The problem of Socrates

Leo Strauss

Socrates"
"The problem of was delivered as a lecture on April 17, 1970, on

the Annapolis campus of St. John's College. Professor Strauss's daughter,

Professor Jenny Clay, of the Department of Classics at the University of Vir
ginia, has generously made available to the editors a copy of the manuscript.

Also, a tape recording of the lecture in the St. John's College library in An
napolis was available to the editors, as were copies of an anonymous transcrip
tion of that tape. Unfortunately, the tape is broken off after about forty-five
minutes, with nearly half of the manuscript still unread, and the transcription
also ends where The tape does. Still, the transcription, as corrected by the

editors on the basis of the tape itself, offers a version of the first part of the
lecture which differs from the manuscript in a number of places and which
sometimes appears to be superior to it. Thus, we have chosen to give the re

corded version almost equal weight with the manuscript as a basis for our

published text. When the lecture as delivered merely contains a word or words

that are not in the manuscript, we have included these in brackets. In the other

cases where the two authorities differ and where we have preferred the version

in the lecture as delivered, we have again included it in brackets, but in these

cases we have also included the manuscript version in a note. In the case of
those discrepancies where we have preferred the manuscript version, we have
included it in the text without brackets, and we have included the oral version

in a note. All italics and paragraphs are based on the manuscript. A note

indicates where the tape is broken off, and after this point we are of course

compelled to rely on the manuscript alone. We have preserved Professor

Strauss'
s punctuation to the extent that we thought possible without sacrificing
clarity. In those few cases where we have made a change on our own (apart
from adding or subtracting a comma), we have so indicated in a note. We have
been compelled to substitute transliterations for Professor Strauss's Greek
words and phrases, all of which appear in the original Greek in the manu

script. Finally, we are grateful to Dr. Heinrich Meier for his generous help in
deciphering Professor Strauss's handwriting.
A small portion of this lecture has been published previously, incorporated
within a different lecture and in a somewhat modified form, in The Rebirth of
Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss

1995 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

interpretation, Spring 1995, Vol. 22, No. 3

322 Interpretation

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [ 1989 by The University of

Chicago]), pp. 44-46.

[I was told that the local paper has announced that I lecture tonight on "The
Socrates."
problems of This was an engaging printing error; for there is more
than one problem of Socrates, in the first place, the problem with which Socra
tes was concerned. But one could say, the problem with which Socrates was

concerned may be of no concern to us, that it may not be relevant. Therefore

after all there are so many things which concern us so much more obviously
and urgently than the problem with which Socrates was concerned. But we
Socrates'
receive an answer why we should be concerned with problem by
listening to the man from whom I took the title of this lecture, and which, as
him.]1 Socrates"
far as I remember, was coined by "The problem of is the first,
immediately revealing title of a section in Nietzsche's Dawn of Idols, one of his
last publications. Socrates and Plato, we hear, were decadents. More precisely,
Socrates was a decadent who belonged to the lowest stratum of the common
people, to the riff-raff. [I quote:] "Everything is exaggerated, buffo, caricature

in him, everything is at the same time concealed, rich in afterthoughts, subter

ranean."

The enigma of Socrates is the idiotic equation of reason, virtue and

happiness an equation opposed to all instincts of the earlier Greeks, of [the]
Socrates'
Greek health and nobility. The key is supplied by discovery of dialec
tics, i.e. the for The high-class Greeks disdained to
and2

quest reasons. earlier

seek for, and to present, the reasons of their conduct. To abide by authority, by
the command either of the gods or of themselves, was for them simply a matter
of good manners. Only those people have recourse to dialectics who have no
other means for getting listened to and respected. It is a kind of revenge which
the low-bom take of the high-bom. "The dialectician leaves it to his adversary
to prove that he is not an idiot. He enrages and at the same time makes help
less."
Socrates fascinated because he discovered in dialectics a new form of

agon, [of contest]; he thus won over the noble youth of Athens and among
them above all Plato. In an age when the instincts had lost their ancient surety,
and [were disintegrating]3, one needed a non-instinctual tyrant; this tyrant
was4

reason. Yet the cure belongs as much to decadence as the illness.

When speaking of the earlier Greeks, Nietzsche thinks also of the philoso

phers, the pre-Socratic philosophers5, especially Heraclitus. This does not mean
that he agreed with Heraclitus. One reason why he did not was that he, like all

philosophers, lacked the "historical

sense."

[so-called] Nietzsche's cure for all

Platonism and hence Socratism was at all times Thucydides who had the cour
age to face reality without illusion and to seek reason in reality, and not in
ideas. In Thucydides the sophistic culture, i.e. the realistic culture, comes to its
full6
expression.

The section on the problem of Socrates in the Dawn of Idols is

only a relic
of Nietzsche's first publication, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit
of Music
The problem of Socrates 323

which he disowned to some extent later on, one reason being that he Had under

stood [in that early work] Greek tragedy in the light or the darkness of Wag
nerian music, and he had come to see that Wagner was a decadent [of the first

order]. In spite of this and other defects Nietzsche's first work delineates his
future life work with amazing clarity. [I will therefore say something about

that.]
Nietzsche paints Socrates as "the single turning point and vortex of so-called
[Nietzsche's]8
merely theoretical; he was con
world-history."7

concern was not

cerned with the future of Germany or the future of Europe a human future

the highest that [has ever been before. The

achieved]9

that must surpass peak of

man hitherto is that manner of life that found its expression in Greek tragedy,
"tragic"

especially in Aeschylean tragedy. The understanding of the world was

rejected and destroyed by Socrates, who therefore is "the most questionable
antiquity,"

phenomenon of a man of more than human size: a demigod. Socra

tes [inbrief] is the first theoretical man, the incarnation of the spirit of science,
radically un-artistic and a-music. "In the person of Socrates the belief in the
comprehensibility of nature and in the universal healing power of knowledge
light."
has first come to He is the prototype of the rationalist and therefore of

the optimist, for optimism is merely the belief that the world is the best
not

possible world, but also the belief that the world can be made into the best of
allimaginable worlds, or that the evils which belong to the best possible world
can be rendered harmless by knowledge: thinking can not only fully understand

being but can even correct it; life can be guided by science; the living gods of

myth can be replaced by a deus ex machina, i.e. the forces of nature as known
in the "higher Rationalism is optimism, it
egoism".10

and used service of since

is the belief that reason's power is unlimited and essentially beneficent or that
science can solve all riddles and loosen all chains. Rationalism is optimism,

since the belief in causes depends on the belief in ends or since rationalism

presupposes the belief in the initial or final supremacy of the good. The full and

ultimate consequences of the change effected or represented by Socrates appear

only in the contemporary West: in the belief in universal enlightenment and

therewith in the earthly happiness of all within a universal society, in utilitarian

ism, liberalism, democracy, pacifism, and socialism. Both these consequences

and the insight into the essential limitations of science have shaken "Socratic
gone."

