This well-researched and provocative reading of Plato's Euthydemus takes the stance that the purported philosophical content of the dialogue can only be understood in the light of the dialogue's literary aspects. Under the latter heading S.-S. includes the interplay of characters in dramatic episodes, structural elements such as doubling, the motifs of blushing, laughter and silence, and linguistic usage. These aspects of the dialogue illuminate both Socrates’ demonstration of the art of protreptic (the exhortation to virtue and wisdom) and the protreptic ‘counter-demonstration’ of the eristic sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. The clownish conduct of the sophistic duo in the face of Socrates’ apparent seriousness has prompted most readers of the Euthydemus to wonder what aim Plato had in writing it. (As many commentators have noted, if the dialogue is a just a joke, it is too long.) S.-S.’s answer to this question is that Plato is concerned to underscore the similarity of Socratic dialectic to eristic in order to explain how easily the two can be confused by both the friend and the critic of philosophy. It is essential to her argument for this conclusion that in Socrates’ scenes with Cleinias, Plato consciously supplies Socrates with fallacious arguments. As the aim of Socratic protreptic is to persuade, ‘fallacy may be employed in the process of reaching a conclusion that Socrates holds to be true’ (p. 42 n. 78). S.-S. maintains that the difference between Socrates’ method and that of his protreptic rivals is therefore one of motive: the brother sophists do not sincerely maintain any of the theses they fallaciously defend. Socrates by contrast sincerely defends theses which he thinks are crucial to Cleinias’ moral and philosophical progress, but often by fallacious means.

The defence of this reading depends crucially on interpretations of two famous arguments in the first protreptic episode. In the first (278e–80b) Socrates argues by cases that in various domains of expertise it is the successful (εὐπραγία) practitioner who is the most fortunate (εὐτυχέστατος). However, he concludes that wisdom always makes people fortunate (εὐτυχεῖν ποιεῖ) without qualification. Given the further association Socrates has set up in Cleinias’ mind between εὖ πράττειν in the senses of success and happiness, S.-S. concludes that Socrates defends the radical position that wisdom is sufficient for happiness: the storm-tossed ship's captain is guaranteed to reach port so long as he is a wise one. S.-S. curtly dismisses commentators who have provided alternative glosses (e.g. Socrates means only that wisdom provides the best possible outcome in any particular circumstance). A similar account is offered of the second famous argument (280c–2d). Whereas Socrates seems to begin by arguing that happiness (εὐδαιμονία) is attained through the wise use of assets (e.g. health, wealth and states of the soul), he illicitly concludes that wisdom alone is sufficient to guarantee happiness. Both arguments are in S.-S.’s view deliberate fallacies, on all fours with the howlers committed by Euthydemus and Dionysodorus in the eristic episodes. However, in both cases it is Socrates’ dialectical circumstances that excuse his otherwise bad dialectical behaviour. The handsome Cleinias, a member of one of the most powerful and controversial of Athenian families, must needs be exhorted to wisdom by the shock and awe of the sufficiency thesis; nothing less than the total denigration of the goods already in his possession will do (p. 38).

Space does not permit a full rehearsal of some obvious objections to this reading, so I will confine myself to three observations. The first is that S.-S. does not explain why Cleinias cannot equally well be exhorted to wisdom by the thesis (surely radical enough to him) that wisdom is necessary for happiness: he has no inkling that the so-called goods in his possession by themselves are not causally relevant to his happiness at all. Next, Socrates induces a state of wonder (ἐθαύμασεν, 279d7) in his young charge in the first argument by asserting ‘Surely, wisdom just is good fortune; even a child knows that’ (d6–7); but he moves immediately to modify this identity claim in terms of a causal thesis. Thus Socratic protreptic begins in wonder and proceeds to a search for the reason why; it does not begin in falsehood and end in deceit. Finally, S.-S. extracts the sufficiency thesis from the second argument largely on the basis of a counterintuitive reading of Socrates’ claim that wisdom is ‘the only thing that makes [ποιεῖν] a man happy and fortunate’ (282c9). Despite S.-S.’s insistent claims to the contrary, this line is not equivalent to the sufficiency thesis; moreover, the thesis it does assert is a causal one.

The treatment of the second protreptic episode is more persuasive. In this scene Socrates attempts to specify the wisdom or knowledge that leads to happiness. This knowledge, which the first protreptic scene suggests is the object of philosophy, is a superordinate art that combines production and use. The scene ends in ἀπορία when the search for the product of this art generates an infinite regress; but Socrates hints that it will be the knowledge that makes citizens virtuous. S.-S. argues that the impasse is solved as follows: philosophy is the provider of the knowledge (or wisdom) which transforms value-neutral properties of the soul (e.g. boldness) into actual virtues (courage); while politics undertakes to transmit that same virtue-related knowledge to others. This solution, while not completely original (as S.-S. admits), is very ably defended.

The second chapter examines the three eristic scenes of the dialogue. Here S.-S. focuses on broad patterns in the sophists’ argumentation. These include doubling as a structural principle and a reliance on binary questions (a technique that is termed ‘the fallacy of the excluded middle’, p. 119). S.-S. makes a convincing case that such techniques are exploited to mock the Platonic doctrine that learning is recollection; also that the fallacies parallel the protreptic scenes in their content. However, the focus on the ‘fallacy of the excluded middle’ results at points in an oversimplification of the source of fallacy. For example, the sophists’ denial of the possibility of false statement and contradiction does not depend, as S.-S. claims, on the denial of a middle between being and not-being; rather, as many commentators have suggested, it turns on a certain conception of a statement as an unstructured whole, which Plato rejects in the Sophist. Students of ancient argumentation may be disappointed to find no more detailed analysis of the riotous variety of sophisms which animate the eristic scenes. S.-S. therefore does not address the question whether Plato regards the study of the source of fallacy (e.g. homonymy) as a serious domain of philosophy, though this would seem to be relevant to her overall project.

The third chapter analyses the dialogue's framing scenes. Here S.-S. focuses on the ambiguous relationship between Socrates and Crito. It is argued that the failure of even such a close associate of Socrates to grasp the distinction between philosophy and eristic illustrates the danger that practitioners of philosophy run of being confused with sophists. Crito's encounter with the unnamed critic of philosophy (whom S.-S. identifies as Isocrates) is in S.-S.’s view included to make a similar point, in so far as Isocrates’ own conception of ‘philosophy’ is distinctly at odds both with that of the sophists and Plato.

The fourth and final chapter discusses the motifs of laughter on the one hand and play and seriousness on the other. S.-S.’s skilful integration of such literary aspects of the Euthydemus with its philosophical content has produced a highly valuable contribution to the study of this badly neglected dialogue.