PL A TO' S

P H A E D R U S
A DEFENSE
OF A
PHI LOSOPHI C ART OF WRI TI NG
Ronnd Burger
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Burger, Ronna, 1947-
Plato's Phaedrus.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Plato. Phaedrus. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient.
3. Socrates. 4. Writing. I. Title.
B380.B86 184 79-9789
I SBN 0-8173-0014-7
Copyright 1980 by
The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
CON T EN T S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
I. Phaedrus the Private Man 8
II. The Multicolored Speech of Lysias 19
III. The Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates 31
I V. The Daemonic Speech of Socrates 44
V. The Art of Speaking and the Principles of Dialectics 70
VI . The Art of Writing 90
Excursus: Writing Like the Painting of Living Animals
Appendix: Isocrates the Beautiful 115
Notes 127
Bibliography 154
Index 157
Unless otherwise noted, translations from the Phaedrus are
the author's.
A CK N OWL EDGM EN T S
The opportunity to work on revisions of the original draft of this project was
provided by an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral research fellowship at the City
University of New York Graduate Center, September, 1978-J une 1979.
For their thoughtful comments and suggestions I am indebted to friends,
colleagues, and professors who read an earlier draft of the manuscript, as well
as to the readers chosen by the press. For my confidence in defending the small
worth of these writings in light of the serious pursuit which underlies them I owe
the deepest gratitude to my teacher, Seth Benardete.
Ml -
m
U
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Many things in praise or blame of each of thearts Thamuz is said to have declared
to Theuth, of which the logos would take too long to narrate. But when hecame to
the letters: "This knowledge, O King," said Theuth, "will render the Egyptians
wiser and give them better memories. For it is a drug of memory and wisdom I
have discovered." But Thamuz replied, "Most artful Theuth, one man is able to
bring forth the art, but another is able to judge what harm or benefit it has for
those who are about to use it; and now you, being father of the letters, claim for
them, through good will, the opposite of the capacity they possess. For this will
produce forgetfulness in thesouls of those who learn to use it, and lack of practice
of memory, inasmuch as, through their trust in writing produced by external
marks belonging to another, they will not recollect by themselves from within; it is,
therefore, not a drug of memory but of reminding that you have discovered. And
you supply to your pupils theappearance of wisdom, not truewisdom; for, having
become addicted to hearing without instruction, they will think they understand
many things, while being for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with,
having become apparently wise rather than truly wise. (PHAEDRUS 274e-275b)
P
ERHAPS ONLY A JEALOUS GOD WOULD CONDEMN THE ART OF WRITING FOR THE
boldness of its attempt to transcend man's natural limitations, but this divine
perspective, cut off from human need, in fact illuminates the danger of the
written word in concealing its effect on the activity of thinking. The discoverer of
the art of writing offers men a divine power that can overcome the restrictions of
human memory and the finitude of human wisdom; a suspicious god, however,
takes heed of his own warning against the written word by suggesting that, if
wisdom is to be anything more than the mere appearance of wisdom, thinking
must always begin again at the beginning, proceeding backwards toward recovery
of the fundamental perplexities which are obscured by all received opinion.
In its claim to surmount this backward procedure, the art of writing presents
itself as the necessary condition for continuity or development in the quest for
wisdom: the illusion of beginning the journey of thought as if it had never been
pursued before can be useful only if recognized as an illusion. The transmission
of knowledge through the art of writing, which makes it unnecessary for every
thinker to begin with a tabula rasa, promises at the same time to free human
memory from the task of preserving communal opinion over time, while creat-
ing, through its independent product, the possibility of that distance from the
authority of tradition necessary for the activity of thinking. Yet like ancestral
tradition handed down from one generation to another, the written word seems
2 Introduction
to be not questioning but* authoritative, not adapted Ho the perspective of an
individual thinker but addressed to a collective audience. The very benefit of the
art of writing is, as the royal god insists, the source of its danger, for the preserva-
tion of a written tradition might produce just that forgetfulness which impedes
the recognition of fundamental perplexities; the written word, with its deceptive
appearance of wisdom, must be acknowledged as an obstacle to philosophic
thought.
Yet this divine judgment against human art is itself nothing but an imitation
by human art. The condemnation of the written word in the speech of the god is
in fact a recommendation for the interpretation of the written words through
which that speech is imitated. It is precisely his critique against the written word,
understood as a replacement for human memory, that compels the royal god to
acknowledge its power as a reminder. Acting as a reminder, the dramatic repre-
sentation of the judgment on the art of writing demands an examination of its
apparently conclusive claim in light of the perspective of the speaker who utters
it. Precluding in this way the passive submission of its reader to its own deceptive
appearance of wisdom, the dialogue on writing triumphs over itself as the very
obstacle brought to light by the royal god whose condemnation it represents.
The dialogue between Theuth and Thamuz, which announces the danger of
the written word as an obstacle to self-discovery, is said to be an ancient story
handed down through generations, providing true opinion or the appearance of
wisdom; but its meaning, which cannot be handed down, must be sought
through an act of self-discovery, which replaces unmoving trust in the fixed
authority of the tale with the motion of living thought. The paradoxical written
imitation of the divine condemnation of writing thus shows itself to be only
apparently self-contradictory: to heed its warning against the danger of writing is
to overcome the need for that warning and thus to realize the potential value of
the written word.
The dialogue between Theuth and Thamuz is a model in miniature of every
Platonic dialogue, whose fundamental perplexity is always determined by the
tension between the living word and its written imitation: the products of the
Platonic art of writing represent Socratic conversation as the paradigm of the
philosophic enterprise without ever acknowledging the deed of their creator.
While Platonic love of wisdom presents itself as nothing but the imitation of
Socratic love of wisdom, the very act of imitation indicates the essential separa-
tion between them. Insofar as Socrates is indeed represented as the paradigm of
the philosophic enterprise, an exploration of the connection between his love of
wisdom and his avoidance of the activity of writing would be the necessary basis
for any Platonic defense of the possibility of a philosophic art of writing.
The dialogue whose particular theme consists in a self-reflection on its own
nature as an imitation is Plato's Phaedrus. The dialogue's reflection on its own
character as a product of writing results, ironically, in the apparent deprecation
of the activity of writing. The capacity of the product of writing to replace living
3 Introduction
thought with the illusion of wisdom is appropriately announced through the
voice of Socrates, servant of the "despot Eros," who condemns those written
words which, like the creatures of painting, always remain the same, not know-
ing when to speak and when to remain silent, unable to defend themselves. In
contrast with the erotic vitality of living speech, writing announces the death of
its creator; it is like the epitaph of thought. The Platonic dialogues commemorate
the death of Socrates by replacing the living and breathing word of the speaker
with a written imitation. But the condemnation of this monument of living
thought conceals the ambiguity of its twofold nature, for the imitation which
deceives when taken as an original may fulfill an indispensable function when
recognized as an imitation: only the written word which points to its illusory
appearance as a replacement of memory is able to uncover its own potential as a
reminder to the knower.
The very condemnation of the written word by the written word betrays that
recognition of the playfulness of writing which is identified in the dialogue as a
sign of the true lover of wisdom. The condition for Socrates' love of wisdom,
which allows him to recognize the playfulness of writing, is knowledge of his own
ignorance, which he identifies as the greatest human wisdom (cf. Apology 23b).
The imitation of Socratic knowledge of ignorance by Platonic art is the claim of
the Phaedrus to know of its own potential appearance of wisdom without the
realitywhich turns out to be the greatest human wisdom concerning the prod-
uct of writing. Plato's Phaedrus thus demonstrates that the only written work
which could condemn the art of writing would have to be an imitation of that
erotic speech we call Socratic irony. Precisely through the acknowledgment of its
own potential dangers, the Platonic dialogue sets in motion the activity of in-
terpretation as its own realization, and thus illustrates the potential for overcom-
ing exactly those limitations of the dead written word which Socrates condemns;
when resuscitated with the breath of thought, the written corpse of the dialogue
becomes a living being, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, able
to defend itself against all unjust abuse.
The demand that "all logos" or "every logos" be constructed like a living
animalwhich seems to be a description of living speech in contrast with
writingis in fact introduced in the course of the discussion between Socrates
and Phaedrus as a necessary principle for the organization of all logoi, spoken or
written, whose structure must be "neither headless nor footless, but having a
middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the
whole" (264c). But just as the character of the dialogue as a product of writing
seems to violate its own condemnation of the written word, so its own structure
seems to violate its explicit demand for the organic unity of all speech. For the
Phaedrus seems to display, rather than the unity of an organic whole, the discon-
tinuity of two halves; while its first part consists in three separate speeches on
eros, punctuated by interludes of playful conversation between two lovers of
speech, its second part consists of a discussion on the art of speaking, which
begins and ends with the question of the value of writing. For centuries commen-
4 Introduction
tators have argued about its unity, contending that the major subject is love, the
soul, the beautiful, rhetoric or the art of speaking, or dialectics, while this very
contention has led to the resigned suggestion that the dialogue is simply self-
contradictory in demanding a unity which it itself does not possess.
If "all logos" and "every logos" must be constructed like a living animal, the
problem of the unity of the separate parts within this dialogue ought to reflect the
problem of the unity of the Platonic corpus as a whole, of which the Phaedrus
represents one part parading as a whole. Precisely that function that the Phaedrus
serves in the structure of the whole composed of all the dialogues, then, might
reveal the theme which determines its own internal completeness as an organic
whole. I f the Platonic corpus is indeed the "many-membered body of a living
animal," the Phaedrus is that member which serves to examine the character of
the whole as an imitation produced by the art of writing. I f the role of the
Phaedrus within the corpus of dialogues illuminates its own internal unity, the
Platonic defense of the art of writing must provide for the Phaedrus itself the
hidden bond between the speeches on eros and the discussion on rhetoric and
dialectics.
If, however, the problem of writing does constitute the underlying theme of
the Phaedrus, its unifying function is perplexingly concealed beneath an appar-
ently random conversation. The appropriate context for the conversation seems
to be furnished by the shade of a grove sacfed to the nymphs, where the two
lovers of speech lie down to exchange their speeches on love. But Socrates and
Phaedrus are in fact led outside the walls of the city by the "drug" of a written
speech; the clever love speech which Phaedrus conceals beneath his cloak betrays
the ghostly presence of the speechwriter Lysias, haunting the apparently private
scene between Socrates and Phaedrus. Socrates finally presents the conversation
that he seems to conduct as a solitary encounter as a message addressed to three
classes of writers: Lysias and the speech writers, Homer and the poets, Solon and
the law-writers. From beginning to end, this most private erotic conversation is
determined by the public nature of the written word. The tension between the
appearance and reality of the drama of the dialogue thus reflects the tension
between the apparent disunity of the themes of eras, rhetoric, and dialectics, and
their concealed unification through the question of the nature of writing. The
perplexing concealment of the theme of writing in feet provides a clue to the
self-concealing nature which constitutes the danger of the written word; at the
same time, the very recognition of the theme of writing, which discloses the
underlying structure of the dialogue as a whole, points to the potential value of
the art of writing for the construction of logos displaying the unity of an organic
whole.
The clues to the theme that determines the underlying unity of the Phaedrus
lie in the muthoi that simultaneously connect and separate the diverse parts of
the conversation, marking the divisions between the speeches on eros, the dis-
cussion on rhetoric and dialectics, and the analysis of writing. The fantastic tales
5 Introduction
of a nymph carried off by the god of the north wind, lovers of music turned into
chirping cicadas by the Muses, and a dialogue on writing between two Egyptian
animal-gods set in motion the central questions of the conversation concerning
the relations between death and eras, art and nature, acquired opinion and
self-knowledge, love of speeches and love of dialectics, and writing and living
speech. It is precisely their capacity for illuminating the danger and power of the
product of writing which allows these muthoi to provide the clues for articulating
the structure and content of the dialogue. When Phaedrus questions Socrates
concerning his belief in the truth of the opening myth, Socrates responds
through an analogy with the inscription of the Delphic oracle, that enigmatic
product of writing which commands the search for self-knowledge. Socrates'
recognition of the value of the myth in initiating the search for self-knowledge in
fact points to the value of the written word as a potential reminder of "that which
is written with knowledge in the soul" (276a). The transcendance of the danger of
the written word as a replacement for memory and the realization of its potential
value as a reminder is thus represented by the problem of the interpretation of
muthos as acquired opinion whose truth can only be disclosed through self-
discovery. That problem is itself reflected in the structure of the Phaedrus, for the
apparent peak of the dialogue, represented by Socrates' "mythic hymn" honoring
the divine madness of eras, in fact obscures the true peak of the dialogue, which
emerges only after Socrates reports his central myth about the lovers of the
Muses, and interprets it exactly at midday, as a warning of the need for critical
examination in the struggle against the danger of slavish possession.
The paradoxical reversal in the course of the speeches on love, where the
divine madness of eras is revealed to be the highest moderation, is thus mirrored
in the reversal of the dialogue as a whole, where the inspired love-speeches are
submitted to critical examination for the evidence of art. The unity of the two
parts of the dialogue emerges only through the examination of the love-speeches
as the perfect models for illustrating the principles of dialectics, which constitute
the standard for the true art of speaking; this unity Socrates ascribes to chance or
fate, ironically concealing the Platonic art of writing. But behind Socrates' ironic
divine possession stands the dialectic art of writing, which establishes the unity of
the speeches on eros, just as it constitutes the resolution of the tension between
eras and art underlying the two apparently autonomous parts of the dialogue as a
whole.
Just as Socrates ironically ascribes the artful organization of his presumably
spontaneous speeches to divine inspiration, so he announces his condemnation
of the art of writing in alliance with the prophecy of a royal god. The connection
between the divine madness of eros and the true art of speaking provides the
ground for Socrates' acceptance of the god's warning against the danger of the
written word, which seems unable to fulfill the demand for "adaptation of
speeches to souls." But the shamefulness of trust in the illusory clarity and
firmness of the written word (275c) Socrates identifies with the slavishness of
6 Introduction
submission to rhetorical persuasion without criticaKxJetachment (277e); the ap-
parent superiority of living speech over the dead written word must, therefore, be
replaced by the superiority of all dialectic logoi, "spoken for the sake of instruc-
tion and written in the soul" (278a).
In alliance with Socrates, Plato wages his struggle against all writers whose
defining characteristic as a class consists in their ignorance of the dependence of
all art on the principles of dialectics. This class is exemplified by the theoreticians
of rhetoric, who profess to write and teach an art of speaking that provides a
tekhne of persuasion dependent only on knowledge of the opinion of the many.
But the Platonic defense of an art of writing must be conducted on another front
in opposition to Socrates, who condemns the dead written word in favor of a
commitment to the philosophic eros of conversation, which he defends in the
name of an immortal god. While the apparent moderation of Socrates' refraining
firom writing is revealed to be the hubris of a divine perspective that ignores the
need for human art, the Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing that
appears to betray the hubris of a desire for immortality is revealed to be the true
moderation of reliance on human art as the necessary path for man, who is not
god. In contrast with the love of money and the sophists in the city, over against
the concealment of death by art and the activity of writing, stand Socrates'
disinterest in money and his presence in the sacred grove outside the city, his
defense of eros and his activity of speaking. Between the poles of this conflict,
which are illustrated by the content and structure of the Phaedrus, lies the space
for the Platonic defense of a dialectic art of writing.
The unity of the Socratic and Platonic enterprise, in its opposition to the
project of the rhetoricians and sophists, is determined by the principles of dialec-
tics, demanding knowledge of the structure of the whole and parts of the beings,
and of soul, and of the effects of particular speeches on particular souls. Yet in its
demand for an integrated knowledge of self-moving ever-moving soul and of the
silent, immobile beings, the dialectic art seems to be nothing more than an ideal
standard, based on the seemingly impossible convergence of a principle of mo-
tion and a principle of rest. This double principle shows up in the Phaedrus as a
conflict between ems and death, between Socrates' erotic dialectics, with its
recognition of the spontaneity and particularity of living speech, and the art of
writing, with its recognition of the fixity and stability of the silent "beings beyond
the heavens." But these opposing paths appear equally incapable of fulfilling the
goal of the dialectic art, for the self-moving motion of soul as the ground of
Socratic conversation seems to be an obstacle to the objective vision of the ideas,
while the authoritative silence of the dead written word seems to preclude the
activity of living thought.
It is, however, precisely that convergence of motion and rest demanded by the
principles of dialectics that is exemplified by the Platonic dialogue itself. For the
opposition of Socratic eros and the art of writing is in fact simply a polarity
constructed within the unity of the dialogue: the Platonic Socrates, who is only
Introduction 7
an image rendered "young and beautiful" by the art of writing (cf. Second Letter
314c), provides the voice through which the Platonic written word comes to life.
The Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing thus preserves that profound
sense of irony which Socrates himself would be compelled to admire in the
playful imitator who made him immortal.
I
PH A EDRUS TH E P RI V A T E MAN
How are you speaking, oh best Socrates? Do you believe that what Lysias com-
posed in a long time at leisure, and he the cleverest writer of our day, I, being a
private man, could recite from memory in a manner worthy of that one? Far from
it; yet, I would wish for that more than for much gold. (228a)
Precisely because the Platonic dialogue is a dialogue and not a
treatise, the philosophic question which constitutes its theme
must emerge through the nature and opinions of a particular
character in a particular situation; the dramatic representation
of Socrates and Phaedrus, then, must illustrate the "adaptation
of speeches to souls" which is laid down as a fundamental
condition for the dialectic art of speaking and, by implication,
for that product of writing which claims to be an imitation of
dialectic speech. I f the unifying theme of the Phaedrus consists
in the Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing, that
defense comes to life through the drama of Socrates' interac-
tion with an individual whose natural response to the product
of writing fulfills all the potential dangers against which the
dialogue itself becomes a warning.
Socrates and Phaedrus engage in a conversation about love
and rhetoric because their likeness to one another consists in
the love of speeches; but while Socrates must make himself
into an image which Phaedrus will follow because he sees
something of himself in it, he must, at the same time, uncover
the innocent inconsistency of Phaedrus as a lover of speeches
who has no understanding of their power. Phaedrus is a "lover
of the Muses," threatened by the danger of becoming their
captive; that danger is exemplified by his admiration for the
written speech of Lysias with which he deceptively lures Soc-
rates into their private conversation. Phaedrus's delight in the
product of writing as an amusement for leisure hours betrays
him as the perfect victim of the poet, the speechwriter, and the
law-writer, hence the perfect model of their power and danger.
Socrates demonstrates his knowledge of Phaedrus's nature by
finally identifying him as a mere messenger commanded to
report his conversation with Socrates in the grove of the
nymphs to the writer Lysias in the heart of the city. The unac-
knowledged influence of public opinion beneath his apparent
commitment to privacy, the transparent coyness of his identifi-
Phaedrus the Private Man 9
cation with the role of the passive beloved, render Phaedrus the
proper intermediary in the contest between Lysias and
Socratesbetween the rhetorical art of Lysias's nonlover and
the erotic dialectics of Socrates' divine lover. But Phaedrus is
the appropriate interlocuter for illustrating the theoretical issue
of the dialogue only because his own character and interests
point beyond themselves to the Platonic defense of a
philosophic art of writing, which emerges as the true media-
tion between human art and divine eros.
TTH E Phaedrus i s AMONG THOSE PLATONIC DIALOGUES WHOSE TI TLE IS THE
name of the chief or sole individual with whom Socrates converses.
1
Even before
establishing the subject of their investigation, Socrates expresses his interest in
Phaedrus himself; by the conclusion of their encounter, however, Socrates treats
Phaedrus as a mere intermediary, commanded to deliver the message of the
dialogue to its intended audience: Lysias and the speechwriters, Homer and the
poets, Solon and the law-writers. If this conversation is appropriately addressed,
finally, to those classes of writers responsible for shaping the opinions of the
political community,
2
it is nevertheless transmitted through a private individual,
whose interests center on the subject of love, the care of the body, and an
appreciation of speech as mere recreation. Phaedrus's status as interlocuter thus
raises a fundamental problem of interpretation, for the conversation which Soc-
rates shares with Phaedrus points, from the outset, beyond Phaedrus, just as its
themes of love, rhetoric, and dialectics point beyond themselves to that which
reveals their unity.
The dialogue begins with Socrates' question concerning the source and goal of
Phaedrus's movement: "Dear Phaedrus, to where and from where?" While
Phaedrus, in the company of Socrates, spends his time at a grove sacred to the
nymphs and the river god, he begins his day in the very heart of the city,
entertained by a feast of Lysias, a wearing away (diatribe) of empty time.
3
Phaedrus himself is in motion, but Socrates wishes to understand that motion by
discovering the stability of its source and its goal. Both the source and the goal of
Phaedrus's motion, however, lie outside himself; considered in isolation from the
influences which determine his own direction, Phaedrus seems incapable of
representing that "self-moving motion" which Socrates later identifies as the
being and logos of soul (cf. 245e).
While Phaedrus is eager to share Lysias's feast with Socrates, on the condition
of his having leisure to hear it, Socrates transforms this condition into a matter
"higher than business" (227b).
4
In betraying his love of speeches for the sake of
amusement, Phaedrus comes to light as an individual who thrives on freedom
and leisure without redeeming those conditions through the practice of philoso-
10 Plato's Phaedrus
phy.
5
Socrates, in contrast, reveals his love of speech as an urgent and most
serious matter;
6
but the playfulness of Socrates' attention to the serious impor-
tance of sharing Lysias's feast even Phaedrus discerns (cf. 234d). The irony in
Socrates' elevation of his encounter with Phaedrus to a matter "higher than
business" he betrays in concluding their discussion by identifying it as mere
amusement (pai di a, cf. 278b). In his initial, seemingly arbitrary, remark on the
serious importance of the playful rhetorical speech that Phaedrus admires, Soc-
rates ironically foreshadows the theme of the dialogue as a whole. For just as
Socrates later discerns the paidia of the love-speeches he shares with Phaedrus
only by recognizing the serious value of the principles of art which they reveal
(cf. 26 5d), he silently indicates that his apparent condemnation of the necessary
playfulness of the written word is in fact the only condition for the recognition of
its serious value (cf. 277e-278b).
Phaedrus meets Socrates at the walls of the city because he seeks, on the advice
of the physician Acumenus, unwearying exercise on the country roads.
7
While
Socrates suggests a walk along the Illisus, Phaedrus, barefoot in the hot summer
sun, readily agrees. I f shoes represent the arts and the city,
8
Phaedrus joins
Socrates only this day in a retreat from that sphere. What for Phaedrus is a matter
of adapting to the physical necessities of the environment, however, is for Soc-
rates a sign of independence from those necessities.
9
Spotting a lofty plane tree
with shade and a moderate breeze as a fitting destination, Phaedrus betrays the
subordination of his desire to hear speeches to his desire for physical comfort. It is
because of the heat of the noonday sun that Phaedrus wants to continue the
conversation at the conclusion of Socrates' first speech (242a), and only because
the heat has grown gentler that he is finally willing to leave (279b).
Phaedrus considers Socrates the perfect audience for the enigmatic love-
speech composed by Lysias; his assurance of Socrates' passionate interest seems to
imply his memory of the encounter represented in the Symposium,
10
where
Phaedrus is "father of the speech," the man who complains that Eros is the one
god with no proper eulogy in his honor (Symposium 177c).
u
Phaedrus's desire
for a eulogy of Eros is announced through the voice of the physician
Eryximachus, whose orders Phaedrus follows without critical detachment, as a
slave follows those of his master.
12
Phaedrus's friendship with the physicians
13
and his characterization as one of the lighter drinkers at the banquet, betray his
willingness to practice moderation only for the sake of bodily well-being. But
while he seems, therefore, to be tied to what is most private, the guidance for that
concern comes only from the accepted opinion of those who claim to possess an
art: Phaedrus's apparently natural self-interest is penetrated, without acknowl-
edgment, by the opinions of the public experts he reveres.
The speech with which Phaedrus initiates the Symposium is, in fact, a self-
eulogy, for his description of Eros mirrors his own position: Eros is the first of the
gods and hence occupies the position of greatest honor. It is the authority of age
which gives Eros his honor, and his honor which makes him the source of our
Phaedrus the Private Man 11
greatest blessings (Symposium 178c). The signs of the power of love Phaedrus
finds in the feelings of shame for the shameful and love of honor for the beautiful;
the effects of love are determined by appearance and reputation: not truth but
honor, not guilt but shame before others. These signs, as Phaedrus insists, are
necessary for the performance of great and beautiful deeds, both in the individual
and in the city (178d).
14
So far is Phaedrus from awareness of any conflict
between the condition of eros and those of the political community, that he
believes the perfect realization of each will necessarily coincide. Phaedrus's "best
city," therefore, consists of a band of lovers, motivated by competition for honor
and avoidance of the shameful. The ideal effect of love is that spiritedness
exemplified by the menos of Homer's heroes (Symposium 179b);
15
the mild-
mannered Phaedrus gives honor to the god Eros by identifying him as the source
of inspired rage. The inspiration which Socrates will present as the lover's active
pursuit of the god in whose footsteps he follows (cf. Phaedrus 248a), Phaedrus
presents as the lover's passive receptivity of the courage breathed into him by a god.
But the unmistakable mark of true love Phaedrus finds in the willingness for
self-sacrifice, manifest in Alcestis's desire to die for Admetus, and Achilles'
determination to give up his life for Patroclus (Symposium 179b-c). Phaedrus's
conviction that death is the ultimate test of love is brought under examination in
Socrates' report of the speech of Diotima, in which eros is understood as the
principle through which the mortal nature seeks, as for as possible, to be im-
mortal (Symposium 207d); the self-sacrifice of Alcestis and Achilles is thus iden-
tified, in Diotima's speech, not as a longing for death, but as the desire for a
"deathless memory" (208d). Phaedrus's own understanding of the honor earned
by those who embrace death as the testimony of love makes him, as Socrates
announces in the Phaedrus, the appropriate audience for a myth about the
Muses, who punish their self-forgetful lovers with death (Phaedrus 259bd).
It is not, however, the self-sacrificer in general on whom Phaedrus bestows his
praise; Achilles, the beloved, must be admired more than Alcestis, the lover, for
the highest honor belongs, not to the lover who sacrifices himself out of the
compulsion of desire, but to the beloved who, in all his perfection, freely chooses
to give up his life for his lover (Symposium 180b). In his identification of the
response of the beloved as the sign of the power of Eros, Phaedrus in fact betrays
the projection of his own self-image as passive beloved. The illusion involved in
mistaking Eros as beloved rather than as lover is uncovered in Socrates' narration
of the speech of Diotima, which illuminates the paradoxical character of a god
who must represent, not the fullness and perfection of an object of desire, but the
incompleteness of desire itself.
The illusory identification of Eros with the beloved is revealed, through the
speeches which Phaedrus and Socrates exchange in their private encounter, to be
the common assumption of every love-speech, which consists in the attempt to
flatter the passive beloved in order to make him become an active lover. Through
his self-identification as beloved, Phaedrus shows himself to be the fitting victim
12 Plato's Phaedrus
of the persuasive power of such erotic rhetoric."Precisely that susceptibility is
displayed by Phaedrus's admiration for the clever speech of Lysias addressed by a
"nonlover" to "one of the beautiful," which Socrates finally explains as the
lover's attempt to attain the favors of his beloved by making himself into an image
of the beloved, that is, the nonlover (cf. Phaedrus 237b).
In the attempt to obtain Socrates' desire for sharing the speech he admires,
Phaedrus coyly contrasts himself, as private individual (idiotes), with Lysias,
"cleverest writer of the day." By attributing the excellence of Lysias's work to its
composition over a long time at his leisure (228a), Phaedrus betrays his reductive
understanding of the value of the potential disinterestedness of the written work,
which may indeed depend upon its freedom from urgency. In expressing his own
response to Lysias's work, Phaedrus reveals the same reductive understanding, for
what he desires more than gold is the ability to repeat the speech from memory.
17
Not the ability to think, to understand, to discuss, to defend, to attack, but only
to recite from memory is what he most admires, and he finds no higher praise of
that desire than its priority over his love of money. Through his association of
money and leisure, writing and memorization, Phaedrus in fact unwittingly
points to the true grounds for Lysias's activity of writing and for the condemna-
tion of the written word which Socrates expresses.
18
Whether the love of speech that Phaedrus professes is one which Socrates
shares, Socrates can discover only by looking through the veil of Phaedrus's
coyness. Socrates therefore enters into the activity of seduction by asserting the
interdependence of his own self-knowledge and his knowledge of Phaedrus: "Oh
Phaedrus, if I don't know Phaedrus, I have forgotten myself' (228a). Socrates
can, apparently, possess such knowledge either because Phaedrus is a mirror-
image of himself, or because he mistakes Phaedrus for such an image, or because
Phaedrus temporarily becomes such an image in the presence of Socrates. If
"love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves,"
19
Phaedrus and Socrates would follow each other because each sees in the other
the projection of himself, while once following, he is set in the motion of
becoming like what he follows.
20
Today Phaedrus is fortunately barefoot, but
Socrates is almost always so; the self-knowledge which Socrates desires may
perhaps demand an uncovering of the illusory likeness which he claims to share
with Phaedrus.
Socrates does not address Phaedrus directly but speaks of him in the third
person, giving Phaedrus a separate image of himself to observe. Socrates forms a
community with Phaedrus in order to examine an objectified image of him; he
creates for Phaedrus that necessary internal otherness which Phaedrus's innocent
coyness seems to preclude. Socrates thus implies that the knower is not the
experiencer but the observer. The fulfillment of this implication, however, de-
pends upon the Platonic dialogue itself, as a product of writing; as an imitation of
the encounter between Socrates and Phaedrus, the dialogue provides for its
reader the distance necessary for overcoming the partial perspectives of the partici-
pants represented within it.
Phaedrus the Private Man 13
It is only this distance which illuminates the tension within Socrates' implica-
tion of his own likeness to Phaedrus. For the description of Phaedrus's activity is
markedly unlike anything Socrates ever reveals of himself. Phaedrus not only
listened once, but commanded Lysias, who was easily persuaded, to repeat
(228a-b); Socrates, presumably, would have been asking questions, not com-
manding repetition. Phaedrus, unsatisfied, at last took the book to examine what
he most desired, then, when tired, took his customary walk outside the walls
hoping to practice reciting the speech from memory (228a-b); Socrates would
only have continued the conversation with the writer of the speech, hoping to
arrive together at some understanding of the nature of the subject under discus-
sion. Phaedrus's interest in Lysias's speech is absorbed by his desire to memorize
it; Socrates' interest in the speech is stimulated by the perplexities raised in
thinking through its inexplicit assumptions. The internal division within the love
of speeches which Socrates shares with Phaedrus thus hints at the ambiguous
value and danger of writing, for the potentially repeatable identity of the written
word has no necessary connection with the identity of shared understanding.
Through his particular response to Lysias's speech, Phaedrus is thus shown to be
the appropriate character for illustrating the essential ambiguity of the written
word.
Socrates accuses Phaedrus of desiring to recite the speech even if no one would
willingly listen;
21
he is a deceiver who poses as one not desiring to speak, like a
lover pretending to be a nonlover. This accusation Phaedrus interprets as a threat
from Socrates.
32
Phaedrus seems to understand compulsion as being in absolute
opposition to pure willingness, acknowledging neither the possible alternative of
persuasion nor the element of compulsion inherent in desire. It is because
Phaedrus acknowledges no intermediary between willingness and force, because
he is completely unaware of the power of persuasion, that he is its perfect victim.
He therefore willingly submits to Socrates' playful threat of force by offering to
replace the feast given by Lysias with his own rearrangement, in condensation
(228e). I f Phaedrus displays his willingness to practice deception in his eagerness
to perform his own rhetorical gymnastics (228e), it is precisely the nature of the
written work he conceals beneath his cloak that creates the condition for such
deception; Phaedrus admires the cleverness of the very speech that mirrors his
own deceitful character. While Phaedrus has a true opinion of the speech as a
rhetorical showpiece, his refusal to acknowledge its status as a "game" of writing
betrays his own ignorance of the deceptive power of the speech which constitutes
the paradigm of writing in this dialogue on writing.
Recognizing Phaedrus's concealment of the speech beneath his cloak, just as
he recognized Phaedrus's concealment of his desire to speak beneath the appear-
ance of self-deprecation, Socrates refuses to allow Phaedrus to take responsibility
for the deceptive speech which reflects his own character. He therefore insists on
hearing Lysias himself (228e), whose presence he identifies with that of his
written work. Socrates forces Phaedrus into the role of actor with Lysias as poet
precisely because this role exhibits not only Phaedrus's character, but the nature
14 Plato's Phaedrus
of the product of writing, waiting in silence to be^brought to life. Socrates begins
his playful threats by placing responsibility for the compulsion to speak on
Phaedrus himself, separating that Phaedrus from the external Phaedrus who
feigns unwillingness; he concludes by attributing responsibility to Lysias for the
speech recited though not necessarily understood by Phaedrus as intermediary.
While Socrates repeatedly commands Phaedrus to lead the way on their path
along the Ilissus (229a, 229b, 230a), Phaedrus, lover of muthoi (cf. 259b), finally
asks Socrates whether they have arrived at the spot where Boreas is said to have
carried off Oreithyia. Socrates, a "stranger outside the city" (230d), knows exactly
where the altar of Boreas marks the location of the mythological event (229c),
while Phaedrus mistakenly believes they stand at the very spot: "Is it not from
here? for the stream appears pleasing and pure and transparent, fit for girls to play
by" (229b). Without being aware of it, Phaedrus himself anticipates his own
identification with the mountain nymph Oreithyia,
23
for Socrates will soon try to
"carry off' Phaedrus with beautiful speeches, eliciting Phaedrus's promise of a
statue in his honor (235d-e, 236d). Socrates renders Phaedrus's mythological
allusion even more appropriate by adding a reference to Pharmakeia, companion
of Oreithyia (229c), just as he later claims that the charm which captures his
attention and lures him on is not Phaedrus himself, but Phaedrus playing with
the drug (pharmakon) of the speech by Lysias (230d, 234d, cf. 274e). While the
myth Phaedrus recalls serves as an image of the natural seduction scene taking
place, Socrates' supplement hints at the role in that scene played by the seductive
drug of the written work.
24
Phaedrus's desire to invest the natural beauty of the scene with the spirit of a
mythological seduction establishes the pattern of the dialogue as a whole. Just as
the discussions on speaking and writing will be introduced by appropriate myths
addressed to Phaedrus, so here the myth Phaedrus introduces, which tells the tale
of a mountain nymph playing with her companion Pharmakeia and carried off
by the god of the north wind, provides a prelude for the theme of the love-
speeches which follow, In his wonder about their natural setting, Phaedrus only
wants to know if Socrates is persuaded of the truth of the muthologema, whether
or not the event actually occurred. In response to Phaedrus's question, Socrates
declares himself out of place (atopos), for, unlike the "wise men" (sophoi), he
does not simply disbelieve in the truth of the myth. If he were a sophisticated
disbeliever, Socrates suggests, he might interpret the story of a maiden carried off
by the passionate god Boreas as merely a concealed account of a woman pushed
off a rock by a blast of wind (229d); a legend about eros would be interpreted by
the artful sophoi as a concealed image of death. The "truth" of the muthologema
would be identified as merely a naive personification by those whose cleverness
makes them blind to the inner experience for which the myth creates a poetic
image.
In contrast with the sophoi, who attempt to rationalize a mythological tale as
the image of a natural occurrence, Socrates looks for the worth of the myth in its
hidden understanding of soul. He himself is moved by the urgency of the de-
Phaedrus the Private Man 15
mand, "according to the Delphic inscription, to know myself (229e). Having no
leisure for the rustic wisdom of the sophoi, Socrates replaces their clever but
laborious interpretations of the Centaur, Chimaera, Gorgon, Pegasus, and the
others, with the investigation of whether he is himself "a monster more many-
tangled and raging than Typhon,
2S
or a tamer and simpler animal, partaking by
nature of a divine and quiet lot" (230a). Socrates is primarily concerned with his
ignorance of the nature of his own hubris, which, according to his own image,
must be either bestial or divine.
If muthos represents the poetic wisdom of man's self-understanding, Socrates
demonstrates the necessity of its subjection to critical examination in the service
of self-knowledge; his model is the Delphic inscription (gramma), whose elucida-
tion requires from Socrates a lifetime of investigation.
26
Between the sophistic
rationalization of the muthos of Boreas and Oreithyia as a concealed account of
death, and Socrates' acceptance of it as an account of eros, stands Phaedrus's
concern with the muthos as an object of true opinion. In the process of expand-
ing Phaedrus's understanding of truth, Socrates provides a model for the reader of
that muthos represented by the drama of the dialogue as a whole. While Socrates
is about to engage in his own production of a many-tangled monster as image of
the soul, he first offers his advice on how to listen to the muthoi with which he,
as artful rhetorician, attempts to "lead souls through words" (cf. 261a).
