The Clitophon (Ancient Greek: Κλειτοφῶν, also transliterated as Cleitophon; Latin: Clitopho) is a 4th-century BC dialogue traditionally ascribed to Plato, though the work's authenticity is debated.
Depicted as a student of Euripides by Aristophanes, Clitophon is mentioned in relation to Theramenes, an Athenian politician, in both works.
Finally Socrates answers that justice is to harm enemies and benefit friends, then later it seems that just men never injure anyone and do only good (410a8-b2).
Clitophon is frustrated by these responses, or lack thereof, and claims that Socrates is unable to tell him how to attain virtue and justice (410b3-b6).
[10] Whether or not Clitophon was paraphrasing,[11] Socrates' speeches lack congruence in content with three unrelated exhortations, taking the pattern of the Platonic trichotomy of values.
[14] The last motif of slavery is within the second example of Socrates' speeches in which variants are seen also in Plato's Euthydemus (280e3-281e2) and Alcibiades I (117c6-e5), Xenophon's Memorabilia (4.2.25-29), Aristotle's Protrepticus (62-66).
[18] With respect to the third definition, Plato is the first to reject that to be just is to harm enemies and benefit friends.
[22] Clitophon holds that deeds and actions need to bring about change and make one just.
Clitophon tries to make the protreptic speeches of Socrates effectual while in their nature they are solely meant to encourage and cause people to have a desire for justice.
[25] Due to Clitophon's desire to be told what to think, this does not make him a proper interlocutor for elenchus.
Wishing to gain the knowledge of how to attain justice for political advancement,[28] Clitophon knows that to be told what he wants, he needs to claim aporia.
[24] However to actually experience aporia through elenchus, Clitophon needs to acknowledge ignorance and bad qualities.
Clitophon remains ignorant to his bad qualities and assumes that he knows much in terms of Socrates' speeches and methodologies.
Within 4th century philosophical texts of the genre logos Sokratikos, the literary character of Socrates was prominent.
This silence leaves the dialogue open-ended to elicit the reader to think what may have happened and reflect on what was just said.
[35] The dialogue begins with Socrates speaking in third person when referring to himself and Clitophon, which can be equated with a legal statement.
An important note is that Socrates claimed that he would reply, for he had stated that he would listen to Clitophon's complaints and try to learn from them.
[39] Many ancient authors, such as Diogenes Laërtius, who stated that it was taken straight from the hand of Plato, had cited Clitophon.
[41] In the 19th century, scholars began to label Clitophon as spurious because it did not fit their subjective interpretation of what qualifies as Platonic works.
[42] Attempts to defend the authenticity have sprung up, but among the defenses there is still much disagreement over classifying the work as fragmentary, completed and independent, or related to Republic.
Heidel and others believed that the vocabulary used in Clitophon would not have been used by Plato; however, that argument has been defeated by Brünnecke, Kester and Grube.
Schleiermacher was one of the first to lead people to characterize Clitophon as spurious; while he acknowledges its listing in the Platonic corpus, he could not reconcile the non-Socratic sensitivity.
[46] Schleiermacher believed it to have been written by a contemporary school of rhetoric, which wrote this dialogue as an attack against Socrates.
[33][52] Bury believed that, if indeed it was written by Plato, Clitophon would be a fragmentary preface of Republic, a stance held by Shorey and Grote.
[33][53] However, Slings makes note that no ancient author ever indicated that Clitophon was incomplete or unfinished.
[55] Discussed previously, Grube thought Clitophon was not necessarily a finished work, but one associated with Republic.
Thrasyllus of Mendes, Tiberius' astrologer, arranged Clitophon within the Platonic corpus including Republic, Timaeus, and Critias.
[60] Although there are clear ties to Republic thematically in terms of the discussions on justice, Clitophon has very different themes concerning philosophical methods, resulting in its classification as an independent work in its own right.
[62] Clitophon is used on this view to criticize protrepsis, for the colleagues of Socrates were only able to gain slogans and motifs surrounding justice rather than a full understanding of it.
As a replacement to protreptic speech, Slings proposes that Clitophon champions elenchus as the mode through which to attain virtue and justice by reaching aporia.