Socratic has There is then

culture"

to its foundation: "the time of man

hope for a future beyond the peak of pre-Socratic a philosophy of culture, for
the future that is longer merely theoretical [as all philosophy hitherto was]
no ,

or on decision.
will11

but knowingly based on acts of the

Nietzsche's attack on Socrates is an attack on reason: reason, the celebrated

liberator from all prejudices, proves itself to be based on a prejudice, and the
most dangerous of all prejudices: the prejudice stemming from decadence. In

other words, reason, which waxes so easily and so highly indignant about

the demanded sacrifice of the intellect, rests itself on the sacrifice of the intel-
324 'Interpretation

lect.12
This criticism was made by a man who stood at the opposite pole of all

obscurantism and fundamentalism.

One would therefore misunderstand the utterances of Nietzsche on Socrates
which I quoted or to which I if did in the fact that
referred one not keep mind

Socrates exerted a life-long fascination on Nietzsche. The most beautiful docu

ment of this fascination is the penultimate aphorism of Beyond Good and Evil,
perhaps the most beautiful in Nietzsche's [whole] work. I do not dare
passage

attempt to translate it. Nietzsche does not mention Socrates there, but [Socra
tes]13 there14
is there. Nietzsche says that the gods too philosophize, thus obvi
Symposium15
ously contradicting Plato's according to which the gods do not
philosophize, do not strive for wisdom, but are wise. In other words, [the]
gods, as Nietzsche understands them, are not entia perfectissima [most perfect
few16
beings]. I add only a points. The serious opposition of Nietzsche to Soc

rates can also be expressed as follows: Nietzsche replaces eros by the will to
power striving which has a goal beyond striving by a striving which has no
a

such goal. In other words, philosophy as it was hitherto is likened to the

moon and philosophy of the future is like the sun; the former is contemplative
[sends]17
and only borrowed light, is dependent on creative acts outside of it,
preceding it; the latter is creative because it is animated by conscious will to
power. Nietzsche's Zarathustra is "a book for
none"

all and [as it says on the

title page]; Socrates calls on some. I add one more point of no small impor
tance. In the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, when taking issue with Plato
and therewith with Socrates, Nietzsche says as it were in passing: "Christianity
is Platonism for the
The profoundest interpreter and at the same time the profoundest critic of
Nietzsche is Heidegger. He is Nietzsche's profoundest interpreter [precisely]
because he is his profoundest critic. The direction which his criticism takes
his18
may be indicated as follows. In Zarathustra Nietzsche had spoken of the
spirit of revenge as animating all earlier philosophy; the spirit of revenge is
is19
however in the last analysis concerned with revenge on time, and therewith it
the attempt to escape from time to eternity, to an eternal being. Yet Nietzsche
also taught eternal return. For Heidegger there is no longer eternity in any

sense or even sempiternity in any relevant sense. Despite of this or rather be

Nietzsche's21
cause of this20, he preserved condemnation or critique of Plato as
the originator of what came to be modem science and therewith modem tech
nology. But through Heidegger's
radical transformation of Nietzsche, Socrates

almost completely disappeared. I remember only one statement of Heidegger's

on Socrates: he calls him the purest of [all]22 Western
thinkers, while making it
"purest"
clear that is something very different from "greatest." Is he insuffi
[Perhaps.]23
ciently aware of the Odysseus in Socrates? But he surely sees the
Socrates'
connection between purity and the fact that he did not write.
singular

To come back to Heidegger's tacit denial of eternity, that denial

implies that
there is no way in which thought can transcend time, can transcend History-
all
The problem of Socrates 325

thought belongs to, depends on, something more fundamental which thought
cannot master; all thought belongs radically to an epoch, a culture, a folk. This

view is of course not peculiar to Heidegger; it emerged in the 19th century and
24
today has become for many people a truism. But Heidegger has thought it
"historicism"
through more radically than anyone else. Let us call this view and

define it as follows: historicism is a view according to which all thought is

based on absolute presuppositions which vary from epoch to epoch, from cul
ture to culture, which are not questioned and cannot be questioned in the situa

tion to which they belong and which they constitute. This view is not refuted
"objectivity"

by the of science, by the fact that science transcends, or breaks

down, all cultural barriers; for the science which does this is modern Western
science, the child or stepchild of Greek science. Greek science was rendered

possible by the Greek language, a particular language; the Greek language

[suggested]25
those insights, divinations or prejudices which make science pos

To [a knowledge beings
simple]26

sible. give example, science means of all

Arabic;]27
(panta ta onto), a thought [inexpressible in original Hebrew or ^he
medieval Jewish and Arabic philosophers had to invent an artificial term to
make possible the entrance of Greek science, i.e. of science. The Greeks, and
therewith in particular Socrates and Plato, lacked the awareness of history, the
historical consciousness. This is the most popular and least venomous expres

sion of why in particular Socrates and Plato have become altogether question

able for both Nietzsche and Heidegger, and so many of our contemporaries.

This is the most simple explanation of why Socrates has become a problem,

why there is a problem of Socrates.