Just at the end of this discussion of myths, Socrates and Phaedrus arrive at the
sacred resting place where they will lie down for the love-play of their speeches
(230a). Unusually aware of his surroundings, Socrates praises the beauty of the
katagoge to which Phaedrus has guided them.
27
He admires the lofty plane tree
and shady willow, the cool spring and pleasant breeze, the statues of nymphs and
of Achelous, the shrill summer music of the cicadas,
28
and the grass thick
enough to lie down on.
29
Just after this inspired praise for the natural beauty of
the grove, Phaedrus declares Socrates a wonder, most out of place, "artlessly
appearing to be led like some kind of stranger and not a native" (230d); Socrates
does not belong abroad, not even outside the walls of the town.
30
Phaedrus,
however, shows no understanding of the connection between Socrates' interest in
erotics and his attachment to the city, which Socrates explains as the result of his
love of learning, not satiable by country places and trees, but only by the men in
town (230d).
31
The unconscious irony of Phaedrus's reproach against Socrates is illuminated
by the conscious irony of Socrates' later imitation. When Socrates praises the
beauty of the grove, Phaedrus calls him amazing, artlessly appearing as a stranger
outside the city (230d); when Phaedrus later begs to continue the conversation,
complaining of the heat from the noonday sun, Socrates calls him "godlike about
speeches and artlessly amazing" (242a). While Socrates' praise for the natural
beauty of their resting spot conceals the truth of his love of learning, Phaedrus's
professed love of speeches seems to conceal his actual concern with the environ-
ment. This reversal points to the problem of the relation between the natural
beauty of a silent vision and the beauty of speech, which is finally transformed to
16 Plato's Phaedrus
the problem of the-relation between the beautiful beloved and the persuasive
lover (cf. 255b-d), The drama of the dialogue provides at the outset an ironic
clue for the reconciliation of this conflict: Socrates has been led outside the city
by Phaedrus's bait, the pharmakon of a silent speech in a book.
Once Phaedrus has gratified Socrates with his recital of the speech of Lysias,
Socrates responds by suggesting the possibility of another speech, different and
not worse, though he has forgotten how and from whom he heard it (23 5d).
Phaedrus commands Socrates not to reveal its source, but only to deliver the
speech itself. He tries to tempt Socrates with a promise of his own, like that of the
nine archons, to set up at Delphi a golden life-size image, not only of himself but
of Socrates as well.
32
The love of honor and of gold, characterizing Phaedrus's
promise, stands in marked contrast to Socrates' later praise of the divine madness
of the oracle of Delphi (244a) and to the lover's worship of the beloved himself,
"like a statue" (251a). When Socrates imitates Phaedrus's dissembling, offering a
rearrangement of the necessary argument of Lysias's speech, Phaedrus enthusias-
tically responds with the promise of another immortal memorial, a statue of
beaten metal next to that of the Cypselids at Olympia.
33
The temptation of
political fame seems to Phaedrus the proper lure for seducing Socrates to speak
about love in this most private setting.
Socrates responds to Phaedrus's threats and promises by imitating Phaedrus's
former coyness, claiming the inadequacy of his private status (idiotes) in contrast
with that of the poet Lysias (236d). Undeterred by Socrates' self-adornment,
Phaedrus finally makes use of the compulsion of desire; he threatens to withhold
what he believes Socrates loves most unless Socrates delivers to him the treasure
he claims to hold within himself (236e). The lover's promise of future benefits
through oaths and prayers, which Socrates is about to condemn in speech (241a),
Phaedrus now enacts in deed. Searching for the god to guard his present oath,
Phaedrus swears by the. plane tree which shelters them never to read or report
another speech unless Socrates produces one of his own.
34
To the compulsion of
desire, ironic as it may be, Socrates at last submits, granting his favors as if he
were a prostitute. Imitating the shameful speech hidden under Phaedrus's cloak,
Socrates cloaks his own head so as to avoid the shame of looking at Phaedrus or
being seen by him.
35
But Phaedrus is uninterested in Socrates' dramatic flourishes;
as long as the speech itself is delivered, the conditions for it, the intention behind
it, its living context, can all be ignored. Considerations of distinctions in pur-
pose, of the difference between speech directed toward grasping the truth and
that directed merely toward persuasion, are immaterial to Phaedrus.
In the transition between the conclusion of Lysias's speech and the delivery of
his own, Socrates makes himself into an image which Phaedrus may follow
because he sees something of himself in it. Once Phaedrus has granted his favors
by delivering the speech of Lysias, "the shell has fallen the other way" (cf. 241b)
and the roles of pursuer and pursued are exchanged; the game between lover and
beloved which Socrates describes in his first speech is thus reflected in the
intricate mirror-play which ensues between the two lovers of speeches. Phaed-
Phaedrus the Private Man
17
rus's final praising of Lysias's speech for its excellence with regard to "names"
(234c) duplicates his initial praise of it as most clever in its advocacy of the
"nonlover" (227c); Socrates' response that he follows in the divine frenzy (234d)
recalls his description of Phaedrus's desire for someone to share in his revel (228b);
Phaedrus's admiration for the comprehensiveness of the speech (234e) matches
his earlier claim of inability to compete with its skillfulness (228a); Socrates'
restricted criticism of its rhetorical redundancy (235a) echoes his original pro-
jected criticism of its content (227c-d); Phaedrus's promise of erecting statues at
Delphi and Olympia (235d, 236b) recalls Socrates' praise of the statues of
nymphs and Achelous marking their sacred spot (230b); Socrates' concession of
producing a rearrangement of the necessary argument (236a) reflects Phaedrus's
concession of offering a summary (228d); Phaedrus's imitation of Socrates' vaunt-
ed knowledge of Phaedrus (236c) is followed by Socrates' imitation of Phaed-
rus's self-deprecation as simply a private man (236d); Phaedrus's oath by the
plane tree (236e) recalls Socrates' praise of it (230b); Socrates' submission to
Phaedrus's threat of withholding future speeches (236e) echoes his original self-
defense as a lover of learning (230d); finally, Socrates' covering his head in shame
(237a) mirrors Phaedrus's concealment of the speech of Lysias under the folds of
his cloak (228d).
The ironic tension within the apparent reiteration of themes in the scene
preceding Lysias's speech by the scene preceding Socrates' speech in fact ex-
plodes the alleged likeness uniting Socrates with Phaedrus. The interdependence
of self-knowledge and knowledge of others which Socrates prizes so highly is
precisely what Phaedrus lacks. His concern with bodily health, his evaluation of
speeches as proper pleasures for leisure hours, his removal from any sense of
urgency or necessity confirm Phaedrus's self-understanding as a very private
individual. But his unquestioning acceptance of authority, his concern with
reputation and appreciation of political honor show that Phaedrus's self-deceptive
pursuit of the noble pleasures of privacy lacks the critical awareness of the public
forces upholding and shaping that pursuit. It is this condition which allows
Phaedrus to praise Lysias's persuasive speech about love, later claiming that
there is no private use for the art of rhetoric (261b) and to insist that the really
powerful force of the art of rhetoric is manifest only in public assemblies (268a).
Phaedrus is a lover of the Muses who does not know of their power over men (cf.
259b); in the attempt to bring Phaedrus to an awareness of the forces which move
him, Socrates must share with him an examination of the art of writing. This
examination serves to reveal Phaedrus's ignorance of himself, his servitude to the
authority of acquired opinion, his trust in the external without internal recollec-
tion (cf. 257a). Socrates' knowledge of Phaedrus's soul is the reflection of
philosophic knowledge of the status of the written word.
Just as Phaedrus excitedly reports to Socrates the universal assumption of the
rhetoriciansthat the art of speaking requires no knowledge of the just, the
good, or the beautiful, but only knowledge of what will seem so (260a)Socrates
discovers in Phaedrus the proper vehicle for his own message in response. In
18 Plato's Phaedrus
recognition of this ppportunity, Socrates takes on the role of divine inspiration,
attempting to possess Phaedrus, who, like the rhapsode possessed by the poet
possessed by the Muse, may then repeat his message to the proper audience (cf.
277e).
36
Socrates enacts this playful enslavement of Phaedrus in the course of
their encounter
37
because he can communicate with Lysias only through the
mediation of Phaedrus, who is torn between them (cf. 257b). The speech which
Socrates delivers under Phaedrus's compulsion, praising the moderation of "ac-
quired opinion striving toward the best" over the hubris of "natural desire for
pleasure" (237e-238a), must then represent the necessary mediation between the
condemnation of ems by Lysias's calculating nonlover and the glorification of
eros by Socrates' mad lover. Socrates' concern with Phaedrus is determined by
his understanding of the necessary dialectic mediation between eros and non-
eros. Behind the veil of Socrates' interest in Phaedrus lies the reality of Lysias's
presence through his product of writing: "For I suspect you have the speech itself.
If that is so, believe this about me: while being very fond of you, in the presence
of Lysias himself I have no intention of lending myself to you to practice on. But
come, show it" (228d-e).
I I
TH E M U L T I COL ORED SPEECH OF L Y SI A S
Do you really think I will try to speak, against the wisdom of that one, another
more multicolored? (236b)
The illusion of a private encounter between two lovers of
speeches is suddenly exploded by Socrates' recognition of the
presence of Lysias through his product of writing, a "drug"
admired for the multicolored (poikilos) wisdom it displays,
Lysias, ghostwriter for the Athenian law courts, is the fitting
fabricator of the speech which deceptively hides its character as
a product of writing beneath the mask of a direct address by a
declared nonlover seeking the favors of his beloved. Lysias's
praise of nonlove, as a relationship of exchange for the mutual
benefit of two contracting parties, mirrors the nature of his
activity of writing as an instrument in the service of money-
making, whose effectiveness depends upon its power of con-
cealment.
The paradigm of writing in the dialogue on writing, which
consists appropriately in a condemnation of eros, elicits Soc-
rates' struggle in the defense of eros, although Socrates himself
admits that the deceptive and one-sided speech necessarily ex-
presses some part of the truth: the madness of eros may be
justifiably condemned for its lack of artful control and for its
arbitrary selectivity, hence its danger as the fundamental obsta-
cle to universality. But this condemnation of eros is based
upon the illusion of the speech as an actual address, for the
very notion of a true nonlover would seem to preclude the
possibility of desire for the favors of a particular beloved; the
nonlover who cannot speak to any particular individual must
represent, it seems, the politician who woos the many as one,
offering his services in the interests of the demos. The tension
between the private particularity of eros and the apparent uni-
versality of the demagogue wooing the demos is appropriately
revealed through the tension between the appearance of the
speech as an actual address and its reality as a product of
writing, for it is not only the content of the speech by Lysias,
but the essential nature of the written word which constitutes
an address to everyone in general and to no one in particular.
The seemingly self-contradictory speech of Lysias thus re-
flects the silence of the written word in its nonerotic relation to
20 Plato's Phaedrus
a public audience. The content of the Speech, which cannot
be brought to life as an actual address, calls into question the
justification of the lover's demand for reciprocity in love, and
in doing so points to the nonmutual erotic relationship be-
tween the lover of ideas and the object of desire which he
seeks. The necessary silence of Lysias's written imitation of the
speech of the nonlover thus emerges as a representation of the
silence and immutability of the "beings beyond the heavens"
in granting favors to the lover of ideas.
The multicolored speech of Lysias, with its praise for the
objectivity of the nonlover over against the madness of the
lover, ironically conceals the germs of the Platonic defense of
the art of writing. Just as the sophist's desire for the acquisition
of money mirrors the philosopher's desire for the acquisition
of wisdom, the tekhne of Lysias, which defends the modera-
tion of nonlove in the service of desire, ironically mirrors the
Platonic tekhne, which defends the necessity of nonlove for
the transformation of human eros for a particular individual to
the divine eros of dialectics.
and Phaedrus lie down to read. At the conclusion of the recital Socrates insists
that he is overcome {ekplagenai) by the daemonic speech of Lysias because of
watching Phaedrus "made bright while reading it" and following in his divine
frenzy (234d).
1
It is not Phaedrus, however, but the feast which he offers that has
lured Socrates to the fountain of the nymphs; not Phaedrus/ Oreithyia but
Lysias/ Pharmakeia attracts Socrates' attention: "But you seem to haive discovered
the pharmakon to bring me out. For as they lead hungry creatures holding out a
branch or some fruit, thus it appears that you, holding out speeches in books,
would lead me all over Attica or wherever else you wish" (230d-e).
2
The speech of Lysias that Phaedrus conceals in his left hand beneath his cloak
is introduced as an occasion for deception; the paradigm of writing is presented in
light of its power for deceit. Beyond the innocent proclivity for disguise that
marks Phaedrus's character lies the intentionally cloaked nature of Lysias's work,
whose effect always depends upon the success of deception. The choice of Lysias
as the fitting representative for the power of deception seems to be motivated by
Lysias's historical identity as ghostwriter for the litigants of the Athenian law
courts.
3
The universal invisibility of the writer beneath the mask of his written
work is, in the case of Lysias, doubly present because of his political status as a
noncitizen of Athens, interested in the affairs of the city but barred from active
participation.
4
Lysias's art, however, is pursued less in the public interest of the
Multicolored Speech of Lysias 21
city than in the self-interest of monetary gain; his rhetorical skill is rarely directed
to the deliberations of the public assembly, being for the most part focused on the
legal disputes of private citizens protecting their own possessions and reputations.
5
Without prolonging the centuries-old controversy as to whether the speech
recited by Phaedrus is an actual work of the historical Lysias,
6
it may be assumed,
for reasons which should become increasingly obvious, that a speech which so
perfectly coincides with the specific function of Plato's own arguments and
dramatic purposes must be the result of art, not of chance. The speech whose
style and content might so easily be attributed to Lysias himself deserves the
crucial position it has in the dialogue only because it introduces precisely the
themes which determine the organic unity of the dialogue as a whole; the speech
attributed to Lysias, no less than the speech Socrates ironically attributes to the
poet Stesichorus (244a), exhibits the "speechwriting necessity" (cf. 264b-c)
which could only issue from the Platonic art of writing. Insofar as this principle
can be generalized, the allegedly authentic speeches incorporated into the dia-
logues would represent Plato's own ability to set forth the positions of his histori-
cal characterslike his fictitious onesmore succinctly and appropriately than
would be possible by simply interjecting what might happen to be their actual
work.
7
Lysias's fame in antiquity as a successful speechwriter rests on his ability to
make the written speech reflect the character of the speaker who recites it as his
own.
8
The ability which is said to be the essence of Lysias's skill thus constitutes a
link with the art of imitation practiced by Plato in producing the speeches which
reflect the characters of the various figures in the dialogues. Like the love of
speeches which unites Socrates with Phaedrus, however, the art of imitation
which unites Plato with Lysias must be examined in light of its internal articula-
tions. The complexity of needs and desires which are suggested at the conclusion
of the Phaedrus as the motivation for the Platonic art of writing, cannot be
identified with the need and desire for money which is suggested as the primary
motivation for Lysias's art of writing (cf. 264c-d, 266c). In order to fulfill its
purpose, the written work of Lysias must conceal its character as a product of
writing.
9
If, however, the necessary concealment of the writer behind his written
work constitutes the common ground for the art of Plato and that of Lysias, the
concealment which Plato practices in the attempt to overcome the dangers
of the dead written word must be distinguished from the concealment which
Lysias practices for reasons of self-interest dictated by economic and political
advantage.
If the written speech attributed to Lysias in the Phaedrus is intended to reflect
the character of the speaker who recites it, it should provide a minor in which
Phaedrus's image is cast. The fitting equivalent, for Phaedrus's nature, to a legal
speech of accusation or defense, or a public speech of council for political action,
would be the persuasive speech to his beloved of a coy lover parading as a
nonlover. The nonlover, whose role Phaedrus so readily accepts, identifies his
own self-interest, in the narrowest sense, with the self-interest of the nonloving
22 Plato's Phaedrus
beloved whose fa vers he seeks; he therefore condemns the madness of love, both
in its human and unacknowledged superhuman manifestations. Certainly
Phaedrus, who identifies himself with the passive beloved, could find nothing
more clever than a speech about love written from the viewpoint of the beloved,
a speech whose content concerns the lack of justification for the beloved's return-
ing love to his lover.
In spite of everything Socrates later claims in his criticism, Lysias's speech
appears to have great persuasive power, over Phaedrus at least (cf. 234c).
10
In the
central section of the dialogue Socrates suggests that the greater the extent of
ambiguity in the word, hence in its referent, the greater the power of rhetoric to
deceive (263b). The power of Lysias's speech must, then, rest on some un-
analyzed ambiguity; that ambiguity, as Socrates and Phaedrus later agree, is the
quality of eros which allows it both to be condemned as harmful to beloved and
lover alike, and to be praised as the greatest of goods (263c). The ambiguity of
eros provides the necessary foundation for the rhetorical persuasiveness of
Lysias's speech precisely insofar as that ambiguity is successfully concealed; the
ground of Lysias's deceit can be illuminated, therefore, only through an under-
standing of the ambiguity of eros, which requires a critical analysis of the love-
speeches, based on the activity of collection and division (cf. 265d-266b).
u
Only on the basis of that subsequent critical analysis can Socrates justify the
fundamental principle of rhetoric that allows him to accept the "necessary argu-
ment" of Lysias's speech while attacking only its rhetorical form (236a). The
argument of the speech which Socrates is compelled to accept is its attempt to
"praise the reasonableness of the one," presumably the nonlover, and to "blame
the unreasonableness of the other," presumably the lover (236a). If, however,
Socrates' first speech results from a criticism of the rhetorical form of Lysias's
speech separate from its argument, his second speech demonstrates the insepara-
bility of this argument from the structure of its arrangement; despite Socrates'
initial claim of attending only to the rhetorical form of the speech and not to its
contents (235a), the defectiveness of the formal organization of Lysias's speech is
finally shown to be determined by the one-sided falsification of its necessary
argument.
Socrates begins his criticism of the speech with the claim that Lysias seems to
say the same thing two or three times without any apparent logical order, "ex-
hibiting his ability to speak now one way and again in another way, saying both
excellently" (235a); Socrates ironically states this very claim two or three times.
12
Socrates' criticism seems to imply his disapproval of the unnecessary redundancy
and nondeductive character of Lysias's arguments; but that apparent implication
conceals Socrates' awareness of the true complexity of this multicolored speech
(cf. 277c). While Phaedrus remains unaware of this complexity, the reader of the
dialogue is warned that the words which appear to "always say the same" (cf.
27 5d) may express a multitude of meanings demanding distinct levels of interpre-
tation. When Socrates later asks Phaedrus if he knows of some "speechwriting
necessity" for the way Lysias "put these together one after another," Phaedrus
Multicolored Speech of Lysias 23
protests that Socrates flatters him in believing him able to perceive accurately this
principle of order in his work (264b-c). But Phaedrus thus points to the compel-
ling reasons for the composition of the speech, for Lysias's apparent artlessness in
feet conceals the character of the speech as a written work based on the tra-
ditional rhetorical arrangement of introduction, narrative, argument, and con-
clusion.
13
The apparent inadequacy of the rhetorical form which Socrates
criticizes is precisely what impresses Phaedrus as a sign of the exhaustiveness of
the speech, which he considers unsurpassable, for no one could speak "more
fully or worthily" (234e).
Because Lysias does indeed seem to say the same thing again and again in
different ways, the structure of the speech remains hidden beneath its appearance
of random spontaneity. The clues for its principle of organization, however, are
provided in Socrates' later examination of the speech, in the course of the
discussion on the conditions for an art of rhetoric (cf. 264a). The opening (231a),
in which "Lysias attempts to swim backwards against the current of the speech,
starting from what should be its end" (264a), constitutes a logical summary of the
centra] argument. The remainder, which seems to be "thrown out in a flood"
(264b), consists of a loose enumeration with no deductive structure, as is con-
firmed by the unusual frequency of purely mechanical connectives in transitions
between sentences.
14
Lysias begins with the assumption that his argument is already known: "About
my affairs you know, and how I believe these things to be advantageous for us
you have heard" (231c). The inconsistency of the speech which follows is first
indicated by its opening statement, which has the character of a proper conclu-
sion.
15
The justification for this self-contradictory opening, which seems to be a
conclusion, lies in the assumption of previous familiarity with the argument of
the speech. But the status of the speech as a product of writing, whose repeatabil-
ity justifies its assumption of prior familiarity and its consequent circular form of
presentation, is necessarily concealed by the speaker who utters it. For the
concealed character of the speech, exhibiting the disinterested detachment of a
written display, would contradict the speaker's initial statement of his persuasive
intention: "I deserve not to fail in what I ask just because I do not happen to be
your lover" (231a).
In defense of this claim to his own worth, the nonlover contrasts his own
motivation with that suggested by the common opinion about lovers: "For lovers
regret their well-doing when their desire ceases, but there is no time when it is
fitting for nonlovers to regret. For they do well to the best of their ability, not out
of necessity but willingly, according to their view of what is best for their own
interests" (231a). Lovers are to be distrusted because they provide benefits out of
passion, which is necessarily unenduring; when they eventually calculate the
harm they will bring to their own interests, they will regret their unreasonable
kindnesses; nonlovers, on the other hand, acting out of reason, provide benefits
with regard to their own interests, and are therefore always reliable. Appropriate
to the persuasive intention of the speech, the inexplicit definitions of lover and
24 Plato's Phaedrus
nonlover which constitute its fundamental premise already incorporate condem-
nation and praise.
16
Hidden beneath these implicit definitions lies the silent
assumption that health consists in the pursuit of self-interest, whereas the self-
forgetfulness of passion represents an inevitably temporary state of illness.
The implications of this assumption are unfolded in the loosely connected
series of contentions that follows. Because nonlovers act solely from the rational-
ity of self-interest, they avoid any conflict with neglect of personal affairs, calcu-
lation of self-injury, or quarrels with relatives, and can therefore eagerly do
whatever they think will please the beloved (231b). Because lovers, on the other
hand, are willing to be hated by others to please the beloved, whenever they fall
in love again they will injure the old love to please the new one (231c). Lovers
themselves admit the sickness of their lack of control and therefore cannot
approve of the actions they committed through passion when they regain their
senses (23Id). Beyond the pain experienced because of the transitory nature of
erotic passion, the speaker condemns the restricted particularity of granting favors
to a lover in contrast with the greater selectivity among nonlovers (23Id); he thus
confirms his identification of the beloved as a nonlover whose response is as-
sumed to be completely free from any compulsion of desire. By indicating the
tension between the narrowness of individual love-relations and the public rela-
tions of friendship or political community, and hence condemning the compul-
sory and arbitrary selectivity of eros, the nonlover cannot help but point to the
truth of its limitations.
It is not the intrinsic value of the relation with a nonlover, however, which
accounts for its superiority, but rather its advantage for public opinion. For the
appearance of the beloved with his controlled nonlover would be indistinguish-
able from any innocent friendship, and would therefore not arouse the preju-
dices evoked by the appearance of the beloved with his lover, who would con-
stantly attempt to show off his passion. The nonlover must, then, artfully pursue
his self-gratification in secret; he thus avoids following the expressed opinions of
men and instead chooses what is really best (232a). In contrast with the jealousy
and possessiveness which force the lover to keep his beloved from associating
with the wealthy, the educated, or anyone else possessing some good, the non-
lover, favored for his excellence (presumably his wealth or education), would
hate those not wishing to associate with the beloved, as though he himself were
slighted by them (232c-d). The nonlover finally affirms the inconstancy of love
on the basis of its foundation in "desire of the body" (23 2e), while simply assum-
ing, in contrast, the primacy of friendship in the relationship with the nonlover.
Yet the nonlover insists that even if the beloved were to grant him his favors, their
friendship would not be lessened by the experience, since he would do so out of
calculation and not out of passion.
In the central sentence of the speech, the speaker switches to the first person,
insisting that it is better to yield to "me" (233a). This sudden admission of the
speaker's own self-interest immediately precedes his identification of the true
superiority of the nonlover with the objectivity of his judgment. Such objectivity
Multicolored Speech of Lysias 25
is contrasted with the lover's constant praise for the words and deeds of his
beloved, necessarily distorted by his fear of displeasing the beloved and by the
blindness of his passion (233b). The objectivity of the nonlover ironically consists
in the calculation of his own self-interest, as a guarantee for the stability of the
relationship: "But if you yield to me, f shall associate with you caring not only for
present pleasure, but for future advantage" (233c). Whatever the association is
that Lysias praises in the name of the nonlover, he relies, for its honor and value,
on identifying it with the firmness of long-lasting friendship or family ties (233d),
whose motivation is nonetheless assumed to depend upon the satisfaction of
mutual self-interest.
By demonstrating the absence of justification in the lover's demand for re-
quited love, the nonlover presents his own version of Socratic irony (cf. 227d);
he suggests that the beloved who grants favors to lovers ought always to confer
benefits, not on the best, but on the most needy (233d). In opposition to such
foolishness, the speaker insists on the reasonableness of granting favors only to
the most deserving, who are not only most able to repay the beloved (233e), but
also most secretive about the affair (234a). Such reasonableness is confirmed by
the attitude of friends or relatives, who never blame the nonlover for managing
his own affairs badly (234b).
Only in conclusion does the speaker confirm his seductive purpose, admitting
that he does not advocate granting favors to all nonlovers, since the favors would
then be worth less, and could not, moreover, be kept secret (234c). In revealing
this purpose, the nonlover himself betrays the erotic particularity he had origi-
nally condemned and thus discloses his character as a concealed lover. The
self-contradictory character of the speech introduced in its opening statement is
thus confirmed in its conclusion: "From it never harm but advantage to both
should come" (234c). If the unidentified subject of this final statement were
understood as eros, the conclusion of the speech would contradict its prior
argument, describing the necessary harm of the erotic relation; if the subject
represents nothing but the proposed association for mutual benefit, the conclu-
sion would be merely a tautology, repeating the original assumption of the
speech as a whole.
The relationship of exchange for the mutual benefit of two contracting parties,
which Lysias praises in the name of the nonlover, is grounded on the principles
of exchange in the economic sphere.
17
The nonlover, who is not carried off
beyond the bounds of self-interest, must persuasively demonstrate his own merits
in a proportion equal to the desired youth and beauty of the beloved;
18
to
accomplish this, the nonlover must compose an advertisement against his com-
petitor, the lover. That such a conception of love for the sake of mutual self-
interest is destructive of the very nature of love, Socrates attempts to demonstrate
in his recantation, which he introduces by expressing his fear of "buying honor
among men in exchange for sinning against the gods" (242d). At the conclusion
of this recantation, Socrates condemns the nonlover's intimacy (oikeiotes) as
"mortal and thrifty economizing," which "begets in the soul of the loved one that
26 Plato's Phaedrus
illiberality praised byl he many as virtue" (256e).*The nature of the erotic rela-
tionship advocated by the speech of Lysias is thus shown to be the fitting image
for the nature of his activity of writing, which serves as an instrument in the
service of money-making.
The attempt to make sense of Lysias's speech in light of the utilitarian nature
of the relation it advocates is based upon the admission of desire for self-benefit
with which the nonlover concludes his address. The written speech can parade as
an actual address only if the nonlover acknowledges the purely semantic signifi-
cance of his designation.
19
But that semantic interpretation, with its implicit
acknowledgment of the nonlover's self-interest, would contradict the apparently
persuasive purpose of the speech, which can be supported only if the nonlover's
self-designation is taken literally. Since, however, the very notion of a true
nonlover would seem to preclude the possibility of desire for a particular beloved,
the speech cannot be the actual conversation between two individuals that it
appears to be.
20
The nonlover can be truly a nonlover and hence fulfill his
persuasive purpose only if the speech acknowledges itself as a product of writing;
as an acknowledged product of writing, however, the speech can no longer
parade as the actual address of an alleged nonlover to a particular beloved.
Because the self-contradiction of Lysias's speech consists in the impossibility of
its being an address to any particular beloved, it seems to indicate the conditions
for persuasion and submission in the association, not of individual lover and
beloved, but of ruler and ruled in the city.
21
The portrait of the speaker who
disclaims his love in the sense of being carried away, but demands the favors of
another for his own benefit, is in fact a description of the potential ruler seeking
to gain the favors of the electorate.
22
This wooer of the demos must provide an
assurance of his own completeness, personal disinterest, and perfect self-control,
as well as a pledge of his willingness and ability to satisfy the needs and desires of
those he seeks to rule. Lysias's portrait of the demagogue courting the favors of
the people through his persuasive power of speech presents itself appropriately
through the voice of the nonlover.
23
The intentional deceptiveness of Lysias's art
thus makes him the fitting representative for the rhetoricians, whose knowledge
of the opinions of the many, as Socrates later affirms, enables them to persuade
the city by "praising evil under the name of good" (260c).
When Phaedrus later denies any awareness of a private use of the art of
rhetoric (261b), he unwittingly confirms the impossibility of Lysias's speech on
the level at which it is presented and the necessity of its reinterpretation. The
unacknowledged political influence underlying the apparently private nature of
Phaedrus's character is reflected in the speech he admires. The deception that
Phaedrus innocently enacts in hiding the reality of the speech as a written work is
mirrored in the content of the speech, hiding its political significance beneath
the guise of a private seduction.
24
This necessary reinterpretation of the appar-
ently private address by the nonlover to the beloved as the campaign speech of a
demagogue to the demos is appropriately uncovered through the recognition of
its character as a product of writing, which necessarily addresses a collective
Multicolored Speech of Lysias 27
audience.
25
The written speech of Lysias thus mirrors the nature of the written
dialogue in which it appears, where the apparently private love-scene between
Socrates and Phaedrus is finally acknowledged as an address to the speechwriters,
poets, and law-writers.
The condemnation of eros as the fundamental obstacle to objectivity and to
artful control, which constitutes the necessary argument of Lysias's speech, is
spuriously accomplished through the acceptance of the illusion of the speech as a
private address; the necessary silence of the nonlover's speech is concealed by the
expressed intention of the speech as an effort of persuasion (cf. 227c). But this
very need for persuasion as it is reflected in the argument of the speech raises a
legitimate question concerning the lack of justification for mutual love between
lover and beloved. It is precisely through this lack of justification that the non-
lover achieves his victory over the lover, who desires the favors of his beloved
simply on the basis of his own love.
The problem of nonreciprocity in love, and the consequent absence of justice
in the erotic experience, should be resolved by Socrates' description of the divine
madness of eros, characterized by a self-forgetfulness which obliterates the de-
mand for equitable returns (cf. 252a). But it is only the recognition by the
beloved of the blessings brought to him by the divine madness of his lover which
constitutes the basis for his own conversion to the role of lover (255d); even
divine madness does not overcome the desirability of responsiveness from be-
loved to lover. The very possibility of mutual divine madness between lover and
beloved, as Socrates' recantation attempts to demonstrate, requires the unifica-
tion of love for another individual with the love of wisdom. The object of love
with which the lover of wisdom seeks some kind of communion, however, is not
a mutually responsive ensouled being, but "the beings which always are" (249c);
in their fullness and self-sameness, the beings lack nothing, they contain no
impulsion toward becoming, no mutual desire for their human lover.
26
The
possibility of achieving the desired mutual love between individuals seems,
paradoxically, to depend upon the existence of a love which cannot be recip-
rocal.
This silence of the ideas in granting favors to the lover of ideas is first suggested
by Lysias's speech, which calls into question the justification of the demand for
reciprocity in love. A persuasive and deceptive speech made by a concealed lover
to his beloved, with its underlying political significance as the address of a
demagogue to the demos, thus comes to light, finally, as a description of the
ideas in their objectivity and absence of desire. Once its illusory pretense is
unveiled, the nonlover's speech points to the character of that "nonlove" neces-
sary for the vision of the ideas portrayed in Socrates' mythic hymn to eros (cf.
247c).
27
Lysias's nonerotic art of writing thus represents the necessary opposition
that reveals the limitations of Socrates' praise for the madness of eros, awakened
by desire for a particular beloved. But the speech of the nonlover, who claims to
possess objectivity through the mastery of desire, discloses the germ of truth in its
condemnation of eros only in light of its nature as a product of writing cop-
28 Plato's Phaedrus
structed by art in the absence of desire; the silence and immutability attributed to
the written word at the conclusion of the conversation (cf. 275d-e) represents,
therefore, the universalization of Lysias's speech as a model for the silence and
immutability of the "beings beyond the heavens."
While the argument of Lysias's speech thus implicitly provides a description of
the nature of the ideas in relation to the lover of wisdom, its arrangement
confirms such an interpretation. The cyclical character and repeatability attrib-
uted to the speech in the course of its examination (264e) recalls Socrates' image
of the "feast on the beings," enjoyed by the gods carried round by the revolution
of the heavens (cf. 247c). Socrates' description of the process of coming to know
as an activity of discovering experienced as remembering (249c) is in fact
suggested by the opening statement of Lysias's speech, with its paradoxical as-
sumption of previous familiarity, which Socrates only criticizes for its inade-
quacy without acknowledging its implication. In their later examination of the
beginning of Lysias's speech, Phaedrus is commanded by Socrates to read (anag-
ndsesthai), that is, "to know again"; language itself provides the clue to the
character of the written word as a representation which involves re-cognition."
28
If mere repeatability is a sign of the absence of truth, the appearance of knowl-
edge without realityPhaedrus only wants to repeat the speech of Lysias, neither
acknowledging its presence nor investigating its meaningsuch repeatability is,
nevertheless a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge, insofar as
recognition of the truth of any claim to knowledge seems to imply the awareness
of having always already known.
29
These contradictory aspects of repeatability
constitute the essential danger and power of the written word (cf. 275a).
30
The
product of writing thus competes with the divine madness of eros as the necessary
condition for the possibility of knowledge as recollection; the germ of this com-
petition lies hidden within the poikilos written speech of Lysias's nonlover,
31
Socrates likens the cyclical speech of the nonlover to the epitaph on the
tombstone of Midas the Phrygian (274d); the tombstone seems to be the perfect
image for the paradigm of writing, which cannot be brought to life without
self-contradiction.
32
But the connection of writing with death, evoked by the
epitaph, is in fact transformed by the very content of that epitaph, which presents
itself as a model for the immortality of the written word:
33
A bronze maiden am I; I lie upon the tomb of Midas.
As long as water flows and tall trees flourish with leaves,
Remaining in the same place upon a much-lamented tomb,
I shall declare to those passing by that Midas is buried here. (264d)
The hubristic speech of the inscription suggests that the everlasting life of flowing
water and flowering trees is attainable by man only through the art of writing
exemplified by the inscription itself; it thus recalls the tension in the opening
scene between the sacred grove and the speech which is to be recited there. The
pnoTavtnp sneaks through the voice, frozen for all time, of a bronze maiden;
34
the
Multicolored Speech of Lysias 29
statue of the bronze maiden remains silent without the written epitaph to ensoul
it, but the written epitaph requires^the response of those passing by in order to
bring the bronze maiden to life. The epitaph points to the desired immortality
and immutability sought in the activity of writing, but the condition for the
fulfillment of that desire seems to require the seemingly impossible convergence
of the dead written word and the living presence of its reader. The desire
suggested by the epitaph seems incapable of being fulfilled by the speech of
Lysias, of which the epitaph is an image, for precisely because it contradicts its
own illusory pretense as an actual address while concealing its true character as a
product of writing, Lysias's speech necessarily remains recalcitrant to ensoul-
ment.
While the epitaph may be the appropriate image for the product of writing in
general, the specific image for the written speech of Lysias is the tombstone of
Midas the Phrygian, mythical model for the self-destructive capacity of excessive
love of gain.
35
The connection between the love of money and the activity of
writing points to the particular character of Lysias's work, which originates in the
house of the rhetoricians near the Olympeium and seems to be out of place
among flourishing trees and flowing water in the grove of the nymphs and Pan.
In contrast with the natural beauty of the sacred grove where Socrates recites his
inspired speeches, the "sophistication" of the city represents the ground for the
connection between writing and money-making, which arise along with, and as
conditions for, the development of the arts.
The dialogue thus suggests the analogous connection of barter and money as
vehicles of exchange for goods of the body, with speech and writing as vehicles of
exchange for goods of the soul. I f barter represents that natural human interaction
guided by the exchange value of objects, money comes into use as a means of
standardizing such interaction, although the art of money-making may become
an end in itself, with the intention of preservation and accumulation;
36
if speech
represents that natural human interaction guided by the relations among the
"beings which always are,"
37
the art of writing comes into use as a means of
standardizing such interaction, but may become a vehicle for preservation and
accumulation.
