his interlocutors' beliefs to elenctic scrutiny, but it is with rarity that he elenctically challenges his own beliefs. In the following two examples, the best I could find (admittedly there may be others), Socrates receives elenctic challenges to his own views, but the challenges seem perfunctory.
SOCRATES: How then could it be that orators or tyrants have great power in their cities, so long as Socrates is not refuted by Polus to show that they do what they want? POLUS: This fellow SOCRATES: denies that they do what they want. Go ahead and refute me. POLUS: Didn't you just now agree that they do what they see fit? ( See Gorgias 466e - 467c)

And the second example:

SOCRATES: If Protragoras is not willing to answer questions, let him ask them, and I will answer, and at the same time I will try to show him how I think the answerer ought to answer. When I've answered all the questions he wishes to ask, then it's his turn to be accountable to me in the same way.

(one Stephanus page later) PROTAGORAS: Well, do you think that the latter is consistent with the former? SOCRATES: It seems to me so (but as I said it I was afraid he had a point there). Doesn't it seem so to you? (See Protagoras 338d - 339d)

Admitting that I don't have the benefit of more time to further study the texts, I will cautiously suggest that [B] should be altered to read: [B2] At any given time, the set of moral beliefs elucidated and held by Socrates throughout his elenctic exchanges are consistent.

I don't claim to proffer an optimal solution here, but suggest a rewording merely to illustrate the issue with claiming that Socrates' moral beliefs are consistently and rigorously subject to elenctic testing.

Second, Vlastos' account of the elenchus encounters a chicken and the egg problem. At what point is Socrates equipped through inductive reasoning to conclude, with sufficient confidence, that his is the set of moral beliefs that, because it is apparently free of inconsistency, can serve as an ordinal anchor point, a referential set of beliefs that can produce reliably true [q, r]'s to give Socrates direction in concluding that not-p will be true and p false? Vlastos acknowledges that Socrates must arrive at [B] in this way: "The consistency of the set is being inferred from its track-record in Socrates' own experience: in all of the elenctic arguments in which he has engaged he has never been faulted for inconsistency." Vlastos calls this a chancy assumption, but nonetheless concludes it should be part of the solution to the problem of the elenchus.

Imagine a fledgling Socrates engaging his first interlocutor in elenctic exchange (perhaps you could pinpoint this dialogue for me?). If he has the confidence to conclude that [q, r] will be

true, then he apparently has some external way of finding truth, and would not need to rely on the assumptions [A] and [B] for the elenchus to be effective as a revealer of moral truths. If he is not confident in the truth value of [q, r] at the outset, then the value of the elenchus is limited to exposing inconsistencies. And, if that were all the elenchus could do, then how does he come upon the assumptions [A] and [B] in Gorgias, as Vlastos suggests? If he didn't believe that he was doing anything more than revealing inconsistencies in his interlocutor's beliefs, it would be difficult to construct a valid story about when and how he would start assuming [A] and [B].

III. THE ELENCHUS AS A ONE-WAY RATCHET IN THE DIRECTION OF TRUTH I'd like to posit an alternative account of the elenchus as a method, much like the scientific method, of homing in on truth over the long run. Admittedly, this will be somewhat difficult to justify given Socrates' apparent confidence in the elenchus as a way to pinpoint individual moral truths in Gorgias. Instead of seeing each iteration as a search for a specific truth, either p or not-p, we can think of it as a lifelong process of trial-and-error aimed towards truth. Logically, each iteration of the elenchus will reveal that at least one of the beliefs, p and not-p, will be false. It could be that both are false. (Of course, this requires taking for granted the assumption that moral truths cannot be inconsistent, a mainstay of the Socratic elenchus.) But, this would be okay, because Socrates will continue to employ the elenchus, and would be open to accepting that a tested not-p from a previous exchange could be refuted in a future exchange. The scientific method operates in much the same way. Come up with hypotheses, attempt to refute those hypotheses, and proceed from very strong hypotheses, now theories, but accept that sometimes those theories can later be refuted. Thus, Socrates would be in a lifelong process of

approaching truth, but would not need to fret if, at some point, an internal inconsistency is revealed in his set of beliefs.

This seems more believable then the idea that Socrates has utmost confidence in declaring moral truths from each iteration of the elenchus, but the primary problem with my account is that Socrates proclaims in Gorgias that he has homed in on moral truths "bound by arguments of iron and adament." This problem might be overcome if I extend Vlastos' argument that Socrates has acquired the confidence of a man who has yet to be proven wrong, but is not necessarily confident that the elenchus per se reveals truth without fail in each particular iteration.

My methodological reworking of the elenchus resembles G.W.F. Hegel's formulation of the continual unfolding of the Universal Spirit, Geist, through the history of thought. In a series of lectures delivered at the University of Berlin between 1821-31, now compiled in book form as Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Hegel postulated a singular continuum of world history that progresses diachronically towards the end of history, the realization of the Absolute Spirit, Geist, through its self-awareness and a realization of self-freedom. The progressive unfolding of world history, for Hegel, happens through thought and the exercise of reason. The history of philosophy takes the form of dialectical exploration of ideas through three stages: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A given thesis will in some respect be wrong or contradictory, giving rise to an antithesis. In the next stage, the antithesis and thesis react to forge a synthesis that constitutes the next thesis, and so on. According to George Kerferd's helpful summary in The Sophistic Movement, this process is, for Hegel, the dialectical unfolding

of thought, the progression of world history, for which each stage constitutes the negation of the previous stage.