29This does not mean that the anti-Socratic position which I have tried to
delineate is
unproblematic.30

It be unproblematic, if we could take for

would

granted the [so-called] historical consciousness, if the object of the historical

consciousness, History [with a capital H], had simply been discovered. But
perhaps History is a problematic interpretation of phenomena which could be
interpreted differently, which were interpreted differently in former times and
especially by Socrates and his descendants. [I will illustrate the fact starting
from a simple example. Xenophon, a pupil of Socrates, wrote a history called
Hellenica, Greek history. This work begins abruptly with the expression
"Thereafter."
Thus Xenophon cannot indicate what the intention of this work
is.]31 infer32
From the begirrning of another work of his (the Symposium) we that
the Hellenica is devoted to the gentlemen; hence the
serious actions of actions

of those notorious non-gentlemen, the tyrants, do not strictly speaking belong

[to history, and are appropriately treated by Xenophon in More
excursuses.]33

Hellenica1*
ends, as far as Thereafter
possible,35

important[ly]: the also with

what we call History is for Xenophon a sequence of Thereafters, in each of

which tarache [confusion] rules. Socrates is also a gentleman, but a gentleman

of a different kind; his gentlemanship consists in [raising

answering the
and
is'
question 'What regarding the various human things. But these 'What is'es
326 Interpretation

way in a state of confusion. As a consequence,

unchangeable,]36
are and in no

history. The primacy of political history is still

the37
Hellenica is only political
"historian"
recognized: a still means a political historian, [unless we add an

adjective, like economic, art, and so on]38. Still, modem history is, or is based

upon, philosophy of history. Philosophy of history begins with Vico [but

Vico's]39
new science [as he called it] is a doctrine of natural right, i.e. a

political doctrine. However this may be, modem history [in the form in which

we know it] deals with all human activities and thoughts, with the whole of
"culture." "culture" [Greek]40
[what is called] There is no in thought but [there
for instance arts, the imitative
arts]41

are including the art of moneymaking and

[opinions]42
and [opinions,] doxai, especially about the highest (the gods); these
[opinions]42
are therefore the highest in what we would call "a culture". These

differ from nation to nation and they may undergo changes within nations.

Their have the

objects43

cognitive status of nomizomena, of things owing their

held,"
being being
to frozen results of abortive reasonings which are declared
to be sacred. They are [to borrow from a Platonic simile] the ceilings of caves.
What we call History would be the succession or simultaneity of caves. The
[caves, the] ceilings are nomoi [by convention] which is understood in contra
distinction to phusei [by nature] In the modem centuries there emerged a new
.

[doctrine]45
kind of natural right which is based on the devaluation of nature;
Hobbes'
state of nature is the best known example. Nature is here only a nega
tive standard: that from which one should move away. On the basis of this, the
law of reason or the moral law [as it was called] ceased to be natural law:
nature is in no way a standard. This is the necessary, although not sufficient,
condition of the historical consciousness. The historical consciousness itself

may be characterized from [this earlier]4*

point of view as follows: History, the

object of the historical consciousness, is a sequence of nomoi, phusis being
understood as one nomos among many nomos has absorbed phusis. Heideg
ger tries to understand phusis as related, not to phuein (to grow) but to phaos-

being rooted in a human

grow"

phds (light) "to is for him above all man's

tradition.47
past, in a creatively transforming that
tradition, and cf. also

Nietzsche's Jenseits aphorism 188. 48

Let me restate the issue in somewhat different terms as follows. The human
species consists phusei of ethne. This is due partly directly to
phusis49

(different
races, the size and structure of the surface of the earth) and partly to nomos

(customs and languages). Every philosopher belongs essentially to this or that

ethnos but as [a] philosopher he must transcend it The prospect of a miracu
.

lous abolition or overcoming of the essential particularism for all men was held
out in somewhat different ways by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A non-

miraculous overcoming was visualized in modem times by means of the con

purely50
quest of nature and the universal recognition of a rational nomos
[law] ,

so that only the difference of languages remains [which even Stalin recognized
as important]. In reaction to this levelling, which seemed to deprive human life
The problem of Socrates
-
327

of its depth,
philosophers51
began to prefer the particular (the local and tempo

ral) to any universal instead of merely accepting the particular. To illustrate this
by what is probably52

the best-known example: they replaced the rights of man

by the rights of Englishmen.

According historicism every man belongs essentially and completely to a
to
historical world, [and he]53 cannot understand another historical world exactly
as it [understood or
understands]54

itself
[he necessarily understands]55

it dif
[understands]56
ferently than it itself. Understanding it better than it understood

itself is of course altogether impossible [and only believed in by very simplistic

anthropologists]. Yet Heidegger characterizes [all earlier philosophers] all ear
Sein,"
lier philosophic thought by "oblivion of of the ground of grounds:
[which means] in the decisive respect he claims to understand [the earlier phi
losophers]57
better than they understood themselves.
This difficulty is not peculiar to Heidegger. It is essential to all forms of
historicism. For historicism must assert that it is an insight surpassing all earlier

insights, since it claims to bring to light the true character of all earlier insights:
it puts them in their place, if one may put it so crudely. At the same time
[historicism]58
asserts that insights are [functions of times or periods]59; it sug

gests therefore implicitly that the absolute insight the historicist insight be
longs to the absolute time, the absolute moment [in history]; but it must avoid

even the semblance of raising such a claim for our time, or for any time; for
this would be tantamount to putting an end to History, i.e. to significant time
Nietzsche).60
(cf. Hegel, Marx, In other words: the historical process is not

rational; each epoch has its absolute presuppositions; [in the formula of Ranke]
(all epochs are equally immediate to God); but historicism has brought to light

this very fact, i.e. the truly absolute presupposition.

The historicist insight for all times, for if that insight were
remains true

forgotten at some future time, this would merely mean a relapse into an obliv
ion in which man has always lived in the past. Historicism is an eternal verity.
61
[That of course is impossible.] According to Heidegger there are no eternal

verities: eternal verities would presuppose the eternity or sempiternity of the

human race (Sein und Zeit 227-230; Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik 64)60.
Heidegger knows that [the human
race]62

is not eternal or sempiternal. Is not

the knowledge that the human race had an

origin,"

this knowledge, a cos

basis,64
mological insight, if not the at least basic, for Heidegger?
65The ground of all beings, and especially of man, is [said to be] Sein.
"Sein"
would be translated in the
every case of by writer other than Heidegger

"being"; but for Heidegger everything depends on the radical difference be

tween being understood as verbal noun and being understood as participle, and
in English the verbal noun is undistinguishable from the participle. I shall

therefore use the German terms after having into Greek, translated them once

Latin and French: Sein is einai, esse, etre; Seiendes is on, ens, etant. Sein is
not Seiendes; but in every understanding of Seiendes we tacitly presuppose that
328 Interpretation

we understand Sein. One is tempted to say in Platonic language that Seiendes is

be a
only by participating in Sein but in that Platonic understanding Sein would
Seiendes.
What does Heidegger mean by Sein? One can begin [at least I can begin] to

understand it in the following manner. Sein cannot be explained by Seiendes.