38
Writing, like money, may become an end in itself and thus
cease to represent any genuine exchange of thinking; precisely this danger is
shown in Phaedrus's admiration for the dead written speech of Lysias.
The connection between the love of money and the art of writing is established
in opposition to the gods outside the city, to whom Socrates addresses his final
prayer requesting only the wealth of wisdom (279b). The division which Socrates
articulates between external wealth and internal wisdom is immediately preceded
by a division between the external product of writing and the internal "word
written in the soul" (277c-278b). Socrates' final prayer seems to be the fitting
conclusion for the conversation he conducts outside the walls of the city, wander-
ing barefoot along the river, praising the beauty of the sacred grove, experiencing
the inspiration of the local gods and finally of his own daimonion. But Socrates'
alliance with love and nature, hence his self-willed alienation from the city, is a
30 Plato's Phaedrus
reaction to the particular artfulness of the sophoi. Just as his admitted interest in
eros is grounded in his pursuit of self-knowledge, his alliance with nature is
grounded in his love of learning; the conjunction of his alliance with nature and
his love of learning is in fact provided by the attraction of a speech in a book (cf.
230e). But Socrates is compelled to transform Lysias's product of writing, with its
associations of lifelessness and love of money, in order to win the admiration of
Phaedrus, "torn in two directions" (257b); in the course of that transformation,
Socrates points to the potential unification of love and art in the activity of "love
with philosophic speeches" (257b).
Precisely this ground for Socrates' struggle against the sophoi is shared by the
Platonic dialogue, while the very expression of that unity reveals a necessary
distinction. The alienation of the external written word, implied by Socrates'
concluding prayer, is thus revealed by the dialogue as a whole to be merely one
aspect of its potential; like the human madness of eros condemned by Lysias, it
represents a part parading as a whole. It is the purpose of the Phaedrus to indicate
the existence of that whole. The poikilos speech of Lysias, therefore, which
Socrates condemns as a sin against eros, provides not only the necessary argument
which will be transformed into the Socratic defense of divine eros, but also the
germ for the Platonic defense of an "erotic" art of writing.
39
I L L
TH E N Y M PH OL EPTI C SPEECH OF SOCRA TES
Oh daimonie, I feel that my breast is full, that I could speak against that speech
another one different and no worse. Now J know well that, by myself, I have never
thought of these things, being aware of my own ignorance; so, I believe, I have
been filled through theears like a pitcher from some other source; but again, from
stupidity, I have forgotten how and from whom I heard it. (235c)
Phaedrus's admiration for the comprehensiveness of Lysias's
speech compels Socrates to demonstrate its inadequacy by pro-
ducing another speech as a rearrangement of Lysias's necessary
argument concerning the superiority of the artful nonlover to
the mad lover. Socrates indicates his recognition of this argu-
ment as a sin against eros by delivering the speech with his
head covered in shame, imitating Phaedrus's concealment of
Lysias's speech beneath his cloak. Dissociating himself from
the speech that "fills him through the ears like an empty
pitcher," Socrates presents the argument of the nonlover
within a narrative frame, which allows him to reveal the true
nature of Lysias's nonlover as a concealed lover who distin-
guishes himself from the mad lover he condemns by his artful
control in seeking the satisfaction of his desire; that disclosure
constitutes the necessary preparation for revealing the true
whole of eros, suppressed by the speech of Lysias.
Because Socrates' first speech must establish the human
bond between the madness of identification with the bestial
and the madness of identification with the divine, the defini-
tion of eros within the speech is based on the construction of a
model of the human individual qua human, ruled by the
competing forces of acquired opinion and natural desire for the
beautiful. In the absence of any higher force, moderation
based on acquired opinion is proclaimed superior to the hubris
of eros as natural desire, arbitrarily restricted to desire for
beauty of the body. On this basis, Socrates' nonlover deduces
the necessary consequences of harm to the mind, body, and
property of a beloved who grants favors to such a lover, thus
organizing the apparently random reproaches set forth in
Lysias's speech while uncovering their implicit assumptions.
The incompleteness of the nonlover's constructed model of
man, which precludes any divine standard of natural desire or
any separate principle of soul, is reflected in Socrates' sudden
32 Plato's Phaedrus
interruption of tfie speech before it is complete. Phaedrus, who
takes the incompleteness of the speech condemning the mad
lover to be an absence of praise for the nonlover rather than an
absence of praise for the divine lover, betrays his own nature as
the basis for the nonlover's model of man. Just as Phaedrus
represents the necessary intermediary between Lysias and Soc-
rates, the speech he compels, praising the superiority of
moderation based on acquired opinion, represents the neces-
sary mediation between Lysias's condemnation of the madness
of human eros and Socrates's recantation raising the divine
madness of eras.
I N RESPONSE TO LYSIAS'S SPEECH PRAISING THE NONLOVER, SOCRATES DELIV-
ers two love-speeches, each introduced as an effort of persuasion directed toward
Phaedrus (cf. 237b, 243a, 257a). Socrates' willingness to compete with Lysias is
encouraged by his opposition to Phaedrus's belief in the exhaustiveness of the
nonlover's speech (235b); the feeling of fullness which Socrates expresses is his
awareness of that part of the whole of eros suppressed by the speech of Lysias.
The perplexity of Socrates' response, however, consists in its problematic articu-
lation into two separate and apparently opposite speeches (265a), If Socrates were
not conversing with Phaedrus, and the dialogue were not a dialogue, the two
speeches might perhaps be collapsed into one whole, as Socrates later indicates
in his analysis of "how the speech passed over from that of blame to that of
praise" (265c). But Socrates is compelled by Phaedrus to begin with the
hypothesis of Lysias's speech: that "the lover is more sick than the nonlover"
(236b). Phaedrus's demand for a paidia of competition seems, then, to deter-
mine the division of Socrates' response to Lysias. The speech compelled by
Phaedrus must serve as the necessary mediation between the clever written work
of Lysias and the recantation of Socrates, which will be believed "not by the
merely clever but only by the wise" (245c).
What unites Socrates' two speeches is not only their common origin as a
revision of the speech by Lysias, but also their presentation as products of divine
inspiration. In assigning responsibility for the speeches he delivers, Socrates
presents several not evidently compatible sources.
1
The sources of the first speech
include: the wise men and women of old who have spoken or written about these
matters (23 5b), Sappho and Anacreon or some kind of prose writers (23 5c), a
stream filling Socrates through the ears like an empty pitcher (23 5d), the Muses
(237a), the gods of the place (238d), the nymphs to whom Phaedrus has exposed
Socrates (241e),
2
Phaedrus (244a), Lysias as father of the speech (257b), Phaed-
rus and Socrates together (265a). The sources of the second speech include:
Phaedrus, surpassed only by Simmias as a cause of speeches (242b), Socrates'
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 33
daimonion (242c), the prophetic soul (242c), Ibycus (242d), Stesichorus of Hini-
era (244a), Socrates himself, moved by shame before an imagined gentleman
and by fear of the god Eros (243d), Socrates and Phaedrus together (265a).
The ambiguous madness of eros which constitutes the content of Socrates'
speeches is reflected in the ambiguous forces of divine inspiration that stimulate
them. With his ironic attribution of the artfulness of his presumably spontaneous
speeches to divine inspiration, Socrates exhibits the ground for the accusation of
hubris against him, and thus provides the necessary foundation for the Platonic
defense of the art of writing. While Socrates introduces his allegedly spontaneous
speeches as products of divine inspiration, however, the models he acknowledges
for them are the works of the lyric love poets; Socrates himself does not seem
perplexed about the apparent contradiction between the divine inspiration that
he credits as the source of his extemporaneous speeches and their professed
literary models. This assumed likeness between divine inspiration and the written
word is in fact suggested by the models for the activity of writing: the poets
honored by the Muses (245a) and the law-writers who believe themselves "equal
to the gods" (258c). The likeness of the written word to the product of inspiration
is suggested by its ambiguous independence (275a), its authoritative appearance,
its potential exemplification of true opinion without knowledge. Only the possi-
bility of alienation from divine inspiration, exhibited by Socrates' later examina-
tion of the speeches on eros, indicates the possibility of a product of writing that
would elicit reflection rather than submission from its responsive reader. The
recognition of this potential of the art of writing would, however, depend upon
the possibility of overcoming the apparent dichotomy between the externality of
the written word and the internalization of living speech; the apparent dichotomy
between writing and spontaneous speech would have to be transformed into a
division within the nature of the written word itself.
The mirror reflecting this transformation of the division between speech and
writing to one within writing itself is provided by the movement unfolded in the
course of Socrates' two speeches on eros, finally presented as parts of one whole
(cf. 265c-266b). While both erotic speeches are introduced as the result of
divine inspiration, the first is generated by the madness of Socrates' being carried
outside himself, the second by a divine reminder from within himself. While the
nymphs and Pan produce the effects of their inspiration through the beautiful
vision of the sacred grove and through the illuminated face of Phaedrus as he
reads the speech of Lysias, Socrates' daimonion is heard as a "voice" from
within. I f possession by the nymphs and Pan puts Socrates beside himself and
thereby leads him astray, the inspiration of the daimonion puts him in touch
with the roots of his error and thus opens the path for purification. External
possession by the gods of the place leads to excess, inducing Socrates to forget
himself (238d); internal possession by the daimonion works as a force of restraint,
issuing inhibitive commands which reflect Socrates' knowledge of himself
(242c). I f the inspiration of the first speech fills Socrates through the ears like an
empty pitcher, the impulse for the second speech acts as "a reminder of what he
34 Plato's Phaedrus
already knows" (cf. 275c). The inner inspiration of Socrates' recantation, which
allows him to return to himself, points to the decisive potential of the written
word as reminder, but the defense for that potential requires a demonstration of
its inherent dangers. Those dangers are portrayed by the external possession of
Socrates' first speech, which seduces him away from the self-knowledge neces-
sary for his recognition of eros as a whole.
Phaedrus's proposal of a competition between Lysias and Socrates is based on
his admiration of Lysias's speech for its complete coverage of the subject, so that
no one could speak "more or more worthily about it" (235b). In his state of
inspiration brought on by Phaedrus's delight, Socrates suddenly remembers his
disapproval of the one-sided content of the speech, in contrast to his original
reproach against the redundancy of its form (cf. 23 5a), Although Socrates finds
himself filled with the memory of the speeches and writings of "ancient and wise
men and women," in his convenient stupidity he has forgotten "how and from
whom" (235d).
3
Socrates surmises, nevertheless, that his knowledge of eros
comes from Sappho the beautiful, or Anacreon the wise, those poets who refuse
to praise the sanity of the nonlover.
4
Sappho and Anacreon are the poets who
write hymns, not to the gods, but to their loves, for each would claim that "my
loves are my gods."
5
On the model of the works of these poets,. Socrates' speech
must demonstrate that persuasive power whiqh might move the beloved Phaed-
TUS to become a lover.
Phaedrus's demand for a speech "better and no shorter and completely other
than the one in the book" (23 5d) could be fulfilled only if Lysias had composed a
speech of complete falsehood; but not even the worst writer can err entirely,
Socrates explains, for error consists only in omission, that is, in the illusion of
taking a part for a whole (23 5e). Understood as a part, the thesis of any speech
may in fact be a necessary argument, misleading only insofar as it is mistaken for
a whole. On this basis Socrates establishes the first principle of the art of rhetoric:
with regard to a necessary argument, only the arrangement is worthy of praise,
while the nonnecessary argument, which is difficult to discover, deserves praise
for itself in addition to its arrangement (236a).
6
Since the necessary argument of
Lysias's speech is based upon the confusion of one kind of love with all love, it is
the ambiguity of eros itself which provides the ground for that argument and its
possible arrangements (cf. 263c). Acknowledging the necessity of Lysias's argu-
ment condemning the madness of eros, Socrates insists that it is only the ar-
rangement which could be blamed for its inadequacy. The speech Socrates is
about to deliver represents, therefore, nothing but the rearrangement of Lysias's
necessary argument, but only the nonnecessary argument underlying Socrates'
recantation uncovers the one-sided falsification of the condemnation of eros,
and thus reveals the whole of which every arrangement of Lysias's necessary
argument is only a part.
The mere rearrangement of Lysias's speech, based on the hypothesis of its
necessary argument, Socrates must deliver with his head covered in shame, as a
sign of the sin he is about to commit. Socrates' knowledge of himself enables him
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 35
to recognize his sin as a lack of complete vision; in his imitation of self-blinding,
Socrates dramatically reveals that the appropriate punishment for lack of com-
plete vision is identical with the sin itself. Socrates' simulated self-blinding thus
serves as a warning that his first speech on eros must be understood in the context
of its compulsory delivery, its attribution to a source external to himself, and its
motivation by the desire to compete with Lysias for the admiration of Phaedrus.
That awareness of the error or sinfulness of the speech which Socrates pretends to
acquire at its conclusion (242c) is in fact present at its inception.
Socrates opens his speech with an invocation to the shrill-voiced Muses (237a);
he requires their aid in order to make himself appear to Phaedrus even wiser than
he now seems to be. The Muses, who punish their own lovers with death and
grant their favors only to those who do not succomb to their charms (cf. 259b-d),
are the antierotic patrons of those who practice an art, hence the proper recip-
ients of Socrates' request for aid in appearing beautiful by speaking in the name
of the nonlover, condemning the madness of eros.
7
Socrates must begin by
flattering Phaedrus's self-identification with the beloved, the nonlover repre-
sented by Lysias, but Socrates displays the artfulness which the Muses seem to
have granted him by establishing a narrative frame for the nonlover's speech,
which renders explicit the purposes left inexplicit in the speech of Lysias. In
making his speech a narrative one, and not direct discourse, Socrates refrains
from identifying the argument of the speech as his own. By accounting for the
perspective of the nonlover who delivers the speech, Socrates' narrative report
seems to overcome the illusory objectivity exhibited by a direct dramatic repre-
sentation.The deceitfulness of Lysias's illusory imitation of the nonlover's direct
address is thus avoided by Socrates' enclosure of the nonlover's address within the
narrative frame which illuminates its particular perspective.
9
Even with the safeguard of his narrative frame, Socrates begins the speech of
the nonlover by announcing the transparent principle of his rhetorical art: the
only beginning for counseling well consists in an agreement upon definition
not necessarily with regard to truthand the deduction of consequences from
that agreement (237c).
10
In exemplifying this hypothetical-deductive rhetorical
art, Socrates' nonlover proceeds to establish a definition of eros which leads
Phaedrus to draw the necessary consequences concerning its harm to the beloved
who accepts it. The premise of this definition is that love is a desire (epithumia),
but inasmuch as "desire for the beautiful is also the condition of nonlovers," the
definition requires a further criterion for distinguishing eros (237d). This crite-
rion is discovered on the basis of a constructed model of the human individual, a
model which implicitly expresses the underlying assumption of the speech as a
whole.
The model of man constructed by Socrates' nonlover indicates that all human
action is determined by the struggles and competition of "two ruling and leading
ideai," not in the soul, but "in us": "the natural desire for pleasure" and "ac-
quired opinion striving for the best" (237e). Moderation by convention, based on
the "victory of acquired opinion through speech" is named sophrosune; the
36 Plato's Phaedrus
"victory of natural desire without speech, dragging toward pleasure" is named
hubris (238a). Since, however, hubris is "many-named," being "many^ftnem-
bered" and "many-formed," the particular madness of eros has not yet been de-
fined. Although Socrates' nonlover acknowledges the complex division of hubris
as a whole, he conceals the possibility of any beautiful or honorable part, any
divine potential. In elucidating this complex whole, therefore, the nonlover offers
the examples of desire for food and for drink (238b); since eros is, presumably, only
one part of hubris, the nonlover may apparently be at the same time a glutton
and a drunkard!
11
Passing over the many "kindred desires," the speaker proceeds to that part of
hubris called eros: "desire led toward pleasure in the beautiful, forced by kindred
desires toward beauty of the body" (238c).
12
Whether the desire for pleasure in
the beautiful demands the possession of its object, on the model of food and
drink, or whether it perhaps requires the distance of contemplation, is a question
which the nonlover never raises. The link between such desire and its compul-
sion toward beauty of the body remains an unexamined assumption; Socrates'
nonlover never asks whether there could be a "natural desire dragging toward
pleasure in the beautiful," which would represent the motive force of the "love of
wisdom."
13
At the completion of this definition, Socrates interrupts the speech in order to
declare himself inspired, and thus denies his responsibility for the speech which
issues from his mouth. Having just condemned the hubris of being carried away,
Socrates proclaims the hubris of his own condition. Socrates' outburst into
dithyrambics is a sign of his attack of nympholepsy,
14
but the cause (c3itias) of
that attack is Phaedrus himself (238d). If the speech is, indeed, bewitched
(katapharmakeuthentos) by Phaedrus (242e), its rhetorical form and content
must express Socrates' knowledge of Phaedrus's nature. Socrates would then
paint a portrait of Phaedrus as a man moved by the struggle between natural
desires, forced toward enjoyment of physical beauty, and acquired opinion striv-
ing toward the right, without philosophic eros as reconciliation. Phaedrus him-
self, the cause of Socrates' nympholepsy, provides the guide for the model of
man underlying the speech he inspires; in leaving the defense against this nym-
pholepsy in the hands of "god" (538d), Socrates hints at the daemonic awareness
that what he now presents as a whole is, in fact, only a part.
Socrates' interruption of the speech serves to distinguish himself from the
nonlover who has just laid down the definition of eros as a premise and can now
draw the proper consequences of advantage or harm for a beloved who grants
favors to such a lover. In deducing these consequences, the apparently random
order of Lysias's speech is organized into a descending hierarchy of harm to
mind, body, and property. The underlying assumption of this argument is that
one who is enslaved to pleasure will desire to make his beloved as pleasing as
possible; but since the lover is sick with madness, he will find pleasure only in
what is inferior to himself and therefore under his complete control (239a).
The nonlover begins, therefore, by describing the lover's efforts in maintaining
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 37
the inferiority of his beloved, keeping him "ignorant not wise, cowardly not
courageous, a poor speaker not eloquent, slow of wit not clever" (239a). The
reference to wisdom and courage provokes an expectation of the other traditional
virtues, moderation and justice,
15
but Socrates' nonlover replaces those virtues
with his own realistic ideals; superiority of mind, according to the nonlover, may
be based on wisdom and courage, but it also requires rhetorical skill and clever-
ness to cover up intemperance and injustice. In promising by implication to
maintain the superiority of the beloved by encouraging his wisdom, courage,
eloquence, and cleverness, the nonlover in fact presents himself as a proper
model for the beloved whose favors he seeks.
By attacking the jealousy of the lover as desire for exclusive possession of the
object of love, the nonlover, despite his explicit intention, hints at the possibility
of a love whose object might unite rather than divide those who pursued it. The
most advantageous association, therefore, which the jealous lover is accused of
holding off from his beloved, is "divine philosophy" (239b). This indication of
the tension between the particularity of erotic passion and the desired objectivity
of "divine philosophy" reveals the truth of the nonlover's condemnation of the
madness of eras, but only by suppressing the possibility that "divine philosophy"
may itself constitute the ultimate standard of eras. Yet despite the one-sided
determination of ems he has articulated, based on the "necessary argument" of
Lysias's written speech, Socrates' nonlover justifiably brings to light the necessar-
ily nonerotic element of "divine philosophy" and thus corrects in advance, as it
were, the equally unbalanced presentation of philosophy as eros, which charac-
terizes Socrates' recantation.
From his account of the harm suffered by the mind of the beloved who yields
to a lover, the nonlover proceeds to an account of the harm to his body. An
explicit consideration of eros in relation to the body is necessarily taken up in a
speech based on the model of the human individual, of man qua man. What the
nonlover attacks, however, is not the sexual experience of erotic passion, but the
lover's effort to maintain his beloved's dependence. The lover is therefore blamed
for his attempt to keep his beloved soft, brought up not in sunshine but in shade,
"unacquainted with manly toils and sweat, but used to a delicate and unmanly
way of life" (239d).
16
It is again Phaedrus himself, the light drinker, lover of grass
and shade, stroller on the unwearying country roads, who fills the role of beloved
for the nonlover who courts him.
The triadic structure of the nonlover's argument concerning the harmfulness
of association with a lover leads from the examination of mind and body to that
of property. On the assumption that whatever is dear to the beloved is necessarily
hated by his jealous lover, it is inevitable that their interests can never coincide.
In identifying the dearest possessions with father, mother, kinsmen, and friends
(239e), the speaker betrays his acceptance of Lysias's economic model of human
relations. Because he wishes to enjoy without disturbance what is most pleasant
to him, the lover necessarily comes into conflict with the beloved's attachment to
the privacy of home and family (240a). In this conflict, the jealous lover bears
38 Plato's Phaedrus
ironic resemblance to tire city, as well as to the demands involved in the pursuit
of philosophy; but while the city and the pursuit of philosophy would claim to
represent the interests of a more comprehensive community or of a higher order
than that of the family, the lover resents the private attachments of his beloved
only because of his own supreme possessiveness and uncontrolled desire.
Having established the inevitable harm to the beloved from his association
with a lover, the speaker goes on to deny even the possibility of pleasure. By
admitting that the flatterer, like the courtesan, may indeed bring pleasure to the
beloved (240b), the nonlover attempts to justify his own promise of providing
pleasure, if not benefit, to the beloved he addresses. In contrast, the burden of
compulsion which the lover exerts on his beloved, based on the compulsion of
desire which the lover himself experiences, serves as a fundamental source of
pain in their association (240c). While Socrates is about to describe in his
recantation to eros the pain experienced by both lover and beloved from the
compulsion of their longing, he identifies that very pain as a sign of the growth of
the capacity for desire, which constitutes the source of our greatest blessings (cf.
251c). Only the nonlover chooses pleasure and pain as the proper criteria for
judging the value of the relationship with a lover or a nonlover.
Having accomplished his condemnation of love as harmful and unpleasant
while it lasts, the nonlover finally turns to the evils that ensue when love has
ceased. Socrates' rearrangement again avoids the randomness of Lysias's speech,
where the condemnation of eros itself is constantly confused with the reproach
against its inevitable cessation. According to the model constructed by Socrates'
nonlover, the inevitable evanescence of the victory of eros guarantees the lover's
return to reason and his repudiation of former promises; "the shell has fallen the
other way, and he changes his part and runs away" (241b). The metaphor of the
game, with its reversal of roles for pursuer and pursued, mirrors the activity
transpiring between Socrates and Phaedrus, but this game is interpreted by the
nonlover in light of Lysias's utilitarian model of love, where each participant is
after the fulfillment of his own needs, expecting payment in return for any
benefits provided.
The nonlover finally gratifies Phaedrus with a summary of his speech, a
rhetorical device which Phaedrus expects and admires (cf. 228d, 267e). To
accept a lover is to yield to one who is "faithless, irritable, jealous, unpleasant,
harmful to property and bodily condition, and most harmful to the cultivation of
the soul, than which there neither is nor will be anything in truth more honor-
able for gods or men" (241c).
17
Whereas the body of the speech proceeds in a
descending hierarchy from mind [dianoia) through body to property, the speaker
concludes his attack against the harmfulness of eros in an ascending hierarchy
from property through body to the soul (psuche), to which he suddenly ascribes
the greatest honor in truth for gods and men. With this sudden replacement of
mind by soul, and acknowledgment of the divine as a standard for the human,
Socrates' nonlover points to the incompleteness of the speech which has bor-
rowed its "necessary argument" from Lysias's condemnation of eros. Only in this
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 39
fleeting moment does the nonlover hint at the possibility of some force of nature
which is higher than acquired opinion; he thus prepares the bridge to Socrates'
second speech as the complementary part of a whole, and justifies the apparently
abrupt beginning of that speech, announcing that the proof for the divine mad-
ness of eros depends upon an examination of "the truth about the nature of soul,
divine and human" (cf. 245c).
The harm to the beloved who grants his favors to the mad lover is affirmed in
the conclusion of the nonlover's speech by the identification of the affection
(philia) of the lover, not as good will (eunoid),
18
but as appetite to be satisfied:
"As the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover loves his beloved" (241c).
19
The artful
speech which begins ironically with an invocation to the Muses consists in a
condemnation of nature, but only by restricting nature to those forces inferior to
acquired opinion, by identifying nature with the bestial rather than with the
divine. When Socrates suddenly interrupts his speech, begging Phaedrus not to
listen any longer, but "to let the logos have its telos" (24I d), Phaedrus's only
reaction is disappointment that the speech is unfinished; he thus confirms, his
fundamental influence on the underlying assumptions of the speech, for he
identifies its incompleteness with its absence of praise for the conventional
moderation of the nonlover, not with its absence of praise for the divine madness
of the true lover.
Socrates protests that he has already passed from the dithyrambics of his
opening section with its definition of eros to the hexameters of his concluding
verse; anticipating the danger of possession by the nymphs to whom Phaedrus has
exposed him, Socrates questions how he might poeticize if he "begins to praise
the other" (241 e). With this ambiguous reference, Socrates acknowledges his
neglect in praising the divine lover at the same time that he shares Phaedrus's
awareness of his neglect in praising the nonlover. If Socrates were to grant to that
"other" all the advantages denied to the lover, he would have to praise the
nonlover for his artfulness and his objectivity; taking up the "necessary argu-
ment" of Lysias's speech, without imitating the self-contradictory, concealed
desire motivating Lysias's speaker, the true nonlover whom Socrates would have
to praise for possessing all the advantages denied to the mad lover is the nonerotic
art of writing.
Surely the nymphs would possess him, Socrates claims, if he were to do so. To
be possessed by the nymphs is to become a beloved, a nonlover incapable of
experiencing erotic desire. The mountain nymph Oreithyia, with whom Phaed-
rus so easily identified himself, is indeed the first model for the nonloving
beloved carried off by a passionate lover; but only Socrates, and not Phaedrus,
admitted that her role must be shared by Pharmakeia, for the comprehensive
account of non-eros must include, not only the calculating nonlover, who seeks
the satisfaction of appetite without being carried away by self-forgetfulness, but
also the nonerotic "drug" of the written word. Possession by the nonerotic
nymphs must constitute the "divine frenzy" in which Socrates follows, struck
with amazement while looking at Phaedrus's face, made bright by reading the
40 Plato's Phaedrus
nonerotic written speeqja of Lysias (cf. 234d). It is the "prophets of the Muses"
and the "gods of the place"Pan and the nymphswhom Socrates later praises
for the artfulness displayed in his first speech delivered in the name of the
nonlover (262d), and again the nymphs and Pan whom Socrates credits for the
artful beginning of that speech, which establishes with no prior defense a deter-
minate definition of eros as the premise of its condemnation (263d). The sacred
resting spot, which Socrates enthusiastically describes upon their arrival, belongs
to the nymphs and the cicadas, prophets of the Muses (cf. 259b-d), and it is the
"fountain of the nymphs and the Muses" that Socrates identifies as the source of
the message, represented by the critical discussion on art in the second half of the
dialogue, which Phaedrus and Socrates are finally commanded to deliver to all
the "writers in the city" (278b).
In the presence of Phaedrus, in competing with the speech of Lysias, Socrates
justifiably fears the threat of possession by the nymphs; but in the original
interruption of his speech, he already acknowledged the responsibility of "god" in
averting their attack. The nymphs and the Muses seem to be allied, over and
against Eros and Socrates' daimonion, for the possession of his soul. This conflict
of the antierotic nymphs and Muses with the daimonion who reminds Socrates
of the divine madness of eros is illustrated by the apparent chronological se-
quence of inspirations Socrates undergoes as the foundation for the deceptive
two-ness of his speeches, the pretense of each part to be a whole. But Socrates
placed his defense against the nymphs in the hands of god even before reaching
the conclusion of his speech for the nonlover; the postponement in the delivery
of his second speech, like the delay before the first speech and the interruption
within it, allows Socrates to entice Phaedrus to use compulsion and thus become
an accomplice in the contest against Lysias.
Before continuing the discussion, Socrates is careful to reaffirm his separation
from the speech just delivered. The muthos will suffer what it must; Socrates
himself must cross the river before experiencing any more of Phaedrus's compul-
sion (242a). Phaedrus reacts to Socrates' reminder of his compulsion by declaring
his own slavery, not to the demands of the logos nor of Socrates' soul, but to the
dictates of the environment; they must speak in order to wear away the time until
the sun goes down. Socrates proclaims Phaedrus "godlike about speeches" and
"artlessly amazing" (242e); his apparent praise of Phaedrus's artless desire for
speeches, motivated by his concern with the environment, is the mirror image of
Phaedrus's earlier exclamation about Socrates' artless strangeness outside the
city, motivated by his concern for speaking with "the men in town" (cf, 230d).
But if Phaedrus is indeed "godlike about speeches" because of his request to
converse (dialegesthai) about what has been spoken, that request cannot be
fulfilled without uncovering the suppressed part of the whole of eros, which the
first two speeches have ignored.
Socrates' desire to correct the speech just delivered in the name of the non-
lover is based on his understanding of the need to articulate the polar opposite of
that "nonlove" exemplified by Lysias's dead and silent writing. Socrates therefore
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 41
replaces Phaedrus's godlike request to discuss the speeches already delivered with
his own proposal for granting the favors of another speech; Socrates repays
Phaedrus for entering him into competition with Lysias by entering Phaedrus
into competition with Simmias the Theban as producer of speeches (242b).
Simmias, who compels Socrates to deliver speeches on the immortality of the
soul, is held up as a standard for Phaedrus in the transition between Socrates'
speech condemning the human madness of eros and his speech praising the
divine madness of eros. By comparing Phaedrus to Simmias, Socrates points to
the inadequacy of his first speech, praising the moderation of acquired opinion,
as a true reconciliation of the conflict between the nonerotic art represented in
and by Lysias's written speech and the divine madness of eros represented in and
by Socrates' recantation. In its implicit function as a mediation of the tension
between death and eros, the speech Socrates first delivers under Phaedrus's
"bewitching" must be judged in light of the speeches Socrates produces under
the compulsion of Simmias; in a moment between the two speeches on eros
delivered to Phaedrus, the Platonic Socrates calls to mind the conversation he
conducts in the Athenian prison on the last day of his life, narrated by Phaedo in
the dialogue which bears his name.
Socrates begins that final conversation by explaining his occupation in the
interval between his trial and his death. The delay resulting from an Athenian
ritual of purification allows Socrates to carry out his own ritual of purification,
engaging, apparently for the first time in his life, in the activity of writing
(Phaedo 60e-61b). His composition of a hymn to Apollo and metrical versions of
the muthoi of Aesop have been motivated, Socrates explains, not by the hope of
competing with the poet Evenus, who had inquired about the rumor of Socrates'
writing, but in fulfillment of his obligation to the Muses, whom Socrates,
perhaps under the influence of his daimonion,
20
has neglected for a lifetime.
Only now, after his conviction by the Athenian demos, does Socrates express his
suspicions about his response to the dream which had repeatedly occurred to him
throughout his life, commanding him to "make music and work at it" (60e); this
dream, which Socrates had always interpreted as a sanction for his eros of
philosophic conversation, "the greatest music," only now elicits from Socrates a
more literal interpretation as a command to produce "demotic music," With this
apparent expression of guilt on the day he is to drink the hemlock, Socrates
reveals a bond between writing and death, over against his lifelong activity of
conversation and eros.
Socrates concludes his report of his poetic activity with a message of farewell to
Evenus, advising him, if he is truly a philosopher, to follow Socrates' present
path as quickly as possible. Disturbed by the implication that the philosopher
would consider death desirable, Simmias demands that Socrates defend himself,
as in a law court, for his willingness to die, when it means separation not only
from the gods who are said to be our good masters, but from his present compan-
ions as well. Socrates takes up this challenge through a defense of philosophy as
the practice of dying, identified as a "separation" (64c). Like the purification of
42 Plato's Phaedrus
writing, which relieves Socrates of his guilt for following his eros of philosophic
conversation, the practice of dying is a separation which constitutes an act of
purification (67c).
Moved by the fear of death as an annihilation of the self, Socrates' interlocut-
ers understand purification through the practice of dying to be a separation of the
soul from the body; they demand, therefore, a proof of the immortality of the
soul as the necessary condition for the success of Socrates' self-defense (7lab).
But beneath the series of arguments on immortality, which fails to "charm" away
the powerful fear of death, Socrates reveals his own understanding of the practice
of dying as an attempted separation, not of the soul from the body, but of
concern with logos from concern with the self (99d-102a). The Platonic Soc-
rates, represented in the hours before his death, silently suggests that the separa-
tion which constitutes the practice of dying is in fact accomplished by the
Platonic dialogue itself, replacing the individuality and spontaneity of the living
Socrates with the logos of a written image. When, however, Socrates' account of
his turn toward logos does not satisfy Simmias, who is overwhelmed by his
awareness of the magnitude of these questions and the natural weakness of the
human mind (107a-b), the dying Socrates offers him a concluding myth about
the fate of the soul after death,
Socrates' allusion to Simmias in his description of Phaedrus's compulsion
adumbrates the focus of the speech he is about to deliver as a purification, which
begins with a proof for the immortality of soul and reaches its peak in the praise
of divine eros as stimulus for the act of recollection.
21
The guilt Socrates experi-
ences from delivering his nympholeptic speech condemning the madness of
eros, based on a model of man with no separate principle of soul, can be purified
only through his recantation, based on an attempt to demonstrate the "truth
about the nature of soul divine and human" (245c). Socrates' praise of the divine
madness of eros reveals that part of the whole of eros suppressed by the "dead"
written speech of Lysias; in uncovering that possibility, however, Socrates' recan-
tation necessarily condemns all "nonlove," without revealing the value of that
alienation from the madness of eros exemplified by the Platonic art of writing.
The connection between the art of writing and the practice of dying Socrates
discloses through their common opposition to the madness of eros; but in the
attempt to gain victory over the claims of the nonlover, Socrates cannot establish
a reconciliation between the highest potential of the madness of eros and the
highest potential of the nonerotic practice of dying. It seems that the dialogue has
not yet completed its reflection on the myth which initiates the love-speeches,
interpreted by the sophoi as a concealed logos about death, and accepted by
Socrates as an account of the experience of eros.
Whereas Simmias provokes Socrates' recognition of the necessity of purifica-
tion from eros through a defense of philosophy as the practice of dying, Phaedrus
provokes Socrates' recognition of the necessity of purification from the subordi-
nation of eros to conventional moderation through a defense of philosophy as the
highest standard of eros. The juxtaposition of Phaedrus's compulsion with that of
Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates' 43
Simmias thus points to the necessary conjunction of philosophy as eros with
philosophy as the practice of dying, but Socrates only indicates the desirability of
that conjunction as a goal which he does not fulfill. In comparing Phaedrus with
Simmias, Socrates indicates the insufficiency of acquired opinion as a bond
between madness and art, between philosophy as eros and philosophy as the
practice of dying, without examining the claim to represent that bond sdt forth by
the Platonic art of writing. Compelled to purify himself from his sin against eros,
which he discovers through his sudden awareness of the prohibitive presence of
his daimonion, Socrates announces only the opposition between the two speeches
he delivers to Phaedrus.
I V
TH E DA EMON I C SPEECH OF SOCRA TES
fust when I was about to cross the stream, my good one, the daimonion and the
sign that usually comes came to meit always holds me back from something I
am about to doand I thought I heard some kind of voice which forbade my going
away before purifying myself as though having sinned against god. (242c)
Socrates is held back from ending his persuasion of Phaedrus
with a condemnation of eros by the sudden recognition of his
daimonion, which speaks to him through a voice within him-
self, reminding him that Eros is "some kind of god." Under the
influence of the daimonion Socrates himself exhibits all the
forms of divine madness which he is about to describe; but the
divine madness which Socrates experiences is in fact modera-
tion and the daimonion which inspires him only holds him
back from the boldness of his first speech, praising conven-
tional moderation based on acquired opinion. The inspiration
of the daimonion thus allows Socrates to remember himself;
the daimonion is his own nature and his nature is eros. The
enemy of eros in Socrates' speech is human art, and the
paradigm of art in the dialogue as a whole is the art of writing.
Through the portrait of Socrates' possession by his daimonion,
Plato thus connects the hubris of Socrates' divine madness
with the hubris of his restraint from writing.
Since the sin which Socrates must purify consists in his
implicit denial of the incompleteness of the human madness of
eros, based on a model of man without any separate principle
of soul, the recognition of divine eros necessarily begins with a
demonstration of "the truth about the nature of soul divine and
human." But the abstract argument introduced as the neces-
sary starting point of the speech demonstrates the deathlessness
of "all soul," identified as self-moving motion, without il-
luminating the distinctive nature of the human soul, as deter-
mined by the experience of eros. Compelled, therefore, to
follow the human path of producing an image, Socrates likens
the soul to the "composite power of winged horses and
charioteer."
