The few lines in the Letter to Herodotus (39.4–8) that I propose to study here have often been discussed by editors and translators of Epicurus. As early as 1920, Ettore Bignone, in his translation of the fragments, devoted a three-page appendix to this passage, which he described as ‘ very difficult’. More recently, these lines have constituted one of the – in truth, numerous – points over which Jean Bollack, who has proposed a new interpretation of the text, has been strongly criticized, in particular by Pierre Boyancé and Olivier Bloch. One of my own reasons for returning to this controversial passage is that I believe I can suggest for the problem that it poses a solution which I (of course) consider satisfactory. Another is that, by closely linking our analysis of the text with an analysis of the discussions to which it has already given rise, we shall raise questions to do with methodology and, more generally, hermeneutics, the interest of which may even eclipse that of their pretext – questions which are, perhaps, not unconnected with the preoccupations of Joseph Moreau, the Greek scholar and philosopher in whose honour these pages are written.

Our text comes at the beginning of the Letter to Herodotus. It follows on immediately after the statement and demonstration of the first two fundamental physical theses: nothing is born from the non-existent and nothing is lost in it.

The ambition of the present study is a limited one: to explain the use of the expression őσον ἐπί τῷ λóγῳ (hereafter ο∈τλ) in Sextus Empiricus. As it stands, that is to say with no addition of any kind, it does not occur frequently in his work: only on four occasions in all, PH 1.20, 227, III.48 and 72. On the other hand, the general formula őσοτ ἐπί + dative is often to be found not only in Sextus but also in other authors, most of them relatively late. Its general meaning could be expressed provisionally as follows: őσον ἐπί τῷ Ξ = ‘insofar as X is concerned’, ‘insofar as it is a matter of X’. This sense is particularly clear in reflexive uses of the expression, such as őσον ἐφ ἑαντῷ = ‘insofar as it is in him’, ‘insofar as it depends upon him’. But what is the meaning of λóγος in ο∈τλ? That is the question.

The reason why this formula seems to merit examination is above all because its meaning is so obscure where it first appears in PH, at 1.20, which describes a crucial aspect of the Sceptic attitude. To clarify our ideas, let me first suggest a provisional and incomplete translation of this passage. Sextus is replying to those who accuse the Sceptics of ‘suppressing the phenomena’ (ἀναιρεῖ τὰ φαινόμενα).

Many modern scholars have considered that, of all the ancient philosophers' many theories on the origin and nature of language, the most remarkable and interesting is that produced by Epicurus. But the difficulty of the texts through which we know it, in particular the principal one, the famous passage in the Letter to Herodotus (75–6), is also generally recognized, and many widely divergent interpretations of it have been put forward. It is not my intention to embark in this study upon a full examination of the problems of comprehension posed by this theory. My more limited aim is to focus upon a number of specific aspects in the light of a question which is bound to arise when one confronts the various competing interpretations. The question is this: does the Epicurean theory incorporate a notion of what, in our day, is sometimes called a ‘private language’, that is to say, roughly speaking, a language that is not (or not yet) a means of communicating with other users of it, but is simply (or in the first instance) a purely individual way of organizing one' own experience and expressing one's own thoughts without anyone else being able, even in principle, to understand this language?

Epicurus' account is presented as a historical description of the birth and development of language.

Socratic Studies is the companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991). It contains, as promised in the Introduction (pp. 18–19) to that work, revised versions of three previously published essays on Socrates plus some new material. Sadly, not as much new material as he had planned to write.

Chapter 1 derives from “The Socratic Elenchus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1 (1983), 27–58. It is the most extensively revised, with some substantial changes and numerous smaller ones. The changes are GV's response to comments and criticisms made in the lively discussion that followed the original publication. The 1983 volume of Oxford Studies already contained (at pp. 71–4) GV's “Afterthoughts on the Socratic elenchus,” which are here revised, expanded and made consistent with Chapter 1 under the heading “Postscript to ‘The Socratic elenchus.’”

In the course of entering corrections and improvements from various dates (the last being 30 January 1991) I have occasionally had to make a decision on whether an omission or change was deliberate or simply a slip in the typing up; I am confident that no point of substance is affected. In the Appendix to Chapter 1 GV started to expand his account of the Euthydemus, but only two inconclusive paragraphs were written; these have been omitted. Throughout the book I have checked references and corrected mistakes of citation.

