Socrates' awe and the Stranger's awe

I earlier posted about the Stranger's αἰδώς (shame or awe) on responding to Socrates' request that he use a vaguely "Socratic" approach to the conversation, with short exchanges rather than long speeches. It is worth noting also that the Stranger’s αἰδώς mirrors Socrates’ own remembered αἰδώς at encountering Parmenides as a young man (Theaetetus 183e6), an encounter that Socrates just recalled (217c5-7).

There, Socrates showed himself as an overconfident young with much to learn yet from a more experienced philosopher. As we learn from the Parmenides (127eff), Socrates thought he could easily refute Zeno's paradoxical arguments about the many and the one by introducing a version of the theory of forms. But the aged Parmenides himself refutes Socrates' arguments, leaving him at a loss. It is this that seems to be the source of Socrates' reverence or awe; not Parmenides' age by itself, but the fact that Parmenides showed him the difficulties with his own position.

Now, the Stranger must have heard of Socrates’ fearsome powers of refutation before meeting him; otherwise his αἰδώς could only be explained as the conventional shame of a younger man upon meeting an older man. This is a possibility, since Theodorus describes him as merely a companion of those around Parmenides and Zeno, not as a companion of Parmenides himself; the Stranger may never have met Parmenides, if we take Theodorus literally. But we are never told that the Stranger is a young man.

At any rate, Socrates appears to the Stranger as a figure inspiring reverence and shame, not someone to be trifled with lightly, especially not by giving oneself airs and putting on exhibitions; we might say that Socrates is to the Stranger as Parmenides was to Socrates. But just as Socrates did not simply bow down before Parmenides’ wisdom (even if he was rendered uncharacteristically at a loss), we should not expect the Stranger do so before Socrates. His very presence is a challenge to Socrates. And yet he seems ashamed of his possible challenge: if he is there to pass judgment on Socrates’ philosophical practice, the presence of a silent Socrates observing him also constitutes a test of the Stranger’s own philosophical activity, including his political thought.

The Stranger's Shame and the dialogic character of the Sophist

The typical view of the dramatic character of the "late" dialogues of Plato (like the Sophist) is that they don't have any. The dialogue is a cumbersome apparatus for presenting dogmatic material. The Eleatic Stranger is supposed to be merely reciting a Platonic doctrine, and Plato's presentation of it in the form of a dialogue is merely a matter of inertia.

Yet consider the small exchange at 217d8-e3. The Stranger, on hearing Socrates’ veiled request that he proceed by means of short exchanges in his investigation, he says that he would be ashamed (αἰδώς τίς μ᾽ ἔχει) to put on an exhibition (ἐπίδειξιν ποιούμενον; like a sophist, cf. Protagoras 320c3), either by himself or with another. He understands that, if he wants Socrates’ approval, he must distinguish himself from the sophists through his pedagogical success and his concern for truth; he must treat the exchange as a real exchange, not simply an opportunity to “show off;” in short, he must prove himself a philosopher.

We are clearly warned in this exchange that however docile young Theaetetus and Socrates may at times appear to be in the conversation that follows, the dialogue is never merely “for show,” and their responses will contain important clues about the effectiveness of the Stranger’s practice of philosophy, contrary to the superficial impression of dramatic inertness which still retains its hold in scholarly interpretations of the Eleatic dialogues (cf. Frede 1996).

To be sure, one may still argued that the drama of the dialogue, in spite of this warning, still remains a cumbersome facade. After all, the Stranger, in his earlier conversation with Theodorus and the boys (Sophist 217b5-9; this happens “off camera,” so to speak, before the meeting with Socrates) is reported by Theodorus to “remember well” what he heard about sophist, statesman, and philosopher from the Eleatics, and to be willing to repeat it. But this need not imply that he is about to merely recite it mechanically, pace Zuckert (2000 p. 70); this would be, after all, an ἐπίδειξιν, an exhibition. Remembrance, at any rate, will play an important role later on in the Statesman; it designates the human relation to the divine in the myth. The Stranger’s good remembrance has to be proven in his treatment of Theaetetus and young Socrates - in his ability to help them remember what is already in them.