Euthydemus

by Plato, Denise Schaeffer (Introduction), Gregory A. McBrayer (Translator)

From the Introduction:

"Neglected for ages by Plato scholars, the Euthydemus has in recent years attracted renewed attention.  The dialogue, in which Socrates converses with two sophists whose techniques of verbal manipulation utterly disengage language from any grounding in stable meaning or reality, is in many ways a dialogue for our times. Contemporary questions of language and power permeate the speech and action of the dialogue. The two sophists—Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus—explicitly question whether speech has any connection to truth and specifically whether anything can be said about justice and nobility that cannot also be said about their opposites."

Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato’s immediate audience.

Features

Notes, glossary, and an interpretive essay.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Ancient, History, Ancient History, Greece

116 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 385

About the author

Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I fear other readers may also find this extended satire on Sophism longer than strictly necessary. In order to help busy people make better use of their time, I offer this new translation, where I have taken the liberty of abridging and modernizing the dialogue in a few places.

EUTHYDEMUS: My brother and I are the greatest philosophers in the world. Ask us anything.

CLEINAS: Like what?

EUTHYDEMUS: Okay, here's your starter for ten. Is a thing the same as itself, or is it a different thing?

CLEINAS: Huh?

SOCRATES: [whispers] You're supposed to say it's the same as itself.

CLEINAS: Ah... it's the same as itself.

EUTHYDEMUS: I shall demonstrate to you that you are wrong. Consider a door. Do you maintain that it is always a door?

CLEINAS: I do, of course.

EUTHYDEMUS: But what about when it is ajar?

[General applause for EUTHYDEMUS's brilliant philosophical insight]

EUTHYDEMUS: I'll let my brother do the next one.

DIONYSODORUS: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?

CLEINAS: I do not know.

DIONYSODORUS: It is so that they can hide in cherry trees.

CLEINAS: But, I have never seen an elephant in a cherry tree?

DIONYSODORUS: Proves it works then!

[More applause]

CRITO: Are these clowns real philosophers?

SOCRATES: Hey, you're smarter than you look.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly do not think that I am a stone, I said, though I am afraid that you may prove me to be one.

Euthydemus is Plato’s most explicitly comical work. As in earlier Socratic dialogues, its focus is the conflict between genuine Socratic philosophy and the empty Sophistical practice. Here, however, the focus is not on the question of virtue or knowledge, but on logic itself. Socrates recounts a meeting with two sophists, Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus, who are experts in the art of fighting with words. These two can prove any thesis, however apparently absurd, such as that every person is omniscient or that lying is impossible. They do this mainly through punning: by playing on the multiple meanings of words, they entrap their interlocutor into admitting manifestly false conclusions.

Plato’s response to this practice is not, as in Aristotle, a treatise on logical fallacies, but an extended satire on this empty wordplay. Yet the modern reader will likely not be amused for very long, since the arguments parodied by Plato are so silly as to be beyond credulity. Clearly no real person could fall for this nonsense. But as the translator of my edition, Benjamin Jowett, argues, this sort of sophism would not have been so transparent to Plato’s contemporaries, living in a time before dictionaries, grammar books, or formalized logic. Indeed, the fallacies to which minds were prey in those days would be shocking now. So Plato, and his disciple Aristotle, can be thanked for doing us a service in decisively seeing through this facile form of argumentation. It is a testament to Plato’s success, then, that this dialogue now seems so pointless.

[c · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lighthearted, heavy-handed satire of Sophists; the twist is that these guys are the most powerful lawyers and merchants in Greece.

Although comedic, the topics of this dialogue correspond to conversations that I see every day in which nonsense-terms are introduced, not defined, and then used in broken arguments, or worse yet perfectly valid arguments after which the arguer walks away victorious, congratulating himself for being so clever. The issues here are the soundness of propositions and the rules assented to in a conversation—you can't force someone to find something sound, you can only present evidence and allow that person to interpret it themselves nor can you force someone to be cooperative; there's no way to induce someone to have a good will, you have to make it worth their while, and if they are already the wealthiest man in Greece who has little interest in talking to you then there's little that you can do.