For instance, causality cannot be explained causally
*
Sein takes the
place of

the categories [surely in the Kantian sense]. This change is necessary because
the categories, the systems of categories, the absolute presuppositions change

from epoch to epoch; this change is not progress or rational the change of the
categories cannot be explained by, or on the basis of, one particular system of

categories; yet we could not speak of change if there [were] not something
lasting in the change; that lasting which is responsible for [the] most fundamen
"gives" "sends"
tal change [fundamental thought] is Sein: Sein [as he puts it] or

in different epochs a different understanding of Sein and therewith of "every

thing."

This is misleading insofar as it suggests that Sein is inferred, only inferred.

But of Sein we know through experience of Sein; that experience presupposes

[however] a leap; that leap was not made by the earlier philosophers and there

fore their thought is characterized by oblivion of Sein. They thought only of

and about Seiendes. Yet they could not have thought of and about Seiendes
except on the basis of some awareness of Sein. But they paid no attention to
it this failure was due, not to any negligence of theirs, but to Sein itself.
The key to Sein is one particular manner of Sein, the Sein of man. Man is
project: everyone is what (or rather who) he is by virtue of the exercise of his
freedom, his choice of a determinate ideal of existence, his project (or his
failure to do so). But man is finite: the range of his fundamental choices is
limited by his situation which he has not chosen: man is a project which is
thrown somewhere (geworfener Entwurf)60. The leap through which Sein is
experienced is primarily the awareness-acceptance of being thrown, of finite
ness, the abandonment of every thought of a railing, a support. (Existence must
insistence.)66
be understood in contradistinction to Earlier philosophy and espe
cially Greek philosophy was oblivious of Sein precisely because it was not
based on that experience. Greek philosophy was guided by an idea of Sein
hand,"

according to which Sein means to be "at to be present, and therefore

Sein in the highest sense to be always present, to be always. Accordingly they
and their successors understood the soul as substance, as a thing and not as

the self which, if truly a self, if authentic [and not mere drifting or shallow], [is
based on the awareness-acceptance of
the]67
project as thrown. No human life
that is is
not68

mere drifting or shallow possible without a project, without an

ideal dedication to it. "Ideal
existence"

of existence and of [this] takes the place

of "respectable opinion of the good life"; but opinion points to knowledge,
"ideal
existence"

whereas of implies that in this respect there is no knowledge

[possible] but only what is much higher than knowledge, i.e. knowledge of
what is project, decision.
The problem of Socrates 329

The ground of all beings, and especially of man, is Sein this ground of
grounds is coeval with man and therefore also not eternal or
sempiternal.69

But
if this is so, Sein cannot be the complete ground of man: the emergence of

man, in contradistinction to the man, [would

require]70

essence of a ground

different from Sein. [In other words] Sein is not the ground of the That. But is
not the That, and That, Sein? If we try to understand anything
precisely the
radically, we come up against facticity, irreducible facticity. If we try to under

stand the That of man, the fact that the human race is, by tracing it to its
causes, to its conditions, we shall find that the whole effort is directed by a
by71
specific understanding of Sein an understanding which is given or sent
Sein.72
The condition[s] [in this view to Kant's
are]73

by of man comparable

Thing-in-itself, of which one cannot say anything and in particular not whether
[sempiternal].74
it contains anything Heidegger also replies as follows75: one

cannot speak of anything being prior to man in time; for time is or happens only
while man is; authentic or primary time is and arises only in man; cosmic time,
the time measurable by chronometers, is secondary or derivative and can there
fore not be appealed to, or made use of, in fundamental philosophic considera

tions. This argument reminds of the medieval argument according to which the
temporal finiteness of the world is compatible with God's eternity and un-
changeability because, time being dependent on motion, there cannot have been
time when there was no motion. But yet it [seems that it] is meaningful and
world"

even indispensable to speak of "prior to the creation of the and in the

Heidegger "prior to the
man."

case of of emergence of

It seems thus that one cannot avoid the question as to what is responsible for
the emergence of man and of Sein, or of what brings them out of nothing. For:
ex nihilo nihil fit [out of
nothing nothing comes into being] This is apparently
.

questioned by Heidegger: [he says] ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit [out of

nothing every being being as comes out]. This could remind one of the Biblical
for76
doctrine of creation [out of nothing]. But Heidegger has no place the
Creator-God. [This would suggest, things come into being out of nothing and

through nothing, ex nihilo et a

nihilo].77

This is [of course] not literally asserted

nor literally denied by Heidegger. But must it not be considered in its literal
meaning?
fit.78
Kant found "nowhere even an attempt of a proof of ex nihilo nihil His
own proof establishes this principle as necessary but only for rendering possi
ble any possible experience (in contradistinction to [what he called] the Thing-
in-itself) he gives a transcendental legitimation [of ex nihilo nihil fit. The
the]79
transcendental deduction in its turn points to
primacy of practical reason.
[In the same
spirit]79

Heidegger80: "die Freiheit ist der Ursprung des Satzes vom

Grunde."

Accordingly Heidegger does speak of the origin of man he says that it is a

mystery
what is the status of the reasoning leading to this sensible result? It
follows directly from these 2 premises: 1) Sein cannot be explained by
Seiendes cf. causality cannot be explained causally 2) man is the being
330 Interpretation

in the in-
constituted by Sein indissolubly linked with it man participates

explicability of Sein. The difficulty re: the origin of man which was encoun

tered within biology (See Portmann) was only an illustration, not a proof.
Heidegger seems to have succeeded in getting rid of phusis without having
left open a back door to a Thing-in-itself and without being in need of a philos
(Hegel).81
ophy of nature One could say that he succeeded in this at the price of

the unintelligibility of Sein. Lukacs, the most intelligent of the Western Marx

ists, using the sledgehammer which Lenin had used against empirio-criticism,

Lukacs only harmed himself by not learning from

mystification.82
spoke of

Heidegger. He prevented himself from seeing that Heidegger's understanding

of the contemporary world is more comprehensive and more profound than
Ding)83
Marx's (Gestell Ware, or that Marx raised a claimsurpassing by far
the claim of him who claimed to have sold the Brooklyn bridge. In all impor
tant respects Heidegger does not make things obscurer than they are.
Heidegger tries to deepen the understanding of what thinking is by reflecting
on the German word for thinking. To this procedure he makes the objection
that a German obviously belongs to a particular language, and thinking is
word

something universal; hence one cannot bring to light what drinking is by re

flecting on one word of a particular language. He draws the conclusion that
there remains here a problem. Which means that historicism even in its Heideg
gerian form contains for him a problem. For him a solution cannot lie in a

return to the supra-temporal or eternal but only in something historical: in a

meeting of the most different ways of understanding life and the world, a meet
ing of East and West not of course of the opinion pollsters or opinion leaders
on both sides but of those who, most deeply rooted in their past, reach out

beyond If this is reasonable, our first task

gulf.84

apparently unbridgeable
an

would be the one in which we are already engaged the task of understanding

the Great Western Books.