In order to account for the deeds and sufferings of the
human soul, Socrates' image must be viewed through an in-
creasingly narrowed horizon of perspective: the portrait of the
celestial army of gods with their troops of human followers
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 45
journeying upward to the feast on the vision of the beings
beyond the heavens, must be supplemented by the portrait of
the individual relation between a lover and the particular be-
loved he chooses in the image of the god he follows. Just as the
crucial experience of the vision of the beings constitutes the
ground for the particular nature of the fallen human soul, so
the distinct worship of a particular god constitutes the ground
for the conduct of the lover in his relation to a particular
beloved. But the comprehensiveness of the vision of the be-
ings, as well as the choice of the beloved whom the lover
pursues as a reminder of his journey toward that vision, are in
fact determined by the internal relations among the parts of the
individual soul; Socrates must return, therefore, in the closing
section of his speech, to an analysis of the complex division
suggested by his original image. In this analysis, the white
horse, lover of honor and true opinion, provides the same link
between the restraining charioteer and the dark horse, friend of
hubris and pride, as Socrates' first speech provides between the
speech of Lysias, representing the nonloving silence of the
ideas, and Socrates' recantation, praising the divine madness of
eros.
If, however, Socrates' recantation provides the poetic image
for the unity of the three speeches on eros, it does so only in
the context of praising divine madness; but precisely because
the madness of eros can only be a divine blessing through its
transformation to philosophic eros, the uncovering of the true
whole, which would reveal the three love-speeches as parts,
must await the critical examination displaying that alienation
from the madness of eros which Socrates' mythic hymn cannot
acknowledge.
^^K FTER FIRST ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS SECOND SPEECH TO PHAEDRUS,
likening him to Simmias, Socrates suddenly introduces the inspiration of his
daimoniort. Only in the speech itself does Socrates begin to elucidate the enigma-
tic relation between the power exercised by another individual with whom he is
conversing' and that attributed to the daimonion within himself.
1
The daimonion
insists that it be recognized; it demands that Socrates affirm his possession by
divine madness, but it does so only by holding him back from something he is
about to do.
2
Through the warning of his daimonion, Socrates recognizes the
sinfulness of the previous speeches, remembering that "Eros is from Aphrodite
and some kind of god" (242d). Phaedrus, who only agrees that "it is said to be
46 Plato's Phaedrus
so/ ' seems to remember the speech of Diotima, where Eros is identified as a
daimon megas, residing, "like all the daemonic," between mortals and im-
mortals, with the power of interpreting and transporting human things to the
gods and divine things to men (Symposium 202e). This daimon Eros, which
exists "between wisdom and ignorance," and is therefore a "lover of wisdom"
(Symposium 204b), seems to be an image of Socrates himself. Socrates now
presents himself to Phaedrus as the daimonios man who possesses that daemonic
wisdom necessary for every "association and converse [dialektos] of gods with
men" (cf. Symposium 203a).
If the daimonion transports Socrates through the divine madness of ems, it
simultaneously puts him in touch with the other forms of divine madness; it is
the collection of these forms of madness which constitutes the starting point of
Socrates' inspired hymn (cf. 244a). The illustrations of Socrates' divine inspira-
tion preceding his recantation, however, only mimic Socrates' critical recogni-
tion that the previous speeches were not sufficiently comprehensive. Possessed by
the daimonionr Socrates asserts his prophetic powers, demonstrating the divine
madness of "mantic inspiration" (cf. 244d); but "the soul itself is somehow
prophetic," as Socrates admits (242c). The inspired prophecy which reveals their
previous ignorance in fact consists in Socrates' recognition of the whole pre-
viously suppressed: "For all along while speaking the speech, I was disturbed"
(242c). If, as Socrates implies, he began the first speech with the second already
in mind, the daimonion only warns him of what he already knows, and prophecy
is none other than recovery of what has been forgotten. The demand of the
daimonion for purification of their previous sin (243a) demonstrates the divine
madness of mystic rites for the cleansing of guilt (cf. 244e); but Socrates' guilt
consists in his acceptance of a falsebecause one-sidedargument, and the
mystic rite of purification is only the transformation of that partial argument
toward a more comprehensive truth. Illustrating the third form of divine mad-
ness, "possession by the Muses of a simple and pure soul" (245a), Socrates
chooses as his model the poet Ibycus, who expresses his fear of "buying honor
among men while sinning against the gods" (242d);
3
Socrates' possession by the
Muses, however, is in fact a description of the disturbance he has experienced
throughout the delivery of his previous speech, and the recognition of his sin
against Eros is the result of the compulsion of an incomplete logos.
In and through his imitation of the forms of divine madness, Socrates recog-
nizes his first speech as "missing the mark" (hamartoma), that is, either an error
or a sin (242d); language itself seems to bear the consciousness of the Socratic
principle that virtue is knowledge. The speeches just delivered are, therefore,
both impious in speaking evil of eros, "for nothing godlike can be evil" (242e),
and foolish in the pretense that they say something healthy or true in order to
deceive and gain honor from some "manikins" (243a). The link between the
foolishness and impiety of the previous speeches is mirrored in the link between
the double motivation of Socrates' coming speech: shame before a noble charac-
ter and fear of the god Eros (243c).
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 47
Socrates illustrates this motivation through the model of the poet Stesichorus
of Himera who, when stricken with blindness for speaking ill of Helen, being "of
the Muses," understood the cause of his blindness and therefore immediately
wrote a recantation, resulting in the recovery of his vision (243a-b). Stesichorus's
recognition of his error in mistaking the appearance for the reality in the case of
the beautiful constitutes the fitting model for Socrates' recognition of his error in
the case of love as desire for the beautiful.
4
If Helen represents the beautiful, the
object of desire for the poets, it is eros itself which represents the object of desire
for Socrates. The immediacy of Stesichorus's recantation suggests that it is not
the result of, but identical with, his being "of the Muses," while his immediate
recovery of vision is not the result of, but identical with, the knowledge exhibited
in the poem. The relation between sin and blindness, or purification and vision,
which is presented mythologically as chronological cause and effect, must be
understood philosophically as an act which is identical with its own reward or
punishment. It is, perhaps, the acknowledgment of this identity which accounts
for Socrates' "greater wisdom" than his ancient teachers (cf. 243b). Socrates thus
issues a warning against the distortion of the philosophic relation between an
image and what it represents by the mythological presentation of that relation as
one of cause and effect. This distortion underlies Socrates' forthcoming
mythological account, which presents the activity of the soul as a cause of its
subsequent reward or punishment, while the effect of reward or punishment is
itself held responsible for the condition of the soul. Before entering into that
mythological account, however, Socrates claims to contain within himself,
simultaneously, the source of ignorance and punishment, as well as that of
recognition and recovery; he dramatizes this self-containment by reversing his
self-blinding during the first speech with the gesture of unveiling for the next
(243b).
The bitter taste of the previous feast must be washed out by the sweet taste that
follows. When Socrates advises Lysias to do the same, Phaedrus promises to
compel him, commanding Socrates to speak courageously, as one would spur a
contestant about to enter some competition. Despite Phaedrus's eager delight
simply to hear another speech, Socrates must first confirm its double motivation,
in love of the truth and concern for Phaedrus's soul. The shame Socrates origi-
nally blamed on the presence of Phaedrus (237a) he now attributes to the thought
of a "noble and gentle character," having knowledge of a free love, who would
attribute the previous portrait of love to men brought up among sailors (243c).
That Phaedrus is moved by this appeal to his sense of shame, and to his desire for
identifying himself with the "noble and gentle character," is betrayed by his en-
thusiastic response (with an oath by Zeus) to Socrates' condemnation of the
shamelessness of the previous speeches.
Through the narrative frame of his first speech, Socrates uncovered the direct
discourse of Lysias's speech as the address of a concealed lover to his anonymous
beloved. Now that he speaks for the lover, Socrates replaces the narrative frame
by direct discourse, presumably addressed to Phaedrus, as the "beautiful boy"
48 Plato's Phaedrus
whose favors are being-sought (24 3e). Socrates wafns us that this sweet speech is
itself a persuasive effort intended to prevent this particular beloved from favoring
a nonlover. Although he abandons the narrative frame of his first speech, Soc-
rates nevertheless attempts to distance himself from the speech he now utters as a
recantation; while responsibility for the first speech is assigned to Phaedrus of
Myrrhinus, whose name indicates his "eagerness for fame," responsibility for the
second speech is assigned to Stes ichor us of Himera, whose name indicates his
connection with "pious speech of desire" (244a). With these opening etymologies,
Socrates sets the tone for his encomium of divine madness.
5
Socrates begins his recantation by affirming its polemic intention: the purpose
of his speech is to refute the claim that a nonlover should be favored over a lover.
Recognizing that the persuasive powerand the germ of truthin Lysias's
speech lies in its attack, not against eros as eros, but against eros as madness,
Socrates must demonstrate that madness is not necessarily an evil, but, when it is
a gift of the gods, the source of the greatest blessings. It is this polemic purpose
which compels the first, though perhaps not the true, beginning of Socrates'
mythic hymn: the necessary basis for the defense of eros against art is the
collection of the class of "divine madness," of which eros will be shown to be one
member. Socrates makes no claim to the exhaustiveness of his initial collection;
although this seemingly arbitrary series has been foreshadowed in the prelude to
the speech, the collection of forms of divine madness looks like nothing but a
product of inspiration.
If competition with Lysias motivates the starting point of Socrates' speech,
with its arbitrary collection of kinds of madness, that initial motivation would be
transcended only if and when Socrates reaches the ground for a defense of eros,
which would no longer appear arbitrary and would thus constitute the true
starting point of the speech. While the consideration of divine madness allows
Socrates to identify eros as. one of its parts, the analysis of that part in fact reveals
the madness of eros to be the moving force of every soul, hence not a part but the
whole.
6
Eros of the beautiful then becomes no longer one example of madness
alongside prophecy, purification, and poetry, but the principle determining all
human soul-types, and their highest manifestation. The arbitrary character of
Socrates' initial consideration of four examples of divine madness is thus over-
come only when the class of madness is revealed to be coextensive with eros, and
its proper internal articulation identified with the division between divine and
human.
Socrates indicates the status of his collection of divine madness by beginning
with an etymological connection between madness (mania) and prophecy (man-
tike), considered the most beautiful art because of its power to judge the future
(244c). The absence of control or self-interested cal cul ati on is a sign of the divine
source of the power belonging to the inspired prophetess of Delphi, the priestess
of Dodona, the Sibyl, and others. Their inspiration must be contrasted with the
sane investigation of birds and other signs practiced through the oionistic art,
7
whose name indicates the activity of supplying mind (nous) and information
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 49
(/ iistorid) to human thought (oiesis) through the intellect {dianoia) (244c-d).
Not despite but because of his playful etymologies, Socrates ridicules his own
praise of madness; while the ancients testify to the superiority of the mantic art
over the oionistic "both in name and in deed," Socrates in fact admits that the
gift of the gods, handed down through the madness of the inspired prophet, must
be contrasted with all forms of human reason; since the artfulness of human
interpretation stands outside the gift of prophetic madness, the fulfillment of the
potential benefit of that madness must depend upon what is wholly other than
itself.
8
The same silent self-ridicule is reflected in the second form of divine
madnessthat of purifications and mystic rites to obtain release from evils aris-
ing from some ancient heritage of guilt. For the "diseases and greatest evils"
which are visited on certain families through some ancient guilt seem to be
identical with the madness which comes in and provides, through oracular
powers, a release for those in need: the blessing of madness is release from
madness. Taking refuge in prayers and services to the gods, the sufferer who
practices purification should be "out of danger" for the present and for all future
time; but in concluding that "he who is correctly possessed by madness has
discovered a release from present evils," Socrates suggests that the benefit of
madness is simply the state of self-forgetfulness it produces. Socrates' praise of the
divine madness of purification, moreover, appeals to the mythical conception of
inherited guilt, but in the cosmic myth he is about to deliver, Socrates under-
stands the inherited guilt of birth, which constitutes man's original sin, to be
nothing but ignorance of the truth covered over with the "food of human opin-
ion" (cf. 248b).
9
Contrary to what he later says about assigning each of the forms of divine
madness to a particular god (265b), Socrates specifies the source of divine inspira-
tion only in relation to the third form of madnessthat possession by the Muses
inspiring a pure and simple soul who, "adorning thousands of ancient deeds,
educates later generations" (245a). Like the self-interested augurer or the guilt-
ridden sufferer not released by madness from the usual laws, the sane man who
wishes to produce poetry by art, without madness, can accomplish nothing. The
imitative art of the self-conscious poet, who calls upon the Muses as a poetic
image for the state of inspiration, Socrates reduces to the deceptive calculation of
an imposter. In his identification of poetry as all madness and no art, Socrates
betrays the partial perspective of his mythic hymn, motivated by the desire to
demonstrate the blessings of divine madness over against the claims of conven-
tional moderation. Socrates therefore praises the self-forgetful inspiration of the
poet, but this very condition, which accounts for the poet's inability to investigate
the truth of what he imitates, constitutes the paradigm of the tragic flaw in all
states of possession.
10
If, in fact, a "pure and simple soul" were able to produce a
poetic "cosmos" in and through the madness of divine inspiration, he would be
only an intermediary between the deeds of the ancients, which he adorns, and
the desire for wisdom in men of later generations, whom he educates. The
50 Plato's Phaedrus
blessing delivered iu and through-the divine madness of the poet could be
realized only in and through the artful human examination of his inspired
creations.
Having gathered this collection of the "beautiful deeds" resulting from divine
madness, Socrates admits its nonexhaustive status: he can mention these and
many more (245b).
11
He therefore proceeds to the fundamental argument of the
speech, the demonstration that ems too is a form of madness sent by the gods for
human happiness. Insofar as it is to be determined in light of the models of
divine madness already established, eros would have to be understood in contrast
to all human reason; its benefit would have to consist in the illusory state of
self-forgetfulness it produces, and its potential blessing could be realized only
through its artful transformation. The examples Socrates chooses to illustrate
divine madness only show the superiority of divinely inspired prophecy, purifica-
tion, and poetry to their calculating human counterparts, without demonstrating
that no human art could be superior to madness in general; Socrates' praise of the
divine madness of eros should, then, only show the superiority of divinely
inspired love to its calculating human counterpart, without claiming its superior-
ity to every human art.
The demonstration (apodeixis) of eros as divine madness, Socrates warns, will
not be believed by the merely clever, but only by the wise (243c); the clever who
may not be the wise must be those "sophisticated" nonbelievers who would
insist, as Socrates explained in his response to Phaedrus's inquiry, upon replacing
a muthos about eros with a logos about death, and would thus be incapable of
seeing the truth of the myth as an account of the human soul (cf. 229d-230a).
The examination of divine eros necessarily begins, therefore, with a demonstra-
tion of the "truth about the nature of soul, divine and human" (245c).
12
The true
beginning for an account of eros emerges only with a consideration of soul,
which Socrates is about to identify as self-moving motion and the beginning
(arche) of all becoming. If Socrates remembers the advice in his first speech
that the beginning determines what the counsel is about (2-37c)he would now
imply that the self-moving motion of soul is itself eros; indeed, every soul, as
Socrates' image will soon portray, is determined by the particular form of the
madness of eros that moves it.
While seeing (idonta) the sufferings and deeds of the soul, it is necessary to
conceive (noesdi) the truth about its nature. The clue to the significance of this
disjunction between seeing and conceiving lies in the division between Socrates'
imagistic myth of the journey of the soul as an account of the experience of eros,
and the arche of his demonstration, defining the being and logos of soul as
self-moving motion. The distinction which comes to light within this initial
argumentbetween soul as self-moving motion and body which relies on soul as
its source of motionseems to have its self-referential reflection in the structure
of the speech itself: the logos which constitutes the arche of the demonstration
must have the same relation to the imagistic account which follows from it, as
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 51
soul "itself by itself would have to the living body with soul as its source of
motion.
The demonstration of the "truth about the nature of soul, divine and human"
begins with its desired conclusion: "Pasa psuche is deathless" (245c). With the
unexamined ambiguity of its subject"all soul" collectively or "each and every
soul" individuallythe demonstration of immortality fails to satisfy that demand
for knowledge of soul with regard to the whole and its parts, which Socrates first
introduced as the goal of his own pursuit of self-knowledge, and later identifies as
the necessary foundation for any art of speaking. The same ambiguity concealed
in the analysis of "all soul/ every soul" will be repeatednot accidentallyin the
principle Socrates later establishes for the artful construction of speech with
organic unity: the wholeness of a living animal is the proper standard for "all
logos/every logos" (cf. 264c).
Socrates begins with the proof that "all soul" is deathless with the claim that
the ever-moving is deathless, without justifying his implicit assumption of the
identity of life and motion. Although the argument would seem to call for a proof
that soul is ever-moving, Socrates first attempts to establish that only the self-
moving is ever-moving, since that which moves something else or is moved by
something else, when it ceases to move, ceases to live. WTiile only the self-
moving, and not that which moves something else, is said to be ever-moving,
Socrates does not take up the problem of the self-moving that is simultaneously
responsible for moving something else; he silently indicates a possible tension
between soul that would be ever-moving insofar as it is only self-moving, and
soul insofar as it is the source of motion for body, which would therefore cease to
live when it ceased moving.
Having established that only that which moves itself, since it is not directed
outside itself, never ceases to move, the argument should now have the task of
proving that soul is precisely this self-moving. But that proof is delayed by what
seems to be a digression, in which the self-moving is identified as the beginning
of all things that are in motion. The digression that delays the identification of
soul as ever-moving, self-moving motion is determined precisely by that tension
implicit in the first stage of the argumentbetween soul as simply self-motion
and soul as the source of motion for body. In turning from the proof of the
self-moving as ever-moving to the proof of the self-moving which is directed
outside itself, the argument admits its hypothetical condition: the beginning of
all things in motion must be the self-moving, and this self-moving beginning
must be ungenerated and indestructible, for if this were not the case, "all the
heavens and all genesis" would come to rest and never again have any source of
motion.
13
Given the existence of an eternal world of becoming, the beginning
itself must be ungenerated, for if it were generated from anything outside itself, it
would not be generated from a beginning. Nor can the beginning itself ever be
destroyed, for if it were, not only could nothing else be generated from it, but it
could never be generated from anything else, since everything must be generated
52 Plato's Phaedrus
from the beginnings-Only the self-moving, therefore, can provide the ever-
present beginning of all motion, and this beginning can be neither generated nor
destroyed if there is to be becoming at all.
The expansion of the proof identifying the self-moving with the ever-moving
to the identification of the self-moving with the beginning of all motion seems to
be based upon the desire to demonstrate self-moving soul as the necessary source
of motion for body.
14
The apparently superfluous character of this expansion is
confirmed by the conclusion of the proof, which seems merely to repeat the
conclusion of the original argument, that the self-moving has been shown to be
deathless. Although Socrates began with the attempt to prove that soul is im-
mortal on the basis of proving that the self-moving is immortal, he now seems to
appeal to a pious acceptance of the immortality of soul as a basis for identifying
soul as the self-moving. While Socrates has provided a logical argument to
demonstrate that the self-moving is ever-moving, and in that sense immortal, he
only claims it would be "not shameful" to identify the self-moving as the "being
[ousid] and speech [fogos] of soul" (245e).
15
With this definition posited, the
nature of soul as ungenerated and immortal can finally be affirmed, although the
identification of the immortal and the self-moving with soul is, however honor-
able, not a deductive necessity. The logos which succeeds in demonstrating that
the self-moving is ever-moving, and that as the source of all becoming it must be
ungenerated and indestructible, must appeal to shame in identifying this self-
moving motion as the being of soul.
The question of the identification of the self-moving and ever-moving points
to the ambiguity in the meaning of "all soul," which has supposedly been
demonstrated to be ungenerated and immortal. To uncover that meaning, the
logical argument for the immortality of all soul, introduced as the necessary
arche for the proof that love is a form of divine madness, must be considered in
light of the mythical image of the individual soul which follows it. The descrip-
tion of the experience of eros based on that image portrays the source of motion
in the soul of the lover as a lack; the final cause of motion for the lover is the
apparent fullness of perfection in the beloved as the object of desire. Insofar as
the final cause represents the beginning of motion, soul can be understood as
self-moving only if it contains within itself the object of desire which moves it.
16
But while the inclusion of the object of desire within the soul is necessary for the
possibility of self-motion, the perpetuation of desire itself is necessary for the
possibility of eternal motion, for if desire sets the soul in motion, its fulfillment
would bring the soul to rest. The relation between desire and the object of desire
mirrors the paradoxical tension and interdependence of self-motion and eternal
motion, for the self-moving motion of soul can be eternal only if its object of
desire is both included within itself and yet always beyond its reach.
What is self-moving and ever-moving must, then, be identified with the
completeness of soul as collective whole, not the incompleteness of its individual
parts. But just this assumption of the completeness of the self-moving motion of
soul as a collective whole precludes the consideration of any telos of motion.
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 53
Socrates' demonstration of immortality seems to assume the perspective of its
subject: the soul which has self-motion as its ousia affirms the eternity of genesis
as a whole, while it is cut off from recognition of any beings at rest. The illusion
of self-sufficiency exhibited in the demonstration of the immortality of "all soul"
is a fitting prelude for uncovering the illusion of eros, in which the lover "madly"
seeks, through union with his beloved, the perfection of a self-sufficient whole.
It is precisely what is missing in the abstract analysis of soul as self-moving
motion that compels Socrates to supplement his initial argument for immortality
with a consideration of the idea of the soul (246a). The tension between the
demonstration of the immortality of soul as self-moving motion and the sub-
sequent need for an examination of the idea of the soul is reflected in Socrates'
mythical account as a tension between the eternally living gods and the dead
ideai. The eternity of self-moving motion, which Socrates has "honorably" iden-
tified as the eternal life of all soul, provides a fitting opposition for the eternally
deathlike immobility of the silent "beings beyond the heavens." But the logical
argument for immortality gives an account of the eternal realm of becoming
while it is silent about the beings. The logos on immortality, which seems to
reflect the self-sufficiency of Socrates thinking to himself, provides an abstract
account of soul as self-moving motion, but only Socrates' imagistic account of
the experience of eros reveals the relation between the soul and the ideai.
Socrates himself acknowledges the insufficiency of his logical demonstration;
he has, after all, promised to portray the pathe and deeds of the human soul, and
in order to do so he must supplement the argument for immortality with a
description of the "look" of the soul. But while Socrates admits the necessity of
speaking about the idea of the soul, he claims to be capable of only producing a
likeness. In justifying this concession, Socrates must appeal to the distinction
which was absent from his demonstration of the immortality of all soul
between divine and human, which now emerges as a methodological principle of
speech: "To tell what it is would be a completely divine and long narration, but
to give a likeness is human and shorter" (246a). Socrates identifies the thought
and speech of "embodied soul" with the ability to make a likeness as "embodi-
ment" of the idea; the criterion which distinguishes human speech from divine
speech seems, then, to mirror the criterion which distinguishes human mortality
from divine immortality, that is, the connection of soul with body (cf. 246c-d).
Body apart from soul is identified, in the initial demonstration of the im-
mortality of soul, as that which has no principle of motion within itself. In light
of Socrates' indication of the connection between body and image, the absence
of self-motion in body might suggest the absence of self-motion in the image,
which would thus seem to be a fitting representation of the unmoving idea. But
the absence of motion in the idea is the sign of its self-sufficiency, whereas an
image which presented itself with the implicit claim of self-sufficiency would
conceal the being toward which it points. Only the image which, like a living
body, could come to life by the motion of soul, would be capable of illuminating
that which it represents. I f the Platonic text presented itself as that "completely
54 Plato's Phaedrus
divine and long narration," which would constitute the adequate expression of
an idea, it would dispense with its imagistic character as a dramatic representa-
tion. It is only by indicating its own non-self-sufficiency through the acknowl-
edgment of its status as an image that the dialogue abandons any claim to be the
adequate expression of an idea, hence a replacement of living thought; in point-
ing beyond itself to that of which it is merely an imitation, the dialogue realizes
its potential for "self-moving motion." The immortality which Socrates now
assigns to the self-moving motion of all soul, he finally attributes, through the
metaphor of generation, to the cycle of legitimate logoi cultivated by the dialectic
art (cf. 277a).
The demonstration of immortality identifies the ousia and logos of soul as
self-moving motion; in seeking a proper image which will reveal the deeds and
sufferings of the individual soul, Socrates chooses a conveyance which may be
said to be self-moving only when taken as a compound whole. But this image,
"the composite power of winged horses and charioteer" (246a),
17
refers only to its
parts, while the inanimate vehicle itself that unites these parts is never men-
tioned.
18
The image itself indicates, without explicitly acknowledging, that the
growing together of these parts is not a natural phenomenon but only the result of
their common function in a human artifact. Each part is simply and by nature a
whole, but the whole itself is a complex unity which is not natural. If the
unmentioned vehicle, as that which is moved, represents the body, it would
seem that the separate parts which supposedly constitute the soul only come
together in the presence of the body. Since, moreover, the same image is origi-
nally introduced for the souls of gods and men, Socrates seems to suggest from
the outset that the gods of his mythic hymn, like the traditional gods of the poets,
constitute man's projected image of his own nature.
But the division between divine and human, first introduced through the
distinction between the consideration of an idea and the production of an image,
now shows up as a differentiation in the particular nature of the chariot team as
an image for the soul: while the horses and the charioteer of the gods are "good
and from the good," those of the others are "mixed" (246b).
19
The connection
with an "earthly body," which marks the human state in distinction from the
divine, necessarily determines the nature of the soul itself. The structural distinc-
tion of the human team is evaluated in terms of its function: the importance of
the disparity between one horse's being a gentleman, "beautiful and good and
from such," and the other's being "opposite and from the opposite," lies in the
difficult and troublesome driving it causes (246b). The mixed nature of the
human soul-team must be understood in light of the standard of the divine team,
but Socrates acknowledges the deceptiveness of his imagistic speech, for it is only
out of human ignorance that "we fabricate, neither seeing nor sufficiently know-
ing god, an immortal being with soul and body grown together for all time"
(246d). As a projection of the human image to its desired state of perfection, the
poet's fabrication of the gods seems to mirror the experience of eros, in which the
lover projects his own ideal onto his chosen beloved, whom he worships as a god.
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 55
But the fabricated gods, which may be nothing but man's idealized self-
projections, constitute at the same time the necessary standard for man's self-
understanding. The human soul, with its mixed breed of horses, originally
presented as a given fact of nature, must, therefore, be elaborated as the conse-
quence of a fall from perfection (247b). While the fall seems to result from the
lack of harmony in the team of horses, the disparity of the team is itself the result
of the fall to imperfection. The inferiority of the human condition, defined by
virtue of its distinction from the divine, can be accounted for only through the
causal circularity between the limitations resulting from the given nature of the
human soul and the deficiency of its own activity.
The breed of horses which determines the human or divine status of the
chariot-team is reflected in the condition of its wings, which seem to belong
neither to the horses nor to the charioteer, but only to the unmentioned whole.
While the task of caring for all that is without soul belongs to the perfect, fully
winged "all soul," the task of originating motion for an individual body belongs
to the soul which has lost its wings, becoming a living animal by taking on an
earthly body (246b-c). Whereas the account of self-moving motion identifies "all
soul" as a principle of life, Socrates now indicates that to be an "ensouled
animal" is to be subject to death (246c). The condition of corporeality, hence
mortality and individuality, characterizes the wing-growing human team in con-
trast with the divine; but Socrates betrays the problematic status of his image of
the gods' winged chariot-team by acknowledging that the wing participates "more
than anything else of the body" in the godlike (246c). The upward motion which
constitutes the natural power of the wings represents the desire for the divine,
that is, "the beautiful, the wise, the good, and all such" that nourish the wings,
while the "shameful and the evil" are the cause of their destruction. But Socrates
identifies the divine (to theion) which nourishes the wings of the soul in distinc-
tion from his image for the gods; the upward motion of the wings is directed, not
toward the gods, who are themselves perfectly winged, but toward that which
makes the gods godlike.
In order to illustrate the loss of wings, which causes the fall of the human soul,
in contrast with the fully winged divine soul, Socrates paints a portrait of the
universe as the battlefield of a cosmic army, filled with squadrons of war chariots,
in which the troops of human teams are divided by the taxis of the divine leaders
whom they worship and follow (247a). In describing the divine leaders of this
cosmic army, apparently representing the traditional twelve member corpus of
the Olympian gods (oi dddeka theoi),
20
Socrates imitates the poets, whose gods
are only "beautifications" of human types.
21
The boundaries of the celestial
army of gods are constituted by its leader, Zeus, "ordering and caring for all,"
and by Hestia, who "alone remains in the house of the gods" (247a). Zeus is the
general, the "first," whose supremacy implies universality.
22
I f Zeus is to the
army of gods what the philosopher is to all men (cf. 252e), he must represent that
principle of soul most aware of the whole as a whole. In contrast, Hestia, who
represents the earth, the hearth, the private, whatever is most one's own,
23
56 Plato's Phaedrus
remains at rest in the center and hence obtains n<Vvision of "the beings outside
the heavens" (247c), although that vision is presented as the minimum require-
ment for the soul, which is to be human (cf. 249b).
24
In naming only Zeus and
Hestia as the divine leaders of the cosmic army, Socrates implies that the range of
human ideals must be bounded by complete universality and complete privacy,
without explicitly examining the conflict which he thus suggests.
The tension between Zeus and Hestia in defining the poles of the cosmic army
is reflected in the activity of all the gods, "traveling among the many blessed
sights and paths within the heavens, each doing for himself his own" (247a). The
principle of justice in the cosmic army, with each god minding his own busi-
ness,
25
is inseparable from the apparent absence of speech, and the acknowl-
edged absence of jealousy among them (247b). If the gods represent the perfec-
tion of self-sufficiency, they could never desire what is lacking in themselves and
hence are, by nature, alien to the experience of eros, the very experience which
is necessary for man's aspiration to the divine. The absence of speech and love
among the gods is manifest in the ease of their ascent to the realm of "the beings
which truly are, outside the heavens" (247b). Without eros of another individual
as the motivating force of this ascent, the gods proceed directly upward to the
ideai; but Socrates says nothing about the desire which initiates this movement,
nor about the possible conflict between the gods' responsibilities within the
heavens and their contemplation of the beings outside the heavens.
26
It is only because the divine chariot-team is driven by a charioteer already
nourished by the feast on the beings that the so-called immortal ones readily
accomplish the ascent which they must have always already achieved, and,
"taking their place on the back of the universe, are carried round by the revolu-
tion, beholding what is outside the heavens" (247c). While the whole realm of
becoming is in perpetual revolution, what is outside the heavens is said to be
immobile, although it might only seem so in relation to the movement of
becoming. The claim that its immobility is not merely a relative phenomenon
betrays the hubris of Socrates, daring to be the first and last poet to "worthily
hymn the superuranian region" (247c). Socrates' boldness consists in speaking
truly, which he is compelled to do, since he is speaking about the truth (247c).
For "the genus (genos) which holds this region" is nothing but "the colorless,
formless, and intangible, truly existing being, visible only to the mind, the pilot
of the soul, and the subject of all true knowledge" (247c-d).
Since only pure mind escapes the demand for imagistic speech, which is now
excluded from the territory of truth, it would seem impossible to speak the truth
about the soul, whose ever-moving motion stands in sharp contrast to the fixed
immobility of the beings.
27
Just when Socrates claims to "speak.truly," he indi-
cates a distinction between mind and soul which would be valid for the imagistic
gods as well as for men. The nature of the soul is said to be determined by the
nourishment it desires, for it feeds on what is most fitting for it, but even in the
case of the gods, the feast on the beings nourishes only the mind as "pilot," while
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 57
the horses, representing the forces of movement in the soul, themselves require
nectar and ambrosia (247e); the "colorless, formless, and intangible being" is
insufficient for the nourishment of the soul as a whole.
The chariots of the gods, nevertheless, ascend directly to the vision of the
ideai, whereas the human team is impelled on its upward journey not by the love
of wisdom, but by love of the particular god it follows. This distinction of the
force which initiates the journey of the soul to the ideas is manifest in the
character of that journey: in contrast with the ease of the divine journey, the
human team is constantly pulled down by the earth-bound motion of the evil
horse, dragging his charioteer toward the "utmost toil and struggle" (247b). The
blessed vision of the life of the gods, therefore, has only a momentary appear-
ance, quickly replaced by a scene of pain, struggle, competition, and frustration,
with only sporadic and elusive satisfaction for those few "best following and most
like god" (248a). Of these few, it is only the head of the charioteer which is
intermittently raised into the outer region; the replacement of the whole by its
highest part confirms the tension between mind and soul acknowledged even in
the case of the gods.
Excluded from the pasture of truth, the competing chariot teams beneath the
surface are forced to feed upon "the food of opinion" (248b), a meadow which
must apparently be cultivated by human art. The subordination of natural desire
to acquired opinion, praised by the nonlover, is now shown to be nothing but
that competition over illusions characterizing the human community exiled
from the plain of truth. The failure of the human soul to sustain any comprehen-
sive vision of the beings beyond the heavens, which itself constitutes its punish-
ment, results from its inability to follow its divine leader. The result of this failure
of the human soul is the loss of its wings and its consequent fall to earth, but
Socrates assigns the cause of that fall not simply to the given nature of the human
soul, but to "some accident" which makes the soul heavy with forgetfulness and
evil (248c). The accident responsible for the fall of the human soul, caused by
the misfortune of being turned toward injustice "through some kind of associa-
tions" (250a), is thus identical with the trampling and colliding, among the
ignorant and the blind, beneath the surface of the upper region.
The same circularity, in which the activity of the soul constitutes the cause of
its own condition, is reflected in the "law of destiny" through which the divine
poet announces a classification of the fallen human souls; while the hierarchical
division of nine human soul-types is declared a "law of destiny," its ground is
determined not by fate but by the proportion of the memory of the vision of truth
incorporated in the "food of opinion." If the political community is represented
by the meadow of opinion, which replaces the natural nourishment of the
beings, the differentiation of individual soul-types would seem to be connected
with the specialization of roles necessary for the unification of the polis.
28
Yet
the differentiation of human types representing a hierarchy of levels of awareness
connected with the specialization of roles necessary for the political community,
58 Plato's Phaedrus
does not answer the question of why nine, and why these nine. Precisely because
it is presented as a "law of destiny," the logical ground of this allegedly exhaustive
set is absent, replaced only by an enigmatic clue to its meaning.
29
Socrates, poet of the "superuranian region," soon affirms that he has spoken of
these mysteries in honor of memory (250c). The hierarchy of nine soul-types is
generated by the power of memory, and the children of Memory are the nine
Muses. Socrates ironically credits the artfulness of the Muses as the source of the
divine madness of the poet, who educates later generations by adorning the deeds
of the ancients (245a) and thus influences the gradations of memory which
determine the hierarchy of human soul-types. The model for Socrates' mythic
hymn is Stesichorus's recantation, resulting from the recognition of his own
ignorance through being "of the Muses" (243a). It seems, then, to be the hierar-
chy of the nine Muses, daughters of Memory, which lies beneath Socrates' scale
of human soul-types, whose moving principles are determined by the degree of
their memory of the truth.
30
At the conclusion of his speech, Socrates relates a
tale about the Muses, who appear in a hierarchy led by "the most beautiful-
voiced Muses" of "heaven" and "divine and human logos" (259d). The power
of the Muses, reflected in the power of the writing they inspire, suggests that only
the poet inspired by the "philosophic Muse"
31
might transcend the dominion of
opinion in order to regain his memory of the vision of the ideas. As the occasion
for the human soul to recollect its journey with a god, Socrates praises the divine
madness of eros; but the role of the Muses, as a model for the comprehensiveness
of the vision which was the goal of that journey, points to the act of recollection
initiated by the written word.
Whereas Socrates began his speech delivered in the name of the nonlover with
an invocation to the "shrill-voiced Muses" (237a), he replaces that address, at the
conclusion of his speech praising the divine madness of love, with an invocation
to the god Eros (257a). But Socrates acknowledges, in their later critical examina-
tion, only the playfulness of the speech uttered under the tyranny of the "despot
Eros" (265c), while he attributes to the "prophets of the Muses" the artfulness of
his speech for the nonlover (262d). The transition to this critical examination of
the love-speeches is in fact accomplished through Socrates' myth about the
Muses, which seems to confirm their symbolic significance of opposition to
Eros. For the Muses punish their own.lovers with death, while they reward them
by turning them into the tribe of cicadas who sing continuously with no need for
the sustenance of life (259b-c). If the god Eros represents the deification of
human desire, the Muses seem to represent the deification of human art, and the
tension between Eros and the Muses reflects the tension between desire and art,
between living conversation and the dead written word, which constitutes the
theme of the dialogue. It is the "fountain of the nymphs and Muses" which
Socrates identifies as the source of the message Phaedrus is finally commanded to
deliver to the "writers in the city" (278b-c), and that message is nothing but the
Platonic dialogue itself.