There is another point of interest here with regard to language games: these Sophists are playing a language game with the purpose of convincing the crowd that they are clever philosophers. They succeed at doing this, and you can argue that the crowd is just a bunch of ignorant Greek farmers but who cares, their language game is successful, so can you really say that they aren't philosophers, even successful philosophers, or at the very least skilled technicians and operators in a very real sense?

Even Socrates is unsure at the end: "Do not trouble about those who practice philosophy, whether they are good or bad; but examine the thing itself well and carefully. And if philosophy appears a bad thing to you, turn every man from it, not only your sons; but if it appears to you such as I think it to be, take courage, pursue it, and practice it, as the saying is, 'both you and your house.' "

[MJD · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the more entertaining, and outright comical, works of Plato.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's difficulty resides in the fact that the Sophists with whom Socrates wars are awful people and rather painful to read. I also saw that I was a Sophist of sorts around 2007, and I didn't enjoy that autobiographical realization.

The dialogue concerns a misuse of reason. The Sophists turn everything one says into the opposite. Socrates identifies their problem: "They cannot be made to understand the nature of intermediates [306]. For all persons or things, which are intermediate between two other things...participate in both of them."

This is a great statement that should have been introduced 20 pages earlier.

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Been there. Read that. Go read Protagoras or Phaedrus or Gorgias instead.

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ancient Art of Arguing
7 March 2020

This is a rather odd dialogue, namely because Plato is recording a conversation that Socrates was having with a friend about a conversation that he had with a couple of other people previously. In a way, I am sort of scratching my head and asking why? Why distance the conversation the way that he has done by putting it into a conversation that Socrates was having with Crito? There are probably some reasons though, namely because the topic of the conversation was about debate, and Socrates was demonstrating to Crito some of the fallacies that the Sophists use when attempting to argue.

Ironically, this was the topic of one of my subjects at University this week (though, of course, it only took up half the lecture, namely because I am studying computer science), and that is the fallacy, or otherwise known as the faulty argument. I’m not necessarily going to say that it is a falsehood, because what might be said may not necessarily be a lie, but rather what it is is the attempt to win an argument, or a debate, by avoiding using evidence to actually prove what you have said is true.

For instance, we have what is termed the ad hominem fallacy, namely that we don’t attack somebody’s argument, but rather we attack their character. I’m sure that we have plenty of examples of this argument, and honestly, it is used by politicians all the time. However, sometimes I do feel that character is actually important in some contexts, especially when you are, say, running for office. On the other hand, it is a pretty lazy way of putting across an alternate point of view – attacking the messenger as opposed to the message – just ask Greta Thumburg.

There are quite a lot of them actually, though when this dialogue was written they didn’t necessarily have a detailed description of each of them. In fact, the word fallacy didn’t even exist. So, in a way, what is happening here is that Socrates, or rather Plato, is attempting to set the foundations of what one could consider being the logical way of argument, and pointing out to his students, using the example of the two Sophists in his dialogue, things one should use to make an argument. Then again, back in those days, the Sophists were quite similar to the lawyers of our days, it is just that they didn’t speak, they just wrote the speeches (in the Athenian legal system, you had to represent yourself, but there was no rule preventing you from getting somebody else to write your speech for you).

The problem is that these arguments work, which is why people continue to use them. In fact, it is much harder to convince people by appealing to evidence as opposed to simply using a fallacious argument. For instance, take the situation in Australia this week – people rushed out and pretty much cleared out every supermarket of toilet people. In fact, people were going out with huge packets in their trollies. The thing was that there is no shortage of toilet paper in Australia – it is made here, and there is pretty much enough to last us for years. This fact was being presented constantly, but the thing was that even after four days the supermarket shelves were still empty – people just didn’t want to listen to the evidence.



(And here is the article, just in case you hadn’t heard of the toilet paper panic).

Take for instance the following argument:

Stalin was a communist.
Stalin committed mass genocide.
Therefore all communists will commit mass genocide.

Let us do something slightly different and change the word communist with the worth atheist:

Stalin was an atheist.
Stalin committed mass genocide.
Therefore all atheists will commit mass genocide.

Now, a good friend of mine showed me the perfect way to defeat that argument:

Stalin breathed oxygen ...

