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I must begin by stating that I agree with what Kierkegaard writes in his Concept of Irony - that the quaint Xenophon fails to understand Socrates; that he delivers a surface portrait even of his thought, but fails to cut into the negative heart of this thought, wherein lies the import of Socrates as a figure (for ancient Athens and for all of history). Plato does much better at addressing this thoughtful import over the splay of his dialogues (though he does of course at times (mis)use the figure of Socrates for his own ends; but who is to say that Xenophon, with his pragmatic interests in estates and morality, did not do the same in turn.

Xenophon displays only the positive side of what we know of Socrates' thought - his ideas on recollection and self-discipline, for example. But his Socrates spends much time espousing a positive doctrine, which is in direct opposition to the Socrates that Plato portrays ( the Socrates of his Apology especially). Socrates' wisdom was that he knew nothing - and this incited his incessant questioning; his search which is his very wisdom. Socrates' negativity opened up different avenues for interpreting or thinking the simply positive or posited.

As Waterfield notes in his introduction, Socrates was a revolutionary figure; "he trained people to be individuals" (36). He did so through his subversive questioning, which negated or worked against the law, the state, and thus the whole or the general, in the name of freedom and individuality, or difference. This Socrates, that is, the thinker as questioner, fails to appear in Xenophon's texts. Thus, with Kierkegaard, do I find that Xenophon only grasped the positive aspect of Socrates, and failed to really ascertain the true greatness of the man, or rather, of his thought. Xenophon's Socrates is no revolutionary; he, and the texts in which he is portrayed, are rather dull.