The "law of destiny" which Socrates announces establishes a hierarchy of nine
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 59
human soul-types determined by levels of memory, based on the model of the
hierarchy of the nine Muses, but this division is preceded by a hierarchy of
soul-types based on the cosmic army of twelve gods with their troops of human
worshippers, each of whom follows the god most like himself. The opposition of
the Muses and the god Eros thus seems to be generalized in the opposition of the
Muses and the twelve gods, as models which determine the classification of
human souls. These conflicting classifications, moreover, establish a division of
soul-types each of which is apparently a unity in itself, but Socrates began his
speech with a universal division of every soul into a winged team of paired horses
and charioteer. Socrates offers no explicit explanation of the relation between the
division of nine soul-types determined by the memory of the vision of the beings
beyond the heavens, the twelve classes of soul determined by the worship of a
particular god, the initial tripartite of the chariot-team as an eikon of the soul,
32
and the unity of "all soul" which provided the arche for his demonstration of love
as divine madness.
By refusing to integrate these diverse divisions, Socrates hints at the tension
between the immortal, self-moving motion of soul as principle of life, and the
nature of the individual human soul, which is itself determined by the tension of
a double principle based on knowledge of the ideai and eros of another indi-
vidual who is worshipped like a god. Socrates' inability to provide a determinate
"arithmetic" of the structure of the soul's whole and its parts is a sign of the status
of his mythic hymn, presented in opposition to the two speeches condemning the
madness of human eros without illuminating that whole which would com-
prehend all the love-speeches as parts. The absence of a determinate analysis of
the structure of the soul's whole and its parts reflects the absence of one unifying
speech on eros as a whole; this problem is rendered explicit only in the later
critical examination, which attempts to unite the opposing love-speeches as parts
of one whole while establishing, as the primary requirement for the true art of
speaking, knowledge of the nature of soul through recognition of its unity and
divisions (cf. 271a, 271d, 273d, 277b-c).
Without resolving the problem of the simplicity or complexity of soul, Soc-
rates transforms the apparently fixed hierarchy announced through the "law of
destiny" by asserting the possibility, within any particular level, of living justly or
unjustly, thereby obtaining a better or worse fate (248e). With this addition,
Socrates seems to imply the independence of moral virtue from determination by
either eros or the vision of the ideas; an unjust philosopher is, it appears, no
more impossible than a just tyrant.
33
Individual responsibility for destiny, based
on the just or unjust fulfillment of any role in life, is grounded in a cosmic
scheme; every fallen soul, accordingly, must go through ten 1,000-year cycles,
each consisting in an earthly life followed by a period of reward or punishment,
at the end of which time the soul must choose its next life.
34
The previous
division of nine soul-types is now reorganized into two, where the first class,
represented by the "undeceiving philosopher" or "one whose love for boys is
conjoined with philosophy" (249a) constitutes the human standard in light of
60 Plato's Phaedrus
which all other classes are defective. Only the philosopher, exempt from the
ten-period cycle, is allowed three successive periods of his choice of life in order
to regain the wings of his soul, foreshadowing the coming reference to the
philosopher's victory in the "three truly Olympic contests" (256b).
The principle that distinguishes the class of philosophers as most godlike
makes the philosopher the standard for all men, and thus serves as the criterion
for distinguishing the human from the subhuman. The minimum requirement
for entry into a human nature is some vision of "the beings which always are,"
which shows up in life as the recollection of the vision beheld in the journey with
god. But this requirement for the soul which is to be human recalls the original
tension between the initiating stimulus of the journey of the human soul in the
love of that god most like itself, and its final purpose of regaining the vision of the
whole.
35
The only possible resolution of this tension lies with the philosopher,
who, in his love of another individual, remains in contact through memory, as
far as possible, with "those things whose presence makes the gods godlike"
(249c). The philosopher is the only human type whose mind is "winged."
The sign of initiation into the vision of the beings is reflected in human life as
the ability to "grasp together by eidos, proceeding from the many perceptibles to
a unity, which is gathered together through reasoning [logismo]" {249bc). It is
the language of initiation into the mysteries which is used, paradoxically, to
describe the activity of grasping a class by collecting many into one through
speech (cf. 249c-d). The ultimate mystery, the divine madness which is the
object of Socrates' praise, is none other than the act of reasoning, the particular
power of the philosopher, who thus constitutes the standard of what it means to
be human. Because of his separation from human interests governed by the
sovereignty of opinion, however, the philosopher cannot be recognized by the
many as the ultimate human standard, but is considered a victim of distraction
rather than of god-filled enthusiasm (249d), The traditional alienation of the
initiate from the polis is transformed by Socrates into the separation of the
philosopher from the many. But the opinion of the many is in a sense true, for
the philosopher is in truth mad; while the madness of eros determines every
soul-type, Socrates only explicitly mentions madness in reference to the
philosopher.
The central sentence of the speech, which follows the description of the
philosophic soul, serves as a reminder that the subject of the whole has been the
fourth kind of divine madness, the experience of unattainable longing for the
memory of what is true evoked by the present vision of the beautiful (249d). The
human soul is a wingless, wing-growing bird, and eros of the beautiful is its
essential nature. If the distinctive experience of the soul is its initiation into "the
most blessed of mysteries," human life is defined by this experience as the
ultimate object of desire, which is nonetheless unattainable for the soul en-
tombed in the body, like "an oyster in its shell" (250c). The divine madness of
eros is nothing but an unfulfillable longing, and yet it is the "best and from the
best of all inspirations" (249e). Socrates seems to describe only the first soul-type,
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 61
the lover of the beautiful; but insofar as every soul is moved by what it finds
beautiful, this one type is itself a true representative of all. Like Zeus among the
gods, the primacy of the philosopher or lover of beauty implies his universality.
All other soul-types represent the internal articulations of the love of beauty,
determined by decreasing levels of the power of memory of the truth. The central
sentence of the speech thus reveals the praise of eros to be in fact an encomium
of memory as the essential requirement of the human condition (250c).
The possibility of the divine madness of eros depends upon the possibility of
recollection, but the soul has fallen into the human condition precisely because
of its state of forgetfulness. Cast out from the "vision of the perfect and simple
and unmoving and happy apparitions seen in the pure light" (250c),
36
human
life is constituted by the longing for the recollection of that whole from which it
is exiled. The power to elicit that recollection lies, not in the obscure likenesses
of justice, moderation, and "the others honored by souls," but only in the
brilliance of the vision of the beautiful (250b). The love-inspiring vision of the
beautiful, perceived through sight, the sharpest of the senses, cannot illuminate
"wisdom and the other beloveds" (250d);
37
Socrates seems to imply that the
beautiful is precisely what shines forth when any eidos becomes apparent, that
the manifestation of any invisible eidos is the beautiful itself.
38
But the shining
seductiveness of the beautiful inspires a state of amazement,
39
characterized by
the loss of self-control and by the absence of self-understanding (250a); in his
exaltation of the vision of the beautiful, Socrates hints at the distortion involved
in his attempt to praise the madness of eros over against the moderation of all
human art.
The center of the speech is marked with the definition of the madness of eros
as eros of the beautiful; the value of that madness lies in its power as reminder of
the crucial experience which determines the nature of every soul. Socrates now
proceeds to translate that crucial experience in terms of its reflection in human
life, through a portrait of the effect of the beautiful on the lover who desires it.
The forgetfulness exhibited by one who is not newly initiated, or by one who has
been corrupted, obliterates fear and shame, and thus allows the lover to surren-
der to pleasure, "mounting in the way of the four-footed and begetting children,"
or "pursuing pleasure against nature" (25 la). In contrast, the memory of the
newly initiated, or uncorrupted, producing the old awe of the vision of the
beings, leads to the lover's "revering the beautiful one as a god" (251a). In the
presence of his beloved, the lover is overcome with shuddering, sweat, and
burning heat. The stream of the beautiful, which flows from the beloved, enters
the lover through his eyes and warms him, watering the passages of his wings,
allowing the hard and choked ducts to become soft so that the wings can grow
from roots all over the soul (251b).
40
Eroti c passion is marked by the intense
mingling of pain, from the pricking and throbbing in the roots of the wings, with
temporary pleasure, from the sight of the beautiful one, warming and moistening
the passages (251c). The very account which praises the lover's restraint from
surrender to pleasure portrays the experience of eros in the language of sexual
62 Plato's Phaedrus
love;
41
the image of the soul which is apparently in complete separation from the
body suggests the relation between sexual desire and the principle of upward
motion.
42
The lover's need for the healing powers of his beloved, as well as the lover's
reverence for his beauty, results in disdain for the conventions of the city. The
sufferer from the divine madness of eros, no less than the sufferer of human
madness, is forgetful of mother, brother, and friends, inattentive to property and
its maintenance, disdainful of laws and good appearances, and willing to give up
all freedom and become a slave to the beloved (252a). The lover, suffering divine
or human madness, not only abandons any self-centered desire for gain, but
neglects all the demands of family and city. The tension between the privacy of
eros and the public claims of the city, already manifest in the contempt for the
philosopher by the many, remains the common assumption of both the speeches
which praise and those which condemn the madness of eros.
43
Having described the suffering of the lover, Socrates in his inspired state relates
the gods' name for the condition which men call eros.
44
The claim to know the
language of the gods constitutes the hubris of the "not exactly metrical" verses
which Socrates recites from the hidden poems of the Homeridae (232b): "Mortals
call him 'Winged Love' [Erota potenon], immortals The Winged' [Pterota], be-
cause of the necessity of wing-growing" (252t*-c). The poet's self-deceptive hu-
bris in claiming to know the language of the gods is inseparable from the self-
deceptive hubris of the lover himself, who imitates the gods without awareness of
his imperfection. Only the immortals, being fully winged, perceive the necessity
for the growth of wings on the part of the lover, while mortals, deprived of the
natural power of the wings, attribute the perfection of the divine to the state of
unsatisfiable desire. In the hubristic verses which Socrates recites, Eros is re-
vealed as the god, insofar as the deification of love illuminates the process
operative in the creation of all men's gods: love, the state of desire or need, is
mistaken for that perfection for which it strives, just as each god must represent
the assignment of perfection to the particular desires of individual men. A trans-
formation of the original story of the maiden Oreithyia, carried off by the god
Boreas, thus underlies the portrait of every human soul as victim of the "winged
god,"
45
captured by its desire for the idealization of its own self-identity.
The lover, in choosing a beloved, finds a mirror for the nature of the god he
worships; since, however, the lover can discover his proper beloved only by
searching within himself (253a), the madness of eras is nothing but the lover's
experience of grasping by memory the nature of the god he follows.
46
The
circularity of the law of destiny is, then, reflected in the portrait of the lover, who
chooses a particular beloved as a mirror of the god he follows in accordance with
his own nature, while developing that nature by conducting himself in imitation
of that god. Just as the crucial experience of the vision of the beings is both the
ground and the result of the level of awareness which determines the "type" to
which each individual belongs, so the distinctive worship of a particular god is
both the ground and the result of the lover's choice of a beloved and the conduct
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 63
of that relationship. But the experience of love for another individual is neither
identical with nor independent of the soul's memory of the vision of the ideas;
the problem of the relation between the vision of the "beings outside the
heavens" and the pursuit of the god most like oneself thus represents the problem
of the relation between knowledge of the whole and eras based on self-
knowledge.
Through his attraction to a particular beloved, the lover discovers the god he
must follow in accordance with his own nature. The stream of the beautiful
through which the god inspires his follower is therefore diverted upon the be-
loved, who shines, not as the source of illumination, but as the reflection of a
reflection (253a).
The lover, however, treats his beloved as a god, honoring him like a statue
(252d). The dissonance tormenting the soul of the lover is intensified by the
paradox of his desire for a petrification of the self-motion of the beloved's soul
along with his desire for that living response which cannot be received from a
statue. In the luminous appearance of his beloved, the lover sees the perfection
of a god, not recognizing that this perfection is the reflected idealization of the
fragmented perspective of his own individuality. That longing for the whole
which might alleviate the fragmentation of individual perspective is only sought,
madly, in the experience of eros.
47
The same circularity which the lover actively performs in choosing a god after
his own nature and then imitating that god in his behavior, is applied passively to
the beloved, who is chosen for his likeness to the god and then led to develop as
far as possible into that "practice and form" (253b). The lover's activity of model-
ing his own behavior after the god he follows is, therefore, both the reason for
and the result of his effort at "persuading and ordering" the beloved to follow the
same path (253b). This effort can only intensify the beloved's appreciation of the
lover himself, and thus support the lover's lack of "jealousy or illiberal hostility"
(253b); but the lover's effort to make the beloved more like himself seems in fact
to be a sign of the lover's slavery to his own self-love.
48
If, however, jealousy
betrays a lack of confidence in one's own desirability, hence a lack of true self-
love, then the absence of jealousy must signify that love of self in the good man,
who recognizes the worth of his own condition and desires the same for his be-
loved,
49
The problem of understanding eros as a relation between likes or un-
likes
50
a question originally raised by the drama of the dialogueis presented
in Socrates' mythic hymn, not in terms of a static dichotomy, but in terms of a
process of development. As a manifestation of the beautiful, the beloved appears
unlike his lover, and thus reminds the lover of the perfection which he finds
lacking in himself; but the very perception of that beauty requires the likeness of
the beloved to his lover, who seems like a Corybantic worshipper, sensitive only
to the strain of the one god possessing him and unaware of all others (253a).
51
The otherness of the beloved, which is embraced by the lover, seems to be both a
force of attraction, necessary for stimulating the ascent to the vision of the whole,
and a deception, concealing the likeness of the beloved as an obstacle to the vision
64 Plato's Phaedrus
of the whole. The only*!over who might escape this obstacle would be one who
persuaded his beloved to move in his own likeness by pursuing that object of love
which is inanimate and nonindividualized, that is, the vision of "the beings
which always are."
In contrast with the relation between the soul as lover and its inanimate object
of love, the enounter of two individuals would seem necessarily to represent a
bonding of likes. But precisely because they are each independently alive and
responsive, the natural bonding of lover and beloved can have no guaranteed
mutuality. While the lover draws the waters of inspiration from the beauty of his
beloved, his attempt to pour it out upon the beloved takes the form of love-
speeches, persuading the beloved to find his own ideal in the lover who pursues
him while claiming to lead him. When Socrates speaks of the happiness which
the true lover brings to his "captured" beloved (253c), he acknowledges the
element of compulsion in the lover's hunting of his quarry. I f erotic necessity
binds the lover to the beloved by nature, he is compelled to capture the beloved
by art in order to bind him to himself with that same bond.
52
An elaboration of the capture of the beloved requires an examination of the
inner forces of the individual soul, hence a return to the image of the soul, as
yoked horses and charioteer, with which the speech began. The complex di-
visibility of the soul suggested by the original image of the chariot-team is
brought into focus only in the closing section of the speech, in contrast with the
assumption of the unity of the individual soul underlying both the description of
the cosmic army with its divine and human troops, and the description of the
particular lover pursuing the beloved most like the god he follows. The division
of soul comes to light only with the internal condition of civil war, distinctive of
the human soul in contrast with the divine. The two-dimensional scene of the
chariot race, with its competing and colliding teams, is thus given depth by the
drama of the rebellion and compulsion going on within the individual teams
themselves. The development of Socrates' "mythic hymn" suggests that recogni-
tion of the nature of soul as simple or complex depends upon the horizon from
which it is considered; in his mythic hymn in praise of the divine madness of
eros, Socrates thus hints at the difficulty in his later demand for an "arithmetic"
of soul as the necessary basis for a true art of speaking (cf. 273e).
The "soul-chariot" provides an image for the experience of being carried away
by inner forces which seem like alien beings with wills of their own, while
denying any natural unity of these forces with the being who is moved. The
internal strife raging within the divided soul results not only from the attempt of
the charioteer to control his team, but from the struggle with their conflicting
natures of the yoked horses themselves, for "the more beautiful horse is straight,
well-articulated, tall, hook-nosed, white, dark-eyed, lover of honor with modera-
tion and shame, companion of true opinion, needing no whip, driven only by
command and speech, while the other is crooked, heavy, randomly put together,
stout and thick-necked, snub-nosed, dark-colored, with grey and bloodshot eyes,
Daemonic Speech of Socrates
65
companion of hubris and pride, shaggy-eared and deaf, scarcely obedient to whip
and spurs" (253d-e). The clue to the respective functions of the dark and white
horse seems to be provided in Socrates' first speech, where the "two ruling ideas
in us" are said to be the "natural desire for pleasure" and "acquired opinion
striving for the best" (cf. 237e), while the absence of a higher principle reflects
the absence of a consideration of soul apart from body.
The white horse, restrained through shame and wonder by the command of
the charioteer, wets the whole soul with sweat; the dark horse, leaping forward
toward the beloved, is restrained by the bit, which covers his tongue and jaws
with blood.
53
In the portrait of the cosmic army, the destruction of the wings of
the soul is not simply the subsequent effect of, but the very condition of, its fall
from the upper region; in the portrait of the dissension within the individual soul,
the punishment of the dark horse is not simply the result of a willful act of the
charioteer, but is necessarily concomitant with his natural response of falling
back in reverence before the beautiful (254c). In the framework of the cosmic
drama, it is the human soul that acts as tragic hero, aspiring to what is inevitably
beyond reach; in the framework of the internal drama, it is the dark horse that
takes over the role of tragic hero, humbled and made wise through suffering (cf.
254e).
The hubristic dark horse, stout and snub-nosed, looks just like Socrates him-
selfl
54
Insofar as the dark horse has taken over in the internal drama the role
played by the whole soul in the cosmic drama, Socrates would seem to mistake
the whole for one part, to project his own soul as universal; in presenting the dark
horse as an image for himself, however, Socrates in fact reveals his self-
identification with one part of "all soul." The dark horse, who is ugly and evil,
not even susceptible to the power of speech, the source of the troublesome
driving that plagues the charioteer of the human soul, is nevertheless the moving
principle of eros, which Socrates praises as the source of our greatest blessings. In
this dark horse, which provides the distinguishing characteristic of the human
soul-team in contrast with the divine, Socrates sees himself.
I f the dark horse is by nature a rebel, the white horse is by convention a
gentleman and good citizen of the polity of the soul.
55
While the dark horse
seems to be Socrates' image of himself, the white horse displays its unlikeness to
Socrates through its role in the erotic experience; the white horse, tall and
beautiful, is the beloved, only dragged by his rebellious partner into the activity
of a lover. Ruled by the fear of shame and the love of honor, the white horse
seems to represent the hidden presence of politically determined opinion in the
individual soul. The white horse is, then, an image of Phaedrus's soul, into
which Socrates looks, as in a mirror whose reflection is distorted by its own
qualities, to see himself; the inclusion of the white horse in Socrates' image of the
soul demonstrates the connection between his art of erotics and his pursuit of
self-knowledge. Between the passionate dark horse and the restraining charioteer
of Socrates' eikon of the soul, the white horse, torn in both directions, serves as a
66 Plato's Phaedrus
necessary bond; Socrate^who praises the divine madness of the true lover, can
communicate with Lysias, who praises the detached sanity of the nonlover, only
through the mediation of Phaedrus, torn between them (cf. 257b).
If the human soul is to follow the divine so that the lovers lead a blessed life on
earth, the dark horse must submit to the restraint of his partner or to the compul-
sion of the charioteer, while the white horse must submit to the spoken com-
mands of the charioteer. The reflection of this process in the dialogue consists in
the submission of nature, in its subhuman manifestation, to human opinion,
and the submission of human opinion, to nature in its superhuman manifesta-
tion; the madness of love as Lysias understands it must be subordinated to the
mortal prudence of the nonlover, which must in turn be subordinated to the
divine madness of love, identified with the natural desire for wisdom. The
unacknowledged unity comprehending the parts of the chariot-team in Socrates'
eikort of the soul is thus the appropriate image for the unacknowledged unity
comprehending the three speeches on eros.
56
It is, however, only by yielding to the compulsion of the dark horse that the
charioteer is brought to the radiant face of the beloved, then carried through
memory to the nature of the beautiful, apprehended as a statue with moderation
and purity (254b). The transformation of the charioteer in the presence of the
beloved links him more closely to the natural force of desire moving the dark
horse than to the conventional force of shame restraining the white one. The
moderation of acquired opinion, praised by the nonlover in Socrates' first
speech, may be a greater obstacle than the madness of human eros to the
fulfillment of the divine madness of philosophic eros praised in Socrates' mythic
hymn; the victory of conventional moderation over the human madness of eros
may, at the same time, represent the fundamental obstacle to the transformation
which would realize the potential value of that alienation from the madness of
eros suggested by Lysias's silent art of writing. The possible convergence of
Socrates' erotic dialectics and the Platonic dialectic art of writing seems to require
the same rejection of acquired opinion, the same acknowledgment of non-self-
sufficiency, which is exhibited by eros in its human, no less than its divine,
manifestation.
Because Socrates understands the nature of eros in light of the imperfection of
desire, his mythic hymn, unlike the first two speeches, is composed from the
viewpoint of the lover, not the beloved; when Socrates finally turns to an analysis
of the response of the beloved, he focuses attention on the beloved himself
becoming a lover.
57
The beloved, who is honored by his lover as if he were equal
to a god, is by nature friendly to the lover who cares for him; his rejection of a
true lover can only be the unnatural result of being "set at variance by some
schoolfellows or some others" (255a). These deceptive companions who mislead
the beloved, claiming "it is shameful to associate with a lover" (255a), must be
identical with those associates who deter the growth of the wings of the soul,
replacing memory of the truth with the forgetfulness of human opinion (cf.
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 67
250a). With the passage of time, however, this unnatural influence on the
beloved is overcome by the destiny of the attraction of likes, which leads him to
respond to a true lover with like affection (255b).
58
The possibility of mutual affection between lover and beloved, brought into
question by the speech of Lysias, is guaranteed by the "impossibility of friendship
between the evil and the necessity of friendship between the good" (255b).
Socrates deals with the problem of justice in love by replacing eros with friend-
ship, and assuming the inevitability of such friendship only between the good.
59
The self-forgetfulness of the inspired lover nonetheless overwhelms the beloved,
who must rank this affection above that of "all other friends and kin" (255b). The
lover's self-forgetful good will, which converts the beloved to a lover, is revealed
through the intimacy of "speech and companionship" (255b). The possibility of
reciprocity in love depends upon the lover's ability to illuminate himself with
beautiful speeches in response to the natural beauty which illuminates the be-
loved. The replacement for the visual image of the beautiful, which was said to
be lacking for "wisdom and the other beloveds" (250d), consists in the art of
speaking, which has the power to render perceptible the beauty of the soul.
To demonstrate the evolution of mutual friendship into mutual desire, Soc-
rates returns to his earlier description of the experience of the lover. From its
source in the beautiful, the stream of longing rushes toward the lover,
60
filling
him and overflowing, rebounding back to the beautiful one and filling his soul
with love (255c).
61
The desiring lover is thus transformed into a reflection of
beauty, which in turn flows back through the eyes of the beloved, exciting the
passages of his wings, watering and rousing their growth (255d). The beloved,
lacking understanding and self-knowledge, sees himself in his lover as in a
mirror. The requited love (anterota) of the beloved condemns him to a self-love
which is not even recognized as such, but is considered mere friendship (255e).
Despite the apparent mirroring, the desire of the beloved remains only a reflected
image [eidolon) of the lover's desire for him;
62
Socrates seems to suggest, in his
praise of divine eros, that love is always for desire itself and not for the object of
desire.
63
In the process of his conversion, the beloved finds his unruly horse "swelling
and confused," ready to grant any favors to the lover, though he is opposed by his
partner and by the charioteer through shame and speech (256a). In contrast with
the speechless passion of the dark horse of the beloved, moving him to embrace
his lover, the dark horse of the lover, having suffered and grown wise, has
apparently become articulate in demanding of the charioteer some enjoyment for
his pains (25 5e). In the struggle which ensues, if the "better of mind" are
victorious, "the lovers lead a blessed and harmonious life on earth, self-ruling
and well-ordered, becoming finally light and winged" (256a). This enslavement
of the evil forces in the soul so that the virtuous may be free represents the
"greatest good possible from either human moderation or divine madness"
(256b). The victory of the self-ruling lovers in one of the "three truly Olympic
68 Plato's Phaedrus
contests" (256b), must beadentical with the victory, inr one of his three periods on
earth, which the philosopher is required to achieve according to the "law of
destiny" (cf. 249a).
But Socrates does not forget that his love-speech is addressed to Phaedrus, the
beloved whose reflected desire he is attempting to arouse. He therefore expands
the rewards of love to include the blessings which come to those who lead a life
"more commonplace" and "without philosophy" (256b). For those souls ruled by
the love of honor, the pair of horses cannot be fully disciplined, since, in the
absence of control by the charioteer, the unsteady guardianship of the white
horse may be lost in moments of "drinking or carelessness" (256c). Nevertheless,
the strength of right habits and the infirequency of such moments of carelessness
allow these lovers to "pass through life as friends, though not such friends as the
others," maintaining their pledges of love and departing at last with their wings
beginning to grow (256d).
In confirming the blessings of divine madness, Socrates again introduces a
cosmic law: "Those who have begun the upward journey can never again pass
into darkness and the journey beneath the earth" (256d). I f Socrates has indeed
provided the principles for the interpretation of muthos in his opening discussion
(cf. 230a), the journey beneath the earth, which would seem to represent the
punishment of embodiment in a subhuman condition (cf. 249b), must in fact
describe the victory of the bestial within the human soul. The nourishment of
the wings of the soul by the feast of the beings as the necessary requirement for
the human condition, is dependent upon the experience of eros, for the vision of
the beautiful one awakens the memory of the lover, which arouses the growth of
the wings of his soul. The destruction of the wings of the soul, hence the
cessation of the upward journey, is the punishment for not loving, hence the
condition for banishment from the upper region, which is itself the punishment
for not seeing. The "law of destiny" governing the interaction of lover and
beloved is inseparable from, though not identical with, that governed by the
memory of the plair^truth.
In the attempt to exhibit the comprehensiveness lacking in the previous
speeches, Socrates' recantation must subsume, under its praise for the madness
of the true lover, the ground for its rejection of the nonlover. The private
familiarity (oikeiotes) of the nonlover, mixed with "mortal moderation," illus-
trated in the first two speeches by their appeal to the interests of the beloved, is
now revealed as a matter of economics, "mortal and thrifty" (256e). The slavish -
ness of that moderation which the many praise as virtue, Socrates identifies as the
cause of "nine thousand years of wandering on earth and being mindless at last
beneath the earth" (257a). The journey beneath the earth, which represents the
victory of the subhuman, is thus identified as the fate of the nonlover praised in
the previous speeches. Just as banishment from the truth and the corresponding
absence of love are presented as both causing the human fall and identical with
the punishment itself, so the narrowness of mortal prudence is not simply the
Daemonic Speech of Socrates 69
cause of some subsequent punishment, but the very nature of that punishment as
experienced in human life.
Although Socrates began his speech with an address to the beautiful youth
whom he wished to deter from accepting a nonlover over a lover, he concludes
with an address to Eros (257a). The tension between the beautiful beloved and
eros, understood as desire for the beautiful, Socrates attempts to resolve by
making eros itself beautiful, that is, revealing its "divinity." But the success of
Socrates' attempt to establish eros as a worthy beloved depends upon the success
of his effort to lead the beloved Phaedrus toward becoming a lover. A speech
attempting to arouse desire in the nonlover must be the persuasive speech of a
lover, whose own self-esteem causes him to lead the beloved in his own image.
That Socrates is indeed such a lover is confirmed by his request that he be, "even
more than now, honored by the beautiful," and thus gain the favor of Phaedrus,
now torn in two directions (257a~b).
Socrates accepted Phaedrus's proposal of a competition by challenging Lysias,
not simply as an individual, but as a representative of the use of writing for the
practice of deception in the pursuit of self-interest; in the course of this competi-
tion, Socrates attempts by persuasion to gain the following of Phaedrus, not
simply toward himself as an individual, but toward "love with philosophic
speeches" (257b). Socrates can fulfill his rhetorical purpose of persuading Phaed-
rus only insofar as he fulfills his philosophic purpose of relating the truth about
eros. In his mythic hymn to Eros, Socrates establishes the ground for the inter-
dependence of knowledge of being and knowledge of soul which he demands as
the necessary condition for the true art of speaking or writing (cf. 277b-c). But
while the blessing of love lies in its power as a reminder of the vision of the
whole, the pursuit of a particular individual nevertheless condemns the lover to a
fragmented perspective on the whole that he seeks. The sweet speech of the
divine lover, which washes away the bitter taste of the speech of the nonlover,
cannot uncover the tension within the condition Socrates lays down for the true
art of speaking.
V
TH E A RT OF SPEA K I N G A f rD TH E
PRI N CI PL ES OF DI A L ECTI CS
Now I myself am a lover, Phaedrus, of the activities of dividing and bringing
together, in order to speak and to think; and i f l think there is another who is able
to seethemany by nature collected into one, 1 follow in his footsteps as if hewere a
god. And whether I name rightly or wrongly those able to accomplish this, god
knows, but I have called them until now dialecticians. (266b)
I f the unifying theme of the dialogue is the Platonic defense of
an art of writing, expressed through the voice of Socrates, the
drama must present a Socrates alienated from himself, who
would defend in speech that which his lifelong activity con-
demns in deed. But the Platonic defense of the art of writing,
which is in fact expressed through the Socratic condemnation
of its dangers, must itself be based upon the principles Socrates
lays down as the necessary foundation for adequate speaking or
writing. The question of beautiful writing, which immediately
follows the delivery of the speeches on eros, is therefore inter-
rupted by a digression which reveals Plato's alliance with Soc-
rates against the universal assumption of the rhetoricians, who
maintain the independence of an art of persuasion based on
knowledge of the opinion of the many.
This interruption of the question of writing for the sake of
the discussion on speaking is accomplished through Socrates'
myth about the cicadas chirping over their heads in the midday
sun; the story of these servants of the Muses Socrates interprets
as a warning to himself and Phaedrus of the need to continue
dialogue in the struggle against the soporific singing which
distracts them. The conflict presented in the myth, between
slavery to the seductiveness of such singing and the freedom of
critical detachment from its charms, is reflected in the digres-
sion it initiates, in which Socrates puts on trial a personified art
of speaking, who claims to be a necessary supplement to
knowledge of the truth for the purpose of persuasion.
The material for an investigation of this art of speaking is by
some chance or fate, as Socrates remarks, provided by the
speeches on eros. The examination of Lysias's speech leads to
a principle dividing those terms with a determinate reference as
the ground for agreement in discussion, from those with dis-
puted meaning as the ground for the rhetorical power of decep-
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 71
tion. On the basis of this principle, which points to the unac-
knowledged ambiguity of eras, Lysias's speech is criticized for
the apparent absence of a determinate definition to begin with
and for its consequent lack of logical order. The examination
of Socrates' speeches, in contrast, leads to the demand that "all
speech" be constructed like a living animal, having its parts in
proper relation to the whole. On the basis of this principle,
which illuminates the articulation of eros as one whole divided
into its divine and human parts, Socrates' two speeches can be
regarded as one; in that light, his playful speeches can display
their serious value as a demonstration of the ideas of collection
and division. Through the critical examination of the speeches
on eros with regard to the structure of the whole and its parts,
Socrates acknowledges the principles of dialectics to be the true
object of his eros.
Having established these principles of dialectics as the neces-
sary foundation for all art, Socrates can criticize the refine-
ments presented in contemporary books on rhetoric as mere
preliminaries to any true art of speaking. In his final struggle
against the rhetoricians' claim to teach an art based on knowl-
edge of the likely, Socrates confirms the dependence of knowl-
edge of likenesses on knowledge of the truth, even for the
purpose of persuasion. In opposition to the rhetoricians'
slavishness to human opinion, Socrates displays his own
commitment to a superhuman project: insofar as knowledge of
its subject matter with regard to the whole and its parts is the
condition for any art, such knowledge of soul is the necessary,
even if unattainable, condition for an art of persuasion.
I N THE PRAYER WHICH CONCLUDES HIS "MYTHI C HYMN" TO EROS, SOCRATES RE-
calls the speech of Lysias, the occasion for his own delivery of the speech of a
nonlover and hence for his necessary recantation. In response to this prayer,
Phaedrus questions Lysias's willingness to write another speech in competition
with Socrates, and thus innocently compels a return to the central problem of the
dialogue: "What, then, is the manner of writing beautifully or not? Must we not,
Phaedrus, question Lysias about this and the others, whoever has written or will
write anything, whether political document or private, in meter as a poet or in
prose as a private man?" (258d). Having identified the central subject of their
investigation, however, Socrates suddenly interrupts himself with a myth about
the cicadas chirping over their heads; as a result of this digression, the question of
the nature of writing itself only reappears at the end of an examination of the
72 Plato's Phaedrus
problem of good or bacTspeaking and writing in general (259e).
1
The perplexity
raised by the order of this critical discussion in fact reveals the necessary path for
the fulfillment of the philosophic purpose of the dialogue as a whole: the Platonic
alliance with Socrates in defense of dialectics against the claims of the rhetori-
cians, must be presented as the primary condition for the Platonic opposition to
Socrates in defense of the art of writing.
The first level of the Platonic defense is introduced by Phaedrus, whose very
nature points to the ambiguous power of the written word. Phaedrus is fearful
that Lysias will refrain from writing out of love of honor, provoked by the
reproaches of the politicians who disdainfully call him a logographos (257c).
Despite his own enthusiasm for written speeches, Phaedrus readily believes that
shame is a powerful source of restraint from writing, for "the greatest and most
important men in cities are ashamed to write and to leave writings behind them
through fear of being called sophists by posterity" (257d). The common suspicion
against the sophists' profession of wisdomthat it is a concealed love of honor
is appropriately linked with the suspicion against the activity of writing,
2
for the
necessarily public character of the written word indicates its possible grounding
in the desire for honor.
3
If Phaedrus's mere concern for opinion motivates his
present hesitation about Lysias's continued competition, it nevertheless
foreshadows the Socratic condemnation of writing based on its potentially sophis-
tic nature, the illusory appearance of wisdom without its reality (cf. 275a).
4
Socrates first takes up the discussion on the level which Phaedrus introduces,
arguing that the same love of honor which might restrain Lysias actually moves
the proudest of the politicians to leave writings behind them, since they seek
immortality through the propagation of written law (257e).
5
I f the paradigm of
writing is the written law, it is because the law is the fitting model for the
authoritative and immutable written word which Socrates condemns.
6
Socrates'
image for the legislator in the assembly is the poet in the theater, on the basis of
their desire for fame and their appeal to the opinion of the many.
7
By identifying
the work of the law-writer and the poet as models for the product of writing,
Socrates discloses the danger of the written word as a potential obstacle to the
activity of dialectics, which requires the subjection of all established opinion to
examination.
The lawmaker's desire for immortality as "writer in the city" serves as the
ground for Phaedrus's agreement with Socrates that writing speeches is not in
itself necessarily shameful; this agreement, based on the evidence of human
opinion, must, however, be transformed into the recognition that the shame of
writing consists in speaking or writing shamefully or badly (258d). While Phaed-
rus is convinced of a beneficial opinion whose implications remain unknown to
him, Socrates necessarily subjects their agreement to question: "What then is the
method of writing beautifully or not?" (258d). The answer to this question is to
be wrenched not merely from Socrates and Phaedrus together, but from Lysias
and any other past or future writer. Phaedrus responds to this project with great
enthusiasm: "You ask if we should? What else should one live for, so to speak,
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 73
but for such pleasures? Certainly not for those which can only be perceived with
previous pain, as with almost all pleasures of the body, which are therefore justly
called slavish" (258e).
It is immediately after arousing Phaedrus's eagerness for an investigation into
the shamefulness of writing that Socrates suddenly interrupts the discussion with
a tale about the Muses. I f the Platonic dialogue were not a drama but a treatise,
Socrates would presumably follow his crucial question with a discussion of the re-
quirements for beautiful writing. But Phaedrus's response apparently induces
Socrates to introduce his digression of the myth, and indeed the whole discussion
on the art of speaking, Socrates seems compelled to introduce his digression pre-
cisely because Phaedrus so eagerly betrays his understanding of speech as the
highest pleasure in life, surpassing, simply by its freedom from pain, the pleasures
of the body. Socrates must transform Phaedrus's unqualified appreciation of
speech in and of itselfan appreciation apparently unaltered by the beautiful
speech just deliveredbefore they can pursue the discussion of writing. Socrates'
recognition of this necessary transformation is indicated by his immediate re-
sponse to Phaedrus: "We have leisure, so it seems" (258e), apparently contradict-
ing his original contention that their encounter is "a matter more important than
business" (cf. 227b).
