Socratic problem

Last updated

In historical scholarship, the Socratic problem (also called Socratic question) [1] concerns attempts at reconstructing a historical and philosophical image of Socrates based on the variable, and sometimes contradictory, nature of the existing sources on his life. Scholars rely upon extant sources, such as those of contemporaries like Aristophanes or disciples of Socrates like Plato and Xenophon, for knowing anything about Socrates. However, these sources contain contradictory details of his life, words, and beliefs when taken together. This complicates the attempts at reconstructing the beliefs and philosophical views held by the historical Socrates. It has become apparent to scholarship that this problem is seemingly impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable. [2] [3] Early proposed solutions to the matter still pose significant problems today. [4]

Contents

Socrates was the main character in most of Plato's dialogues and was a genuine historical figure. It is widely understood that in later dialogues, Plato used the character Socrates to give voice to views that were his own. Besides Plato, three other important sources exist for the study of Socrates: Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Xenophon. Since no writings of Socrates himself survive to the modern era, his actual views must be discerned from the sometimes contradictory reports of these four sources. The main sources for the historical Socrates are the Sokratikoi logoi, or Socratic dialogues, which are reports of conversations apparently involving Socrates. [5] Most information is found in the works of Plato and Xenophon. [6] [7]

There are also four sources extant in fragmentary states: Aeschines of Sphettus, Antisthenes, Euclid of Megara, and Phaedo of Elis. [8] In addition, there are two satirical commentaries on Socrates. One is Aristophanes's play The Clouds , which humorously attacks Socrates. [9] The other is two fragments from the Silloi by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius, [10] satirizing dogmatic philosophers.

Xenophon

There are four works of Xenophon that deal with Socrates. They are Apology of Socrates to the Jurors (which apparently reports the defence given by Socrates in court), [11] [12] Memorabilia (which is a defence of Socrates and so-called Socratic dialogues), [11] Oeconomicus (which concerns Socrates' encounter with Ischomachus and Critobulus), [12] and Symposium (which recounts an evening at a dinner party to which Socrates was an attendee). [13] [14] [15]

Plato

Socrates—who is often credited with turning Western philosophy in a more ethical and political direction and who was put to death by the democracy of Athens in May 399 BC—was Plato's mentor. Plato, like some of his contemporaries, wrote dialogues about his teacher. Much of what is known about Socrates comes from Plato's writings; however, it is widely believed that very few, if any, of Plato's dialogues can be verbatim accounts of conversations between them or unmediated representations of Socrates' thought. Many of the dialogues seem to use Socrates as a device for Plato's thought, and inconsistencies occasionally crop up between Plato and the other accounts of Socrates; for instance, Plato has Socrates denying that he would ever accept money for teaching, while Xenophon's Symposium clearly has Socrates stating that students pay him to teach wisdom and that this is what he does for a living.

Stylometric analysis of the Plato corpus has led to the formation of a consensually agreed chronology classifying dialogues as falling approximately into three groups, Early, Middle and Late. [16] On the assumption that there is an evolution of philosophical thought in Plato's dialogues from his early years to his middle and later years, [17] the most common modern view is that Plato's dialogues contain a development of thought from closer to that of Socrates' to a doctrine more distinctly Plato's own. [18] However, the question of exactly what aspects of Plato's dialogues are representative of Socrates and what are not, is far from agreed upon. Although the view that Plato's dialogues are developmental in their doctrines (with regard to the historical Socrates or not) is standard, the view is not without objectors who propose a unitarian view or other alternative interpretations of the chronology of the corpus. [19] [20] One notable example is Charles Kahn who argued that Plato had created his works not in a gradual way, but as a unified philosophical vision, whereby he uses Socratic dialogues, a non-historical genre, to flesh out his views. [21] The time that Plato began to write his works and the date of composition of his last work are not known and what adds to the complexity is that even the ancient sources do not know the order of the works or the dialogues. [22]

Aristotle

Others

Aeschines

Two relevant works pertain to periods in Socrates' life, of which Aeschines could not have had any personal first-hand experiential knowledge. However, substantial amounts are extant of his works Alcibiades and Aspasia. [23]

Antisthenes

Antisthenes was a pupil of Socrates, and was known to accompany him. [24]

Issues relating to the sources

Aristophanes (c. 450–386 BCE) was alive during the early years of Socrates. One source shows Plato and Xenophon were about 45 years younger than Socrates, [25] other sources show Plato as something in the range of 42–43 years younger, while Xenophon is thought to be 40 years younger. [26] [27] [28] [29]