Well, if they accept the above two arguments, one wanders whether they will accept the third one and stop breathing oxygen?

Yeah, this is the biggest problem with arguing, and it doesn’t matter what you do, what memes you post, or what evidence you present, people are still going to resort to fallacious arguments because, as I said, they work. Not only that, but they are quick, easy, and you don’t always come away looking like a fool. Okay, in the eyes of some people you do, but in the eyes of others, well, you don’t. In fact, many of these people don’t care about the people who actually think they are fools, as long as they are able to appeal to the people who count, who tend to be the masses. How do you think Donald Trump because president?

In the end, I think the following picture pretty much demonstrates the power of the fallacious argument:

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detta är en bok som balanserar mellan filosofi och humor, och därigenom bidrar till att nedgöra sofisternas idéer om att språk och substans är samma sak. Den gör detta genom att dra nytta av en serie ordlekar och hur dessa gör argument omöjliga att lita till. Rådet i boken är enkelt: om någonting säger emot ditt bondförnuft, utgå från att personen har använt ord för att lura dig. Kopplingarna till nutiden ger sig själva.

Trots detta skulle jag säga att boken inte egentligen är värd speciellt mycket uppmärksamhet. Den innehåller inte någonting nytt som är överlägset säg Talebs böcker, och säger inte det som sägs på ett sätt som är starkare än moderna (lättillgängligare) formuleringar av samma påstående. Jag rekommenderar den därför inte.

[Yago González · Rating 3 out of 5]

Menuda conversación de besugos, aunque supongo que es la idea.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of Plato’s dialogues, so I was looking forward to reading this slender book. But I was disappointed. The dialogue focused on niggling issues, callow word play, puns and words taken out of context. A character at the end of the book described it perfectly as “chattering and making a worthless fuss about matters of no consequence.” Amen!

So what was the point? To show how awful nihilistic logic and wordplay are? It is necessary to spend an entire dialogue doing that? It’s like writing a novel about writing a bad novel and writing it poorly.

The translation by Rosamond Kent Sprague was nice and captured Socrates’ impish personality. However, rather than format it like a play, it was formatted like a novel but without using quote marks, which make reading it more difficult than it had to be.

I’m assuming Plato’s other dialogues are better. I can’t recommend this one.

[Billie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really pleasant surprise. Not that I have low expectations but this particular dialogue stood out to me. That may be because the form and format of Socrates' discussion with his interlocutors is somewhat off-brand in this one. Anyway, the Euthydemus is a fun dialogue in which Socrates effectively exposes the uselessness of those who "win" by using word games and language quirks rather than engaging with meaning.

[Hussain Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

لب لباب المحاورة في نهايتها. عندما قال سقراط

"كن معقولا يا كريتون، ولا تهتم سواء أكان أولئك الذين يتعقبون الفلسفة أخيارا أو أشرارا، بل فكر في الفلسفة عينها. اختبرها جيدا وبحق. وإذا كانت سيئة حاول أن تبعد كل الرجال عنها، وليس ولديك فقط. لكن إذا كانت كما أعهد منها، فاتبعها عندئذ واخدمها أنت وأهل بيتك، كما يقول القول المأثور، وكن سعيدا."

[Miguel Angel Lozano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eutidemo y Dionisodoro son dos sofistas extranjeros que se proclaman como los más sabios y se atreven a decir que lo saben todo, literalmente el gran todo. Sócrates, como de costumbre, es escéptico y decide probar su conocimiento; pronto, se da cuenta de las técnicas que sus adversarios usan y les demuestra como están embaucando la conversación. Una refutación, me imagino que, es a lo que nunca se habían enfrentado los dos hermanos que, hay que reconocer, hasta el momento han sido los rivales más fuertes de Sócrates; pero que, al final, fallaron en demostrar que sabían más allá de un razonamiento puro. Cabe hacer énfasis en que Sócrates no pretende saber lo que no sabe, y al refutar, no lo hace con la intención de impartir su doctrina, porque no tiene una que sea verdadera absolutamente, sino que al hacerlo, pretende hacer que su interlocutor vea que él tampoco sabe.