Can we not formulate the Socratic elenchus as a microcosm of the Hegelian progression of world history? Each exchange will produce a thesis, p, an antithesis, [q, r], and a synthesis, not-p. Socrates will proceed in future exchanges with a belief in not-p, but it very well may be the case that this will be negated in a later exchange. In this way, the Socratic elenchus looks not like an infallible arbiter of truth in each iteration something unsupported by its logical form but rather like a one-way ratchet that proceeds confidently in the direction of truth. It's possible this is an unsupportable idea, but full-scale exploration is beyond the purview of this essay.

Briefly, I believe this approach has two benefits. One, if Socrates ever encounters inconsistency in his own set of beliefs, he need not lose complete confidence in the elenchus. Rather, he can incorporate the new belief into his system of thought, and deploy it in future exchanges. He will be approaching truth, but will be open to the occasional inconsistency, just as science is open to the occasional earth-shattering refutation of a long-standing theory.

Two, my long-term view of the elenchus as a truth seeking device comports with a close reading of the Apology, namely a belief that the elenchus can be employed by anyone, not just Socrates. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith in an essay entitled Vlastos on the Elenchus point out that Socrates seems to suggest in the Apology that he believes others can and should practice the elenchus. Socrates refers to young men who, seeking to imitate him, try to

question others and incite anger towards Socrates and philosophy (Apology 23d). Later, Socrates advises the jury that an unexamined life is not worth living, thus imploring that they, too, search for moral truths (id. 38a). Finally, he tells the jury to "harass" his countrymen as he has been harassing them, which in all likelihood refers to the elenchus, Socrates' method for examining beliefs (id. 41e3 - 42a1). This precludes reading the Socratic elenchus as a method that could only be employed by Socrates. Unlike a long-term view of the elenchus, reliance on [A] and [B] to explain Socrates' confidence in arriving at moral truths suggests that only Socrates would be equipped to use it, the only person who, through inductive reasoning, could confidently assume [B]. And, given that [B] is predicated on just this inductive reasoning, the whole enterprise of the elenchus is bound to collapse at any moment, whenever Socrates' set of beliefs is shown to be inconsistent. A stronger account of the Socratic elenchus will describe a method that could be employed by more than one person, let alone a person so supreme and confident (arrogant?) that he could come to assume [B]. Certainly, Socrates demonstrates this sort of confidence, but the texts suggest that he does not see the Socratic elenchus as exclusively a method that he can employ.

IV. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS I want to briefly mention two other issues that I will not be able to delve into in this paper. First, referring back to Vlastos' structure of the elenchus, he says that [q, r] are logically unsecured within the argument. He simply asks the interlocutor if he agrees, and if he does, he proceeds from there. However, it seems that Socrates is able to select [q, r] in such a way to guarantee that they entail not-p. We do not see him leading interlocutors astray. If he can consistently select a set of premises that entail the negation of p, then it may be the case that [q,

r] are not logically unsecured within the argument, but rather that, temporally, we haven't uncovered yet how that logical relation plays out. Second, Vlastos suggests that the elenchus is simultaneously philosophical and therapeutic. This explains why Socrates demands that his interlocutors say what they believe. While I understand that this requirement distinguishes the elenchus from the eristic, the Socratic elenchus itself entertains the possibility of interlocutors not knowing their beliefs. This is why there is catharsis when, suddenly, the logical inconsistencies of their mutual beliefs are revealed to them. This suggests that Socrates is aware that there are "unknown knowns," or beliefs we have that we don't know we have. To demand that an interlocutor says what he believes only accesses explicit beliefs, as how could the interlocutor, for instance, say they believe not-p when it is the elenchus which is crucial for demonstrating that, in fact, the interlocutor does believe both p and not-p. It would be interesting to examine how this limitation plays out, and to look at beliefs not just as abstract ideations, but also something that manifests through behaviors. A good modern day example is Zizek's argument that to participate in the capitalist system while professing that you disavow capitalism is still, in a fundamental way, to believe in capitalism. For Zizek, performance is belief.

CONCLUSION I have conducted a modest critique of Vlastos' account of the elenchus, in what otherwise is a brilliant and insightful essay. Vlastos' solution falls short in certain key respects. First, Socrates does not regularly elenctically test his own beliefs. Second, if Socrates cannot confirm separately that [q, r] are true, at what point will he accrue the confidence to start believing [B]? Is there a plausible story for this happening? Third, I advanced the idea of looking at the

elenchus as a long-term method, a one-way ratchet, in the direction of truth. This may solve some of the issues with Vlastos' account, and be able to describe it as a method employable by more than one supremely confident Socrates.