THE SOCRATIC SILENCE IN PLATOS CLEITOPHON

Arlene W. Saxonhouse1

Mark Kremer, ed., Platos Cleitophon: On Socrates and the Modern Mind
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004), ix + 87 pp.,
$29.95/16.95, ISBN 087668 311 1 (pbk).

I
The Cleitophon seldom, if ever, I would hazard, makes it on to undergraduate
(or even graduate) syllabi. It is certainly one of Platos more obscure and sel-
dom read dialogues, though it and the essays that surround this new transla-
tion by Mark Kremer suggest that such obscurity may need to be remedied.
The dialogue, clearly a companion piece to the Republic, gives the response to
Socrates that Thrasymachus so caught up in the perfection of a ruler who
knows what is in his self-interest fails to make. And it is a response to
which Socrates himself offers no reply, leaving us to wonder whether if
Thrasymachus had not so readily dismissed Cleitophons suggestion that a
ruler might indeed mistake what his interest is, there would have been no
Republic. But, of course, Thrasymachus holds firm in his defence of the art of
the ruler and we have the Republic; as David Roochnik argues in his essay in
this slim volume, this is precisely because Thrasymachus is not the relativist
he at first appeared to be when he declared justice to be simply the interest of
the stronger. There exists, as Thrasymachus understands it, the interest of
the ruler, and the ruler insofar as he is a ruler knows it. If he does not, he is not
worthy of being called a ruler. Cleitophon lives under no such illusions. There
is no such certainty in his life and unfortunately Socrates (as Cleitophon has
come to understand from both Socrates companions and Socrates himself) is
not able to help him find it. And so the dialogue of the Cleitophon ends
quickly, a bare four Stephanus pages from where it began. In this companion
to the Republic, discussion ends abruptly as it certainly does not in the mul-
tiple books of the Republic which take us dramatically through the night at
Cephalus house in ten full books.
The Cleitophon is the tale of a fallen hero. Socrates had appeared to
Cleitophon as a wondrous, divine creature, like a god on stage, like a deus ex
machina. Cleitophon had heard Socrates warn men that they must turn them-
selves towards the pursuit of justice rather than wealth, that men do not will-
ingly choose to do injustice, that they are unjust only when they are bested by
pleasure. He had heard Socrates conclude his speeches nobly (kals): For
whoever does not know how to make use of a soul, it is better for him to keep
1 Dept. of Political Science, University of Michigan, 5700 Haven Hall, 505 S. State
St., Ann Arbor, MI 481091045, USA. Email: awsaxon@umich.edu
POLIS. Vol. XXII. No.1. Spring 2005
 REVIEW ARTICLE 129

his soul at rest, and not to live and to act by himself (408a).2 All of Socrates
speeches Cleitophon had found most inspiring and most useful and truly
suited to wake us, as it were, from our slumber (408c). And so, in awe of Soc-
rates, he questions Socrates companions and what does he discover? They
have no adequate response when Cleitophon asks what follows the exhorta-
tions, when he asks the critical What next? (408e) question. The answers he
gets, even from the one of them reputed to be the most formidable (409a)
and the one who in fact was reputed to speak in a most accomplished way
(409d), do not satisfy him for all the associates of Socrates seem to be able to
say is that the art of having to do with the virtue of the soul is justice.
Cleitophon does not find the companions answers satisfactory; they befuddle
the language of work and of friendship and ultimately of justice. And when
Socrates cant answer his questions about justice and helping and harming
enemies either, Cleitophon just, as he puts it, gave up (410b).
The exhortations to justice have not revealed why he should choose justice
rather than the pleasures of power that the sophistic Thrasymachus with his art
of rhetoric can offer. At first Cleitophon begged Socrates to show him why he
must attend to the soul rather than pursue the things of the body. Then he chal-
lenges Socrates, remarking that once Socrates has done his exhorting towards
virtue, he becomes a stumbling block (empodion, 410e) to the goal (telos) of
virtue and becoming a happy human being (410e). The language is harsh,
especially coming from one who initially wants to learn from Socrates. And
yet, despite this attack, Socrates remains silent, offering no defence of the jus-
tice of the soul, offering no refutation to the accusation that his exhortations
have become worse than useless. So, Cleitophon receiving no satisfaction from
the silent Socrates goes off, we assume, to follow the guidance of
Thrasymachus and accompany him to the Piraeus. The god has clay feet and at
the end of the dialogue Cleitophons disappointment in Socrates is palpable.
II
Kremer does the field of ancient political thought a great service by revivify-
ing this neglected dialogue with his new translation, his introductory and
interpretive essays and by arranging for the publication of the three other
essays on the Cleitophon that are included in this volume. These essays by
David Roochnik, Clifford Orwin and Jan H. Blits all offer sparkling examples
of the kind of Platonic readings that draw out from the text the richness of
thought and provocation that is likely to elude the casual reader, and each
author addresses the dialogue from a different perspective, mostly comple-
mentary rather than challenging each other.3 There are some problems with
2 I use Kremers translation.
3 D.L. Roochnik, The Riddle of the Cleitophon, pp. 4358; C. Orwin, On the
Cleitophon, pp. 5970; J.H. Blits, Socratic Teaching and Justice: Platos Clitophon,
pp. 7187.
130 A. SAXONHOUSE

