>
>
> Leaving aside dramatic irony, which does present special problems,
> the ironic tradition in the West begins with something close to deliberate
> distortion of an opponent -- I'm thinking in particularly of the debate
> between Thrasymachus and Socrates which begins my favorite book,
> Plato's *Republic*. The victory Plato arranges for Socrates in that
> debate (and "arranges" is almost too kind a word) depends on two
> violent distortions of what (had Thrasymachus or one of his fellow
> sophists been able to speak for himself) would have been the
> argument. Distortion 1 (and this can't be an honest mistake on Plato's
> part) is to individualize the argument, which in the first instance had
> been an argument about *class*, not individuals. Distortion 2 (perhaps
> honest, perhaps not) was to assume human perfectibility separately
> from practice, leading to the absurd conclusion (which Thrasymachus
> is made to accept) that a mathematician is not a mathematician when
> he is making a mistake. This leads to the conclusion that when a
> ruler makes a decision *not* in his own interest, justice consists in
> not obeying him. But this simply denies the corrigibility of ideas
> through practice and critique. None of Socrates' arguments holds
> water in the absence of these two fallacious premises.
I would say that Thrasymachus confuses the descriptive with the normative (at least in the Cornford translation) To say that the ruling class makes the laws in its own interest (L338-9) is different from saying that laws should be made by the ruling class in its own interest or that is just that justice is whatever the ruling class does in its own interest .T vacillates between these two conceptions saying that the rc makes the laws in its own interest and that it is right or just that the rc does this.
Saying that the ruling class everywhere and always makes the laws in its own interests, assumes that the base determines the legal superstructure in a deterministic fashion, ignoring the fact, as Jim D pointed out, that the base may be multiply realizable i.e. different legal superstructures maybe consistent with the same base.
>
>
> Irony as Plato (Socrates?) practiced it is essentially vicious in that
> it depends on the complete control of the ironist over the ironist's
> victim. In Plato's dialogues that control is guaranteed by the fact
> that they are fictions Plato himself controlled. But a professor of
> mine in grad school noted a second form of this control. Commenting
> on the frequent praise of the "Socratic Method" as a classroom
> strategy, he said: "The Socratic Method can be used by only one
> person" -- i.e., the professor exercising authoritarian power in the
> class room. (Sometimes, of course, the term "Socratic method"
> means merely discussion -- but it can be used in that sense only
> by people who have either never read Plato or have read him with
> utter lack of attention.)
I would also note the use of the so-called Socratic method in legal courtroom practice. The witness is not allowed to ask questions and can only answer the questions directed at her.
Sam Pawlett