Otro punto importante es que, los hermanos me parecieron muy poco honorables al no aceptar que se les había descubierto su técnica, sino que siguieron necios empujando por donde mismo, ¡ay, cuantos he conocido que se comportan así, que, se apegan tanto a sus hipótesis, como si de ellas dependiera también su amor propio! Qué después, muy molestos proceden a insultarlo directamente a uno. ¿Pero que no es mejor, una vez detectada la falla, abandonar lo falso, y aunque se estanque uno en la ignorancia, llega a ser mejor que quedarse en el error? Supongo que será una tendencia general de conducta, no digo que yo no, al ser más joven también llegue a comportarme así, ¡ni tampoco estoy tan seguro que una postura de ignorancia total sea lo mejor para un homo sapiens! Solo habría que haber visto a Pirrón el escéptico, que prácticamente vivió dudándolo todo, incluso su propia existencia, ¡hay un riesgo en tanto pensar, al final, uno puede parecer a los ojos de muchos un verdadero demente, mientras que ha llegado a conclusiones racionales! ¡Como Diógenes que terminó viviendo desnudo en la ciudad, sin poseer nada, ladrando como un perro, orinando a las personas y defecando por gusto en lugares públicos! Ya no sé que me deparará el continuar estas lecturas, si me ven mendigando en unos años, al menos se sabrá porque fue.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the sophist of the Protagoras is a reasoned and respectable wielder of elegant rhetoric, a subtle if imperfect interrogator of thought, then the sophist of the Euthydemus is… well… comically incompetent, and mercilessly treated as such.

Plato tends to have a rather complicated and ambivalent relationship with the sophists, but this is unambiguously his gloves-off hit-piece — and it’s an absolute riot.

The dialogue is an bonafide satire, presenting the titular character and his sophist colleague as cunning abusers of words, flogging imprecise relativism in the guise of actionable virtue, teasing the curious — who, when push comes to shove, they appear to hold in contempt — and betraying their (purported) principles.

The way they treat Socrates (they expressly ridicule his age a number of times), you can almost picture them sneering from amongst the accusers at his trial. They’re likened to magicians, mendacious enchanters of the masses, demagogues in potentia; and yet, here they’re revealed to be little more than clumsy manipulators getting their kicks out of trapping unsuspecting interlocutors in their semantic schemes.

Whilst it’s hardly amongst Plato’s most profound or edifying works, it’s absolutely one of his most rip-roaring. I won’t spoil them here, but a fair few exchanges genuinely had me chuckling under my breath (a rare achievement for ancient philosophy, in my experience).

To any modern reader, the sophists are so blatantly, well, engaging in sophistry (there’s no such thing as falsehood! One either knows nothing or everything!), that we hardly require much additional critical exegesis of their arguments from Socrates.

That being said, his hilariously ironic snark oversatures their snappy back-and-forths, making for a seriously enjoyable (and memorable) read. A snarling, sarcastic tension pervades the entire discourse, imbuing it with a dynamic drama and driving the momentum into maddening absurdity. Go into it expecting a good time, not a revelation.


P.S. If someone wants to throw this on at their local theatre, I’ll bring the popcorn.

[Chris Bowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Euthydemus contains lots of wisdom, though ultimate comes across as a comparison between the methods of the true philosopher according to Plato (those seeking wisdom i.e Socrates) and sophists (those seeking to win debates with words). Euthydemus is enjoyable on multiple fronts: the philosophical questions provoke thought; the manner of speaking (Socrates in particular) and the absurd nature of some of the arguments are often hilarious; there’s linguistic gold in how ambiguities in Ancient Greek can be used to form sophisms; as with other dialogues or plays, it is filled with cultural references of the time that help a learner understand fifth-century Athens.
-----

Some notes:

-Actual teaching, emparting knowledge VS proving somebody wrong for the sake of it, achieved by dual/multiple meanings of many words.
-Arguments can have invalidities but should never be null (meaningless).
-If ignorance guides traditional goods (e.g. wealth), they can become great evils.
-Some weak arguments from Plato/Soc: wisdom is luck/don't need luck if you have wisdom.
-Knowledge on how to use something very important. If we don't know how to use eternal life, it isn't good having it.
-Genuine puzzlement vs confusion caused by sophist.
-Ad hominem attacks OK in dialectic.
-Theory of recollection: immortal soul has knowledge of everything, we remember parts of it.
-Funny bits: logically arguing each other's fathers are pigs and dogs.
-People (of the time) see philosophers as sophists. No distinction between philosophy and sophistry to most citizens. Leads to death of Socrates.
-Good practioners in any subject are truly rare.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Euthydemos ist ein Gespräch zwischen Sokrates und zwei Sophisten, die mit Sprache spielen und dadurch vieles infrage stellen. Das Werk soll satirisch die Bedeutung echter Philosophie im Gegensatz zu leerem Gerede verdeutlichen. Die beiden Nicht-Philosophen streiten im Gespräch und widerlegen alles Gesagte, unabhängig davon, ob es richtig oder falsch ist. Sie konzentrieren sich darauf, mithilfe sprachlicher Kunstgriffe eine vermeintliche Wahrheit zu konstruieren, sind jedoch an der tatsächlichen Wahrheit kaum interessiert.

Insgesamt fand ich das Buch etwas zu lang und zu detailliert. Besonders einige kurze Kapitel, in denen es um feine Unterschiede der altgriechischen Grammatik geht, um daraus eine vermeintliche Wahrheit abzuleiten, haben mir nicht gefallen, vor allem wegen ihrer heutigen Irrelevanz.

Gut gefallen haben mir hingegen einige der kurzen Erklärungen von Sokrates über die Bedeutung von Weisheit („Denn nie wird einer aus Weisheit etwas verfehlen, sondern immer richtig handeln und es erlangen. Denn sonst wäre es ja keine Weisheit mehr.“) sowie seine demütige Gesprächsführung und sein charmantes Schmeicheln.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t have the self-assurance to give anything by Plato anything less than 5 stars, but this was genuinely a fun read. The things that make modern attention grabbing arguments frustrating turn out to be the same things that made ancient attention grabbing arguments frustrating. Reading Socrates perfectly expose and cripple the nonsense was both funny and inspiring. This guy might be onto something…

[Nicole Cage · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Are you saying you know everything” “yes.”

lol

but really tho, yay Clinias! Yay dialectic! It is in aporia that we find the way, that the search for the good and the good are not so distinct as they may seem! Cheers to the examined life!!

[Hilton Aires · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diálogo com uma relação estreita com outro diálogo, "Protágoras". As falácias sofistas, quando não embelezadas com diversas camadas de retórica, resultam ridículas e por demais esdrúxulas.

[James Carrigy · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

A classic Ancient Greek catfight.

[Anastasija · Rating 3 out of 5]

Euthydemus is a philosophical dialogue that satirizes the Sophists, but it is not a straightforward philosophical work. It's a complex and entertaining work that challenges readers to think critically and question the claims of others. Also, a very good translation.

[Valle Inklán · Rating 3 out of 5]

básicamente dos extranjeros se ponen a trolear a Sócrates en el gimnasio, es gracioso pero parece más una obra de teatro corta que filosofía

[Dean the Phantasy Guru · Rating 1 out of 5]

This dialogue perfectly exemplifies irrational philosophy that pervaded Athens in ancient Greece; perpetuated not by Plato and Socrates, but from street-performers who delight in arguing every statement put forward, regardless of its logical integrity. "Since you claim to know one thing, then it follows that you know everything," they claim. "My father is everyone's father, and my mother is everyone's mother, including dogs and sea-nymphs." They go on to "prove" such glaringly ludicrous generalizations through double-meanings and puns. And the crowd loves it! Their utter lack of critical thinking makes them vulnerable to such verbal ploys. Wordplay wins the day while sense and logic are shown to be too out of place to contend with such blind stupidity. All in all, this is a dialogue that does not inform in any way aside from providing a glimpse into ancient life and the troubles that once confronted the wise men of the day. From a philosophical stand-point, this dialogue is the definition of a complete waste of time.

[Genesis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pair of Hellenic charlatans, who were banned from the Italian forums, attempt to troll Socrates. Little did they know, they were facing the king, the Master Baiter, who was just pretending to be outsmarted. He was participating IRONICALLY, so it's fine.