this little volume, but let me review the general arguments that are built
around this dialogue, the briefest of Platos offerings.
In many ways Clifford Orwin had set the stage with his original article On
the Cleitophon which was the earliest of the previously published essays,
appearing in 1982 in The Canadian Journal of Political Science. Orwin intrigu-
ingly reads the dialogue as a kind of counter-Apology, i.e., the citys response
in effect to Socrates inability to teach justice despite his exhortations to follow
a life of justice. As Orwin points out, Cleitophon, now speaking as the city of
Athens in his reading, demands to understand justice as if it were an art with a
product. But Socrates friends are unable to explain to him what the product of
this art of justice may be and so, given their failure, Cleitophon turns to Socrates
himself and hears that justice was helping friends and harming enemies (p.
65),4 but Socrates response is no better than that of his followers. Cleitophon
wants to understand justice as an art with a product and Socrates has not
answered him in those terms or at least Cleitophon has not heard Socrates
explanation beyond the Polemarchian understanding. Orwin concludes his
analysis of the dialogue by noting specifically what is missing from the dia-
logue, namely any discussion of the good. This is an index of the low ceiling of
the dialogue, one of the few that never mentions philosophy (p. 68). It is a dia-
logue that in its search for the product of an art ignores philosophy which, rather
than offering a product, gives only a life of questioning and exhortations to pur-
sue such a life. Or, as Orwin trenchantly phrases it: It fosters not harmony [for
which Cleitophon longs] but a new kind of discord between itself and the
city (p. 69). Thus, the city that wants answers in the way that Cleitophon insists
on them cannot be moved by the Socratic apology and has the last word without
a response from Socrates. Kremer picks up this reading of the dialogue in his
introductory essay and sees the silence of Socrates as an opportunity for the
reader to be the judge of Cleitophons defense (p. 2) and thereby as well of
Athens execution of the philosopher.
The other essays in the volume were published later than Orwins piece and
offer their own explanation for Socrates peculiar silence, in part in response
to Orwins suggestions. Roochnik attempts to answer the riddle of the
Cleitophon, that peculiar silence of Socrates that had led earlier scholars
(before Orwin) to dismiss the dialogue as spurious or, if not spurious, then at
least unfinished. Roochnik is not persuaded by Orwins alternate Apology
thesis with Cleitophon as the stand in for the citys response to Socrates
Apology. But he does follow through on Orwins suggestion that it is
Cleitophons deficiency that is responsible for Socrates silence (p. 49).
Roochnik looks for the philosophically explicable to answer the riddle and
he finds it in Cleitophons radical relativism. Referring back to the Republic
4 Orwin makes reference here to the Republic, but he does not remark on the fact that
Cleitophon ascribes this speech to Socrates whereas in the Republic Socrates gives this
definition of justice to Polemarchus. I will consider the significance of this point below.
 REVIEW ARTICLE 131