Issues resulting from translation

Apart from the existing identified issue of conflicting elements present in accounts and writings, there is the additional inherent concern of the veracity of transfer of meaning by translation from classic Greek to contemporary language, whether that be Greek, English or any other. [30]

History of the problem

Efforts have been made by writers for centuries to address the problem. According to one scholar (Patzer) the number of works with any significance in this issue, prior to the nineteenth century, are few indeed. [31] G.E. Lessing caused a flurry of interest in the problem in 1768. [32] A methodology for analysis was posited, by study of Platonic sources, in 1820 with Socher. A break of scholarly impasse in respect to understanding, resulted from Campbell making a stylometric analysis in 1867. [32]

An essay written by Friedrich Schleiermacher in 1815 ("The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher"), published 1818 (English translation 1833) is considered the most significant and influential toward developing an understanding of the problem. [33] [34]

Throughout the 20th century, two strains of interpretation arose: the literary contextualists, who tended to interpret Socratic dialogues based on literary criticism, and the analysts, who focus much more heavily on the actual arguments contained within the different texts. [35]

Early in the 21st century, most of the scholars concerned have settled to agreement instead of argument about the nature of the significance of ancient textual sources in relation to this problem. [36]

Manuscript tradition

A fragment of Plato's Republic (588b-589b) was found in Codex VI, of the Nag Hammadi discoveries of 1945. [37] [38]

Plato primary edition

The Latin language corpus was by Ficinus during 1484, the first of a Greek language text was Aldus in 1513. [39] [40]

Xenophon primary edition

The Memorabilia appeared in the Florence Junta in 1516. [41] [42]

The first Apology was by Johan Reuchlin in 1520. [43]

Scholarly analysis

Karl Popper, who considered himself to be a disciple of Socrates, wrote about the Socratic problem in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies . [44]

Søren Kierkegaard addressed the Socratic problem in Theses II, III and VII of his On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates . [45] [46]

The German classical scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher addressed the "Socratic problem" in his essay "The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher". [47] Schleiermacher maintained that the two dialogues Apology and Crito are purely Socratic. They were, therefore, accurate historical portrayals of the real man, and hence history and not Platonic philosophy at all. All of the other dialogues that Schleiermacher accepted as genuine he considered to be integrally bound together and consistent in their Platonism. Their consistency is related to the three phases of Plato's development:

  1. Foundation works, culminating in Parmenides ;
  2. Transitional works, culminating in two so-called families of dialogues, the first consisting of Sophist , Statesman and Symposium , and the second of Phaedo and Philebus ; and finally
  3. Constructive works: Republic , Timaeus and Laws .

Schleiermacher's views on the chronology of Plato's work are rather controversial. In Schleiermacher's view, the character of Socrates evolves over time into the "Stranger" in Plato's work, and fulfills a critical function in Plato's development, as he appears in the first family above as the "Eleatic Stranger" in Sophist and Statesman , and as the "Mantitenean Stranger" in the Symposium . The "Athenian Stranger" is the main character of Plato's Laws. Further, the Sophist–Statesman–Philosopher family makes particularly good sense in this order, as Schleiermacher also maintains that the two dialogues, Symposium and Phaedo, show Socrates as the quintessential philosopher in life (guided by Diotima) and into death, the realm of otherness. Thus the triad announced both in the Sophist and in the Statesman is completed, though the Philosopher, being divided dialectically into a "Stranger" portion and a "Socrates" portion, isn't called "The Philosopher"; this philosophical crux is left to the reader to determine. Schleiermacher thus takes the position that the real Socratic problem is understanding the dialectic between the figures of the "Stranger" and "Socrates".

Proposed solutions

Four solutions elucidated by Nails were proposed early in the history of the Socratic problem and are still relevant, even though each still poses problems today: [4]

  1. Socrates is the individual whose qualities exhibited in Plato’s writings are corroborated by Aristophanes and Xenophon.
  2. Socrates is he who claims “to possess no wisdom” but still participates in exercises with the aim of gaining understanding.
  3. Socrates is the [individual named] Socrates who appears in Plato’s earliest dialogues.
  4. The real Socrates is the one who turns from a pre-Socratic interest in nature to ethics, instead.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plato</span> Ancient Greek philosopher (428/423 – 348/347 BC)

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period.

