Abstract

This dissertation seeks to prove that Socrates' method in the early Platonic dialogues and Euripides' in Medea are similar. ;Chapter One analyzes Socrates' method as practiced in Euthyphro and discussed in middle and late dialogues. The method seeks but does not attain definition. Instead, it refutes by logic acknowledged in analogies. The primary interlocutor proceeds from self-assurance to recognized reversal. Wonder attends and shame signals recognition. Although reversal is termed aporia , Socrates, analogies do maieutically suggest definition which can withstand elenchos; but the interlocutor is unreceptive to new definition. Despite the objectivity afforded by elenchos' "impersonal aspect" , the interlocutor's emotional commitment to faulty definition is ensured by elenchos' "personal aspect." But because elenchos confronts emotion with reason, the interlocutor tends to flee and blame Socrates. He is nonetheless drawn by elenchos' promise of truth, which can only be born in a more objective, secondary interlocutor, the reader-auditor. ;Chapter Two argues that Aristophanes in the Clouds comically represents Socrates conducting a maieutic elenchos of Strepsiades. In other comedies, Aristophanes attributes to Euripides and his plays the characteristics of comically represented Socratic method. ;Chapter Three illustrates that modern critics have made frequent and unconscious, or overt but partial comparisons between Euripides' and Socrates' methods. ;Chapter Four shows Socratic method at work in Medea. Competitive definitions for arete, sophia, and eros are proffered in Medea, Jason, and Creon, and accepted by the primary interlocutors, the Chorus. The definitions, by unerring logic, lead to emotionally repugnant conclusions and are refuted, but not abandoned. For even as primary and secondary interlocutors are afforded objectivity by alienation from one or all of the characters, their subjectivity is ensured by the popularity of definitions espoused. Euripides, like Socrates, renders these logically compelling definitions emotionally unacceptable by his analogies: medicine, music, the natural order of life and death in marriage, childbirth, and parental nurture of the young. Interlocutors are left grasping for the fledgling truths these maieutic analogies and their logic suggest