Roochnik writes: Though silenced, Cleitophon is not silenced; he has formu-

lated a position which is never refuted by Socrates (p. 52). This is the key to
Roochniks answer to the riddle. Socrates does not answer because he cannot.
He cannot carry on dialogues with those who are unwilling to look for a
grounding for their arguments, those for whom there is no measure or stan-
dard against which they can calculate their interests. Thrasymachus becomes
Socrates friend (at least according to Socrates reporting of the story of the
Republic) in Book 5 because Thrasymachus was willing to affirm that no ruler
would act against his interests, meaning that the ruler has an interest, what-
ever that may be. The silent Cleitophon of the Republic makes no such affir-
mations and thus when he challenges Socrates, Socrates cannot engage him.
To the radical relativist Socrates cannot speak. This makes Socrates silence
in the Cleitophon more significant than simply allowing in juridical fash-
ion the city to have the last word. Socrates silence reveals if not the failure
then the limits of his philosophy and exhortations. He cannot speak to all. He
cannot speak to the radical relativist and as Roochnik concludes:
Cleitophons charges are highly illuminating. They imply that silence looms
as an irremediable possibility, one always hovering on the bounds of philo-
sophical discourse, both limiting and threatening it (p. 55).
Roochniks essay is powerful and scary, reminding us of the limits of phi-
losophy in the face of a radical relativism that is all too familiar in our contem-
porary world, a relativism that silences the philosophic life. Blits has a
somewhat, though not entirely, more optimistic reading of the dialogue and
prefaces that optimism when he asks: Socrates seems to go out of his way to
incite Cleitophons criticism only to corroborate it by his silence. Could his
refusal to teach Cleitophon about justice be itself an act of justice? (p. 71). He
too offers an answer to the riddle of the Socratic non-reply, only for him it is
the absence of thumos in the soul of Cleitophon rather than the presence of rel-
ativism. Like the others writing in this volume, Blits emphasizes Cleitophons
identification of justice as an art which then parallels to the art of politics. But
Blits goes further in this argument; in his reading: Clitophons emphasis on
art causes him to exaggerate the power of reason or speech in politics (p.75).
Thus, as Cleitophon sees this, reason and speech control political life and pol-
itics becomes susceptible to the power of the rhetorician. Or, as Blits bluntly
puts it: The art of rhetoric is the ruling art (p.76).
In Blitss reading, it is precisely this focus on art and reason that blinds
Cleitophon to the role of thumos and that allows him to accept what appears to
be good rather than long for what is truly good. And it is this absence of
thumos that (in Blitss interpretation) more than Roochniks theory of relativ-
ism that precludes the conversation between Socrates and Cleitophon. Men
can be exhorted to the sort of virtue that rests on shame . . . , but not to the sort
that springs from a spontaneous desire. They can be exhorted to political jus-
tice or duty, but not to philosophy or wisdom (p. 82). Yes, Cleitophon is one
132 A. SAXONHOUSE

of Socrates failures, but not because of Cleitophons relativism, but because of

Cleitophons lack of eros, because of his lack of an understanding of the soul, of
the meaning of education. Cleitophon wanted a product. Socrates teaches only
soul-craft. While the interlocutors of the Republic driven as they are by thumos
are able to participate in a Socratic dialogue, Cleitophon driven only by techno-
logical duty lies outside the world of philosophy and discourse. As such,
Cleitophon can warn us of about the dangers of an instrumental technological
outlook, but he does not become the contemporary citizen mired in a sea of rela-
tivism to whom Socrates cannot speak.
Kremer contributes two essays to his edited volume. First he writes a some-
what abstruse introduction to his translation in which he sets up the dialogue
within a Nietzschean framework of nature and wills. Thus, Socrates as the
man who lived according to nature (that is, immaterial nature) along with
Plato become the founders of the Western tradition of political philosophy, a
philosophy that will be at loggerheads with the modern and post-modern
hatred of reason and the affirmation of the will to power (p. 3). Kremers
Cleitophon looks to philosophy not as a way to live the life according to
nature like Socrates, but instrumentally as a tool that brings into being prod-
ucts. The clash between Socrates and Cleitophon in the four Stephanus pages
of the dialogue captures the contest between Socratic dignity and Nietzschean
nihilism according to Kremer. Thus, Kremer turns Cleitophon into Nietzsche
both . . . haters of reason (p. 5) and makes the dialogue a paean to the
Socratic way of life according to nature by showing the inadequacies of a man
who millennia before the descent to modernism incorporates the Nietzchean
will to power. With his brief, but epic, introduction to the dialogue Kremer
then offers his translation of the work. The too easy identification of
Cleitophon and Nietzsche is not necessary and if we want to hang the defence
of the Socratic way of life on Socrates silence before a Nietzschean
Cleitophon, I fear we will have a very slim reed on which to base our salva-
tion. Nevertheless, Kremer is right to attempt to draw forth the larger insights
that rest in this brief dialogue. None of the three supplemental essays goes as
far as Kremer, but more important is that while they each raise important
issues for us to address about the status of philosophy in relation to the pro-
ductive arts, none is so confident as Kremer about Socrates ultimate victory.
In Kremers introduction to the translation Plato presciently anticipates
modernity in the character of Cleitophon. The same theme marks the interpre-
tive essay that follows the translation, only here Cleitophon is not so much the
Nietzschean character but the one who dreams of using philosophy to create
the strife-free city. When this fails, he rejects philosophy for the doctrine of
the will and power commonly known today, Kremer tells us, as legal posi-
tivism (p. 17). Cleitophon becomes less Nietzsche in this essay than Marx
and curiously this means for Kremer also legal positivism. (This is the first
time I have seen Marxism so closely associated with legal positivism. One can
 REVIEW ARTICLE 133