I began bysaying that Socrates has become a problem that the worth, the

validity, of what he stood for has become a problem. But the question of the

worth of what Socrates stood for, presupposes that we know already what it
85
was for which he stood. This second, or primary, question leads to the
problem of Socrates in another sense of the expression, to the historical prob
lem. This problem of Socrates stems indeed from the fact that Socrates did not

write and that we depend therefore for our knowledge of him, i.e. of his
thought, on mediators who were at the same time transformers. These media

tors are Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. Aristotle did not know
Socrates except through reports oral or written. Infact, what he says about
Socrates is a restatement of what Xenophon said. Aristophanes, Xenophon and
Plato knew Socrates himself. Of these 3 men the only one who showed deed
by
that he was willing to be a historian, was Xenophon. This establishes a prima
facie case in favor of Xenophon. As for Plato, I remember having heard it said
today"

that "we know that some of his dialogues are early and hence more
The problem of Socrates 331

Socratic than the later ones. But for Plato it was a matter of complete indif
ference which implications or presuppositions of the Socratic question "what is
virtue"

were known to Socrates and which were not: so much was he dedicated
Socrates'
to question; so much did he forget himself. It is much wiser to say of
the Platonic Socrates, with Nietzsche, jocularly and even frivolously, prosthe

Platon, opithen te Platon, messe te Chimaira. At any rate, the Platonic Socrates
is less eusunoptos than is the Xenophontic Socrates. I shall limit myself there
fore to the Xenophontic Socrates. But this is not feasible if we do not remind
Aristophanes'
ourselves of the Socrates of Clouds.
That Socrates was manifestly guilty of the two stock charges made against the
philosophers at the time: 1) that they did not believe in the gods, especially the
gods of the city, and 2) that they made the weaker argument the stronger, that

they made the Adikos Logos triumph over the Dikaios Logos. For he engaged in
2 activities: 1) in phusiologia, the study of the compulsions by which especially
heavenly phenomena come about, and 2) in rhetorike. The connection between
the 2 pursuits is not immediately clear, for the Aristophanean Socrates was

altogether unpolitical and rhetoric seems to be in the service of politics. Yet:

phusiologia liberates from all prejudices, in particular the belief in the gods of

the city; and this liberation is frowned upon by the city; the philosopher-physi
ologist needs therefore rhetoric in order to defend himself, his unpopular activ

ity, before the law courts; his defense is the highest achievement of his skill to
make the Adikos Logos triumph over the Dikaios Logos. Needless to say, he
can use that skill also for other, in a sense lower purposes, like defrauding
debtors. The Aristophanean Socrates is a man of the utmost continence and

endurance. This fact alone shows that the Adikos Logos who appears on the
Socrates'
stage is not Adikos Logos, at least
in its pure, ultimate form. This
not

Adikos Logos is to the effect that the tme community is the community of the

knowers, and not the polis, or that the knowers have obligations only toward
one another: the ignoramuses have as little rights as madmen. The knower is
much closer to another knower than he is to his family. The family is constitu
ted by paternal authority and the prohibition against incest by the prohibition
against killing one'sfather and marrying one's mother. The prohibition against

incest, the obligation of exogamy, calls for the expansion of the family into the
polis, an expansion which is necessary in the first place because the family is
not able to defend itself. But the 2 prohibitions would lack the necessary force
oud'

if there were no gods. Socrates questions all this: esti Zeus. He thus
subverts the polis, and yet he could not lead his life without the polis. In the
words of theDikaios Logos, the polis feeds him. Xenophon does not reply to
Aristophanes directly. But the 2 main points made by Aristophanes became in a
Socrates' formed87
somewhat modified form the 2 points of indictment by
Meletos, Anytos and Lykon. By refuting the indictment, Xenophon refutes

then, if tacitly, Aristophanes too.

re asebeia no phusiologia but only study of tanthropina yet Socrates did

332 Interpretation

study nature in his manner proof of the existence and providence of the gods

( + the gods of the city)

re diaphthora Socrates the perfect gentleman (on the basis of his egkra-

teia) he even taught

kaloka'
gathia to the extent to which it can be taught he
did not separate wisdom from accordingly he
one88

and moderation another

was law-abiding, he even identified justice with law-abidingness he was then

a political man the xenikos bios not viable he even taught ta politika in
this context, he criticized the established politeia (election by lot) but this
Socrates'

was gentlemanly view to take. Yet we are reminded of

a alleged

ability ton hetto logon kreitto poiein by the fact that he could handle everyone

in speeches in any way he liked therefore he attracted such questionable gen

tlemen as Kritias and Alcibiades but it would be very unfair to make Socrates
responsible for their misdeeds.

Xenophon's Socrates does not always take the high road of kalokagathia
but in doing so he became, not a dangerous subversion, but rather a philistine.
Di'
86E.g. his treatment of friendship friends are chremata ne utilitarian,
economical treatment reducing the kingly art to the economic art. Ultimately:
kalon =
agathon =
chresimon
86
Yet: kalokagathia has more than one sense. What did Socrates understand by
kalokagathia^ Knowledge of the ti esti of tanthropina such knowledge is not

possessed by the gentlemen in the common sense of the term. Xenophon dis
pels any possible confusion on this point by presenting to us one explicit con

frontation of Socrates with a kalos kagathos (Oeconomicus 11 nothing of this

kind in Plato). This makes us wonder as to the full extent of the difference
between Socrates and the kaloi kagathoi in a chapter of the Memorabilia
devoted to gentlemanship (II 6.35) Xenophon's Socrates tells us what the arete
andros is: surpassing friends in helping them and enemies in harming them
Socrates'
but in speaking of virtue Xenophon does not mention at all harming
Socrates'

people andreia does not occur in Xenophon's 2 lists of virtues.

