Philosophy as a way of life

Obviously, we cannot know exactly how Socrates' discussions with the Athenians took place. Plato's dialogues - even the most "Socratic" - are only a doubly weak imitation of them. In the first place, they are not spoken, but written, and, as Hegel remarked, "in printed dialogue, answers are altogether under the author's control; but to say that in actual life people are found to answer as they arc here made to do, is quite another thing." 46 Moreover, beneath the surface charm of literary fiction, we can recognize in Plato's dialogues the trace of the scholastic exercises of the Platonic Academy.

Aristotle codified the rules of these dialectical jousts in his Topics.41 There were well-defined roles for both questioner and respondent in these argumentation exercises, and the rules of this intellectual fencing were rigorously defined.

It is not our task here to try to disentangle what may be properly "Socratic"

in the conversations reported by Plato; rather, we arc concerned to uncover the significance of Socratic irony as it was known to tradition, and the movements of consciousness to which it corresponds.