find some similarities, but to do so one must look at the superficial similarities
and ignore the fundamental theoretical differences.) Kremer comes to Socra-
tes defence as the one who is only interested in reason to the extent that it is
part of his soul rather than a practical tool (p. 18). The battle lines are clearly
set. Socrates is philosophic soul-craft and Cleitophon is the stand in for all
that is wrong with modern society from Bacons instrumentalism to legal pos-
itivism to Nietzsches will to power to Marxs determinism. Against this
grand array of modernity, of course, Socratic naturalism is victorious in
Kremers reading but only by its silences.
As with all such readings, there are sparks of insight, but the expansive
breadth of the claims sometimes leads to sententious claims such as
Cleitophon appears to be somewhere between the crowd and Socrates com-
panion, which is to say that Cleitophon is nowhere (p. 26); or, one stumbles
over sentences like the following one pregnant with meaning and reference
but more opaque than enlightening: The spiritedness of the law contains
within it justice or that ambiguous combination of the passionate attachment to
what is whats own and rationality in the form of justification (p. 31). Whereas
the other essays had focused largely on the Republic and the Apology and to
some degree the Phaedrus, Kremer adds a much wider array to the mix includ-
ing the Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes, Oresteia, several of
Aristophanes plays, suggesting verbal and thematic allusions to all these
works. Perhaps, Plato is referencing in his brief dialogue all these ancient dra-
matic works. The riffs on the actual texts to which Kremer refers are all sugges-
tive in their own right; whether they all illuminate the Cleitophon is less certain.
Kremer uses Cleitophons failings to reveal Socrates strengths. They are
opposites and Cleitophons efforts to impose an order through the arts stands
in sharp contrast to Socrates openness to an independence from the arts
demand for order and products. The Socratic life finds order in an immate-
rial nature rather than the arts of Cleitophon (which Kremer transforms into
the will.) In this way Kremers interpretive essay offers insight into the dia-
logue and lays out how it may address some of the critical issues we do still
face today under whatever label nihilism, logical positivism, rationalism
we may want to place it.

III
The translation: Kremer offers a new and useful translation of the Cleitophon
in which he aims to preserve the tone of the dialogue as well as the ambigu-
ities inherent in some of the language (p. 9). Kremer does remain true to the
original text, thought this does not necessarily lead to the most mellifluous of
translations. Nevertheless, there are some translation choices that strike me as
hindering some of the potential readings of the work which do not surface in
the interpretations offered in the set of essays included here. Let me note just a
few specific examples.
134 A. SAXONHOUSE