Socrates'
Xenophon speaks of exemplary conduct in campaigns but he sub
Socrates'
sumes this under justice and he does not give a single example of
Socrates'

military prowess. Bumet, who very low view of Xenophon's

had a

understanding, believed that people like Xenophon and Meno were attracted to
Socrates by his military reputation while all we know of that reputation we
know through Plato. Socrates was then a gentleman in the sense that he always
considered the What is? of human things. Yet Xenophon gives us very few
examples of such discussions; there are many more Socratic conversations
is'
which exhort to virtue or dehort from vice without raising any 'What ques
tion than conversations Xenophon points to the
esti}9

dealing with ti core of

Socrates'
life or thought but does not present it sufficiently or at all.

The Xenophontic Socrates characterizes those who worry about the nature of
all things as mad: some of them hold that is only one, others that there
being
are90

infinitely many beings; some of them hold that all things are
always in
The problem of Socrates 333

motion, others that nothing is ever in motion; some of them hold that every
thing comes into being and perishes, others that nothing ever comes into being
and perishes. He thus delineates the sane or sober view of the nature of all

things; according to that wiser view there are many but not infinitely many
beings, these beings ( i= other things) never change, never come into being and
perish. As Xenophon says in anentirely different context Socrates never ceased
considering what each of the beings is: the many eternal beings are the 'What
is'es, the tribes (= the infinitely many perishable individuals). Socrates did
then worry about the nature of all things and to that extent he too was mad; but
his madness was
sobriety There is only
sobria ebrietas one occasion on

which Xenophon calls Socrates "blessed": when he speaks of how Socrates

acquired his friends or rather his good friends he acquired them by studying
with them the writings of the wise men of old and by
selecting together with
them the good things they found in them but Xenophon does not give a single
example of this blissful activity. Xenophon introduces a Socratic conversa

tion with Glaukon as follows: Socrates was well disposed to Glaukon for the
sake of Charmides the son of Glaukon and for the sake of Plato. Accordingly
the next chapter reports a conversation of Socrates with Charmides. We are

thus induced to suspect that the next chapter will report a conversation of Soc
rates with Plato. Instead the next chapter reports a conversation of Socrates
with an Ersatz for Plato, the philosopher Aristippos: the peak -the conversa

tion with Plato is pointed tobut missing and not because there were no

such conversations. That Book of the Memorabilia which comes closest to

presenting the Socratic teaching as such, is introduced by the remark that Soc
rates did not approach all men in the same manner: he approached those who

had good natures in one way and those who lacked good natures in another

way; but the chief interlocutor in that Book, the chief addressee of the Socratic
teaching presented by Xenophon, is manifestly a youth who lacked a good
nature. A last example: Socrates used 2 kinds of dialectics one in which he

led back the whole argument to its hupothesin and made clear that hupothesin;
in this way the truth became manifest. In the other kind Socrates took his way
through the things most generally agreed upon, through the opinions accepted
by human beings; in this way he achieved, not indeed knowledge, or truth, but
agreement or concord. In the second kind of speech Odysseus excelled; and, as

frequently cited the verses from the Iliad

the accuser of Socrates said, Socrates
in which Odysseus is presented as speaking differently to men of worth and to
worthless people. Only by following these intimations, by linking them with
one another, by thinking them through and by always remembering them

even when reading how Socrates gave good advice to a poor fellow who was

near despair because 14 female relatives had taken refuge in his house and were

about to starve him and themselves to death only by always remembering

Xenophon's intimations, I say, can one come to see the true Socrates as Xeno
phon saw him. For Xenophon presents Socrates also and primarily as innocent
334 Interpretation

and even helpful to the meanest capacities. He conceals the difference between

Socratic and ordinary kalokagathia as much as possible, i.e. as much as is

compatible with intimating their conflict.

is for the law for the
^Nothing more characteristic of gentlemen than respect

right kind of law; or, if you wish, the wrong kind is not law at all. It is
therefore necessary to raise the question ti esti nomos; but this question is never

raisedby Xenophon's Socrates; it is raised only by Alcibiades, a youth of

extreme audacity and even hubris who by raising that question discomfited no
Socrates'
less a man than the great Perikles. failure to raise that question

showed how good a citizen he was. For laws depend on the regime, but a good
citizen is a man who obeys the law independently of all changes of regimes.
citizen"

But, according to a more profound view, "good is relative to the re

gime: a good citizen under a democracy will be a bad citizen under an oligar

chy. Given this complication, it is prudent not to raise the question 'what is
law.'

But, alas, Alcibiades who did raise that question was a companion of
Socrates at the time he raised it, and the way in which he handled it reveals his
Socratic training. Xenophon almost
openly admits that Socrates subverted pa

ternal authority. As for incest, Xenophon's Socrates asserts that incest is for
bidden by divine law, for incest between parents and children is automatically
punished the defective character of the offspring, good offspring coming
by
only from parents who are both in their prime. The Socratic argument is silent

on incest between brother and sister. Above all, the punishment for incest be
"punishment"

tween parents and children does not differ from the that is visited

on an oldish husband who marries a young wife. On this point the Xenophontic

Socrates comes very close to the Socrates of the Clouds.

The Socrates of the Clouds teaches the omnipotence of rhetoric, but this

teaching is refuted by the action of the play. The Xenophontic Socrates could
handle everyone as he liked in speeches this means that he could not handle

everyone as he liked in deeds. The greatest example is Xanthippe, to say noth

ing of his accusers. But the Xenophontic Socrates (= the Socrates of the

Clouds) is aware of the essential limitation of speech. Xenophon indicates this

also as follows. His comrade-in-arms Proxenos was able to rule gentlemen but
not the others who regarded him as naive; he was unable to instil the general
fear; he was
run of soldiers with unable to inflict punishment; he was a pupil of

Gorgias. Xenophon, however, the pupil of Socrates, was able to rule both
gentlemen and non-gentiemen; he was good at doing as well as at speaking.

86From Aristotle we learn that the sophists identified or almost identified the
political art with rhetoric. Socrates, we infer, was opposed to the sophists also
and especially because he was aware of the essential limitations of rhetoric. In
this important respect, incidentally, Machiavelli had nothing in common with

the sophists but agreed with Socrates; he continued, modified, corrupted the
Socratic tradition; he was linked to that tradition through Xenophon to whom
he refers more frequently than to Plato, Aristotle and Cicero taken together.
The problem of Socrates
-
335

This is why one should pay greater attention to Xenophon

an additional reason

than one ordinarily does.

