Notes

Introduction: The Man Whose Name Is an Example

1. 1.Leo Tolstoy, Confession, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, trans. Peter Carson (New York: Liveright, 2014), 132.
2. 2.Confession, 133.
3. 3.Confession, 131, italics mine.
4. 4.Confession, 132.
5. 5.Confession, 162.
6. 6.Confession, 132.
7. 7.Plato, Apology, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 41c.
8. 8.Plato, Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 173b.
9. 9.Apology, 21b.
10. 10.Apology, 23a.
11. 11.Plato, Gorgias, trans. Donald J. Zeyl, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 458a. Here, and in a few other places, I have modified the translation of the Greek word anthrōpos. I use “person” or “human being” in place of “man,” because Greek has another word, anēr, specifically for “man” in the sense of male human being.
12. 12.Gorgias, 458ab.
13. 13.Gorgias, 458ab.
14. 14.Gorgias, 458a.
15. 15.Gorgias, 458a.
16. 16.Gorgias, 481bc.
17. 17.Apology, 30c.
18. 18.John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), 383.
19. 19.Cicero, Academica in Cicero: De Natura Deorum; Academica, Loeb Classical Library vol. 19, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), I.4.16.
20. 20.William Rainey Harper, “Freedom of Speech,” in The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression, ed. Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2023), 29.

Chapter 1: The Tolstoy Problem

1. 1.Confession, 139–140.
2. 2.William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Routledge, 2002), 147.
3. 3.Confession, 131.
4. 4.Confession, 130.
5. 5.Confession, 130–31.
6. 6.Confession, 134.
7. 7.Confession, 139–40.
8. 8.Confession, 134.
9. 9.Confession, 160.
10. 10.Confession, 132.
11. 11.Confession, 151.
12. 12.Confession, 162.
13. 13.All of the quotes in this paragraph are from Confession, 158–59.
14. 14.Plato, Protagoras, trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 310b–d.
15. 15.Protagoras, 312cd.
16. 16.Protagoras, 312e.
17. 17.Protagoras, 313bc.
18. 18.Protagoras, 361a–d.
19. 19.Protagoras, 361e.
20. 20.Plato, Euthyphro, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 11b.
21. 21.Euthyphro, 15c.
22. 22.Euthyphro, 15e.
23. 23.Plato, Alcibiades, trans. D. S. Hutchinson, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 117a. This dialogue is sometimes known as First Alcibiades so as to distinguish it from the Second Alcibiades, which is generally agreed not to have been written by Plato. On the authorship of the former, see note 1 to chapter 6 below.
24. 24.Plato, Lesser Hippias, trans. Nicholas D. Smith, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 376c.
25. 25.Lesser Hippias, 372e.
26. 26.Confession, 138.
27. 27.Confession, 137.
28. 28.Cited in Fabrizio Macagno and Douglas Walton, Emotive Language in Argumentation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2.
29. 29.Gorgias, 491b.
30. 30.Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), I.9.
31. 31.Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia, trans. Ann Goldstein (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 2016), I. 13.
32. 32.Varieties of Religious Experience, 146.
33. 33.Apology, 38a.
34. 34.Plato, Theaetetus, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 172de.
35. 35.Plato, Meno, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 97c–98a.
36. 36.Meno, 98a.

Chapter 2: Load-Bearing Answers

1. 1.See S. C. Humphreys, “Kinship Patterns in the Athenian Courts,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 1986, who comments, “in Athenian eyes this was an incomprehensible way to behave,” 69.
2. 2.Euthyphro, 3e–4b.
3. 3.Euthyphro, 4e–5a.
4. 4.Plato, Lysis, trans. Stanely Lombardo, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 207d.
5. 5.John Cooper, note to Charmides in Plato’s Complete Works, 639.
6. 6.Euthyphro, 15e.
7. 7.Meno, 71e–72a, emphasis mine.
8. 8.Euthyphro, 5de.
9. 9.Gorgias, 448c.
10. 10.Alcibiades, 110bc.
11. 11.Alcibiades, 112ab.
12. 12.Euthyphro, 7b–d.
13. 13.Alcibiades, 110c.
14. 14.Quoted in van Jean Heijenoort (ed.), From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 127.
15. 15.Sophocles, Antigone, trans. Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), lines 304–14.