The Trial of Socrates was held to determine the philosopher's guilt of two charges: asebeia (impiety) against the pantheon of Athens, and corruption of the youth of the city-state; the accusers cited two impious acts by Socrates: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xenophon</span> Greek philosopher, historian, soldier (c. 430–355/354 BC)

Xenophon of Athens was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies of the Achaemenid Empire, the Ten Thousand, that marched on and came close to capturing Babylon in 401 BC. As the military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge wrote, "the centuries since have devised nothing to surpass the genius of this warrior". Xenophon established precedents for many logistical operations, and was among the first to describe strategic flanking maneuvers and feints in combat.

<i>Symposium</i> (Plato) Philosophical text by Plato

The Symposium is a philosophical text by Plato, dated c. 385–370 BC. It depicts a friendly contest of extemporaneous speeches given by a group of notable men attending a banquet. The men include the philosopher Socrates, the general and political figure Alcibiades, and the comic playwright Aristophanes. The speeches are to be given in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire.

<i>Crito</i> Platonic dialogue concerning justice and injustice

Crito is a dialogue that was written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It depicts a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito of Alopece regarding justice (δικαιοσύνη), injustice (ἀδικία), and the appropriate response to injustice after Socrates's imprisonment, which is chronicled in the Apology.

In Ancient Greek philosophy, techne is a philosophical concept that refers to making or doing. Today the modern definition and use of "practical knowledge" is similar to the Ancient Greek definition of techne, whereas the latter can include various fields such as mathematics, geometry, medicine, shoemaking, rhetoric, philosophy, music, and astronomy.

The Apology of Socrates, written by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue of the speech of legal self-defence which Socrates spoke at his trial for impiety and corruption in 399 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socratic dialogue</span> Genre of literary prose

Socratic dialogue is a genre of literary prose developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The earliest ones are preserved in the works of Plato and Xenophon and all involve Socrates as the protagonist. These dialogues, and subsequent ones in the genre, present a discussion of moral and philosophical problems between two or more individuals illustrating the application of the Socratic method. The dialogues may be either dramatic or narrative. While Socrates is often the main participant, his presence in the dialogue is not essential to the genre.

The Apology of Socrates to the Jury, by Xenophon of Athens, is a Socratic dialogue about the legal defence that the philosopher Socrates presented at his trial for the moral corruption of Athenian youth; and for asebeia (impiety) against the pantheon of Athens; judged guilty, Socrates was sentenced to death.

<i>Oeconomicus</i> Work by Xenophon

The Oeconomicus by Xenophon is a Socratic dialogue principally about household management and agriculture.

Memorabilia is a collection of Socratic dialogues by Xenophon, a student of Socrates. The lengthiest and most famous of Xenophon's Socratic writings, the Memorabilia is essentially an apologia (defense) of Socrates, differing from both Xenophon's Apology of Socrates to the Jury and Plato's Apology mainly in that the Apologies present Socrates as defending himself before the jury, whereas the former presents Xenophon's own defense of Socrates, offering edifying examples of Socrates' conversations and activities along with occasional commentary from Xenophon. Memorabilia was particularly influential in Cynic and later Stoic philosophy.

Simon the Shoemaker was an associate of Socrates, and a 'working-philosopher'. He is known mostly from the account given in Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. He is also mentioned in passing by Plutarch and Synesius; a pupil of Socrates, Phaedo of Elis, is known to have written a dialogue called Simon.

The Philebus is a Socratic dialogue written in the 4th century BC by Plato. Besides Socrates the other interlocutors are Philebus and Protarchus. Philebus, who advocates the life of physical pleasure (hedonism), hardly participates, and his position is instead defended by Protarchus, who learnt argumentation from Sophists. Socrates proposes there are higher pleasures as well as lower ones, and asks if the best life isn't one that optimally mixes both.

<i>Minos</i> (dialogue)

Minos is purported to be one of the dialogues of Plato. It features Socrates and a companion who together attempt to find a definition of "law".

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher, the second of the trio of ancient Greeks including Socrates and Aristotle said to have laid the philosophical foundations of Western culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crito of Alopece</span> 5th-century BC Athenian philosopher

Crito of Alopece was an ancient Athenian agriculturist depicted in the Socratic literature of Plato and Xenophon, where he appears as a faithful and lifelong companion of the philosopher Socrates. Although the later tradition of ancient scholarship attributed philosophical works to Crito, modern scholars do not consider him to have been an active philosopher, but rather a member of Socrates' inner circle through childhood friendship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socrates</span> Classical Greek Athenian philosopher (c. 470 – 399 BC)

Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.