Chapter 2 derives from “Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge,” Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1985), 1–31. The major change is the removal of pp. 23–6 on the “Socratic Fallacy,” which was superseded by the material that appears here as Chapter 3.

In Plato's earlier dialogues – in all of them except the Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus – Socrates' inquiries display a pattern of investigation whose rationale he does not investigate. They are constrained by rules he does not undertake to justify. In marked contrast to “Socrates” speaking for Plato in the middle dialogues, who refers repeatedly to the “method” (μέθoδoς) he follows (either in general or for the special purpose of some particular investigation), the “Socrates” who speaks for Socrates in the earlier dialogues never uses this word and never discusses his method of investigation. He never troubles to say why his way of searching is the way to discover truth or even what this way of searching is. He has no name for it. λεγχoς and the parent verb λέ Χ (“to refute,” “to examine critically,” “to censure”), he uses to describe, not to baptize, what he does. Only in modern times has elenchus become a proper name. The “What is the F?” question which Socrates pursues elenctically about other things he never poses about the elenchus, leaving us only his practice to guide us when we try to answer it for ourselves. Lacking his definition of it, ours can only be a hypothesis – a guess. And we may guess wrong.

I guessed wrong thirty-five years ago in the account of the elenchus I put into my Introduction to Plato's Protagoras and so have others before or since.

In Plato's earliest dialogues, when Socrates says he has no knowledge, does he or does he not mean what he says? The standard view has been that he does not. What can be said for this interpretation is well said in Gulley, 1968: Socrates' profession of ignorance is “an expedient to encourage his interlocutor to seek out the truth, to make him think that he is joining with Socrates in a voyage of discovery” (p. 69). More recently the opposite interpretation has found a clear-headed advocate. Terence Irwin in his Plato's Moral Theory holds that when Socrates disclaims knowledge he should be taken at his word: he has renounced knowledge and is content to claim no more than true belief (Irwin, 1977: 39–40).

I shall argue that when each of these views is confronted with the textual evidence each is proved false: there are texts which falsify the first, and others which falsify the second. How could this be? These views are proper contradictories: if either is false, must not the other be true? Not necessarily. If Socrates is making appropriately variable use of his words for “knowing” both views could be false. I shall argue that this is in fact the case, proposing a hypothesis which explains why Socrates should wish to do just this. I shall review the relevant evidence (section I), develop the hypothesis (section II), and exhibit its explanatory power (section III).

The first interpretation is virtually ubiquitous. It has even captured the dictionaries. Webster's gives this entry under “irony”:

The lines that close the death-scene in the Phaedo are well known:

Was Socrates really as good as that? I have never seen this question raised anywhere in the vast literature on him. I raise it in full view of the fact that throughout his corpus Plato presents his teacher as a man without a peer in three of the virtues most honored among the Greeks – courage, sophrosyne, and piety. Plato is as emphatic on the third as on the other two, making it the crux of the defense against the charge of impiety on which Socrates was to be condemned to death: Socrates' practice of philosophy had been itself a lifelong exercise of piety, obedience to the god of Delphi who had “ordered him to philosophize, examining himself and others.” Plato makes it clear that it was just because of unflinching obedience to that divine command that Socrates had been convicted: had he been willing to propose self-muzzlement as an alternative he could have been acquitted.

So in the case of those three qualities Socrates' character is flawless, granite-solid in Plato's portrait of him. But what of the one that forms the punch-word in the epitaph: “and most just”? Plato feels so sure that on this score too the record is perfect that he has Socrates say he will face divine judgment in the nether world confident that he “had never wronged anyone, man or god.”

MORAL VS. TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

There is a passage in the Laches which poses a problem for the interpreter of Socrates' moral theory. Though often discussed in the scholarly literature, there has been as yet no definitive solution to its puzzle. It occurs in Socrates' argument with Laches 192D–193C.

The answer Laches had just proposed – “endurance” – (192B–C) to “What is courage?” had been rejected because it failed to stipulate that, to qualify as courageous, endurance had to be guided by wisdom. Drop that stipulation and the answer is easily discredited:

When Laches agrees – he could hardly do otherwise – it looks as though Socrates would concede that courage is wise endurance. But he does not. What he now wants to know is what sort of wisdom this would have to be: “Wise in what (είς τí φρóνoς)? In all things, be they great or small?”