8
The leisure required for the digression which interrupts the
problem of writing is in fact seriously and urgently demanded by Phaedrus's
identification of speech as mere leisure entertainment.
The myth with which Socrates introduces his digression is, appropriately, a
story about slavery and freedom. Socrates warns Phaedrus that they must not be
lured by the siren voices of the cicadas chirping above their heads, like slaves
slumbering at noon,
9
but must sail past these sirens, conversing (dialegomenous)
like free men (259a). The story Socrates relates describes the slavery of these
sirens themselves as the price paid for their love of the pleasure of song. Precisely
because it paints such an accurate portrait of Phaedrus's nature, Socrates declares
it unfitting for Phaedrus, lover of the Muses, to be unaware of the story (259b).
The content of the first myth in the dialogue, introducing the written speech of
Lysias, is a story of being carried away by love, interpreted by the sophoi as a story
about death. Socrates now offers his own myth, where love is the cause of death.
At the birth of the Muses, those men who were overwhelmed with the love of
song, forgetting food and drink, sang and sang until they died; but the reward for
that overwhelming love is the transformation of these men into the genos of the
cicadas, who sing continuously, without food and drink, until they die. At their
death, the cicadas become messengers, able to obtain the favors of the Muses for
their respective lovers. Socrates insists, however, that these intermediaries bestow
their gift only on those who sail past their seductive charms (259a);
10
he therefore
concl udes his tale with praise for Urani a and Cal l i ope, those Muses concerned
with "heaven" and with"logos divine and human" (259d).
n
The favor Socrates
ironically seeks through the intermediaries who chirp above them is the strength
to resist their charms; that favor is necessarily sought from the particular Muses
worshipped by those who pass their lives in philosophy (cf. 259d), for only these
74 Plato's Phaedrus
Muses encourage resistance to the dangerous seduction practiced by their follow-
ers. The eldest Muses must be identical with those gods in whose footsteps
Socrates follows, those he has always called "dialecticians" (cf. 266b); only for
these Muses is Socrates' love so strong that he will accept death in preference to a
life not devoted to their service.
12
The myth of the servants of the Muses is recited, as Socrates remarks, exactly
at noon (259a), midway between Phaedrus's sunrise entertainment with the feast
of Lysias's speech and his sunset communion with Socrates in a prayer for inner
beauty.
13
This story, which Socrates interprets as an admonition to continue
conversing in the struggle against the soporific seduction of song, forms the bond
between the speeches on love and their critical examination. The myth of the
cicadas interrupts the investigation of writing that follows the love speeches and
stimulates a discussion on the art of speaking, which establishes the principles of
dialectics as the necessary foundation for any art of speaking or writing. The
structure of the dialogue thus reflects the content of Socrates' central myth, for
the madness of being carried away is, as a result of the tale of the cicadas, averted
through the practice of dialectics.
14
The cicada tale constitutes the central myth between the first, a story of desire
and death which Socrates interprets in light of the problem of self-knowledge,
and the last, a story about the discovery of the art of writing; while it is linked with
the opening myth, in relating a tale about the convergence of love and death, it is
linked with the concluding myth in affirming the "deathlessness of the genos"
expressed through their "unceasing production of song" (259c). The story of the
lovers of the Muses thus points to the function of writing as a bond in the conflict
between eros and death. The immortal singing, which charms its audience into
slavery, luring them from the duty of dialectics, must represent, then, the "things
written in books" that threaten the same seduction (cf. 227d). The opposition
between dialegesthai and deathless song is thus the proper prelude for the opposi-
tion finally established between dialectics and the written word that seduces its
readers away from their own thinking through its pretense of "clarity and firm-
ness" (cf 275c).
In the immediate sequel to the myth, Socrates lays down the criterion for what
is well or beautifully spoken: "The mind of the speaker must know the truth
about each of the beings of which he is to speak" (259e). But Socrates is im-
mediately challenged by the essential position of the opponent, enthusiastically
reported by Phaedrus: "About that I have heard, dear Socrates, that for one who
is to be a rhetorician, it is not necessary to understand what is truly just, but what
would seem so to the many who are to judge, not what is truly good or beautiful,
but what will seem so; for it is from these that persuasion comes, and not from
the truth" (260a). Socrates' ironic response is an implicit rejection of the position:
he insists that this "word of the wise" cannot be accepted on the basis of opinion
but must be examined in light of its possible truth (260a). Socrates begins this
examination by obtaining Phaedrus's agreement on the absurdity of praising the
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 75
ass under the name of the horse; without acknowledging either the likeness
which might allow for such confusion or the intention which might motivate it,
Phaedrus affirms that such a replacement would be "most laughable" (260c). But
Socrates belittles this laughable deception by comparing it with the danger of a
clever enemy, like the rhetorician ignorant of good and evil, who attempts, on
the basis of studying the opinions of the many, to praise evil under the name of
good (260c).
15
Phaedrus, who seems to have forgotten Lysias's praise for self-
concern under the name of nonlove, readily agrees to the poor fruit such rhetoric
would harvest from the seed it had sown (260d).
Fearing, however, the harshness of their reproach to the art of speaking,
Socrates feels compelled to bring her to life so that she might speak in her own
defense.
16
In her brief apologia the art of speaking in fact justifies Socrates' own
customary activity; while not compelling anyone to learn to speak without know-
ing the truth, she claims only that, without her power, knowledge of the truth
does not itself constitute an art of persuasion (260d).
17
In order to judge this
claim, the art of speaking must go on trial before the arguments of the "Law-
man" for whom Socrates speaks; these "noble creatures" are to persuade Phaed-
rus, "father of beautiful children," that a real art of speaking that does not grasp
the truth does not and never will exist (261a). Socrates thus replaces his former
prayer to Eros, requesting aid for his guidance of Phaedrus (257b), with a plea to
the Laconian arguments for aid in refuting the claim of an art of speaking based
on mere opinion.
The accusation begins with a definition of rhetoric as "an art which leads souls
through words, not only in law courts and other public assemblies, but in private
as well" (261a).
18
With no further qualification, the tekhne of leading souls
(psuchagogia)
19
through logoi is a definition of rhetoric which does not preclude
Socrates' initial stipulationthat the mind of the speaker know the truth about
that of which he speaks (259e)any less than Phaedrus'sthat the speaker must
know what will seem true to his listeners (260a). The power of psuchagogia
constitutes the "whole of rhetoric," transcending distinctions between small and
great, serious and trifling issues (261b). But Phaedrus, both witness and jury in
this trial, betrays his own lack of awareness for, having just recited Lysias's
persuasive love speech, he responds to Socrates' generalization by denying that
he has ever heard of any private use of the art of rhetoric. As a model of the
private art of contention, Socrates chooses the work of Zeno, whose written
speeches make the same things appear like and unlike, one and many, at rest and
in motion,
20
thus representing the private equivalent to contention about the just
and unjust carried on in the law court, or contention about good and evil carried
on in the public assembly. The contentious writing of the "Eleatic Palamedes"
Socrates ironically compares to the "arts of speaking" written by Nestor and
Odysseus at their leisure during the Trojan Warl
21
Every example for the art of
contention Socrates playfully identifies as a product of writing; insofar as the act
of writing renders public the most private matters, Socrates defends his intended
76 Plato's Phaedrus
unification of public and private rhetoric while, af the same time, illuminating
the truth behind Phaedrus's doubts about the possibility of a completely private
art of rhetoric.
On the basis of the likeness between the advocate in a lawsuit, the speaker in a
public assembly, and the Eleatic Palamedes, Socrates describes the art of conten-
tion, which constitutes the whole of rhetoric, as the ability to "produce a likeness
between all things capable of being alike (in some respect), and bring to light the
likenesses produced and concealed by others" (261e). Contrary to his apparent
intention, Socrates in fact indicates that the art of contention, based on the
discovery of likenesses, could not be wholly independent of the activities of
collection and division, which he will soon introduce as the principles of all
thought and speech (265d-e). Even if this ability to discover likenesses were used
simply as a means toward the end of deception, Socrates affirms, it could fulfill
the condition of an art only insofar as it is free from self-deception, for "the art of
leading his hearers to pass from one thing to its opposite by small degrees through
likenesses, but of escaping that himself, cannot be possessed by one who is
ignorant of each of the beings" (262b). Knowledge of the nature of each being is
constituted by knowledge of its likeness or unlikeness with "the others," the other
beings, that is, as well as the images in which they are reflected; complete
knowledge of the whole represents the necessary condition for an art of conten-
tion.
The interrelated structure of likenesses among the beings as parts of an or-
ganized whole, reflected through the various individual perspectives on that
whole, is none other than the superuranian feast beheld by the various gods with
their troops of human followers. Yet, for the human soul, the pursuit of a
particular god is only the necessary and not the sufficient condition for the vision
of the ideas: the necessary if not sufficient condition for knowledge of the struc-
ture of being must be knowledge of soul, with self-knowledge as its necessary
basis. Knowledge of likenesses, introduced as a requirement for the true art of
speaking, begins to look like a description of Socratic erotics. In demonstrating
that the ground of the art of speaking is the conjunction of knowledge of being
with knowledge of soul, Socrates defends the art of speaking as a necessary
supplement to knowledge of the truth, while at the same time defending knowl-
edge of the truth as the necessary condition for any art of speaking. But whether
this desirable art is in fact possible, Socrates seems to put into question, for
without complete knowledge of the whole, deception would seem inescapable,
while the very nature of human memory presupposes the partial absence of such
complete knowledge.
In order to investigate the possibility of a true art of speaking, Socrates proposes
as an appropriate model the speeches just delivered; Phaedrus, who finds their
critical discussion rather "naked," readily assents (262c). The perfect paradigm of
the way in which, "knowing the truth, one would lead his listeners by playing in
speeches," is provided by the "two speeches" (262d); Socrates seems to remain
intentionally ambiguous in referring either to his own two speeches, or to the
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 77
speech of Lysias and one of his speeches, or to the speech of Lysias and his own
two speeches taken together as one.
22
Socrates attributes the paradigmatic status
of the speeches to "some kind of chance, as it seems" (262d); he ironically
replaces the responsibility of the Platonic art of writing with his praise for the
inspiration of the "gods of the place" and the "prophets of the Muses."
23
When Phaedrus requests further clarification in their examination of the
speeches, Socrates commands him to read the beginning of the speech by Lysias
(262d). But Socrates suddenly interrupts this reading just before Phaedrus recites
Lysias's concealed definition of eros; in the course of this interruption, Socrates
establishes a principle of rhetoric which Phaedrus will be compelled to apply to
the speech of Lysias when he returns to it. The repetition of the opening lines of
Lysias's speech thus forms a frame for the statement of a fundamental principle of
rhetoric: "Then he who is to develop the art of rhetoric must first make a
methodical division, grasping the character of each form [eidos], between those
in which the multitude is necessarily led astray and those in which they are not"
(263b). The art of rhetoric, for obvious reasons, has less power to deceive with
regard to those terms on which we areor think we are"in harmony," such as
iron or silver, than with regard to those on which "we stand apart from others and
from ourselves," such as justice or goodness (263a-b).
What Socrates identifies in his mythic hymn as the unmoving beings beyond
the heavens, are now introduced as representatives of the class "in which we
wander." Forgetfulness of the vision of the truth, reinforced by the apparent
clarity of perceived images and acquired opinion, causes us to "wander" in our
understanding. The ambiguity of the ideas, which results from our forgetfulness,
thus constitutes a condition for the power of deception; but only an awareness of
ambiguity, insofar as it sets in motion the process of thought, could serve as the
necessary condition for the activity of recollection. The unwavering stability
which Socrates now assigns to those terms on which we assume ourselves to be in
agreement, is finally attributed to the nondialectic written word, which remains
"external to the soul of the learner" (cf. 27 5d). Only when the potential am-
biguity of the product of writing is acknowledged, thus obliterating trust in its
clarity and firmness, does it have the power to set in motion the internal process
of thought (cf. 277d). The very ambiguity which allows for the rhetorical power
of deception thus provides the power of the Platonic dialogue to speak and
remain silent when fitting, to defend itself against the inherent dangers of the
authoritative written word.
24
Applying Socrates' principle of division, Phaedrus assigns eros to the class of
ambiguous terms, for eros allows itself to be described as "harmful to the beloved
and the lover" and again as "the greatest of goods" (263c). Phaedrus's understand-
ing of the ambiguity of eros must rest on some recognition of the two speeches as
one whole; while Socrates praises Phaedrus for this recognition, he directs his
attention to each speech as an isolated whole, in order to investigate the artful-
ness with which it treats the ambiguity of its subject. The artfulness of a speech,
Socrates simply asserts, depends upon the immediate establishment of a defini-
78 Plato's Phaedrus
tion; he therefore raises the question of whether Lysias "compelled us to suppose
eros to be some one of the beings which he chose and kept in mind while
composing the rest of the logos" (263d-e). As a proper model, Socrates com-
mends the artfulness of his, own speech; with this singular allusion, Socrates
seems to refer to his "false and impious" speech, which does indeed begin with
an explicit definition of eros (257d238a), as opposed to his recantation, which
only works its way toward the circular definition of eros as "eros of the beautiful"
(249e).
25
By calling to mind this contrast between his two speeches, Socrates
casts doubt on the validity of the rhetorical principle that simply demands the
stipulation of some definition or other as the proper starting point for any in-
quiry.
Having established the criterion for an artful speech, Socrates commands
Phaedrus to reread Lysias's beginning, allowing him to continue, this time, just
until he has reached the implicit definition of eros: "For lovers repent of the
kindnesses they have done when their desire ceases" (264a). Phaedrus, who reads
just as he listens, takes no advantage of the repeatability of the product of writing
for a reconsideration of the rhetorical motives behind Lysias's implicit definition;
persuaded by Socrates of the absence of a definition, Phaedrus acquiesces in
Socrates' condemnation of the speech as an artless product of writing. This
condemnation of Lysias's speech, understood as the paradigm of the product of
writing, takes place through the repetition of its opening lines, which forms a
frame around Socrates' discussion of rhetoric and the power of deception; the
digression which establishes the division between the ambiguous and the clear on
the basis of the opinion of the many stands in the same relation to Lysias's speech
as the digression establishing the principles of "collection and division" stands in
relation to the general analysis of writing.
Just as he returns to the analysis of writing only after the digression on speaking
(cf. 274b), Socrates returns to the examination of the speech by Lysias only after
his digression on the power of deception. Lysias is criticized for "attempting to
swim up the speech from its end," then for "throwing out the remainder in a
flood" (254a-b). When Socrates asks Phaedrus if he sees some "speech-writing
necessity" for the apparently random arrangement of Lysias's speech (264b), he
implicitly criticizes the absence of any deductive taxis in its argument, while
suggesting, at the same time, that Lysias may have had some rhetorical purpose
for either avoiding or concealing such taxis. Phaedrus, who does not understand
the difference between the logographic necessity of rhetoric and that of dialectics,
believes Socrates flatters him in suggesting such accurate discernment; he seems
to have already forgotten the immediately preceding discussion of ambiguity, for
it is precisely the ambiguity of eros, concealed by Lysias's rhetorical skill, which
gives his speech its power to deceive. The content of Lysias's speech, which
conceals the whole of eros in order to condemn one part, is mirrored in its form,
which conceals its own principle of arrangement in order to appear exhaustive.
In order to evaluate the apparent absence of logical order in the speech by
Lysias, Socrates introduces a principle of logographic necessity by which to judge
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 79
"all speech" or "every speech" (pas logos, 264c); the ambiguity of pas logos
reflects the ambiguity of pasa psuche with which Socrates began his account of
the immortality of soul as self-moving motion (cf. 245c). Appropriate to this
analogy, Socrates' principle demands that all speech/ every speech be put together
"like a living animal, having a body of its own, not headless nor footless, but
having a middle and limbs, composed [gegrammena) in fitting relation to each
other and to the whole" (264c). As a standard by which to examine the structure
of the whole and parts of his inspired speeches on eros, in contrast with the
apparently random organization of Lysias's speech, Socrates establishes the prin-
ciple of logographic necessity demanding that "all speech" be constructed with
the organic unity of a living being.
26
But this principle Socrates presents without
any grounds for its necessity, and with no clarification of the basis for knowledge
of the one whole and its many parts. The justification for this principle of artful
speech has been supplied, paradoxically, only through Socrates' mythic hymn
praising the divine madness of eros, with its imagistic account of the journey of
the soul to the vision of the beings. In defending his standard for the artful
construction of logos against the challenge of the rhetoricians, the Platonic
Socrates ironically invokes his divine inspiration, while suppressing any acknowl-
edgment of the art which is in fact responsible for the "speech-writing necessity"
displayed in the construction of his allegedly inspired speeches.
In refusing to acknowledge the potential value of the art of writing for the artful
construction of organically unified speech, Socrates takes the speech of Lysias as
the paradigm of the product of writing, while imitating the error of Lysias in
condemning one part as if it were a whole. In contrast with the principle that all
speech must be organized like a living being, Socrates likens the indifferent
circularity of Lysias's dead, written speech to the circular epitaph on the
tombstone of Midas the Phyrgian, in which any line can come first or last (264e).
Unlike the birth, growth, and decay of a living animal generated by desire, the
frozen voice of the bronze maiden, with its eternal repeatability, serves as a fitting
image for the lifeless declaration of the nonlover; the inorganic form of Lysias's
speech mirrors the condemnation of eros in its content. The juxtaposition of
Lysias's inanimate, written speech with Socrates' demand for logos constructed
like a living animal thus indicates the tension between the erotic spontaneity of
living speech and the deathlike fixity of the product of writing.
Yet Socrates presents his requirement that all speech be constructed like a
living animal as a principle of writing (gegrammena) (264c); the irony of applying
to the product of writing the demand for ensouled logos is in fact suggested by
language itself, since the word for a living animal (zoon) is also used to denote
any figure or image, as, for example, in a painting. The resolution of the tension
between the natural spontaneity of living speech and the rigid fabrication of the
product of writing seems to depend upon the possibility of a product of writing
constructed by art with the taxis of an organic whole, yet able to function like an
ensouled being. Such a product of writing is-in fact represented by the dialogue
itself, for it is precisely by demanding recognition of its hidden structure as an
80 Plato's Phaedrus
organic whole, hencocalling into being the activity of interpretation as its own
fulfillment, that the Platonic zoographia displays its potential for coming to life.
In order to illustrate the unity of logos as living animal, Socrates chooses as
appropriate models his own speeches on eros; only on the basis of this principle is
Socrates able to bring together the two speeches as one "body," dividing that
whole into its left-handed and right-handed counterparts. Since, as Socrates
reminds Phaedrus, the speeches were delivered "madly," it is only their present
investigation which can uncover the unity of love as madness, based on the
discernment of its two eide, that of "human diseases" and that of "divine release
from the usual laws" (265a). Socrates looks back with the calmness of human
reason on his playful image-making, produced while a slave to the "despot Eros"
(265c):
27
"Somehow making a likeness of the erotic pathos, perhaps touching
some truth, perhaps being led away elsewhere, having mixed a not completely
unpersuasive speech, we playfully composed a measured and euphonic hymn to
Eros, despot over myself and you, Phaedrus, and guardian of beautiful boys"
(265b-c).
Removed from the tyranny of eros, Socrates can now see his two speeches as
one paidia,
28
passing from blame to praise (265c). But the serious value of that
paidia lies, not in the pretense of each speech as an erotic address, but in their
joint manifestation of two inseparable forms {duoin eidoin), "whose power, if art
could grasp it, would not be ungratifying'* (265d). The missing ground for the
rules of rhetoric previously discussed is now indicated by these two principles;
"seeing and bringing together the scattered many into one idea, so as to make
clear by definition each about which one wishes to teach" (265d) and "being able
to cut by forms {eide) along the natural joints, not trying to break off any part, in
the manner of a bad carver" (265e). Socrates identifies, as the foundation of all
speaking and thinking (265b), what he declared in his mythic hymn to be the
essential requirement for the human soulthe recollection of the vision of the
beings beheld in the journey with a god, reflected in human life as the ability to
"grasp together by eidos, proceeding from the many perceptibles to a unity,
which is gathered together through reasoning (logismo)" (249b-c).
The illustration of these principles which would be gratifying for all tekhneif
it were capable of grasping themis to be found in the speeches on eros:
collection of the scattered many into one idea is exemplified by the way in
which, just now, Eros was defined, whether well or badly, so that the speech
gained clarity and consistency, while the principle of division is exemplified by
the way in which, just now, the dyad of speeches assumed one eidos in common,
taking madness to be naturally one eidos in us, then cutting its left-handed from
its right-handed part, so that one speech could justly revile human eros while the
other could praise divine eros (265d-e). In examining his two speeches on eros
which have now become one dyad, Socrates claims to have discovered a dyad of
principles for all reasoning; but in his separate accounts of the principle of
collection and division Socrates reveals each to be in itself a dyad which necessar-
ily involves its own collection of a whole and division of parts, for collection of
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 81
one idea must be accomplished by "seeing together" (sunoronfa) the scattered
many while division by eide must be accomplished by first assuming one com-
mon eidos.
While Socrates claims simply to articulate a dyad of complementary princi-
ples, he in fact points to their unequal status. The principle of collection into one
idea through definition is distinguished by its motivation of teaching from the
principle of division by eide according to natural articulations; the dual purposes
of communication and discrimination constitute the ground of separation be-
tween the dual principles of all reasoning. In exemplifying the principle of
collection Socrates speaks of the consistency of his one speech based on a single
definition; in exemplifying the principle of division he speaks of his dual
speeches, each representing one part of a common eidos. The tension between
the two principles is reflected in Socrates' implication of the tension between the
determination of the definition of Eroswhether accomplished well or badly
and the determination of the form of madness as a whole of parts. The distinct
status of the two principles has in fact been indicated by the immediately preced-
ing examination of the love-speeches from which Socrates extracted without
defense a set of rules for the rhetorical art. The principle of collection is adum-
brated in the demand for determination of that class of ambiguous terms in
which rhetoric shows its power of deception, which led to the requirement for
establishing a definition at the beginning of any logos as the basis for further
deductions (263b-d); the principle of division, on the other hand, is adumbrated
in the demand for the construction of all logos displaying the organic unity of a
living animal with parts in proper relation to the whole (264c). While the first
rule provided the standard for evaluating the superiority of Socrates' first speech
over the speech of Lysias, the second rule provided the standard for understand-
ing the organic unity of Socrates' two speeches as parts of one whole; the demand
for a definition at the beginning of every logos was first introduced as the neces-
sary starting point of the speech Socrates delivered in the name of the nonlover
(237c-d), while the demand for collection of one common class as a basis for
further division was introduced as the starting point of the speech Socrates
delivered in praise of divine eros (cf. 244a-245c).
Socrates claims to illustrate the principles of collection and division through
his speeches on eros, but he emphatically announces that the definition of love
as a whole and the division of madness into parts has been achieved "just now."
The exemplification in the love-speeches of the principles of all reasoning is
accomplished, not by the speeches as originally presented, but only by the
present critical examination which uncovers at the same time the collected
whole and divided parts of the two love-speeches as one.
29
Recognition of whole
and part, as foundation of speech and thought, seems to be necessarily obscured
by the madness of love for another individual, which may nevertheless constitute
the necessary human path toward such recognition. Socrates indicates the only
possible resolution of that tension by identifying the truth of his divine madness
to be eros of the principles of collection and division. The only beloved, whoever
82 Plato's Phaedrus
he may be, whom Sdfcrates is willing to follow aslhough he were a god, is one
who is able by nature to gain insight into the one whole and its articulated parts;
in giving the name 'dialectician' to one who pursues this activity, only god knows
whether Socrates speaks rightly or wrongly (266b).
30
The ability to make the same thing appear good and evil, originally attributed
to the power of rhetoric (cf. 261c-e), is now shown to result from the suppression
of that whole which comprehends its good and evil parts, each of which may be
deceptively presented as a whole in itself. Socrates thus accounts for his original
insistence on the impossibility of any speech being wholly false, insofar as the
falseness of a speech necessarily lies in its incompleteness (cf. 23 5e). The presen-
tation of Socrates' speeches as self-contained wholes, which conceals the true
whole of which they are only parts, is based on their apparent intention as
persuasive addresses to a particular beloved. The structure of the whole and its
parts that allows Socrates' two speeches to emerge as one living being, hence to
illustrate the principles of dialectics, requires the ability to look back on them,
subsequent to their delivery, as repeatable entities; comprehension of the
speeches as an articulated whole seems to depend upon overcoming their illusory
appearance as independent, spontaneous deliveries, through recognition of that
product of writing in which these inspired speeches are imitated.
But the manifestation of the principles,.of dialectics in his speeches on eros
Socrates attributes to chance or fate (cf. 262d, 265d), maintaining the illusion of
the absence of the Platonic art which in fact accounts for the paradigmatic status
of the speeches; he thus reminds us of the distance between the conversation
portrayed as an actual event and the work of artful imitation in which it is
represented. In the absence of mediation by the daimonion, which inspires
Socrates to recognize the incompleteness of a part parading as a whole, the
transformation of eros to philosophic eros seems to require the distance of
objectivity, rendered possible by the art of writing. Without divine inspiration,
the necessary guidance for recognition of the whole to be collected and the parts
to be divided seems to depend upon a "drug" for human memory. This potential
value of the art of writing Plato affirms through the written imitation of Socrates,
who rejects the activity of writing because of its alienation from dialectics, while
attributing to divine inspiration the dialectic analysis of eros accomplished by the
Platonic art of writing.
With the identification of the activity of collection and division as the pursuit
of those belonging to the class of "dialecticians," Socrates excludes from that
class Phaedrus, Lysias, Thrasymachus, and the others-the teachers of an art of
speaking for "those willing to pay them as kings" (266c). Phaedrus is willing to
grant dialectics its own territory, but only by maintaining the independence of an
art of rhetoric, exhibited by "the things written in books on the art of speaking"
(266d). Thanks to Phaedrus's "beautiful reminder," Socrates proceeds to recite a
quick summary of the "refinements of the art" taught by all the leading rhetori-
cians of the day (266e-267d).
With an almost bitter playfulness, Socrates displays his knowledge of rhetorical
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics
83
principles of organization, specifying the order of introduction, narrative and
testimony, proofs, probabilities, confirmation, and refutation. He offers ironic
praise of the worthy Theodorus (who explained refutation and further refutation
in accusation and defense), of the illustrious Parian, Evenus (who invented
covert allusion and indirect praise and censure), of Gorgias and Tisias (who
discovered the superiority of likelihood to truth), of the most clever Prodicus
(who found the mean between long and short speech to be "the moderate"), of
Hippias (who would agree with him), of Prodicus (with his brilliant figures of
speech), of the names presented by Licymnius, of the principles of correct
diction invented by Protagoras, and of the precepts of Thrasymachus the mighty
Ghalcedonian, able to arouse in his audience gentle pity and fierce anger on
appropriate occasions; finally, most fittingly, Socrates concludes by praising their
universal agreement on the conclusion of speeches, which some call recapitula-
tion while others invent other names for it. Despite the great force of these
refinements that Phaedrus finds so impressive, at least in public assemblies,
Socrates insists on examining the "gaps in their warp" (268a).
To exhibit the essential difference between the principles of dialectics, which
Socrates identifies as the necessary foundation of all art, and the refinements
presented in books on rhetoric, Socrates chooses three examples of art
medicine, tragedy, and musicwhich seem, perhaps particularly in their con-
junction, to provide fitting models for illuminating the character of the art of
speaking. To the knowledge of causes and the sense of judgment necessary for the
medical art of Eryximachus and Acumen us, Socrates compares empirical ac-
quaintance with mere techniques of treatment (268b). To the masterworks of
tragedy produced by Sophocles and Euripides, he compares the ability to make
long or short, pitiful or threatening speeches (263c). To knowledge of the princi-
ples of harmony, Socrates compares the ability to play the highest or lowest notes
of the scale (268e).
The indignant physician would, according to Phaedrus, accuse the mere
technician of madness, if he claimed to practice an art,
31
while the disdainful
tragedian would laugh at his ridiculously unworthy competitor. But the artful
musicianfor whom Socrates speaksis himself mousikos and would never
harshly reproach the self-deceived claimant to an art; practicing persuasion in the
service of instruction, the true musician would gently explain that the techniques
employed in the artful pursuit of appropriate ends cannot themselves constitute
the art, but only its preliminaries (268e). After reformulating, on this basis,
Phaedrus's proposed responses for the artful physician and tragedian, Socrates
replaces the artful musician with an imitation of the mousikos rhetorician, thus
suggesting their identity. In the eyes of the "mellifluous Adrastus or Pericles,"
32
the refinements of rhetoric, which Phaedrus so admires, must be recognized as
mere preliminaries; the techniques of rhetoric, not grounded in knowledge of the
proper ends of persuasion and unable to guarantee their own proper application,
are merely instruments, deceptively parading'as an art, whereas the persuasive
use of such techniques in the composition of a harmonious whole could only be
84 Plato's Phaedrus
accomplished by the tttie master of an art of rhetoric. Speaking in the voice of
this artful rhetorician who imitates the speech of the artful musician, Socrates
ironically reproaches himself and Phaedrus for their harshness against the pre-
tenders to an art of rhetoric whose inability to define its nature is based on their
ignorance of dialectics (269b).
Submissive to this reproach, Phaedrus is eager to hear "how and from where
someone would be able to procure the true art of rhetoric and persuasion"
(269d). In order to fulfill the necessary conditions for the art of rhetoric, Socrates
insists, one must add knowledge and practice to natural ability; he says nothing
about the possibility of teaching.
33
Denying the claims of Lysias and
Thrasymachus as teachers of the art, Socrates returns to Pericles as "the most
perfect rhetorician to have come into being" (269e).
34
Pericles is assigned a
unique position as the only nonmythical possessor of an art of speaking; but the
source of his knowledge, as the necessary supplement to natural ability, is the
encouragement toward "idle talk and meteorologizing about nature" which he
gained from the teachings of Anaxagoras (270a).
35
With this ironic description of
Periclean rhetoric and its theoretical foundations, Socrates seems to suggest that
the fitting teacher of "the truly rhetorical and persuasive art" would have to
exhibit the combination of an interest in the political power of persuasion with
an interest in the study of nature. Socrates himself, who rejects both these aims
and claims to possess only knowledge of his own ignorance,
36
necessarily brings
into question the teachability of this true art of persuasion.
The implicit tension between the desirability and the possibility of the art of
persuasion is disclosed through Socrates' analogy between rhetoric and the art of
healing. The artfulness of medicine and rhetoric consists in their ability to
analyze, in the one case, the nature of the body, in the other, of the soul. The
analogy between medicine and rhetoric rests on a consideration of the parallel
relation of the body with the soul, of health and strength provided by drugs and
diet, with desired opinion and virtue provided by speeches and lawful practices
(270b).
37
The validity of the analogy between medicine and rhetoric presupposes
the independence of each as an autonomous art (hence the strict parallelism of
body and soul) in the absence of a comprehensive whole; Socrates, therefore,
conceals the inadequacy of his model by suppressing his recognition of the
ambiguity in his demand for knowledge of "the whole" as the necessary condi-
tion for knowledge of the nature of the soul (270c).
38
In support of his own interests, Phaedrus tries to preserve the analogy between
medicine and rhetoric, calling Hippocrates, who claims the same dependence on
knowledge of the whole for knowledge of the body, as a witness (270c).
39
Unwill-
ing to accept this witness without further examination, Socrates claims to speak
for Hippocrates and the "true logos," affirming that the first requirement for
artfully investigating the nature of anything whatsoever consists in knowledge of
its simplicity or complexity. The demand for knowledge of the simplicity or
complexity of any nature seems merely to repeat the principles of collection and
division which Socrates first discovered, through the examination of his love-
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 85
speeches, as the foundation of all speech and thought. But in addition to these
fundamental principles demanding the collection of a whole and the division of
its parts, the investigation of any nature whatsoever requires knowledge of its
power of action and passion, and of its proper agents and patients. For if the
nature under investigation is simple, its power of acting or of being acted on, and
by what, must be determined, and if it has many forms (eide), each of these must
be numbered, then treated as if it were a simple being whose actions and passions
could be articulated. Socrates does not claim, however, that such an investiga-
tion could be accomplished for the complex being as a whole, and the whole
may be more than the sum of its parts. The simple conjunction of the medical
analysis of the nature of the body with the rhetorical analysis of the nature of the
soul may not in itself constitute an analysis of the nature of man. The tension
which implies the inadequacy of the analogy between medicine and rhetoric as
parallel and independent arts is thus reflected in Socrates' deduction from that
analogy of the principles for knowledge of any nature as a whole.
40
The recogni-
tion of whole and parts, presumably identical with the activity of collection and
division which Socrates called "dialectics" is nonetheless confirmed by the "true
logos" to be the criterion for the proper practice of any tekhne, for "any other
method would be like the path of a blind man" (270e).
The standard established for the proper practice of any tekhne remains, there-
fore, the basis for a reconsideration of the rhetoricians' claim to possess an art of
speaking. The true art of speaking must be based upon knowledge of the nature of
the soul, which, in turn, according to the "true logos," must be based upon
knowledge of the nature of the whole; whether that "whole" refers to the whole
manbody and soulor to the whole of being, Socrates does not explicitly take
up for consideration. On the basis of this ambiguity in the meaning of "the
whole," Socrates conceals his transition from demanding an analysis of the
nature of the beings about which one speaks to demanding an analysis of the
nature of that to which one speaks (270e). The justification for this apparently
arbitrary transition, however, lies in Socrates' address to those teachers who
claim to possess a universal art of persuasion irrespective of the content in-
volved.
41
Since the goal of the rhetorician's art is to "produce persuasion in the soul"
(271a), whoever seriously claims to teach a rhetorike tekhne will, in the first
place, "write with complete precision and make soul visible, whether it is one
and naturally homogeneous or, like body, multiform" (271a); secondly, he will
defirfe itsfpctions and their objects as well as its passions and their agents; thirdly,
he will arrange the classes {gene) of speeches and souls, teaching why certain
souls are necessarily persuaded by certain speeches and others not (271a-b). If
speeches represent the agents of action on the soul as well as the products of
action by the soul, the final requirement for the adaptation of classes of speeches
to classes of soul is necessarily derivative from the first requirements, which seem
merely to apply to the subject of soul the principles Socrates just articulated as
the requirements for investigation of any nature whatsoever (cf. 27 Id). But while
86 Plato's Phaedrus
the first account ofc the activities of collection^-and division defined the most
general principles for artful speech and thought (265d-e), and the account of
division by eide ascribed to Hippocrates and the "true logos" defined the princi-
ples for investigation of the nature of anything (270d), in examining the claims of
the art of persuasion^Socrates applies these principles to the analysis of soul and
says nothing about division of the beings. Only if knowledge of soul were indepen-
dent of knowledge of the beings could the rhetorike tekhne be an autonomous
whole on the basis of which persuasion could, presumably, be pursued indepen-
dently of instruction.
That Thrasymachus is now taken up as a potential example of the true teacher
of an art of rhetoric, shortly after his designation as the most powerful in evoking
pity, arousing audiences to anger, and calming them (267c), suggests the tension
between the effectiveness of an ability to persuade and the requirements which
Socrates lays down for an art of persuasion. The very recognition that the ability
to persuade particular souls by particular speeches may indeed be only a matter of
judgment or natural talent and not a tekhne must itself constitute that knowledge
of soul which the "contemporary writers on the art of speaking know very well"
(271c); professing to teach a tekhne of persuasion, these magicians necessarily
conceal their knowledge of its impossibility.
The primary requirement for an art of speaking is an exposition of the nature
of soul as simple or complex. In response to Phaedrus's original inquiry about the
truth of a muthologema, Socrates had insisted on the urgency of the need to
examine the simplicity or complexity of his own soul (cf. 230a). That priority,
which Socrates recognized through knowledge of his own ignorance, is now
identified as the universal condition for any art of speaking. But Socrates' own
attempt to articulate the idea of soul only followed the "human and shorter" path
of producing a likeness, while the accuracy he now demands from the artful
rhetorician Socrates once considered a "wholly divine and long narration" (cf.
246a).
42
Although Socrates began his mythic hymn with the promise of an
account of "the truth about the nature of soul divine and human" (245c), the
structure and content of his speech are in fact determined precisely by the
unresolved tension between the simplicity and complexity of soul.