Debra Nails is an American philosophy professor who taught at Michigan State University. Nails earned her M.A. in philosophy and classical Greek from Louisiana State University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1993. Previously, she taught in the Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion at Mary Washington College. Nails taught courses on the history of philosophy, continental rationalism, metaphysics, and modern philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum</span>

Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum was an ancient Athenian follower of the philosopher Socrates. He is best remembered as a character and narrative source in Plato's Symposium, and is also preserved in Xenophon's Memorabilia and a fragment from Aristophanes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victorino Tejera</span>

Victorino Tejera was a writer, scholar, and professor of philosophy with specializations in ancient Greek thought, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, and American philosophy. He was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He is known especially for his writing on Plato's Dialogues. Many scholars believe Tejera's work in this area is his most valuable contribution to philosophy. He was editor and contributor with Thelma Lavine on History and Anti-History in Philosophy whose FromSocrates to Sartre (1984) was the basis for the PBS series of the same name.

References

  1. A Rubel, M Vickers, Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens: Religion and Politics During the Peloponnesian War, Routledge, 2014, p. 147.
  2. Prior, W. J., "The Socratic Problem" in Benson, H. H. (ed.), A Companion to Plato (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 25–35.
  3. Louis-André Dorion (2010). "The Rise and Fall of the Socratic Problem". The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–23 (The Cambridge Companion to Socrates). doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521833424.001. hdl:10795/1977. ISBN   9780511780257. Online Publication Date: March 2011 , Print Publication Year: 2010. Retrieved 2015-05-07.
  4. 1 2 Nails, Debra (Spring 2014). "Early attempts to solve the Socratic problem". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Supplement to ‘Socrates’. Stanford University.
  5. J Ambury. Socrates (469–399 B.C.E.) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Retrieved 2015-04-19]
  6. May, H. (2000). On Socrates . Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. p.  20.
  7. catalogue of Harvard University Press – Xenophon Volume IV [Retrieved 2015-3-26]
  8. CH Kahn  Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (p. 1) Cambridge University Press, 4 Jun 1998 (reprint) ISBN   0521648300 [Retrieved 2015-04-19]
  9. Aristophanes, W.C. Green - commentary on The Clouds (p.6) Catena classicorum Rivingtons, 1868 [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
  10. Bett, R. (11 May 2009). A Companion to Socrates. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 299–30. ISBN   978-1405192606 . Retrieved 2015-04-17. (a translation of one fragment reads "But from them the sculptor, blatherer on the lawful, turned away. Spellbinder of the Greeks, who made them precise in language. Sneerer trained by rhetoricians, sub-Attic ironist." Cf. source for a discussion of this quote.
  11. 1 2 M Dillon; L Garland (18 June 2010). Ancient Greece: Social and Historical Documents from Archaic Times to the Death of Alexander. Routledge. ISBN   9781136991370 . Retrieved 20 April 2015. (connection to Oxyrynchus was found in here p.33)
  12. 1 2 Xenophon (translated by A. Patch), RC Bartlett (2006). The Shorter Socratic Writings: "Apology of Socrates to the Jury," "Oeconomicus," and "Symposium". Agora Editions. Cornell University Press. ISBN   978-0801472985 . Retrieved 23 February 2019.
  13. M MacLaren - Xenophon. Banquet; Apologie de Socrate by Francois Ollier The American Journal of Philology Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 212-214 (Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press in JSTOR) [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
  14. Louis-André Dorion; S Ahbel-Rappe; R Kamtekar (11 May 2009). A Companion to Socrates. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9781405192606 . Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  15. E Buzzetti - Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus (p.7) Palgrave Macmillan, 21 May 2014 ISBN   1137325925 [Retrieved 2015-04-17]
  16. M Cormack (15 October 2006). Plato's Stepping Stones: Degrees of Moral Virtue. A&C Black. p. 8. ISBN   9781847144416 . Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  17. Krämer (1990) ascribes this view to Eduard Zeller (Hans Joachim Krämer, Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics, SUNY Press, 1990, pp. 93–4).
  18. Penner, T. "Socrates and the early dialogues" in Kraut, R. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 121. See also Irwin, T. H., "The Platonic Corpus" in Fine, G. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Plato (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 77–85.