Chapter 3: Savage Commands

1. 1.Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 437c.
2. 2.Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. J. A. Smith, in The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 431a8–10.
3. 3.Republic, 439b.
4. 4.Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
5. 5.Plato, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 66c.
6. 6.Phaedo, 69ab.
7. 7.Protagoras, 356cd.
8. 8.Phaedo, 66a–c.
9. 9.Plato, Crito, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 48c.
10. 10.Crito, 44d.
11. 11.Gorgias, 481e.
12. 12.Gorgias, 513c.
13. 13.Protagoras, 353c.
14. 14.Protagoras, 352de.
15. 15.Protagoras, 355d.
16. 16.Protagoras, 356a.
17. 17.Protagoras, 356bc.
18. 18.Protagoras, 355d.
19. 19.Protagoras, 355a–d.
20. 20.Protagoras, 356b.
21. 21.Crito, 45c–e.
22. 22.Crito, 50a–c.
23. 23.Crito, 49a–d.
24. 24.Gorgias, 477–79.
25. 25.Republic, 335b.
26. 26.Crito, 49de, italics mine.
27. 27.Crito, 45c–e.
28. 28.This example is borrowed from Elizabeth Bruenig.
29. 29.Gorgias, 480e–481b.
30. 30.Crito, 51e–52a, italics mine.
31. 31.See Alan Kim, “Crito and Critique,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2011.
32. 32.Crito, 48e–49a, italics mine.
33. 33.E.g., οὔτε πείθεται οὔτε πείθει ἡμᾶς, Crito 51e.
34. 34.Crito, 45d.
35. 35.Crito, 44c.
36. 36.Crito, 45c.
37. 37.Crito, 48cd.

Chapter 4: Socratic Intellectualism

1. 1.Alcibiades, 115ab.
2. 2.Alcibiades, 115cd.
3. 3.Alcibiades, 116a.
4. 4.Alcibiades, 116cd.
5. 5.Alcibiades, 115d.
6. 6.Protagoras, 360a.
7. 7.Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, in Hellenistic Philosophy, trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), 129–30.
8. 8.Vatican Collection of Epicurean Sayings, in Hellenistic Philosophy, trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), 56–57; however, I have modified their translation, translating apistia as “treachery” rather than “a lack of confidence.”
9. 9.For Bentham, see An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter 2, paragraph 7; for Mill, see Utilitarianism, chapter 2; for Sidgwick, see Methods of Ethics, book I, chapter 1, paragraph 4.
10. 10.Seneca, De Otio, in Seneca: Moral Essays, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library, trans. John W. Basore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 4.1.
11. 11.Discourses 1.18.3–9, 1.28. 9–10.
12. 12.Seneca, Letters on Ethics, 121.7.
13. 13.“No One Errs Willingly: The Meaning of Socratic Intellectualism,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2000, 1.
14. 14.Roslyn Weiss, The Socratic Paradox and Its Enemies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); she denies many of the other intellectualist claims as well.
15. 15.A group of interpreters argue that when Socrates says “everyone desires the good,” he means that we desire what appears good to us, not necessarily what really is good: Gerasimos Santas, “The Socratic Paradoxes,” Philosophical Review, 1964; David Wolfsdorf, “Desire for the Good in Meno 77b2–78b6,” Classical Quarterly 2006; Kevin McTighe, “Socrates on Desire for the Good and the Involuntariness of Wrongdoing: Gorgias 466a–468e,” Phronesis 1984; and Rachel Barney, “Plato on the Desire for the Good,” in Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good, ed. Sergio Tenenbaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For the opposing view, see Terry Penner, “Desire and Power in Socrates: The Argument of Gorgias 466A–468E That Orators and Tyrants Have No Power in the City,” Apeiron, 1991; and Terry Penner and Christopher Rowe, “The Desire for Good: Is the Meno Inconsistent with the Gorgias?” Phronesis, 1994. For the view that Socrates thinks we desire what both appears good to us and is in fact actually good, see my “Everyone Desires the Good: Socrates’ Protreptic Theory of Desire,” Review of Metaphysics, 2017.
16. 16.Rachel Singpurwalla, “Reasoning with the Irrational,” Ancient Philosophy, 2006.
17. 17.I am referring here to the famous and much vilified “craft analogy,” which appears in many dialogues and seems to compare the knowledge we could acquire of virtue to knowledge we do have of various crafts. Theodor Gomperz, in his Greek Thinkers, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1905), 296, understands the Hippias Minor as a reductio ad absurdum of the craft analogy; Gregory Vlastos, in his Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 279, n.137, insists that the analogy be understood only loosely; and Rachel Barney argues that the craft analogy need not be understood in intellectualist terms: see her “Techne as a Model for Virtue in Plato,” in Productive Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy, ed. T. Johansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
18. 18.Vlastos, “Happiness and Virtue in Socrates’ Moral Theory,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 1984.
19. 19.Nehamas, “Socratic Intellectualism,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 1987; Robert Zaborowski, “To what extent was Socrates a moral intellectualist? Revisiting Plato’s Protagoras,” Acta Classica, 2021; Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas D. Smith, Socratic Moral Psychology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
20. 20.Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan and Co, 1874), book I, chapter 2.
21. 21.William James, “What Makes a Life Significant,” in his Talks to Teachers (New York: Henry Holt, 1925), 268–69.
22. 22.“What Makes a Life Significant,” 270.
23. 23.“What Makes a Life Significant,” 272–73.
24. 24.Alcibiades, 115d.
25. 25.Republic, 505de.
26. 26.I am reading “beautiful things” here as a reference to objects of bodily sensory appreciation, along the lines of the discussion of the “lovers of sight and sound” in book V, who take pleasure in bodily experiences of beauty (“beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything fashioned out of them,” 476b and following), such as delicious wine and attractive young men. It is, however, possible that “beautiful things” is instead a reference to noble or honorable actions, in which case both examples (just things and beautiful things) would pertain to the spirited part of the soul. I’ve adopted the former interpretation, but I see the latter as possible as well; there isn’t much in the text to decide between them.

Chapter 5: The Gadfly-Midwife Paradox

1. 1.Translated by Michael Hamburger, in German Life and Letters, 1951; all quotations from this text are from pages 42 and 43.
2. 2.Alcibiades, 130e.
3. 3.Apology, 21e.
4. 4.With the admittedly notable exception of Diotima, the teacher to whom Socrates alludes in the Symposium, his interlocutors in the Platonic dialogues are all men.
5. 5.Theaetetus, 150de.
6. 6.Meno 81c and following, Phaedo, 73 and following.
7. 7.Plato, Charmides, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 166d.
8. 8.Gorgias, 505e.
9. 9.Gorgias, 508e.
10. 10.For a historical overview of the development of this consensus, see Leonard Brandwood, “Stylometry and Chronology,” in Richard Kraut ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
11. 11.Crito and Phaedo are sometimes classified as “transitional” or “early-middle.”
12. 12.Protagoras, 348c–349a.
13. 13.Some scholars do not believe that Plato wrote the Clitophon. I won’t go into the details of this dispute (those interested could start with G. S. Bowe, “In Defense of Clitophon,” Classical Philology, 2007), since for our purposes all that matters is that whoever wrote it had an important insight into how Socrates was received by some of his companions.
14. 14.Plato, Clitophon, trans. Francisco J. Gonzalez, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 408c.
15. 15.Clitophon, 410b–d.
16. 16.Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). All quotes are from III.12.
17. 17.Plato, Euthydemus, trans. Rosamond Kent Sprague, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 274de.
18. 18.Euthydemus, 275.
19. 19.Charmides, 165bc.
20. 20.Charmides, 166c.
21. 21.Charmides, 166cd.
22. 22.“The Will to Believe,” in William James: Writings 1878–1899 (New York: Library of America, 1992), 469.
23. 23.“The Will to Believe,” 469.
24. 24.In Clifford’s Lectures and Essays, volume 2, ed. Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (London: Macmillan, 1879).
25. 25.“The Ethics of Belief,” 183.
26. 26.“The Ethics of Belief,” 183.
27. 27.“The Ethics of Belief,” 184.
28. 28.“The Will to Believe,” 469.
29. 29.“The Will to Believe,” 470.
30. 30.“The Ethics of Belief,” 181.
31. 31.“The Will to Believe,” 473.
32. 32.“The Will to Believe,” 470.
33. 33.Intention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), §32
34. 34.This is an update of Davidson’s famous carbon copier example. See 92 of his “Intending,” in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
35. 35.Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 12.
36. 36.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1145b2–7.
37. 37.Theaetetus, 150c.
38. 38.Charmides, 166cd.
39. 39.Protagoras, 338bc.
40. 40.Protagoras, 348c–49a.
41. 41.Gorgias, 457e–458a.
42. 42.Charmides, 166c.

Chapter 6: Moore’s Paradox of Self-Knowledge

1. 1.Alcibiades, 105a–c. In the nineteenth century the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher raised doubts about the authenticity of the Alcibiades, but more recent scholarship has largely put those doubts to rest (see discussion in Jakub Jirsa, “Authenticity of the ‘Alcibiades’ I: Some Reflections,” Listy filologicke, 2009). However, even those doubts were still active, I would make the claim that I made above about the Clitophon above, see note 13 in chapter 5 above: what’s important for our purposes is not that Plato wrote the Alcibiades, but that whoever wrote it had insights into the Socratic method.
2. 2.Alcibiades, 135bc.
3. 3.Alcibiades, 135c.
4. 4.Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 13, which offers the overview of what we know about Alcibiades’ life on which this summary draws.
5. 5.The Peloponnesian War, trans. Steven Lattimore (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 6.16.1.
6. 6.Plutarch Lives, vol. IV, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916), I.4.16.
7. 7.William Smith, A Smaller History of Greece, from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest (New York: Harper & Bros., 1872), 376.
8. 8.Alcibiades, 127d.
9. 9.Apology, 23b.
10. 10.Meno, 80b.
11. 11.Euthyphro, 11b.
12. 12.Gorgias, 473e–474b.
13. 13.Alcibiades, 113bc.
14. 14.Alcibiades, 112d–113c.
15. 15.Alcibiades, 114de.
16. 16.Alcibiades, 118ab, italics mine.
17. 17.Authority and Estrangement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 170–71.
18. 18.Alcibiades, 124b.
19. 19.Alcibiades, 128a.
20. 20.Alcibiades, 129a.
21. 21.Alcibiades, 132d–133b.
22. 22.Gorgias, 508e.
23. 23.Gorgias, 486d.
24. 24.Alcibiades, 113b.
25. 25.Symposium, 215e–216b.
26. 26.For further discussion of Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium, and some more specific thoughts about why he in particular struggles to get the positive project into view, see chapter 10 below.

Chapter 7: Meno’s Paradox

1. 1.In “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, vol. LIX, issue 236, October 1950.
2. 2.Meno, 80d.
3. 3.Meno, 80e.
4. 4.Meno, 71d–72a.
5. 5.Meno, 72c.
6. 6.Meno, 77a.
7. 7.Meno, 79a.
8. 8.Meno, 80b.
9. 9.The references here are to Euripides (Rhesus, 213), Aeschylus (Seven Against Thebes, 540), and Xenophon (Cyropaedia, 6.1.51), respectively; see the entry for problēma in Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
10. 10.Robert F. Barsky, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (Boston: MIT Press, 1998), 95.
11. 11.Meno, 80d, italics mine.
12. 12.Meno, 86c.
13. 13.Meno, 82de.
14. 14.Meno, 83de.
15. 15.Meno, 84cd.
16. 16.Plato, Laches, trans. Rosamund Kent Sprague, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 194cd.
17. 17.Meno, 80d.
18. 18.Meno, 81cd.
19. 19.Meno, 86bc.
20. 20.Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
21. 21.Anabasis, II.6.

Introduction to Part III: The Socratizing Move

1. 1.Gorgias, 521d.
2. 2.Symposium, 177d; Phaedrus, 257a.
3. 3.Phaedo, 64a; 67e.
4. 4.The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 14.
5. 5.Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler, Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Chapter 8: Politics: Justice and Liberty

1. 1.Apology, 32a.
2. 2.Apology, 31d.
3. 3.Gorgias, 485de.
4. 4.Apology, 30a, Gorgias, 421d.
5. 5.Gorgias, 454c.
6. 6.Gorgias, 457de.
7. 7.Gorgias, 457e–458a.
8. 8.Gorgias, 458ab.
9. 9.Gorgias, 506c.
10. 10.Apology, 39d.
11. 11.Emily Wilson, trans., The Iliad (New York: W. W. Norton, 2023), Book 1, lines 55–61.
12. 12.Phaedo, 115e.
13. 13.“Creative Democracy,” in The Essential Dewey, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 342.
14. 14.Dewey, “Creative Democracy,” 342.
15. 15.Gorgias, 456bc.
16. 16.Gorgias, 473e.
17. 17.Gorgias, 471e.
18. 18.Gorgias, 472bc.

