The lives and opinions of Socrates and Stilpo as defended by Plutarch against the insidious yet ignorant attacks of Colotes

• Main Author: Jan Opsomer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ENS Éditions 2013-05-01
• Series: Aitia : Regards sur la Culture Hellénistique au XXIe Siècle
• Subjects: Socrates; Academic scepticism; apraxia; self-knowledge; Megarics; Stilpo
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/aitia/677

In chapters 17 to 23 of the Adversus Colotem Plutarch defends Socrates and Stilpo against Colotes’ criticism. I examine the embedding of this section in the larger context of the work, the links between the sections on Socrates and Stilpo, Colotes’ criticisms and Plutarch’s counter-arguments and polemical strategies. In doing so, I attempt to disentangle the different layers of this complex text. Socrates is portrayed as an imposter and a sceptic by Colotes. Plutarch argues that Socrates’ philosophy indeed implies a radical distrust of the senses, but that this does not make it impossible for him and his followers to live their daily lives. Socratic philosophy is much to be preferred to Epicureanism. Stilpo, a Megarian, also belongs to the Socratic tradition. Plutarch upholds the high moral reputation of this sharp-witted philosopher against the abuse that he had to suffer from Colotes. The latter also attacked Stilpo’s rejection of all predication except identity predication. Plutarch claims that Stilpo’s argument is a mere dialectical exercise and poses no threat to our daily lives. Plutarch moreover engages in a counter-attack on the Epicurean philosophy of language, more particularly their abolishment of the intermediate level – that of meanings. As Plutarch presents Stilpo’s famous argument, it amounts to a denial of the ontological relation to which ordinary predication corresponds. Plutarch’s conclusion – that Stilpo merely urges us to abandon the use of the verb “to be” as a copula – does not fit the argument as it is presented by him. This mismatch is best explained by the hypothesis that Plutarch copied the argument quite faithfully without analysing it in detail. That would also explain the fact that the argument makes no use of Plato’s account of predication in the Sophist.