Nor is the demand for precise knowledge of the nature of soul satisfied by
Socrates' critical examination of the inspired speeches as parts of "one body."
Since the left-handed madness of human eros is distinguished from its divine
counterpart by its compulsion toward "beauty of the body," and it is the body, as
Socrates implies, that accounts for the complexity of the soul, the problem of the
one whole which would comprehend the two separate speeches condemning
human eros and praising divine eros is itself a reflection of the unresolved
question of the simplicity or complexity of soul. Socrates' love-speeches and the
present critical discussion seem to mutually illuminate the doubtfulness of
achieving precise knowledge of the structure of the soul's whole and its parts as
the necessary condition for the true art of speaking.
Socrates announces the standard which rhetoric must fulfill if it is to claim the
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics
87
title of an art to "whomever seriously teaches a rhetorical art," namely, "those
now writing arts of speeches" (271b-c). The possession of a dialectic knowledge
of the structure of the soul's whole and its parts as the necessary foundation for
any art of persuasion is a demand addressed to those who write about the art of
speaking, not to those who merely practice it. Socrates has justified his own
apparent exemption from the requirements he announces, by attributing his own
power of persuasion to divine inspiration (cf. 262d). Phaedrus requests a repeti-
tion of the principles laid down for an art of speaking because he is, presumably,
confused by Socrates' interwoven references to speaking and writing. But this
repetition, which Socrates introduces as the "method of writing by art," seems to
present the necessary conditions only for persuasion in speech: "Since the power
of speech happens to be soul-leading," the student of rhetoric must acquire
knowledge of the number and quality of the eide of soulwhich, as Socrates
now adds, determine the natures of individual menand of the number and
quality of the eide of speeches, and of the effects produced by certain kinds of
speeches on certain men for the purpose of persuasion; he must be able to
recognize with his senses a particular individual as belonging to a particular class,
to discern the proper time for speaking and remaining silent, and to judge the
right occasions for particular speeches with certain purposes (27Id272a).
Precisely those characteristics which Socrates finally denies to the written word
(cf. 275d-e) are now identified as the method of writing artfully. But Socrates
concludes his repetition by attributing the manifesto to the writer of a treatise on
the art of speaking, who questions Socrates and Phaedrus for their agreement
with his principles (272b). The investigation of the standards for artful persuasion
in speech, which was in fact occasioned by the written speech of Lysias, begins
with a consideration of the criteria for artful speech or writing (271b-c), ad-
dressed to those who write about the art of speaking, and is repeated as a model
for an artfully written exposition on the art of speaking (272b); the analysis of the
rhetorike tekhne, identified as an art of writing whose subject matter is the art of
speaking, thus mirrors the hidden structure of the discussion occupying the
entire second half of the dialogue in its covert transitions from the problem of
writing to that of speaking and writing, to that of speaking alone, returning only
in conclusion to the problem of writing itself. In this convoluted path of imita-
tion, Plato speaks through Socrates, who speaks through the voice of a writer on
the art of speaking in order to demand, in any written exposition of the art of
speaking, the application of the principles of dialectics to the nature of soul if
rhetoric is to fulfill its claim as a tiue art of persuasion.
In response to the standards Socrates establishes for the true rhetorike tekhne,
Phaedrus can remember no other method, while he divines that the attainment
of an art of speaking based on a dialectics of soul is "no small deed" (272b). For
the first and only time in their encounter, Socrates tells Phaedrus, "You speak
truly" (272d). Although he is willing to examine all their words, looking for an
easier and shorter path, Phaedrus cannot remember hearing of any simpler
method from Lysias or any others (272c); he has, apparently, already forgotten
88 Plato's Phaedrus
Socrates' description offcis eikon of the soul as a human and shorter path chosen
instead of the divine and longer analysis of the idea of the soul (cf. 246a). Rather
than remind Phaedrus of this path, however, Socrates chooses to warn him of the
inherent danger in any image-making, with its substitution of the likely for
knowledge of the true.
Socrates attempts, once more, to conduct a fair hearing for the art of persua-
sion against the demand for the principles of dialectics as the necessary founda-
tion of all art. Socrates therefore speaks as advocate for the "wolf,"
43
claiming
that the effective rhetorician need not know the truth about the just or the good,
but only about "the likely," which is the real source of persuasion (272e). Be-
cause Phaedrus suddenly remembers the importance of this defense for the
claimants to the art of speaking, Socrates carries on the argument with such a
claimant in the person of Tisias, who offers the "wise and artful" definition of
"the likely" as the opinion of the many (273b).
44
In the struggle against Tisias, to
whom Phaedrus has "listened sharply," Socrates claims Phaedrus's allegiance for
the defense of dialectics, repeating that the success of arguments based on proba-
bility depends upon their likeness to the truth (273d).
While the strength of the argument of the "wolf' lies in its identification of the
criterion for art with the effectiveness of persuasion irrespective of truth, Socrates
practices his own persuasion in demonstrating that even the fulfillment of that
end is best accomplished by an art based on knowledge of the truth (274a). The
ability to number (diarithmesetai) the natuwtof one's listeners, to divide the
beings by eide and to bring together the many mto one idea, is therefore con-
firmed as the condition for the true art of speaking (273d-e). But the demand for
an "arithmetic" of the natures of men provides a standard by which to measure
the deficiency of Tisias's claim to an art of persuasion without defending the
ground of its own possibility. In what seems to be a mere repetition of the
conditions for the precise art of speaking, Socrates replaces the original demand
for knowledge of the soul by the demand for knowledge of the nature of the man
to whom a speech is addressed, without explicating the relation between the
division of human "natures" and the division of the eide of the beings together
with their collection into an idea.
Having first established the general principles of collection and division
(265d-e) and having then applied these principles as the condition for the artful
investigation of any nature (270d), Socrates offered at the center of the discussion
two accounts of the conditions for the art of persuasion, demanding knowledge of
the simplicity or complexity of soul and of the effects of the interaction of various
classes of speeches and soul (271a, 27 Id); only now, in this examination of the
rhetorician's claim to possess an art of persuasion based on mere probability, does
Socrates define the true art of speaking on the basis of the standard of dialectic
knowledge of the subject matter of any speech together with knowledge of the
perspective of the listener to whom that subject is being communicated. Socrates
thus frames the two central accounts, with their demand for an investigation of
the nature of soul, by reflecting the initial analysis ascribed to Hippocrates and
Art of Speaking and Principles of Dialectics 89
the "true logos," with its requirements for the investigation of any nature, in this
present response to Tisias, with its demand for dialectic knowledge of the nature
of those to whom a speech is addressed together with knowledge of the beings as
an articulated whole. One further analysis of the true art of speaking or writing,
at the conclusion of the examination of the status of the written word (277b-c),
will in turn reflect Socrates' original account of the general principles of collec-
tion and division as the foundation of all speech and thought, and thus provide
one last frame to complete the structure underlying the apparently random order
of the discussion on the tekhne of logos.
In his final account of the standards for an art of persuasion, which precedes
the analysis of the status of the art of writing, Socrates implies the identity of
knowledge of likenesses with knowledge of the truth, where truth must be under-
stood as the interaction of kinds of souls with the objective structure of the ideas,
and artful speech as the harmonious convergence of persuasion and instruction.
The principles which Socrates lays down for the art of speaking seem to hide,
under the assumption of a harmonious parallel between knowledge of the beings
and knowledge of soul, any recognition of the internal tension between the stable
identity of the beings and the ever-moving motion of soul; Socrates justifiably
qualifies his articulation of the standard of the "truly persuasive art," which must
be pursued "to the extent of human capacity" (273e).
In contrasting Tisias's " slavish ness to fellow slaves" with the way of dialectics
as "servitude to our good and well-born masters" (274a), Socrates recalls his
original rejection of "buying honor among men at the price of sinning before
the gods" (242d); he confirms the repudiation of his first erotic speech, intended
to capture Phaedrus's admiration, in favor of his recantation, addressed finally to
the god Eros. The demand for much toil in the pursuit of these great ends echoes
Socrates' warning to Phaedrus against the slavishness of succumbing to the
seductive charms of the servants of the Muses (259a). Socrates ascribes the
demand for "servitude to the gods" to "those wiser than we" (274a); but since
those whom Socrates follows like a god are none but the "dialecticians," this
servitude to the gods must be nothing other than the activity of dialectics.
While Socrates' hymn to Eros disclosed his apparent madness as true modera-
tion, the critical discussion of the art of speaking discloses, beneath Socrates'
apparent humility, his true hubris. The condition for a true art of speaking is
determined by nothing less than the standard of complete knowledge of the
collection and division by eide of the beings reflected in all classes of human
perspective; in his demand for the principles of dialectics as the necessary founda-
tion of the true art of rhetoric Socrates points to that desired transformation of
eros to philosophic eros presupposed by his recantation. That the desirability of
the true art of speaking cannot be judged by its attainability Socrates suggests in
his concluding remark, that "it is beautiful to strive after what is beautiful, and to
suffer whatever one happens to suffer" (274b).
V I
* TH E A RT OF WRI TI N G
But he who believes that, in the written word, there is necessarily much playful-
ness, and that no speech, in meter or without, worthy of great seriousness, has yet
been written... but that the best of them, in truth, become reminders to us of
what weknow... perhaps that man, Phaedrus, is such as you and I might pray
we may become. (278a-b)
Socrates' analysis of the relation between rhetoric and dialectics
seems to bring the discussion on the art of speaking to a con-
clusion; but the implicit tension between the standard for any art
based on the ideas of collection and division, and the dubious
status of an art of persuasion, necessarily brings to the surface
the issue hidden beneath the conversation from the outset.
The discussion on the art of speaking thus emerges as a long
digression on the initial question of the value of the written
word, which Socrates recalls through his report of an "Egyp-
tian story" about the discovery of the art of writing. In this
dialogue between two animal-gods, Theuth, the Egyptian
Prometheus, introduces with great pride his new discovery of
the grammata, while the rejection of his discovery by the
sovereign god Thamuz-Ammon seems to be accepted by Soc-
rates as the final word on the value of writing. But the con-
demnation of writing as a poison rather than a beneficial drug
comes from the voice of a supreme and immortal being who
seems to ignore the limitations of the human condition that
might make this dangerous art necessary. The dialogue be-
tween Theuth and Thamuz is a microcosmic Platonic dia-
logue, which requires an interpretation in light of the demand
for the "adaptation of speeches to souls." By insisting on the
danger of the product of writing as an artificial memory which
may usurp the role of living thought, the prophecy of Ammon
in fact points to the potential value of the written word as
"reminder to one who knows." The written words which con-
demn those who trust in their clarity and firmness thus demon-
strate their transcendance of the very dangers they announce.
The dialogue within the dialogue, condemning the written
word for its power to create the illusion of wisdom without the
reality, is appropriately identified as an "Egyptian story," for
the fitting model of that writing which is "truly like the paint-
ing of living animals" is Egyptian hieroglyphics. The opposi-
Art of Writing 91
tion between Greece and Egypt, indicated by the conflict be-
tween Theuth and Thamuz, is thus reflected in the opposition
between alphabetic writing, a representation of living speech,
and hieroglyphic writing, an imitation of the visual appearance
of that to which it refers. The distinction between alphabetic
writing, in which a meaningful whole is constituted by the
combination of meaningless parts, and hieroglyphic writing, in
which a single symbol constitutes a meaningful whole without
the combination of parts, reflects the distinction between the
dialectic exchange of logos and the monologic recital of
muthos. I f the love-speeches in the Phaedrus function as
hieroglyphic symbols, while the logos on rhetoric, dialectics,
and writing provides an alphabet, the very structure of the
dialogue would point to the distance between the Platonic art
of writing and that condemned by Socrates in alliance with the
Egyptian god-king.
Socrates' critique of the silent written word is thus shown to
be a condemnation of a part, and not the whole, of the art of
writing. The discriminating selectivity and power of self-
protection which are denied to the illegitimate logos are,
through that very denial, made manifest by the Platonic logos,
which therefore identifies the legitimate offspring of thought,
not with all living speech in opposition to dead writing, but
with all dialectic speech or writing. Precisely that written work
which betrays an awareness of its own lack of clarity and firm-
ness, and thereby demonstrates its knowledge of when to speak
and when to remain silent, would reveal the possibility of
overcoming the reproach against the shamefulness of writing
alienated from Socrates' erotic dialectics. The Platonic art of
writing thus imitates the lover of wisdom, who disparages the
playfulness of writing in light of the seriousness of dialectic
speech, while bestowing his praise on that product of writing
composed with knowledge of the truth and "really written in
the soul of the learner," hence worthy of the name 'philoso-
pHy.'
W
W WI TH HIS AFFI RMATI ON OF THE BEAUTY OF THE TRUE ART OF SPEAKI NG, RE-
gardless of its questionable attainability, Socrates announces the sufficiency of
their investigation (274b); the art of speaking has become an object of eros,
desirable even if unfulfillable. But Socrates, who has not forgotten the original
question which set their discussion in motion, suddenly interrupts this apparent
92 Plato's Phaedrus
conclusion by introducfng the question of propriety and impropriety in writing.
His interjection of the problem of beautiful writing is all the more surprising
since he has, moments before, provided an imitation of the method of writing
artfully (cf. 271c); that imitation, however, offers a paradigm for artful writing
about the art of speaking, while the question of the value of writing itself remains
unresolved. The problem of writing does not seem able to stand on its own; it
emerges only as a supplement to its own digression dealing with the art of
speaking.
1
After concluding the digression on the art of speaking with the distinction
between speaking or acting for the favor of fellow men and speaking or acting, to
the best of our ability, in a manner pleasing to the gods (273e), Socrates intro-
duces the problem of writing with the question of "how to best please god, acting
or speaking about logoi" (274b). A written speech which condemns the activity of
writing expresses a possible tension between speaking and acting with regard to
speeches. The conflict between what Socrates says about writing and what Plato
does in writing warns us that the standard for speaking about logoi may not
coincide with that for acting.
2
This explicit separation of speech and action,
which introduces the problem of writing, emerges through a consideration of the
difference between human standards and divine; the defense of the activity of
writing, which only appears to be condemned in speech while it is being prac-
ticed in deed, must depend upon human comprehension of the distinction
between man and god. The separation of human and divine eros supplied the
inner articulation for the comprehensive whole of eros as madness, while the
division between the love-speeches collected together and their critical examina-
tion was based upon the distinction between divine inspiration and human art.
The division between divine and human thus underlies the internal structure of
the dialogue as an organic whole, while, as the conclusion of the dialogue
reveals, it provides at the same time the ground for defending the necessity of the
art of writing.
In response to the question of how to please god about logoi, Socrates offers to
relate what he has heard from the ancients (274c). Contrary to his apparent
veneration for the knowledge of the ancients, however, Socrates immediately
questions the willingness to accept human opinion. The tale itself can be passed
on from one generation to another, but the knowledge of its truth cannot. This
separation of acquired opinion and self-discovery, introduced through the ques-
tion of the proper response to the myth, already points to the theme of the myth
concerning the nature of the product of writing. Although Phaedrus readily
agrees that concern for human opinion is laughable, he begs Socrates simply to
repeat what he has heard.
The tale which Socrates reports consists of a dialogue between two Egyptian
animal-gods; Theuth, who proudly presents his new discovery of the grammata,
is rebuked by his sovereign judge, Thamuz, who prophesies the danger of this
"drug" for human memory. At the conclusion of the report, Phaedrus complains
that Socrates easily produces speeches from Egypt or wherever else he pleases
Art of Writing
93
(275b), Socrates reproaches Phaedrus for his greater concern with the speaker
and his origin than with the truth of the speech. But Socrates' ironic criticism of
Phaedrus's resistance to the meaning of the myth serves as a reminder of their
prior agreement, resulting from the entire discussion on the art of speaking, that
the truth of a speech can only be grasped in light of the perspective of its speaker
and its audience.
The myth about writing must, then, be considered in light of its attribution to
the Egyptians, whose antiquarian wisdom is inseparable from their reverence for
their "sacred writings."
3
The Egyptian esteem for the ancestral,
4
their preoccupa-
tion with the dead,
5
the rigidity of their social classes,
6
their acceptance of kings
who are gods,
7
and their association with the love of money,
8
all make Egypt the
fitting source for a story about the art of writing. Interpretation of the mythical
dialogue that Socrates reports thus depends upon the symbolic identification of
Egypt as the ancient, Greece as the modern.
9
The Egyptians worship the dead,
the Greeks the living.
10
Egyptian memory is "hoary with age," the Greeks "all
young in soul."
11
The wise man of Egypt is the priest, of Greece the
philosopher.
12
The Egyptian "type" is a lover of money, the Greek a lover of
learning.
13
The Egyptian god appears as an animal, the Greek god as a man.
14
The Egyptian monarch is a god, the Greek ruler a man.
15
Egypt is a single
empire, Greece a collection of cities.
16
Egyptian law is considered an immutable
divine code, Greek law as the creation of human reason.
17
The political and
philosophic significance of the symbolic distinction between Egypt and Greece is
reflected, not accidentally, in the nature of their distinctive arts of writing. The
Egyptians respect their sacred writings, the Greeks respect living speech. Egyp-
tian hieroglyphic writing may be understood as a direct imitation of the objects it
represents, Greek alphabetic writing must be understood as the representation of
oral speech.
18
The symbolic opposition between Greece and Egypt shows up in Socrates'
myth as an opposition between the arts and the ancestral, or between the human
and the divine. The discoverer of the primary elements of the arts is the god-man
Theuth, the legendary culture-hero who imparts the gifts of civilization to his
people in rebellion against the commands of a jealous god. Theuth is the Egyp-
tian Prometheus.
19
His origin is the Athenian emporium of Naucratis, represen-
tative territory of the Greek polis in the Egyptian empire.
20
The discovery of the
arts shares its origin with the growth of trade and the economic development of
the city; Athens in particular, protectress of the arts, represents the motherland of
their inventor and defender. This godlike discoverer of numbers and letters is,
however, only a technician;
21
he has the ability to bring forth arts, but not to
judge of their usefulness or harm to their users (274e).
22
Theuth must therefore
defend his discovery before the sovereign Thamuz-Ammon, who rules in the
"great city of the upper place which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes."
23
I f
Naucratis represents the modern, the rise of trade and of the arts, identified with
the territory of Greece, Thebes represents the ancient, home of the oracle and his
priests, originally identified with the whole of Egypt.
24
Socrates claims that the
94 Plato's Phaedrus
Greeks call the god thamuz "Ammon," the hidden,
25
and "Ammon" is the
Egyptian name for Zeus.
26
This identity Socrates confirms at the close of his tale
through his analogy between the "prophecy of Ammon" and "the first prophetic
sayings" uttered by the holy oak of Zeus at Dodona (275b).
27
Socrates reports nothing of the dialogue between the sovereign Thamuz and
the technician Theuth concerning the discovery of the numbers;
28
it is the
judgment on the grammata which determines the significance of Socrates' Egyp-
tian story for his conversation with Phaedrus. Theuth, the medicine man, who
has discovered a drug (pharmakon) for human memory and wisdom (274e), is
advised by Ammon, the oracular god-king, to leave the human condition as it is
by nature, without the interference of human art.
29
While we hear the judg-
ment which Thamuz delivers on the discovery of Theuth, we are not told the
outcome of the conversation; just as Zeus found it necessary to punish Pro-
metheus, while leaving in the hands of men his dangerous gift of fire and the arts,
perhaps Thamuz found it necessary to punish Theuth, while leaving in the
hands of men his dangerous discovery of the art of writing.
30
Theuth praises his art for its ability to make the Egyptians "wiser and give them
better memories" (274e); but the ambiguity of "memory" raises the question of
whether a drug for memory is necessarily an aid to wisdom,
31
for the natural
rhythm of thinking may be usurped by the artificial assistance of reading.
32
Theuth, as the royal god charges, is blind to the dangers of his discovery because
of his fatherly affection for his own offspring (275a). Socrates' later reproach
against the dependence of the written work upon the father who must protect it
(275e) is foreshadowed by Ammon's censure of the art of writing, misjudged by
the father who loves it. Man's love for the product of his own activity makes him
praise it for exactly that quality exhibiting, in truth, the opposite power: Theuth
has discovered, not a drug for memory, but only for "reminding" (275a).
The art of writing, which encourages men to neglect the use of their own
memory and lets them believe that they know what they have merely read, in fact
produces forgetfulness. The danger of the art which Theuth discovers but cannot
judge lies in its power to hide its own unnatural nature. Theuth's discovery is a
transgression of the natural limitation which distinguishes mortal man from
immortal god.
33
But this natural limitation of mortality guarantees the inevitably
imperfect health of human memory, and the necessary instrument for the treat-
ment of this disease is the drug of writing. Theuth, the god of writing, is the god
who escorts the souls of the dead, but the god who escorts the souls of the dead is
also the god of healing.
34
It is only insofar as it remains external to our memory,
while concealing such externality> that the drug of writing cannot cure the
disease of mortality. As a drug, writing is both remedy and poison; the danger of
this unnatural invention must be weighed against its power for the restoration of
nature.
35
Only a jealous god, omniscient and omnipotent by nature, could
simply condemn the art of writing for its artificiality. In his condemnation of the
discovery of Theuth, the oracular god-king does indeed reveal its limitations; but
Art of Writing 95
it is precisely the acknowledgment of those limitations which allows the poison-
ous external product of writing to be "internalized" in its capacity for healing.
The justification for the harsh judgment of Thamuz against the danger of the
written word is most appropriately illustrated by Socrates' encounter with Phaed-
rus. Phaedrus has charmed Socrates into wandering around the countryside
outside the walls of the city, leading him by the drug of speeches in books (230d),
just as the nymph Oreithyia is carried off by Boreas only in the company of
Pharmakeia (cf. 229c). The truth of the warning uttered by Thamuz is displayed
in Phaedrus's response to the drug which supposedly captivates Socrates: it is his
eagerness for "reading many things in books" that leads Phaedrus "to think
himself wise without really understanding anything" (cf. 275a). Phaedrus unwit-
tingly makes fun of his own character when, in their examination of the criteria
for all artful investigation, he speaks for the true physician, who would respond to
a mere technician by calling him mad if he imagined himself to be in possession
of the art when he has merely read something in a book (268c).
The essential danger of the written word is its power to produce the appearance
of wisdom without the reality (275b). The written word produces that pretense to
wisdom (doxosophia) which constitutes the most recalcitrant obstacle to the
pursuit of wisdom,
36
Since the attempt to uncover the unmoving ignorance of
doxosophia represents the mission to which Socrates devotes his life, the con-
demnation of the written word by the royal god echoes, most fittingly, Socrates'
condemnation of those with whom he converses.
37
The conversation between
the oracular Thamuz-Ammon and the ibis-headed Theuth is Plato's amusing
imitation of the unwritten dialogue between Socrates and himself. Socrates
reports Theuth's initial claims for the benefit of his new discovery as well as the
judgment on those claims by Thamuz-Ammon; he does not report any response
by Theuth to this critique. The defense which Theuth might have offeredand
the only defense which would legitimately meet the attack of the oracular
godmust be reconstructed by the reader of the Platonic dialogue, which is itself
the implicit self-examination of that unreported defense.
Socrates had introduced his Egyptian story with a distinction between accep-
tance of human opinion and one's own discovery of the truth (274c). The
original division between the story itself as received opinion and one's interpreta-
tion of it as truth undergoes an ironic transformation when Socrates finally
criticizes Phaedrus's resistance to the truth of the myth by drawing a distinction
between the simplistic acceptance of the ancients, who trust in the truth of divine
prophecy, and the scepticism of the moderns, who are concerned only with the
speaker's name and origin. In identifying his myth with the prophetic utterance
of a supreme god, Socrates claims to represent the natural oracular power of an
oak or rock, of Dodona or Delphi. When Socrates speaks of his humanity,
manifested in the particularity of his own origin, he rejects the claim of "spring-
ing from an oak or a rock";
3
now Socrates rejects his individuality as a mere man
among men. Socrates concludes his story by accepting, apparently without ques-
96 Plato's Phaedrus
tion, the prophecy of-Ammon, who reproaches the technician Theuth for trans-
gressing the limitations of nature. But in sharing this very reproach, Socrates
identifies himself with a wise and powerful god-king, and thus implies his own
transgression of human limitations.
39
While Socrates seems to use himself as an illustration of the danger of unques-
tioned acceptance of divine prophecy, it is precisely this danger which is illumi-
nated by the contents of the prophecy condemning the art of writing. In his
paradoxical appearance of embracing the prophecy of Ammon, Socrates thus
recalls his opening remarks on the necessity of understanding the truth of a
received myth in light of the quest for self-knowledge (cf. 230a). Myth, like the
product of writing, possesses a twofold power, for benefit or harm; that which
enables it to function as stimulus to self-knowledge can equally function to
suppress the search for self-knowledge. Writing can be a drug of reminding only
when recognized as no replacement for memory. In alliance with the oracular
Ammon, Socrates thus confirms the status of the muthologema as a paradigm for
the written word. He warns us that the truth of the myth that apparently rejects
the art of writing stands in need of our interpretative encounter. The rejection of
writing represents the truth of the myth only from the perspective of a god;
human understanding of the truth of the myth requires knowledge of the adapta-
tion of speeches to particular souls (cf. 271d, 272b, 273d, 277b-c).
40
The Egyp-
tian stoTy about writing is indeed a jewellike miniature of the Platonic dialogue.
The irony of Socrates' apparent praise for the simplicity of the ancients in their
unexamined acceptance of divine prophecy is immediately revealed in his cen-
sure of an even greater simplicity, exhibited by "whoever leaves behind or re-
ceives the product of writing with trust in its clarity and firmness" (275c). This
clarity and firmness, perceived by the simple, must be the opposite of the com-
plexity of speech which Socrates demands for complex soul (cf. 277c); only
through recognition of its complexity can the otherwise "dead" written word be
brought to life through an encounter with its reader. To be aware of the deceptive
clarity and firmness of the written word is to recognize the warning of Ammon
against its unacknowledged dependence. Awareness of the prophecy of Ammon
thus constitutes the condition for the actualization of the one positive function
ascribed to the written word, its power as "reminder to one who knows" (cf.
275c).
The capacity of the written word as reminder seems to be merely a concession
on the part of the royal god who condemns the written word for its dangerous
power of producing forgetfulness. But the clue to the significance of the capacity
for reminding was already hidden in Socrates' recantation, which he claimed to
deliver in honor of memory (cf. 250c): insofar as man is unlike the gods, hence
not at rest on the back of the heavens and feasting on the vision of the beings
which always are, the value of all "earthly likenesses" lies in their power as
reminders of what was once known. The value which Socrates ascribes to the
beautiful, in initiating the experience of eros as source of our greatest blessings, is
thus finally assigned to the written word, as reminder for one who knows. In
Art of Writing 97
praising the beautiful for its power of reminding, Socrates had concealed its
inherent danger; in disclosing the danger of the written word, he conceals its
inherent power.
In the beginning of their investigation of the speeches on eras, Socrates had
announced that all speech must be put together "like a living animal" (264c),
with apparent reference to its formal structure. He now uncovers the substantive
significance of his apparently formal principle of rhetoric, for the art which
Theuth introduces as a drug for the healing of living beings Socrates identifies as
"truly like the art of painting living beings" (27 5d). If speeches are living animals,
written speeches are like paintings of living animals, not themselves alive, but
only imitations. The illusion produced by an imitation which does not acknowl-
edge itself as an imitation constitutes the apparent clarity and firmness of the
written word, creating that trust which Socrates considers the mark of simplicity
and ignorance of the truth (cf 275c).
The creatures of painting stand forth like animals, but if one asks them a
question they maintain a solemn silence. The product of writing, like the crea-
ture of painting, is not an independent being with a life of its own, able to speak
for itself; it requires its begetter to protect it against unjust abuse. The creatures of
painting do not exhibit the self-moving motion that defines the presence of soul;
the dead, written word, like the painted animal, is frozen in the stream of
motion: "You might opine that they speak as if having intelligence, but if some-
one were to question them, wishing to understand their sayings, they always
signify one and the same" (275d), The product of writing remains the same no
matter who receives it, not knowing when to speak and when to remain silent
(27 5e); the written speech displays no erotic impulse toward a particular audi-
ence. In condemning the nonerotic nature of the written word, Socrates seems to
imply its potential for objectivity. Yet as long as the potential for objectivity
precludes the possibility of erotic selectivity, the written word could not over-
come the limitations which account for its inferiority to living speech.
The repeatability of the product of writing looks like that immutability of the
ideai which renders them possible objects of knowledge. But the process of
coming to know, which must unfold through the motion of soul, cannot be mere
external repetition. The repeatability of the product of writing, which serves as
the basis for its potential value, can deceptively replace the living process of
thought which it ought to set in motion. The realization of the potential value of
the product of writing thus depends upon the possibility of a self-protective
written speech which could possess the self-moving motion signifying the pres-
ence of soul. Just when the Platonic Socrates condemns the product of writing
for its dependence on its father and its inability to protect itself against unjust
abuse, the very acknowledgment of these limitations allows the dialogue to
protect itself against unjust abuse; by issuing a warning against its potential
deceptiveness, the dialogue calls forth from its reader the activity of interpretation
which enables it to overcome the very danger it announces.
The danger of the written word's creating the illusion of wisdom while remain-
98 Plato's Phaedrus
ing external to the sjul of the learner is expressed through the image of the
painted imitation. But while the prophecy of Ammon is supported by the analogy
of writing to painting, just those characteristics specified by the analogy seem to
be absent from that writing exemplified by the Platonic dialogue.
41
The art of
writing which is "truly like the painting of living animals" finds its appropriate
model in the art of Egyptian hieroglyphics, handed down without innovation
from one generation to another, guarded and controlled by the sacred priests of
Ammon; dependent upon memorization and repetition, it exemplifies the nature
of that nondialectic writing, alienated from living speech, which Socrates con-
demns.
In contrast with alphabetic writing, which provides for the representation of
living speech, hieroglyphic writing provides an imitation of the visual appearance
of its referent, without the intermediary of spoken language.
42
Each of the
"painted animals" of hieroglyphic writing is a meaningful symbol whose refer-
ence may be determined by its context; but the range of possible meanings for
each symbol is fixed by convention and must be preserved through memory.
With alphabetic writing, in contrast, a meaningful whole is produced by weaving
together atomic units meaningless in themselves; the alphabetic system thus
allows the greatest potential for expression with the fewest symbolic units of
convention. If hieroglyphic writing is the art of a class of initiates, alphabetic
writing is in principle democratic.
The hieroglyphic symbol consists in a visual image of that to which it refers,
but it is through logos that men must investigate those beings which possess no
"earthly likenesses" (cf. 258d).
43
The hieroglyphic symbol, like the written word
in general, could escape its own limitations only by acknowledging its depen-
dence on the self-moving motion of thinking; but the interpretation of the hiero-
glyph replaces the demand for logos with the memorization of received opinion.
Hieroglyphics thus provide the model for that silent, external product of writing
which a dialectic art of writing must seek to overcome. The image of this
dialectic writing is the alphabetic system, for the combination of vowel and
consonant in the representation of sound reflects the combination of non-self-
sufficient parts necessary for the activity of dialectics.
44
If the alphabet serves as a
fitting image for the interwoven logos of dialectic writing, the hieroglyph, as a
single symbol carrying an ambiguous range of meanings, is an image for the
myth or monologic speech which must be subjected to interpretation.
45
In the
Phaedrus, the speeches on love function as hieroglyphic symbols, while the logos
on rhetoric, dialectics, and writing provides an alphabet; by illustrating the
necessary subjection of hieroglyphic muthos to the logos of exchanged question
and answer, Plato differentiates his own art of writing from the "picture-writing"
condemned by Socrates and the Egyptian god-king.
46
Confirming the silent assumption of another logos not subject to the criticism
of the written word that is like a painting, Socrates asks about the existence of its
"legitimate brother," distinguished in its manner of coming into being as well as
in its better and more powerful nature (276a). The contrast between the living
Art of Writing 99
and the painted animal is replaced by that between legitimate and illegitimate
offspring; the written logos is no longer the product of human fabrication but,
like its living counterpart, the result of natural generation. The illegitimate logos,
with its awesome silence, looks like an act of parricide, but in fact it remains
completely dependent upon its father for its own protection. The legitimate
logos, capable of achieving its desired independence through its potential for
self-protection, is in fact the real act of parricide, which paradoxically provides
protection for the mortal father whom it replaces.
To be well-born according to the standard of law is to be capable of being
brought to life through the presence of soul.
47
The ability to judge of that
capacity, hence to discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate child of
thought, Socrates attributes to himself, on the basis of his own barrenness.
48
Against the resentment generated by this ability, Socrates must defend himself
before the Athenian demos, whom he looks on as children demanding the death
of their father.
49
Since, however, the barrenness which gives Socrates his power
of discrimination at the same time precludes the productive activity of writing,
his capacity or willingness to defend himself seems to be severely limited.
50
Yet
the apparent sterility of Socrates' speeches, which seems to be guaranteed by the
mortality of their father, is in fact overcome by their true fertility, exemplified by
the Platonic dialogues, which claim to be the legitimate offspring of Socratic
speech. The legitimate logos, however, can achieve its purpose only by demon-
strating its independence from its begetter, whom it replaces; the Platonic dia-
logue must bear responsibility for its deed of parricide against Socrates.
51
It is
precisely by announcing the death of Socrates as a living individual, through the
acknowledgement of its status as an imitation, that the dialogue offers its own
self-defense as "legitimate logos," providing the necessary support for the mortal
father whom it replaces.
52
The Platonic Socrates exhibits his awareness of this support in his description
of the more powerful logos as "written with knowledge in the soul of the learner,
able to defend itself, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent" (276a).
It is Phaedrus who describes this "legitimate logos" as "the living and breathing
word of the knower, of which the written word may justly be called the specter
[eidolon]" (276a), Ignoring Socrates' metaphor of a logos written in the soul,
Phaedrus identifies the better and more powerful logos with all spontaneous
speech in general, while he himself, a "living and ensouled speaker," has no
knowledge of its true nature "written in his soul";
53
the true opinion which
Phaedrus expresses in his definition of the legitimate logos, without understand-
ing its identification, constitutes a perfect image of the illegitimate logos which
Socrates condemns.
In response to Phaedrus's identification of the legitimate and the illegitimate as
a distinction between the ensouled logos and its written eidolon, Socrates re-
places the metaphor of natural generation with that of the agricultural art, whose
rules are determined by the demands of nature. In accordance with this model
for the distinction between the legitimate and the illegitimate logos, the soul
100 Plato's Phaedrus
must be understood ^ the ground itself in which the seeds of logoi are to be
planted by the speaker for the fruit they will yield. In place of the contrast
between a painted imitation and a living being,.the tension between art and
nature is now illustrated by the contrast between the artificial paidia of planting
seeds in Adonis pots in the heat of summer and the serious effort of planting seeds
in fitting ground according to the art of farming; in contrast with the celebrant in
the Adonis festival, who delights in the seeds he has planted when they emerge in
beauty in eight days,
54
the serious farmer is content with the attainment of their
maturity in eight months. If the art of agriculture is a primary condition of
civilization, the Adonis garden is a mere refinement; the playful celebration in
honor of the god of vegetation constitutes man's artful imitation of the cycle of
nature.
55
But while Socrates appears to spurn the playful Adonis garden in favor
of the serious art of agriculture, he in fact ascribes only to the artificial soil the
power of yielding fruit that is beautiful.
Having already ignored Socrates' qualification in his condemnation of the
dead written word, Phaedrus must interpret the contrast between the playfulness
of Adonis gardens and the seriousness of fruit growing in fitting soil as an image
for the opposition of writing and spontaneous speech; but Socrates, who iden-
tifies that which is "more beautiful" with the seriousness of the dialectic art (cf.
276e), must understand his image as a representation of the opposition between
the rootless, illegitimate logos which is like a silent painting and the dialectic
logos, spoken or written, whose roots are planted in the soul of the learner. The
fruits of logoi harvested by the artful cultivator of souls are grown from the seeds
of his knowledge of the just, the beautiful, and the good;
56
if such a farmer were
serious, Socrates insists, he could not "sow his seeds through a reed in a river of
ink, with logoi unable to defend themselves nor to teach the truth adequately"
(276c). In this apparent condemnation of the playfulness of writing in general,
Socrates hides an important restriction: serious cultivation of the seeds of knowl-
edge is impossible only for the nondialectic art of writing, which is unable to
defend itself and is unfit to "adequately teach the truth,"
Planting the "garden of letters" is, nevertheless, a paidia, which shares with
drinking parties and "kindred amusements" the necessary condition of leisure
(276d). But inundation by the stream of desire which accompanies the "water-
ing" of drinking parties (cf. 256c) is now replaced by the river of ink irrigating the
tender growths in the ground of those souls who follow the same path as the
cultivator. Such followers possess the capacity for experiencing the same memory
of what was once known as he who stored up in solitude the treasure of reminders
against forgetfulness (276d). The value of the experience of eros which makes it
the source of our greatest blessings is therefore assigned to the paidia of writing,
which in solitude cultivates from seeds of knowledge the garden of letters as
reminders of the truth. The footprints of the "dialectician" whom Socrates pro-
fesses to follow (cf. 266b) are, at the same time, replaced by the imprints of the
written word. But the abiding traces of footprints only satisfy their promise when
filled with the living presence of one who fits them.