This lecture consists of 2 heterogenous parts they are held together appar
Socrates,"

ently only by the title "The problem of which is necessarily ambig

uous: the problem of Socrates is philosophic and it is historical. The distinction

between philosophic and historical cannot be avoided, but distinction is not

total separation: one cannot study the philosophic problem without having
made up one's mind on the historical problem and one cannot study the histori
cal problem without having made up one's mind implicitly on the philosophic
problem.

NOTES

1. The manuscript contains the following sentences instead of these bracketed ones: "Why
should we be interested in it? Why should it be relevant to us? There are so many things that
concern us so much more obviously and urgently than the problem of Socrates. We receive an

answer by listening to the man from whom I took the title of my lecture and who, as far as I
Socrates.'"

remember, coined the expression 'the problem of

2. Word omitted in the lecture as delivered.
"disintegrated" disintegrating"
3. is written instead of "were in the manuscript.
"is" "was"
4. replaces in the lecture as delivered.
"pre-Socratics" philosophers"

5. replaces "pre-Socratic in the lecture as delivered.

"est"
6. The word in the text was originally "fullest"; has been crossed out.
7. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following words, which are written at
Schopenhauer."
the bottom of the page in the manuscript: "anti-Hegel, (The word which we have
"anti-"
interpreted as is difficult to read, and perhaps we are in error about it.) These words are not

present in the lecture as delivered.

"His" "Nietzsche's"
8. is written instead of in the manuscript.
achieved" achieved"

9. "man has ever is written instead of "has ever been in the manuscript.

10. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following phrase, which is written at

the bottom of the page in the manuscript: "i.e. collective egoism of the human race (utilitarian
ism)"
This phrase is not present in the lecture as delivered.
will," will"

11. The words "on acts, on the replace "on acts of the in the lecture as delivered.
12. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following sentence, which is written
at the bottom of the page in the manuscript. "Science cannot answer the question 'why science': it
foundation."
rests on an irrational This sentence is not present in the lecture as delivered.
"he" "Socrates"
13. is written instead of in the manuscript.
"there,"
14. The word which has been added above the line, is omitted in the lecture as deliv
ered.
"Banquet' "Symposium"
15. replaces in the lecture as delivered.
few" "one"

16. The words "a added above the line to replace which has been crossed out. In
"points"

keeping with this addition, the word has been made plural by the addition of the final "s".

Also, the manuscript contains here the following sentence, which has been crossed out (see, how
ever, the end of the paragraph): "In the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, when
taking issue with
Plato and therewith with Socrates, Nietzsche says as it were in passing 'Christianity is Platonism
people.'"

for the
"sends"

17.
"spends"
is [inadvertently] written instead of in the manuscript.
"his"

18.
"the"
replaces in the lecture as delivered.
the line.
is"

19. "it added above

20.
"it"
replaces
"this"
in the lecture as delivered.
336 Interpretation

21.
"Nietzsche's"
added above the line to replace
"the"
which has been crossed out. In the
"the."
lecture as delivered, however, the reading is again
"the" "all"
22. is written instead of in the manuscript.
"Probably." "Perhaps."
23. is written instead of in the manuscript.

24. "a truism for many

people"

replaces "for many people a

truism"

in the lecture as delivered.

"supplied" "suggested"
25. is written instead of in the manuscript.
"an"
26.
simple"

is written instead of "a in the manuscript.

27. "inaccessible e.g. to original Hebrew or Arabic

thought:"

is written instead of "inexpress

"original"

ible in original Hebrew or

Arabic:"
in the manuscript. Also, the word in the manuscript

is added only above the line.

28. The remainder of this paragraph is omitted in the lecture as delivered. The tape contains
here a pause of about fifteen
during seconds of shuffling pages.
which the only sound is that
29. At the preceding paragraph, the manuscript has the marginal notation "turn to
end of the
8"
sheet (in Professor Strauss's own hand). Accordingly, the editors have chosen to omit, for the
time being, a large portion of the lecture and to continue instead from the beginning of sheet 8. At
4b."
the end of sheet 10 of the manuscript, there is another marginal notation, "Continue That
notation points back to the present one, on sheet 4b, and thus also to the omitted portion of the text.
This omitted portion, which we will return to as directed by that later notation, continues to what
appears to be the end of the lecture. Our editorial procedure is further justified by the fact that the
lecture as delivered in Annapolis continues here in the manner that we are presenting it (i.e. from
sheet 8 of the manuscript). Since the tape breaks off before the occurrence of the second marginal

notation, however, we cannot be certain how much, if any, of the omitted section was included in
Professor Strauss's oral presentation. (A subsequent note will indicate where the tape breaks off.)
30. This sentence is omitted from the lecture as delivered and replaced by the two following
sentences: "We have to pay some attention to this question of historicism, that is to say of history
unproblemati

in the first place. The anti-Socratic position, which I have tried to delineate, is not
'Thereafter'
31. The sentence "Xenophon's Hellenica begins abruptly with thus Xenophon
is."
cannot indicate what the intention of his work is written instead of these four bracketed sen

tences in the manuscript.

Symposium)"

32. The words "(the are omitted in the lecture as delivered, and the words "we
infer" infer."
are also omitted and replaced by "one can
it." history,"
33. The words "in are written instead of "to in the manuscript. Also, instead of
excursuses."

the words "and are appropriately treated by Xenophon in the manuscript contains the
excursuses"

words "belong in above the line.

Hellenica"
34. "this
work"

replaces "the in the lecture as delivered.

delivered.
possible"

35. The phrase "as far as is omitted in the lecture as Instead, the next
possible."
'Thereafter"
occurrence of the word is followed by the phrase "within the limits of the
is' unch

36. "considering the 'What of the human things, these 'What is'es being is
written instead of these bracketed words in the manuscript.
"Xenophon's" "the"
37. replaces in the lecture as delivered.
38. "(= economic historian, art historian . is written instead of these bracketed words in
the manuscript.
his" Vico's"
39. "yet is written instead of "but in the manuscript.
"classical" "Greek"

40. is written instead of in the manuscript.