Socrates begins the dialogue curiously not by addressing Cleitophon

directly but referring to him in the third person and reports that someone had
just told him about Cleitophons praise for Lysias and Thrasymachus and cen-
sure for Socrates. To this, Cleitophon responds directly to Socrates no third
person evasion for him. That someone, O Socrates, did not correctly recount
to you my arguments (406). The word translated recount is
apemnmoneue; embedded in that verb is the root term for memory. The issue
of memory is a central theme of the dialogue that none of the essays in this
volume addresses. By using the very neutral word recount that concern with
memory which is introduced right at the beginning of the dialogue gets lost.
Cleitophon clarifies because the someone did not remember accurately what
he had been saying or perhaps shaded the memory consciously by exclud-
ing the positive things Cleitophon had been saying about Socrates, or perhaps
Socrates manipulated the reported speech in order to challenge Cleitophon. In
any event, selective memory was involved, be it that of the reporter, of Socra-
tes, or even Cleitophon. This problem surfaces over and over again through-
out the dialogue as Cleitophon keeps repeating what Socrates associates told
him and what he claims Socrates told him directly. The childrens game of
telephone plays constantly within the passages of recollected speeches of
what someone else had said. Cleitophon claims to depend on Socrates associ-
ates in order to know what Socrates would say. Are Socrates associates ade-
quate recollectors or reporters? Does Cleitophon adequately recall all that the
associates themselves said? Does he distort their responses, willingly or
unwillingly? Or do they and he, like the unnamed someone, shade the sto-
ries they tell and give only half of the answers?
When Cleitophon goes to Socrates himself to find out what justice is, he
learns from Socrates, he says, that it is helping friends and harming enemies, a
phrase we all know from Republic. But, of course, this isnt what Socrates
says. 5 It is what Polemarchus had said. So, is this Cleitophon
misremembering, misreporting like the perhaps forgetful someone from
the beginning of the dialogue in the early hours of his evening at Cephalus
house? If he is misremembering, it may not be Cleitophons relativism that
leads to Socrates silence, but the inability to converse with one who cannot
recall with any clarity arguments made earlier. The condition for participation
in Socratic dialogue may be an agile mind, not the rejection of relativism. This
misreporting of Socrates view may also suggest something about chronol-
ogy. All the essays seem to assume (although they do not state it explicitly)
that the Cleitophon takes place dramatically before the Republic. Cleitophon
has joined Thrasymachus and become his defender when Socrates fails. But
the mis-recollection could also suggest that the Cleitophon occurs after the
Republic and that Cleitophon misremembers the conversation of that night so
5 Kremer notices this mis-recollection, but he buries the point in a footnote and does
not consider its significance or how it might reflect back on the translation (p. 36n4).
 REVIEW ARTICLE 135

badly that he cannot even remember who said what. Perhaps he is so over-
whelmed by the length of the discourse or bested by wine that no else seems
to be able to enjoy that his memory is faulty.
I go through all these hypotheticals because they come to the fore if we
begin to think about the dialogue in terms of faulty memories, an issue that
emerges immediately in Cleitophons initial response to Socrates but which is
lost when the root term for memory does not somehow make its way into the
translation. On the other hand, Kremer introduces Nietzsche or at least
modernity into the dialogue by translating the famously difficult terms
hkontas/hekn as volition, avoiding the more familiar translation which
uses willingly for these words. This certainly connects to the Nietzschean
themes he introduces in his two essays, but the language of volition forces the
dialogue into the modern framework rather than leaving us within a Greek
vocabulary that is still struggling to understand why Achilles does not run the
sword through Agamemnon when he wants to.
Translators make choices that inevitably cast shadows on the original. It is
impossible not to do so and this is especially true in the case of the carefully
constructed Platonic dialogues. If the translation is to help us read on our own
the Platonic dialogues then every effort needs to be made to capture the
multivalent connotations in each word. Kremer does so in most instances; that
he misses in a few is only an indication of the extraordinarily fertile prose of
Platos Greek.
IV
There are some editorial choices having more to do with the structure of the
book than with the content. The essays by Roochnik, Blits and Kremer are all
more or less explicit responses to Orwins piece. Given that, Orwins essay
should have preceded the others, even if there are some revisions as Orwin
suggests (p. 70n1). Similarly, some effort might have been made so that refer-
ences to internal articles refer to the page numbers in the volume in hand, not
to the original publication. A unified bibliography rather than one for each
essay would have been more helpful, as would have some more careful
proofreading.
Despite these quibbles, this volume should aid in bringing the Cleitophon
into its rightful place as the acknowledged companion piece to the Republic,
raising different questions and expanding the range of the challenges that
Plato bequeathed to us. Kremers diligence in bringing forward the dialogue
to us in this fashion deserves our appreciation.

Arlene W. Saxonhouse UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR