Socrates Plays the Buffoon: Cautionary Protreptic in Euthydemus

PLATO’S Euthydemus is somewhat uninteresting to traditional philosophers, who tend to treat the dialogues from the aspect of their theoretical content.1 The arguments repeatedly presented by Socrates’ opponents are below Platonic standards,2 while Socrates carries on only a single, somewhat truncated logos of his own. The dialogue’s primary interest lies elsewhere, in the odd use it makes of protreptic or conversionary philosophical rhetoric and in its highly ambivalent examination of Socratic tactics. Socrates’ adversaries are a pair of ludicrous charlatans, caricatures of the other fifth–century “Sophists”3 whom Plato satirized; but the tactics of the two brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, are also awkwardly close to those of Socrates himself. No other Platonic dialogue features interlocutors who make a habit of practicing the Socratic question–and–answer mode, and in no other dialogue does Socrates allow anyone but himself to assume the dominant role of interrogator.4 The “sandwich” format, in which two Socratic discussions