A Problem in Platoʼs Hagiography of Socrates

What would you expect of such a man?To propagate his message, to disseminate the knowledge which is itself the elixir of life.Is this what he does?How could he, if, as he says repeatedly in the dialogues, he does not have that knowledge?*<+ Could this be true?If it were, then on his own teaching, he too would be one of the damned.42. I speculate that Xenophonʼs view of Socrates would solve the trilemma this way.Evidence for regarding the Xenophontic Socrates as committed to the first two claims in the trilemma can be readily found, but the Xenophontic Socrates appears to be full of the knowledge and wisdom he disclaims having in Platoʼs texts.3. Gregory Vlastos, "The Paradox of Socrates," in The Philosophy of Socrates, ed.Gregory Vlastos (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971), 7. [Repr.from the original version in Queenʼs Quarterly 64 (1957-58): 496-516].4. The version of the trilemma I give here is slightly revised from the version originally given in Prior [William J. Prior, "The Portrait of Socrates in Platoʼs Symposium," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31 (2006), 158].An earlier version was provided in Graham, and the problem itself is certainly discussed in Yonezawa [Daniel W. Graham, "What Socrates Knew," in Wisdom, Ignorance, and Virtue: New Essays in Socratic Studies, ed.Mark.L. McPherran (Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing, 1997), 25; Shigeru Yonezawa, "Socratic Knowledge and Socratic Virtue," Ancient Philosophy 15 ( 1995)].Yonezawa and Graham argue that Socratic virtue derived from his knowledge of his own ignorance, and they provide several good arguments for why Socratesʼ awareness of his own ignorance would be a great ethical advantage.Neither explores the relationship between knowledge and craft that I claim solves the problem, so while I am very sympathetic with their arguments, I do not think the answers they give are complete.Their arguments must also confront the objections several scholars make against taking what Socrates says to indicate that he knows that he is ignorant (so see, for examples, Taylor who calls such a view "a clear

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