Chapter 9: Politics: Equality

1. 1.On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Keith Ansell-Pearson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), first essay, §13.
2. 2.The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. R. Hurley (London: Penguin, 1998), 93.
3. 3.Republic, 343e–344a.
4. 4.Republic, 359c.
5. 5.Gorgias, 483bc.
6. 6.Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 2002), 344.
7. 7.The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. 4, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds. (London: The Camelot Press, 1968), 4.
8. 8.Orwell, “Revenge Is Sour,” 5.
9. 9.Iliad, book 1, 230–54.
10. 10.Iliad, book 1, 220.
11. 11.The Theory of Moral Sentiments, D. D. Rafael and A. L. Macfie, eds. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1976), 336.
12. 12.See also Creon in chapter 2, p. 74
13. 13.Gorgias, 472bc.
14. 14.Gorgias, 474ab.
15. 15.Gorgias, 471e.
16. 16.Gorgias, 482de.

Chapter 10: Love

1. 1.Symposium, 192d.
2. 2.Symposium, 192e.
3. 3.Symposium, 205e–206a.
4. 4.Symposium, 206a.
5. 5.“Platonic Love,” in Facets of Plato’s Philosophy, edited by W. W. Werkmeister (Assen, Netherlands: van Gorcum, 1976), 57.
6. 6.Phaedrus, 256b.
7. 7.Phaedrus, 257b.
8. 8.Phaedrus, 249c.
9. 9.Lysis, 206c.
10. 10.Phaedrus, 257a.
11. 11.Symposium, 177d.
12. 12.Laches, 201a.
13. 13.Phaedrus, 251bc.
14. 14.Symposium, 210d–211a.
15. 15.New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1902, 60.
16. 16.See Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
17. 17.Symposium, 217bc.
18. 18.Symposium, 217c.
19. 19.Symposium, 218c–219a.
20. 20.Symposium, 219b.
21. 21.Symposium, 219b–d.
22. 22.Symposium, 219e.
23. 23.Symposium, 222b.
24. 24.See the end of chapter 6.
25. 25.Symposium, 222d.
26. 26.Crito, 44b.
27. 27.Crito, 45c–46a.
28. 28.Crito, 46bc. Emphasis mine: the italicized text reflects a slight modification on my part of Grube’s translation. The original runs ὡς ἐγὼ οὐ νῦν πρῶτον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀεὶ τοιοῦτος οἷος τῶν ἐμῶν μηδενὶ ἄλλῳ πείθεσθαι ἢ τῷ λόγῳ ὃς ἄν μοι λογιζομένῳ βέλτιστος φαίνηται.
29. 29.Crito, 48e.
30. 30.Symposium, 219b.
31. 31.Symposium, 216ab.
32. 32.Apology, 41e–42a.
33. 33.Symposium, 216e.
34. 34.Symposium, 218d.
35. 35.Republic 337a.
36. 36.See note 56 below.
37. 37.Gorgias, 481b.
38. 38.Gorgias, 489d.
39. 39.Apology, 20d.
40. 40.Apology, 38a.
41. 41.See Lane, M., “The Evolution of Eirōneia in Classical Greek Texts: Why Socratic Eirōneia is Not Socratic Irony,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2006.
42. 42.“Socratic Irony,” The Classical Quarterly, 1987, 81.
43. 43.“The Evolution of Eirōneia in Classical Greek Texts,” 77.
44. 44.“Socratic Irony,” 85.
45. 45.De Oratore II, 269–70, Loeb Classical Library, trans. E. W. Sutton, H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942).
46. 46.The Orator’s Education, Volume IV: Books 9–10, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Donald Russell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 9.2.46.
47. 47.“Socratic Irony,” 94.
48. 48.See Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, trans. by E. S. Haldane (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner 1892), 397–406.
49. 49.Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press, 1989); Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Vlastos, op. cit.; Lear, A Case for Irony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
50. 50.Consider a representative discussion:

    Nor should we infer that irony is, at least in Plato, the expression of something that is false, a lie or an intentional deception. What makes Socratic irony in particular so complicated is that the statements in question are in different ways both false and true. Again, the true kernel in the statement is not necessarily just the opposite of what the statement seems to mean, as might be the case with a merely sarcastic statement; it might be something different from what is conveyed by the surface meaning of the words. When Socrates professes ignorance, for example, it is false that he is simplistically ignorant, but perhaps true that in some deeper sense he is indeed ignorant—and in a way that shows a certain kind of knowledge. (Charles L. Griswold, “Irony in the Platonic Dialogues,” Philosophy and Literature, 2002.)

    Notice the knots in which the interpreter is tied: Socrates’ professions of ignorance are false, though perhaps true, but the way in which they are true, if they are, is that they are false, because he has a certain kind of knowledge. Socratic statements are both false and true, but what is true about them is not merely a negation of what is said, but somehow hidden in what is said, so that one must always shun the “surface” meaning in favor of some “deeper sense.” One must be wary of interpreting him “simplistically,” because Socratic irony is “so complicated.” Such an approach to the text makes it very difficult to encounter, evaluate, and be personally challenged by Socrates’ arguments. One suspects that may even be the point.