It's important to know that when the word "virtue" is used, the more fitting translation is "excellence". With this in mind, it makes more sense why Euthydemus and his brother moved the conversation the way they did. They were demonstrating "the excellence of defeating others with words".

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, Having read it, I'm pretty sure that the phrase 'Are you kidding me!' has ancient Greek origins. It is more of a parody on sophists than philosophy. If anything its funny at times, but it is simply not worth the hour you may spend reading it - not specially if you do not wish to read your ancestors calling names on each other.

[Subashini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plato does Aristophanes, with mixed results. Some madcap, zany philosophising by the two antilogician bros and Socrates having a LarryDavidConfused.gif vibe throughout the whole thing. All in all, this is a great representation of Twitter, so props to Plato for being an oracle who saw the future, on top of everything else.

[Ytse · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Euthydemus" which is not only hilarious, but also the clearest example of Socratic irony.

[Illiterate · Rating 5 out of 5]

On logic/wisdom vs rhetoric. Socrates highlights logical fallacies and mocks those who make them.

[Aloysius · Rating 1 out of 5]

They say comedy doesn't always age well. Here's a prime example.

[M F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, Socratic (Platonic?) mistrust of sophistry runs deep. Euthydemus is another of several dialogues in which Socrates' main goal is to illuminate fallacies in sophist logic, but it's probably the most dramatically compelling of the bunch that I've read so far, and a good reminder of Plato's narrative skill. It begins with a framing narrative: Socrates running into Crito and recounting a public discussion he had with a pair of sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, one-time teachers of legal oratory and military tactics who now devote themselves to public argumentation. From there, we get a retelling of the dialogue in real time, with occasional interruptions by the Crito-Socrates framing narrative. In the dialogue, the two men are set to give a classic sophistic demonstration of their ability to refute any argument, whether true or false, but before they get going, Socrates gives them another challenge: convince young Clinias to devote himself to philosophy. The dialogue that unfolds from there is mild, ludicrous fun, with the men exhibiting ridiculous arguments marked by equivocation, deflection, strawmanning, and all other manner of logical fallacy in an attempt to beguile their listeners. It's obviously satirical--at one point, Socrates bursts into laughter and accuses them of not being serious people, and he even occasionally wades into the fray, taking the men on to highlight their terrible arguments for fear that Clinias "will turn coward and disgrace us" (227c) and frustrating them whenever he refuses to play into their obvious traps by asking them to clarify their terminology. He also sometimes takes over for them, engaging Clinias in authentically philosophical dialogue to serve as counterpoint to the sophists' dubious argumentation. As always, the crux of the matter is the struggle between philosophy, as the pursuit of truth/wisdom, and sophistry as the pursuit of victory, truth be damned.

Yet one of the most beguiling things about the dialogue is that, in the end, after exposing the sophists' ludicrous tactics, Socrates refuses to condemn them, even when given an opportunity to do so during the framing narrative's ending by the skeptical Crito, who doesn't quite buy Socrates' hyperbolic endorsement of the two men as paragons of wisdom. So while it's clear from the progression of his discussion with the sophists that we're not to take their logic seriously, it's less clear what we're supposed to take away from it all. Is any exercise of reason, however faulty and misguided, a worthy enterprise? Or is Socrates just trolling Crito by asking him to take the sophists' classes with him? In the end, all we're left with is his closing advice to Crito: "pay no attention to the practitioners of philosophy, whether good or bad. Rather, give serious consideration to the thing itself: if it seems to you negligible, then turn everyone from it, not just your sons. But if it seems to you to be what I think it is, then take heart, pursue it, practice it, both you and yours, as the proverb says" (307c). While the general sentiment---pursue truth!---isn't out of keeping for Socrates, I do find his skepticism about the practitioners of philosophy a bit odd, considering his own dialogic method of philosophizing, which by definition requires a partner. I suppose the point is to pursue wisdom itself rather than those who claim to be able to teach it. In any case, though there's not a lot to take away, philosophically (aside from some tentative forays into the nature of knowledge and the possibility of teaching virtue), it's a lot of fun following Euthydemus's contortions.