Irony in the soul: should Plato’s Socrates be sincere?

The Socrates of Plato’s Apology seems to face his accusers with that old forensic gambit: ‘my opponents think me insincere, but I am telling the truth’. And yet Plato himself encourages us to see his character as an ironist. What does that mean? Socrates seems to conceal the truth rather than tell it, and to do so with a smug knowingness which may well explain the hemlock. His victims miss the point; but Plato’s readers see it all too well – we all feel the sting of Socrates’ elaborate compliments to the insensitive Euthyphro. Indeed, Plato has Alcibiades add emphasis:This same Socrates, however,2 is strict with his interlocutors, demanding of them standards of truth-telling quite different from those he seems to apply to himself.