Abstract

In the first chapter of The Contribution of Socratic Method and Plato’s Theory of Truth to Plato Scholarship, Rod Jenks argues that since Socrates and Plato take the Socratic elenchus to establish truths and the Socratic elenchus can only establish consistency, Socrates and Plato must be committed to a coherence theory of truth. Jenks denies any explicit recognition of such a commitment in Plato’s early dialogues. The claim is rather that “early Socratic practice as recorded by Plato makes sense only against the backdrop of the assumption of a coherence theory of truth”. It is, according to Jenks, Plato’s solution to “the problem of the elenchus.” In the middle and later dialogues, Jenks argues, Plato exposes the philosophical foundations of this assumption and addresses various problems associated with it, only to return to the Socratic elenchus—now supported by a philosophically grounded CTT—in the Philebus.