51. 51.Cicero, De Oratore, II. 270.
52. 52.Consider all the linguistic parallels: not just eirōneia/ironia but Alcibiades’ paizōn (and Callicles’ paizei) vs. Cicero’s ludens, Alcibiades’ panta ton bion vs. Quintilian’s vita universa, Alcibiades’ exapatōn vs. Cicero’s dissimulantia—and that Socrates’ contemporaries already see him as possessed of his own characteristic brand of irony (eiōthuia eirōneia, Republic 337a, likewise eiōthotōs at Symposium 218d), which means that the idea of peculiarly Socratic irony is not new to the positive meaning.
53. 53.I am far from alone in irony denialism. C. D. C. Reeve, Socrates in the Apology (Indianapolis: Hackett), argues that it is much easier to understand the Apology if we interpret Socrates literally instead of looking for hidden subtext; Richard Kraut, in Socrates and the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), sees Socrates as someone who “must be taken at his word” (288) and who is “completely straightforward and honest” (311). Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith likewise present an unironic picture of Socrates in their books, Socrates on Trial (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Plato’s Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). In Terence Irwin’s influential Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), which traces the development of Plato’s moral philosophy from the Socratic dialogues through the Republic, the only mention of Socratic irony occurs in the context of a discussion of Socrates’ views on akrasia, where Irwin comments, “We should not dismiss Socrates’ conclusion as mere irony” (93).
54. 54.See note 50 above, with Griswold quote.
55. 55.Symposium, 217bc.
56. 56.Gorgias, 481b. It is worth noting that this line is a word for word repetition of 447c5. It is impossible to know whether Chaerephon is aware that he is echoing Callicles’ words from the opening of the dialogue, but if he is aware, he might be suggesting that Callicles interrogate Socrates in just the way that Socrates, there, interrogated Gorgias.
57. 57.Symposium, 216e.

Chapter 11: Death

1. 1.Phaedo, 63e.
2. 2.Phaedo, 64a.
3. 3.Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, trans. Peter Carson (New York: Liveright, 2014), 101.
4. 4.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 78–79.
5. 5.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 105.
6. 6.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 105–6.
7. 7.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 108.
8. 8.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 107.
9. 9.Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage, 2008), 347.
10. 10.War and Peace, 348.
11. 11.Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Penguin, 2000), 530.
12. 12.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 79.
13. 13.Phaedo, 118a.
14. 14.Phaedo, 88c.
15. 15.Phaedo, 89a.
16. 16.Phaedo, 107bc.
17. 17.Phaedo, 89d.
18. 18.Phaedo, 90cd.
19. 19.Phaedo, 90e–91a.
20. 20.Phaedo, 91bc.
21. 21.Meno, 71e.
22. 22.Phaedo, 115c–116a.
23. 23.Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, trans. Don Bartlett (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 4.
24. 24.Knausgaard, My Struggle, 5.
25. 25.Phaedo, 115e.
26. 26.Apology, 40cd.
27. 27.bfinn, “Premature Death Paradox,” www.lesswrong.com, April 13, 2020.
28. 28.Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 125.
29. 29.Excerpt from “Aubade” from The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin by Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett. Copyright © 2012 by The Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved.
30. 30.See De Rerum Natura, III, 853.
31. 31.“Death,” Noûs, 1970, 80.
32. 32.See Lucretius III, 944–49, and 1080–81, following Epicurus PD 18–20.
33. 33.“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” in John Keats, The Complete Poems (New York: Penguin, 1973), 221.
34. 34.Phaedo, 60e.
35. 35.Did Socrates have writing materials, or did he compose the verse in his head? We do not know. But the argument in the Phaedrus (275d and following), which attacks writing for its fixed character—the words say the same thing to you every time you encounter them—applies either way.
36. 36.The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 105.
37. 37.Phaedo, 116e.
38. 38.Phaedo, 116e–117a.
39. 39.Phaedo, 115b.
40. 40.Apology, 39d.
41. 41.Meno, 86bc.
42. 42.Theaetetus, 172d.
43. 43.Theaetetus, 172d.
44. 44.Larkin, Aubade, 116.
45. 45.Confession, 130–31, italics mine.
46. 46.Phaedo, 114d.
47. 47.Phaedo, 118a.