  19. Rowe, C. "Interpreting Plato" in Benson, H. H. (ed.), A Companion to Plato (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 13–24.
  20. Smith, Nicholas; Brickhouse, Thomas (2002). The Trial and Execution of Socrates : Sources and Controversies. New York: Oxford University Press. p.  24. ISBN   9780195119800.
  21. Kahn, Charles H. (2000). Plato and the Socratic Dialogue : The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form. Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN   978-0521648301.
  22. Fine, Gail (2011). The Oxford handbook of Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 76–77. ISBN   978-0199769193.
  23. C.H. Kahn - Aeschines on Socratic Eros in PA. Vander Waerdt - The Socratic Movement Cornell University Press, 1 Jan 1994 ISBN   0801499038 [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
  24. J Piering - Antisthenes Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy[Retrieved 2015-04-20]
  25. Nails, D. (Spring 2014). "Socrates". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. section 2:1, paragraph 2. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  26. Meinwald, C.C. "Plato". The Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  27. Kraut, R. "Socrates". The Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  28. Tuplin, C.J. "Xenophon". The Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 24 March 2015.
  29. Ehrenberg, V. (22 May 2014). From Solon to Socrates: Greek history and civilization during the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Routledge. p. 373. ISBN   978-1136783944 . Retrieved 24 March 2015 via Google Books.
  30. Bartlett, R.C., ed. (2006). The Shorter Socratic Writings: "Apology of Socrates to the Jury", "Oeconomicus", and "Symposium". Agora Editions. Cornell University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN   0801472989 . Retrieved 17 April 2015 via Google Books.
  31. J Bussanich, ND Smith - The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates (please see - Note 14 & 16) A&C Black, 3 Jan 2013 ISBN   1441112847 [Retrieved 2015-04-17]
  32. 1 2 D Nails (31 July 1995). Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (p.23). Springer Science & Business Media, 31 Jul 1995. ISBN   9780792335436 . Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  33. Louis-André Dorion (2011). The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN   9780521833424 . Retrieved 2015-04-16.
  34. M Trapp - Introduction: Questions of Socrates [Retrieved 3 May 2015] (p.xvi)
  35. Nails, Debra (February 8, 2018). "Socrates". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
  36. G Klosko, Henry L. & Grace Doherty (2011). History of Political Theory: An Introduction: Volume I: Ancient and Medieval. Oxford University Press. p. 40. ISBN   978-0199695423 . Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  37. SJ Patterson, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, JM. Robinson - The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age (p.1) Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 15 Jun 2010 ISBN   0567178269 [Retrieved 2015-04-20] (primary source for Nag Hammadi was this)
  38. GW Bromiley - The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (p.474) Wm. B. Eerdmans 1986 Publishing ISBN   0802837859 [Retrieved 2015-04-20]
  39. Boter, G.J. (1989). The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic. Brill. ISBN   9004087877 . Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  40. Dibdin, T. Frognall (1804). [no title cited]. W. Dwyer. p. 5. (located Ficinus using this source, which though provides suggestions of the wrong years for publication - p. 5)
  41. Boyle, M. O'Rourke (1998). Senses of Touch: Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to Calvin. Brill. footnote 170, p. 33. ISBN   9004111751 . Retrieved 20 April 2015 via Google Books.
  42. Marsh, David. "Xenophon" (PDF). Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum . 7: 82. Retrieved 25 August 2015. (editio princeps using Brown, V. "Catalogus Translationum" (PDF). Cicero translated Oeconomicus)
  43. Schmoll, E.A. (1990). "The manuscript tradition of Xenophon's Apologia Socratis". Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. 31 (1). Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  44. Malachi Haim Hacohen – Karl Popper – The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna (p. 424) Cambridge University Press, 4 Mar 2002 ISBN   0521890551 [reference Retrieved 2015-04-20, material added at a prior date]
  45. RL Perkins - The Concept of Irony (p.210) Mercer University Press, 2001 ISBN   0865547424 Volume 2 of International Kierkegaard commentary [Retrieved 2015-04-20] (mentions Thesis VII)
  46. Søren Kierkegaard (translated by HH Hong & EH Hong) - Kierkegaard's Writings, II: The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates/Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures (p.6) Princeton University Press, 21 Apr 2013, ISBN   1400846927 [Retrieved 2015-04-20] (shows details of Theses II, III & VII)
  47. The Philological museum, Volume 2 (edited by J.C. Hare) Printed by J. Smith for Deightons, 1833 [Retrieved 2015-05-03] (sourced firstly at L-A Dorion in D.R. Morrison - The Cambridge Companion to Socrates)

Further reading