41. "technai
mimetike)"

(including chrematistike and is written instead of these bracketed

words in the manuscript.
"doxai" "opinions"
42. is written instead of in the manuscript.
"They"
43. The
objects"

words "Their added above the line to replace which has been crossed
"They"

out. In the lecture as delivered, however, the word is the one used.
held"
44. "of things owing their being to being added at the bottom of the page in the manu
script. A notation above the line directs us to insert this phrase here, and it is included here in the
lecture as delivered.
"teaching" "doctrine"

45. is written instead of in the manuscript.

earlier"

46. "the in the manuscript.

classical"

is written instead of "this

The problem of Socrates 337

47. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following words, which are written at
Gemachte."
the bottom of the page in the manuscript: "das Gewachsene = das These words are

not present in the lecture as delivered.

48. These last few lines, beginning with the words "Heidegger
tries,"

are omitted from the

lecture as delivered.
"nature" "phusis"
49. replaces in the lecture as delivered.
"purely"

50. added above the line.

"philosophers" "men"
51. added above the line to replace which has been crossed out.

52. "what is
probably"

omitted from the lecture as delivered.

he"
" we"

53. is written instead of "and in the manuscript.

54. "understands
understood" understands"

or is written instead of "understood or in the manuscript.

55. "we necessarily

understand" understands"

is written instead of "he necessarily in the manu

script.
"understood" "understands"
56. is written instead of in the manuscript.
"them" philosophers"

57. is written instead of "the earlier in the manuscript.

"it" "historicism"
58. is written instead of in the manuscript.
periods)" periods"

59. "f(times or is written instead of "functions of times or in the manuscript.

60. This entire parenthesis is omitted from the lecture as delivered.

"Yet"
61. This sentence begins with the word in the manuscript.
"it" race"

62. is written instead of "the human in the manuscript.

origin"

63. "the knowledge that the human race had an added at the bottom of the page in the
manuscript. A notation above the line directs us to insert this phrase here, and it is included here in
the lecture as delivered.
basis" basis"
64. "is this not the replaces "if not the in the lecture as delivered.
65. Professor Strauss indicates by section of the text,
a marginal notation that the following
which includes four paragraphs, written on two separate sheets, belongs here. This section
over

also occurs here in the lecture as delivered. It replaces the following sentences, which have been
crossed out. "The ground of all beings, and especially of man, is Sein this ground of grounds is
coeval with man and therefore also not eternal or sempiternal. But if this is so, Sein cannot be the
complete ground of man: the emergence of man (+ the essence of man) requires a ground differ
ent not the ground of the That. To this one can reply as follows: the That of man
from Sein. Sein is
or its is necessarily interpreted in the light of a specific understanding of Sein
condition of
Sein."

understanding which is given or sent by A subsequent note will indicate the end of this
interpolated section.
66. This entire parenthesis is omitted from the lecture as delivered. Also, Professor Strauss is
"insistence"

probably using the word here in its older, and Latinate, sense of "standing or resting
upon."

a"

67. "is resoluteness, i.e. the awareness-acceptance of is written instead of these bracketed

words in the manuscript.

"not"
68. is inadvertently omitted from the lecture as delivered.
sempiternal"

in the lecture delivered.

eternal"

69. "sempiternal or replaces "eternal or as

require"
"requires"
70. is written instead of "would in the manuscript.

71.
"by"
the to "of in the manuscript and in the lecture as delivered.
added by editors replace

72. This is the end of the interpolated section which was mentioned in note 65.
"is" are"

73. is written instead of "in this view in the manuscript.

"sempiternal"

74.
"aidion"

is written instead of in the manuscript.

follows"

75. "mentions this

reply"

replaces "also replies as in the lecture as delivered.

"denies"

76. "has no place

for"
added above the line to replace which has been crossed out.
fit."

77. The symbol

"
"

followed by "ex nihilo et ab nihilo omne ens is written instead of

written, but then crossed out, after

ens"

this sentence in the manuscript. Also, the words "qua are

ens."

the words "omne

78. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following words, which are written at
Substanz."

the bottom of the page in the manuscript: "Grundsatz der Beharrlichkeit der These

words are not present in the lecture as delivered.

338 Interpretation

79. The symbol " bracketed words in the manuscript.

"

is written instead of these

80. Here is where delivered in Annapolis breaks off (cf. note 29).
the tape of the lecture as

Accordingly, we have only Professor Strauss's manuscript of the remainder of the lecture.
81. Beneath the line here there are added two distinct groups of words in the manuscript. The
first, which begins under the word "Thing-in-itself, consists of two lines, one underneath the
The bottom line to be "but
sich'
unknowable."

other.The top line is "(Kant) nature 'an appears

Without."
for Heidegger and Nietzsche: no Beyond or (This line, and especially the word which we
"for,"
have interpreted as is difficult to read, and perhaps we are in error about it.) The second
(Hegel)"

group of words, which is found underneath the words "philosophy of nature is "nature as
Anderssein."
mind in its
82. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following two sentences, which are
written at the bottom of the page in the manuscript. "Heidegger has something to do with mysticism
if mysticism is the discovery of the life of the deity in the depths of the human heart. But the

mystery which Heidegger claims to have discovered is meant to be deeper, and less based on
God."
questionable presuppositions, than the mysteries of
",Ding" "Ware"
83. The word (with the preceding comma) is written underneath the word in
the manuscript.

84. A notation above the line directs us to insert here the following sentence, which is written

at the bottom of the page in the manuscript. "In this way, and only in this way, Heidegger upholds

intention
philosophy."

the universalist the trans-national or trans-cultural of

85. Here, at the end of Professor Strauss's manuscript, occurs the marginal notation "Continue
4b,"
to which we referred in note 29, and which directs us back to the portion of the lecture that we

have omitted so far. At the beginning of this portion of the lecture, a new paragraph begins with the

following sentence, which has been crossed out: "However this may be, can one answer the ques
tion of the worth of what Socrates stood for, nay, can one properly formulate it, if one does not
stood."

know in the first place what it is for which he As the reader will notice, this sentence is
4b."

nearly the same as the one that immediately precedes the marginal notation, "Continue Ac
cordingly, in turning now to this omitted section, we have chosen not to begin a new paragraph.
86. No indention in the manuscript, although the previous line appears to be the end of a

paragraph.
"framed" "formed."

87. It is possible that Professor Strauss wrote the word here instead of
"one"
88. added by the editors.

89. The words "than conversations dealing with ti estr are added beneath the line in the
manuscript.
"are"
90. added by the editors.