57
The peril of being lost is
Art of Writing 101
occasioned less by the total darkness of no footprints than by the obscurity of
following footprints without awareness of their nature as empty images demand-
ing to be properly filled.
Phaedrus illustrates the peril of following footprints without awareness of their
status as mere traces by following Socrates' true opinion in acknowledging the
necessary playfulness of the written word without understanding its justification
or implications. Whereas Socrates is interested in distinguishing playful from
serious speech, Phaedrus only divides noble from base playfulness: "A most
beautiful paidia you speak of, in contrast with the base, Socrates, that of the
ability to play in logoi, mythologizing about justice and the other things of which
you speak" (276e). Socrates accepts Phaedrus's division, but insists on adding a
higher option, for "to be serious about them is more beautiful." He thus reminds
Phaedrus of the division between playfulness and seriousness that was just illus-
trated by the contrast between the playful speeches on eros and the serious
principles of dialectics which they happened to reveal (cf. 265d). The true
standard for serious beauty Socrates discovers, therefore, in the dialectic art of
one who, "taking a fitting soul, plants and sows words with knowledge, able to
help themselves and their planter, not without fruit, but having seeds from which
other words grow in other souls, able to continue the process forever, and making
the possessor happy as far as humanly possible" (277a).
To plant the garden of letters with a river of ink is necessarily playful in
comparison with the seriousness of planting in fitting souls the seeds of knowl-
edge; but Socrates says nothing about their mutual exclusivity. Faced with the
challenge of confronting Phaedrus's love of speeches for the sake of pleasure,
Socrates is compelled to abandon the problem of distinguishing living speech
from writing, in order to establish the primary distinction between speech or
writing which is merely playful and that which legitimately fulfills the claim to
serious worth. Phaedrus readily agrees to Socrates' affirmation of the greater
beauty of the serious art of dialectics, without understanding Socrates' implicit
acknowledgment of the possibility of a dialectic art of writing exemplified by the
serious playfulness of the Platonic dialogue. Insofar as it represents the fruit of the
seeds of knowledge sown by Socrates in the ground of Plato's soul, sowing in turn
its own seeds in the ground of the souls of its readers, the dialogue itself consti-
tutes the model of the immortal process of dialectics. The generation of legiti-
mate logoi through the dialectic aitwhich transcends the distinction between
speech and writingexemplifies that immortal "self-moving motion" which
Socrates first presents as "the truth about the nature of soul divine and human"
(cf. 245c).
Phaedrus's agreement about the hierarchy of beauty, in which base and noble
playfulness must be subordinated to the seriousness of dialectics, Socrates now
presents as the necessary foundation for their judgment on the original questions
of the discussion, which Phaedrus no longer remembers (277b). Socrates re-
minds Phaedrus of the perplexities which set their investigation into motion: "the
reproach against Lysias as speechwriter" and the problem of "whether the
102 Plato's Phaedrus
speeches themselves \ ^re written with or without^ait" (cf. 258d, 262c). Having
established the necessity of the dialectic art for all serious speech, Socrates
believes they have measurably disclosed what is artful and what is not (277b). But
when Phaedrus requests a reminder, Socrates willingly offers a summary of the
conditions for art, "as far as the genos of speeches can be naturally managed,
either for the purpose of instruction or for persuasion" (277c). While admitting
that speech may not be perfectly capable of control by art, Socrates insists upon
the impossibility of practicing a tekhne of logos until "someone knows the truth
about each thing of which he speaks or writes, proves able to define each in its
entirety, then having defined, knows how to cut it again by eide down to the
indivisible parts; then, having discerned in the same way the nature of soul,
discovering the eidos fitting for each nature, he thus arranges and adorns the
speech, giving complex and completely harmonious speeches to complex soul,
simple speeches to simple soul" (277c).
Between the original description of the principles of collection and division
which Socrates introduced as the serious benefit of his playful love-speeches
(265d), and the present summary of the requirements for an art of speaking or
writing, Socrates has provided, with almost unnoticeable variations, an account
not only of the requirements for the investigation of any nature whatsoever (270d),
not only of the requirements for an investigation of the nature of soul in par-
ticular (271a, 27I d), but also of the standards for a true art of rhetoric based
on the collection and division of the beings about which one speaks together with
knowledge of the nature of the listener to whom one speaks (273d-e), The
particular context of the present repetition of those standards, at the conclusion
of the discussion on the art of writing, implicitly raises the question of how the
division between persuasion and instruction is related to the division between
speaking and writing. Socrates' initial presentation of the principles of collection
through definition and division by eide establishes the demand for knowledge of
the structure of the whole and the parts of the beings, which constitutes, so it
seems, the "matter" of instruction. Only when the art of speaking is identified
with the purpose of persuasion are the principles of dialectics set forth as the
necessary condition for knowledge of soul. Yet, insofar as knowledge of soul is
inseparable from the "collection and division" of the beings, it would seem
impossible to separate the art of persuasion from instruction; the suggestion of
this interdependence was in feet introduced by Socrates' original defense deliv-
ered in the voice of the art of speaking, who claims that "without my help,
knowledge of the beings does not produce the art of persuasion" (260d).
58
The divergence of persuasion and instruction, however, seems to be indicated
by the structure of the dialogue as a whole. For while the purpose of persuasion
led to the illusory presentation of each speech on eros as a whole in itself, the
purpose of instruction led to the recognition of the unity of the speeches as a
model for the principles of collection and division. While Socrates' recantation,
delivered in the effort to lead Phaedrus toward "love with philosophic speeches,"
seems to suggest the unity of persuasion and instruction, it reveals in feet the
Art of Writing 103
tension between erotics and dialectics, through the image of the tension between
the desire to follow the one god most like oneself and the desire for the vision of
the superuranian ideas as the true goal of eros.
I f the desired objectivity of an art of speaking is rendered impossible by the
lover's inevitable attempt at persuading the beloved he addresses, the possibility
of subjecting persuasion to instruction would seem to require an art motivated by
the love of wisdom, yet capable of overcoming the possessive particularity of
erotic attachment. The claim to fulfill that standard is announced by the Platonic
dialogue, in defending its status as a dialectic art of writing. While the solitary act
of writing seems to suffer, even more than shared conversation, from the subjec-
tivity of individual perspective (cf. 276d), its character as an address to a universal
audience indicates its potential for transcending the particularity and immediacy
of living speech (cf. 275e). By its very imitation of the convergence of persuasion
and instruction in the representation of Socrates' erotic dialectics, the Platonic
dialogue attempts to demonstrate the possibility of philosophic instruction inde-
pendent of persuasion.
The implied superiority of the product of writing over spontaneous speech in
fulfilling the requirements of tekhne must depend, according to Socrates' final
account of the dialectic art, upon its capacity for discriminating the complex
from the simple in the adaptation of speeches to souls. When Socrates ironically
proclaims his inability to compete with the written speech of Lysias, he equates
its wisdom with its complexity (cf. 236b). The simplicity of the speech to which
Phaedrus enthusiastically responds consists in its appearance as a direct address
from the nonlover to his beloved, which Socrates reorganizes in his competing
version (cf. 237b); the self-contradictory character of this pretense is uncovered
only through an acknowledgment of the true complexity of the speech, based on
the recognition of its character as a product of writing. If the conversation
represented within a Platonic dialogue, in which a particular message is ad-
dressed to a particular character, represents the offering of simple speeches to a
simple soul, the artful imitation of that conversation by the written dialogue,
which addresses a universal reader, must represent complex speech for complex
soul. Through the tension between the simplicity of what it represents and the
complexity of its own representing, the Platonic dialogue initiates a dialectic
encounter with its reader and thus demonstrates the harmonious adaptation of
speeches to soul laid down as the requirement for any true tekhne of logos.
The principles which constitute the basis for the adaptation of simple speeches
to simple soul and complex speeches to complex soul, Socrates repeats to Phaed-
rus as a reminder of the proper basis for their judgment on the artfulness of the
speeches on eros. Only after confirming the principles of dialectics as the neces-
sary condition of art for both speaking and writing can Socrates return to the
question of "whether it is beautiful or ugly to speak and write speeches, and how
it would justly be said to be shameful or not" (277d). An evaluation of the initial
reproach against Lysias's shamefulness as a speechwriter must be determined by
the investigation of the standards for beautiful speaking or writing, based on the
104 Plato's Phaedrus
conditions laid dojyn for the true tekhne of iogos. Remembering Phaedrus's
rhapsodic delivery of the written speech of Lysias, Socrates declares the fitting
model of the shameful written work to be the recitation of the rhapsode, "spoken
in order to persuade without judgment or instruction" (277e-278a). Socrates
likens the slavishness of an audience moved by persuasion to suspend all critical
detachment to the shamefulness of trusting in the seriousness of the written work.
Illusory trust in the clarity and firmness of the written work, betraying "ignorance
of the prophecy of Ammon" (cf. 275c), has the same result as "ignorance of
justice and injustice and of evil and good" (cf. 277d), J hi ch was introduced at
the beginning of the discussion on the art of speaking as the condition for the
rhetorician's deceitful manipulation of the city (cf. 260c).
The shamefulness of writing arises from the belief in its clarity and firmness; its
ugliness results from submission to the illusion of its nondialectic nature.
Avoidance of the shamefulness of the written work requires, therefore, awareness
of the playfulness of its dialectic complexity. The shamefulness of the writer who
takes his own product too seriously, believing in its great worth, must be con-
trasted with the nobility of him "who believes that there is necessarily much
playfulness in the written word, and that no written speech is worthy of great
seriousness" (277e). But it is precisely the acknowledgment of its necessary play-
fulness which allows the written work to overcome its illusory appearance as a
replacement for living thought and to realize its potential as a "reminder to the
knower."
59
Socrates' final acknowledgment of "clarity and completeness and
serious worth" is assigned, therefore, not to living speech in distinction to the
written word, but to "that which is spoken for the sake of instruction, about the
just, the beautiful, and the good, and really written in the soul" (278a).
60
Not the spoken word in opposition to the written, but the logos written in the
soul, has the potential for participating in the perpetual motion of the dialectic
art, which consists in the process of the generation of logoi which are the
legitimate offspring of the speaker: "First, that in him, if it be found there"
(278a), followed by its "children or brothers growing in a worthy manner in other
souls" (278b). Speeches are not merely agents acting on the soul, nor the effects
of its own action; the natural reproductive cycle of logoi seems itself to represent
the ever-moving, self-moving motion which Socrates demonstrated as the
ground for the immortality of soul.
61
In this final account of the dialectic logos,
Socrates thus justifies the demand for the adaptation of speeches to soul re-
peatedly laid down as the condition for a true tekhne of logos.
In light of this understanding of the relation between soul and logos, Socrates
appropriately echoes the prayer at the end of his hymn to Eros by concluding his
praise of the noble attitude toward speech with the prayer that he and Phaedrus
may be like the man who possesses it, that they themselves may become the
fitting ground for the seeds sown by serious logoi. But Socrates comes to the end
of his discussion with Phaedrus by identifying it as paidia: "We have already
measurably amused ourselves with speeches" (278b).
62
The Platonic Socrates
thus answers his own prayer for the right attitude toward speeches; the fitting
Art of Writing 105
image of Socrates, who insists on the serious worth of the activity of dialectics,
could he provided only by those written words that display the nobility of acknowl-
edging their own necessary playfulness, thereby overcoming that externality
which creates the appearance of wisdom without the reality.
By questioning its own clarity and firmness, the Platonic dialogue refuses to
present itself as a replacement for living thought; by transforming itself into a
playful "reminder to the knower," the dialogue demonstrates its serious worth.
But this overcoming of itself would constitute its self-realization only insofar as
the dialogue is an imitation which determines the being toward which it points.
If the paradoxical self-condemnation of writing by the written word is in fact the
means of its self-defense, the "more noble" and "more serious" truth of which
the dialogue is only a playful reminder could not be sought through extraneous
speculation on the teaching of the historic Socrates or Plato; the being which the
image of the dialogue calls forth is not the reconstruction of some historic speech
or deed, but the activation of the drama of thought.
63
Having established the standard for serious speech and the serious value of the
playfulness of writing, Socrates concludes his private encounter with Phaedrus by
commanding him to deliver the message of their discussion to the absent Lysias
(278b). Phaedrus's submission without critical detachment to the misleading
appearance of authority in the product of writing makes him the perfect mes-
senger to Lysias, who is entombed in his written speech and unable to participate
in the questioning of dialectic inquiry. But while Phaedrus is the fitting inter-
mediary from Socrates to Lysias, only the conjunction of Phaedrus and Socrates
can provide an adequate intermediary to the "writers in the city" from the
"fountain of the nymphs and the Muses" (278c). Under the guise of "the gods of
the place," Socrates again conceals the true source of the message he delivers
through the written word of Plato. As recorder of the Socratic conversations,
Plato would appear to act as the intermediary for Socrates; in this dialogue, an
imitated Socrates suggests that he is, in fact, the intermediary for the writer Plato.
Since Plato must speak through Socrates to all his fellow writers, the message
to Lysias must also be addressed to Homer and the poets, and to Solon and the
law-writers. While Lysias practices an art of writing moved by the love of money,
the poets and the legislators seem to practice an art of writing moved by the love
of honor (cf. 258b-c).
64
But Lysias is united with the poets and the legislators as
writers who assign "clarity and completeness and serious worth" to their written
work, whose foundation and final judge is the opinion of the many; the common
enemy which unites the Platonic Socrates and the Socratic Plato is represented
by these "writers in the city" whose pretensions and dangers are to be revealed
through the message of the Musesa message which is, in fact, nothing but the
Platonic dialogue.
In recognition of this unity with his imitator, the Platonic Socrates must
restrict his condemnation of writing; on the basis of his own argument, Socrates
is compelled to attribute to any writer "who writes with knowledge of the truth,
and is able to support his writing with speech and to show by his speech the small
106 Plato's Phaedrus
worth of his writing," tlie name 'philosopher/ on the ground of the serious
pursuit which underlies such writing (278c). The writer who qualifies as a lover
of wisdom must be distinguished from those who "possess nothing more honor-
able than what they have composed or written" (278d). The poet, speechwriter,
and law-writer belong together in their devotion to the product of writing itself,
"turning it up and down in their leisure, adding one thing and taking away
another" (276e). I f Plato too must be justly addressed as poet, writer of speeches,
and writer of laws, he is, nevertheless, one who writes with knowledge of the
truth. Plato would seem, then, to assign to himself the title sophos, which
Socrates claims is "fitting only for a god" (278d). But that knowledge of the truth
which the philosophic writer possesses must be knowledge of the serious pursuit
which underlies his writing; the written work which admits the ultimate serious-
ness of dialectics, and therefore acknowledges its own necessary playfulness,
betrays knowledge of the truth that is not other than Socratic knowledge of
ignorance.
The message which Socrates and Phaedrus are to carry away from their con-
versation in the sacred grove establishes the criteria which must be met by any
writer who deserves to be called a lover of wisdom. But the message that the
nymphs and Muses command Socrates and Phaedrus to deliver to all who have
ever engaged in the art of writing, Socrates only presents as part of the message
that he himself commands Phaedrus to deliver to his friend Lysias (278b). When
Socrates, apparently neglecting his own obligation as intermediary, reminds
Phaedrus of his duty to act as messenger to Lysias, Phaedrus suddenly insists that
Socrates do likewise for his own friend, Isocrates the beautiful (278e).
65
Phaedrus
wishes to hear, not only what message Socrates will deliver to Isocrates, but also
what name he would bestow on him. Whether, however, the rhetorician de-
serves the name 'lover of wisdom,' or whether he should be called poet,
speechwriter, or law-writer, must be determined precisely by the message Soc-
rates and Phaedrus are to deliver to all who have engaged in the practice of
writing. In order to clarify this message, which Phaedrus has apparently not
understood, Socrates is willing to express in these last few moments of the
conversation a "prophecy" concerning the nature and the art of Isocrates. The
ironic reflection of Socrates' criticism against Lysias's speech, for beginning with
what the lover would say to his beloved at the end (cf. 264a), lies in Socrates'
prophecy for Isocrates, at the conclusion of a conversation which directs itself
toward him from the start.
66
Only at the very end of the dialogue is the spotlight
cast on the ghost hovering over the scene from the outset; the dialogue as a whole
is thus framed by its concern with the two speechwriters, Lysias and Isocrates,
who represent the ambiguous presence of any writer in his written work.
The Pl atoni c "compl ex speech for compl ex soul " (cf. 277c), whi ch is con-
cerned with the general question of the philosophic significance of writing,
reveals within itself, finally, a "simple speech" for one intended listener, a
message which Socrates is to deliver to Plato's chief contemporary competitor in
the art of writing. The conversation which establishes the demand for the adapta-
Art of Writing 107
tion of speeches to souls concludes by indicating the need for a reexamination of
its logos in light of the perspective of the particular audience to whom it is
addressed. This clue, offered at the conclusion of the Phaedrus, brings into focus
a concealed thread constituted by the persistent echoes of Isocrates' speeches,
which themselves exhibit Isocrates' concealed defense for his own art of writing.
The basis for the defense of his art of writing, which Isocrates weaves into its
products, is its capacity to encourage, through persuasion, the virtue of modera-
tion, hence its ability to realize the goal of rhetoric as the necessary mediation
between the phronesis of the philosopher and the practice of men of action in the
political world. The ironic transformation of Isocrates' words in their Platonic
echoes suggests the possibility of a "more godlike force" (279b), in light of which
Isocrates' defense of his art of writing, and the understanding of philosophy that
constitutes its foundation, must be judged all too human. The Platonic dialogue
thus appropriately represents the message from the "gods of the place" which
must be delivered to Isocrates through Socrates as intermediary.
Only after establishing the unity of the Platonic Socrates and the Socratic Plato
through the message to the "writers in the city" can the dialogue indicate the
internal division within that unity, suggested by Socrates' concluding prayer to
"Pan and the other gods of the place" (279b). Pan is not only the god who reigns
outside the city, but also the god of logos, divine and human,
67
hence the fitting
recipient for Socrates' prayer. Socrates prays for inner beauty and for the har-
mony of the outer with the inner.
68
He asks for as much gold as befits modera-
tion; what befits philosophic moderation is the inner beauty which consists in the
recognition of wisdom as wealth.
69
Socrates has just distinguished the external
product of writing, private or public, from that inner writing in the soul which
alone possesses serious worth (278a). The written work, as an external possession,
cannot be identical with the nonproductive "beautiful soul"; Socrates' content-
ment with inner beauty and his indifference to external possession, belong to-
gether with his disdain for the practice of writing. The closing association of
inner beauty, the wealth of wisdom, and moderation, thus stands in sharp
contrast with the opening association of writing, money, and greed.
70
Phaedrus's opening remark betrays his entertainment, at sunrise, with the
speech of Lysias in the city; his closing remark requests communion with Soc-
rates, at sunset, in a prayer to the gods for inner beauty and for contentment with
the wealth of wisdom. At the outset of his encounter with Socrates, Phaedrus
expressed his desire for the ability to memorize the speech of Lysias "more than
for much gold" (228a); the apparent transformation of that desire is reflected in
Phaedrus's final wish to share in Socrates' prayer for wisdom. If gold is the
paradigm for the object of desire which necessarily divides those who pursue it,
wisdom seems to be the model for that which unites its l overs.
71
Phaedrus thus
appropriately, even if unwittingly, expresses his wish to share in Socrates' prayer
because "friends have all in common" (279c).
72
But the friendship which Phaed-
rus considers the foundation for his communion with Socrates is his unconscious
mirroring of Socrates' eros, as Socrates suggests in his description of the soul of
108 Plato's Phaedrus
the beloved who mistakes for friendship the streanV of yearning from the lover
reflected in himself (cf. 255d-e). Phaedrus's assumption of his friendship with
Socrates as the basis for his wish to share in the prayer for inner beauty may
represent no real understanding of the nature of Socrates' desire, but only the
eidolon of Socrates' eros, which dwells in Phaedrus's soul. Precisely by its repre-
sentation of this tension, the Platonic dialogue silently points to the legitimacy of
its own claim to share with Socrates in the "communion of friends."
At least for himself, Socrates announces, the prayer for moderation is itself
measured. Socrates prays for wisdom, not for love of wisdom, after just announc-
ing that wisdom is possible only for a god (278d). Socrates' wisdom consists in
knowledge of ignorance, yet he himself claims that his ignorance of art has been
replaced by divine inspiration, and the truth of his moderation is divine madness
(cf. 245b-c). Socrates' hubris is reflected in his apparent interpretation of the
division between the interior and the exterior as a division between living speech
and the product of writing. In establishing the charge against Socrates' hubris,
Plato must transform the division between interior and exterior into one within
the art of writing as a whole, determined by the nature of the particular work and
the reader who responds to it. The development of inner wisdom is thus de-
scribed through the metaphor of the external act of writing: logoi of serious worth
are those written in the soul. And the source of the serious worth of logoi in the
soul is not determined by their expression through either speech or writing, but
only by the standard represented in the principles of dialectics.
The principles of dialectics, which constitute the foundation for all artful
speech or writing, demand knowledge of the truth of each of the beings, as an
internally articulated whole and as a part of a more comprehensive whole, the
same knowledge of soul with regard to the whole and its parts, and finally,
knowledge of the relation between the beings and soul. But this demand for
complete knowledge of the whole, together with complete knowledge of all types
of human perspective on that whole, seems to be nothing but an "ideal" standard
by which to measure, not only the rhetoricians' claim to teach an art of persua-
sion, but also the actual procedure of Socratic conversation and, further, the
Platonic imitation of that conversation.
The standard of the dialectic art, based on the demand for knowledge of the
ideas and of soul, is determined by a principle of rest and a principle of motion,
of death and of eros. The pursuit of this goal Socrates claims to follow through
an "erotic dialectics," in which eros of conversation with another individual
provides the path toward recovery of the vision of the beings. But the limitations of
the Socratic direction are disclosed by the representation of that pursuit in the
Platonic dialogue, for the objective vision of the structure of the ideas as an
internally articulated whole is always obscured or distorted by the particularity of
Socrates' concern with self-knowledge and with the soul of his interlocuter;
despite the goal of Socrates' erotic dialectics, the self-moving motion of soul is
always an obstacle to reaching the perfect fixity and stability of the beings. By
representing this inadequacy, the Platonic dialogue would seem to claim the
Excursus 109
superiority of the opposite direction, pursued through.the nonerotic art of writ-
ing, toward the goal articulated in the principles of dialectics. Through its imita-
tion of the voice of Socrates, however, the Platonic dialogue acknowledges its
own limitations, for the perfect fixity of the written word seems to exclude the
possibility of living thought; the illusory objectivity of the product of writing
seems to represent an obstacle to the particularity of the unique perspective of
each reader, and the dead, written word seems incapable of incorporating the
self-moving motion of soul.
The principle of motion that governs Socrates' erotic dialectics and the princi-
ple of rest that governs the art of writing seem equally to stand in the way of the
goal of the dialectic art. But access to this goal is in fact provided neither by
participation in the spontaneity of Socrates' living conversation, nor by a "dead"
written treatise analyzing the structure of the beings as an internally articulated
whole; these two opposing poles are, rather, nothing but the implications
suggested by one unitary representation: the conversation of the Platonic Soc-
rates, who appears only as an image in the dialogue, and is therefore one with the
written work of Plato, which constitutes that image. The ideal meeting point
defined by the principles of dialectics, as the convergence of the two paths of eros
and death, of living speech and writing, is in fact represented by the Platonic
dialogue itself. The Platonic defense of dialectic writing against Socrates' appar-
ent commitment to the eros of living speech is established through the "inter-
nalizable" written logoi which point to the dangers of the written word, and thus
portray a Socrates who must, indeed, vindicate the art through which his love of
wisdom is imitated.
EXCU RSU S
WRI TI N G L I K E TH E PA I N TI N G OF L I VI N G A NI MA L S
For writing certainly has this terrible power, Phaedrus, as if truly like the painting
of living animals. For the offspring of that stand forth like living animals, but if
someone were to question them, they maintain a solemn silence. And it is the
same with logoi; you might opine that they speak as if having intelligence, but if
someone were to question them, wishing to understand what is spoken, they al-
ways signify one and the same thing. (275d)
While the historical problem of how accurately Plato understood Egyptian
hieroglyphic writing remains an open question, the symbolic significance which
he attaches to it as the figurative representation of an idea seems to be suggested
by the role it plays in illuminating the philosophic issue under consideration in
the Phaedrus. Socrates reports an "Egyptian story" which credits the god Theuth
110 Plato's Phaedrus
with the discovery of the grammata, while attributing to the god Thamuz the
condemnation of this discovery. But Socrates does not report in this "Egyptian
story" the nature of the grammata which have been discovered and condemned,
although he himself offers an interpretation in relation to zoographiathe paint-
ing of animal figures (275d). While grammata may seem to refer to the alpha-
betic letters, the word is in fact generally used to denote any written notation,
including drawings or musical notes. When Herodotus wishes to specify the
Phoenician alphabet, he speaks of the letters as kadmeia grammata (Histories
4.59), while other Greek writers use the word to specify hieroglypkika grammata
(cf. Clement of Alexandria Stromata 5.4).
In the Philebus, Socrates introduces the art of alphabetization as a model of
the path he himself has always tried to follow; this path, which consists of the
division of the infinite into a determinate multiplicity of kinds, appears to Soc-
rates to be a gift from gods to men, tossed down through "some kind of Pro-
metheus" (16c). In order to clarify his example, Socrates describes the discovery of
the alphabet, based on the observation of the differentiation of the infinite stream
of sound into the classes of vowel sounds, sonants, and mutes, every class being
divided into a multiplicity of individual parts, each given the name of a single
letter, and all bound together as one through the single art of grammatike; to the
god or godlike man who discovered this art an "Egyptian logos" gives the name
"Theuth" (18b-c). Without confirming this claim of the "Egyptian logos," Soc-
rates is concerned to establish the significance of the alphabet as a model for
division into kinds, based on the representation of sound (the syllable), through
the combination of a phenomenal element (the vowel) and the abstraction of a
nonphenomenal element (the consonant), rendered determinate through an
image (the name of the letter) which makes all elements appear homogenous.
With these ambiguous references in the dialogues to the legendary discovery of
the Egyptian Theuth, Plato seems to speculatively establish the symbolic signifi-
cance of hieroglyphic writing by contrast with the significance of the alphabet,
while carefully refraining from commitment to any claim which would either
confirm or deny his recognition of the alphabetic element in the Egyptian system
of writing.
That Plato may have been aware of the eventual alphabetization of Egyptian
writing is not impossible (see Robert Eisler-Feldafing, "Platon und das aegyp-
tische Alphabet," p. 9). Iamblichus reports that Pythagoras, Plato, Democritus,
Eudoxus, and many other ancient Greeks taught "what is fitting" about the
sacred writing of Egypt (De Mysteriis 1.1, in Fontes historiae religionis aegyp-
tiacae, ed. Theodor Hopfner, p. 497). But it seems doubtful that the hiero-
glyphic system of writing was clearly understood in antiquity outside the Egyptian
temples; at least no completely accurate description seems to exist in Greek
literature (see Liselotte Dieckmann, Hieroglyphics: History of a Literary Symbol,
pp. 4f f .).
Egyptian hieroglyphics, deciphered by Champollion after the discovery of the
Rosetta stone in 1799, in fact consist of a mixture of ideograms and phonograms,
Excursus 111
representing either whole words or single sounds, often using an ideogram affixed
to a phonogram, or having the same symbol stand for a word or for a single letter.
The combination of pictorial and verbal symbols was further supplemented by
syllabic signs as well as explanatory determinatives. The oldest hieroglyphic
writing consists of a collection of pictorial symbols, whose significance was
probably preserved by a small, conservative caste of priests; the oldest evidence of
this writing was discovered on stone pallettes south of Thebes in upper Egypt,
and is dated from around 3000 B.C., although hieroglyphics were still in use in
the fourth century A.D. This original hieroglyphic writing was first supplemented
by the hieratic, a more cursive version representing the same language, and then
by the more simplified and more conventional demotic script, probably around
the seventh century B.C. Finally, around the second century B.C., the demotic
script was replaced by coptic, in which the Egyptian language was represented by
Greek alphabetic letters. Before then, the advantages of an alphabetic system
were apparently not appreciated by the Egyptians, for the hieroglyphic symbols,
even when coming close to such a system, were never used consistently in
alphabetic fashion (see Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, "Writing and Literacy," in
Legacy of Egypt, ed. J. R. Harris, pp. 6 ff.).
The ambiguity of Plato's references to Egyptian hieroglyphics seems to be
supported by a long tradition of Greek writers from Herodotus through Diodorus
Siculus, Clement of Alexandria, Plutarch, and Plotinus. Even when these
writers seem to be aware of the phonetic element in Egyptian writing, they tend
to concentrate, perhaps for the sake of distinguishing Egyptian from Greek writ-
ing, on the importance of the ideogram. Herodotus remarks that the Egyptians
use two systems of writing, the sacred and the demotic, without defining their
characteristics; Herodotus finds the opposition to other cultures exhibited by so
many of the Egyptian customs to be reflected in their system of writing, for they
write, in opposition to the Greeks, from right to left, although they claim their
writing is more "dexterous" (histories 11.36).
Diodorus Siculus reports that the Egyptian priests teach their sons two kinds of
writing, the hieroglyphic and that which is used for more general instruction
(Library of History 1.81). Like Herodotus, he recognizes no distinction between
hieroglyphic and hieratic, but classes both together in opposition to demotic. He
describes the hieroglyphics as letters whose forms take the "shapes of animals and
members of the human body and tools.. . . such writing, rather than expressing
the intended logos by means of syllables joined together relies on the significance
of the object copied and its metaphorical meaning learned by memory" (III.4).
Plutarch, writing before 120 A.D,, by which time demotic was long in use,
describes the status of pictorial metaphors in hieroglyphic writing through an
analogy with the figurative sayings of the Pythagoreans, and thus seems to ignore
the phonetic element in Egyptian writing (Ofl si s and Osiris 1.10). In another
context, however, he mentions their use of twenty-five grammata, which may
perhaps imply recognition of an alphabetic system (IV. 56).
A better articulated description of Egyptian writing, which helps to account for
112 Plato's Phaedrus
the ambiguity of -the reek tradition; is provided^by Cl ement of Alexandria,
writing in the second century A. D. ; "The men of learning among the Egyptians
first of all learned the epistolographic, and second the hieratic method of writing,
which the sacred scribes use, and then, last of all, the hieroglyphic, of which one
sort, the literal, is expressed in letters, and the other is symbol i c. And of the
symbolic, one kind proceeds by literal imitation, but another is figurative, and a
third is allegorical, speaking in eni gmas" (Stromata V.4.20).
The limitations of hieroglyphic writing as understood through the Greek tradi-
tion are expressed by Ammi anus Marcel l i nus, writing in the fourth century A.D.
We see engraved everywhere in Egypt innumerable shapes and forms called hiero-
glyphics, expressing the ancient records of primordial wisdom. Carving many kinds
of birds and beasts of a strange world, so that the memory of tradition may be
published to succeeding ages, they herald the wishes of kings, fulfilled or simply
promised. For not as nowadays did the ancient Egyptians write a set and easily
learned number of letters to express whatever the human mind might conceive, but
one character stood for a single name or word, and sometimes signified an entire
thought. (Res gestae XCI 1.4.8-11, in Fontes historiae religiones aegyptiacae, p.
547)
Plotinus, who uses the model of Egyptian hieroglyphics as an image for his
own concepti on of "Pl atoni c i deas," describes the isolated embl em which con-
veys nondiscursive knowledge:
It seems to me that the Egyptian wise men, either working by right reasoning or
spontaneously, when they desired to represent things through wisdom, did not use
letters descriptive of words or sentences, imitating the sounds and pronunciation of
propositions, but drew pictures, and carved one picture for each thing in their
temples, thus making manifest the description of that thing. Thus each picture was
a kind of understanding and wisdom and substance and given all at once, and not
discursive reasoning and deliberation. (Ennead V.8)
In a gloss on this passage, the fifteenth-century translator of Plotinus, Marsi l i o
Fi ci no, elaborates the "neo-PI atoni c" concepti on of the Egyptian hieroglyphics:
The Egyptian priests, when they wished to signify divine things, did not use letters,,
but whole figures of plants, trees, and animals; for God doubtless has a knowledge
of things which is not complex discursive thought about its subject, but is, as it
were, the simple and steadfast form of it. Your thought of time, for instance, is
manifold and mobile, maintaining that time is speedy and by a sort of revolution
joins the beginning to the end. It teaches prudence, produces much, and destroys it
again. The Egyptians comprehend this whole discourse in one stable image, paint-
ing a winged serpent, holding its tail in its mouth. (TheHieroglyphics ofHorapollo,
trans. George Boas, p. 28)
Nor does the neo-Pl atoni c tradition mark the end of the interpretation of the
C k: . . . il u -
Excursus 113
symbol. After first establishing that the "first nations thought in poetic characters,
spoke in fables, and wrote in hieroglyphics," Vico attributes to the Egyptians the
recognition of three stages of writing, corresponding to the three ages of gods,
heroes, and men: ideographic or hieroglyphic writing, born spontaneously with-
out convention, corresponding to savage hunting; heroic or symbolic writing,
using conventional signs, corresponding to barbarism and agriculture; and al-
phabetic writing, a system of images of images, corresponding to the labor of
civilization. In order to show that the Greeks agreed with the Egyptians on this
order of development, Vico examines several "golden" passages in the Iliad, and
interprets Homer's references to the distinction between divine and human lan-
guage. In the attempt to establish that all the first nations by common natural
necessity "spoke in hieroglyphics," Vico hopes to uproot the false opinion held
by "some Egyptians," that hieroglyphics were invented by the philosophers to
conceal their mysteries of lofty esoteric wisdom (See Giambattista Vico, The
New Science, trans. Thomas Bergin and Max Fisch, pp. 138-42).
The order of development elaborated by Vico seems to be taken up by Rous-
seau, who describes the evolution of the art of writing through a threefold
division corresponding to three stages "according to which one can consider men
gathered into a nation." The depicting of objects is appropriate to a savage
people, signs of words and propositions to a barbaric people, and the alphabet to
civilized peoples.
The primitive way of writing was not to represent sounds but objects themselves,
whether directly, as with the Mexicans, or by allegorical imagery, or as the Egyp-
tians did, in still other ways.... The second way is to represent words and propo-
sitions by conventional characters. That can be done only when a language is
completely formed and an entire people is united by common laws.. .. The third
way is to break down the spoken voice into a given number of elementary parts,
either vocal or imaginable. This way of writing, which is ours, must have been
invented by commercial peoples. (Jean Jacques Rousseau, "On Script," in Essay on
the Origin of Languages, trans. John H. Moran, p. 17)
The superiority of alphabetic writing, as a transcription of vocal speech, to
hieroglyphic writing, based on a presupposed analysis of representations, is de-
fended by Hegel in light of a consideration of their distinct conceptions of the
'sign.' While hieroglyphic writing uses spatial figures to designate ideas, alpha-
betic writing uses its symbols to designate vocal notes, which are already signs. In
contrast with the hieroglyphic system, where the sign remains on the level of
sensible-spatial intuition, the alphabetic system discovers the sign in the element
of temporalization; in its respect for the spoken language, the alphabet remains
the most open to the development of tradition, while only the most stationary
civilization could fittingly employ a hieroglyphic system of writing. At the same
time, the analysis of ideas expressed in hieroglyphics appears to be possible in the
most various and divergent ways, so that the relation of concrete mental ideas to
one another must necessarily be tangled and perplexed. The hieroglyphic sys-
114 Plato's Phaedrus
possession of mental culture," consists in a deaf reading and a dumb writing,
whereas alphabetic writing represents the "movement of spirit in relation to its
own inferiority" and is therefore "in and for itself the most intelligible." "What
has been said shows the inestimable and not sufficiently appreciated educational
value of learning to read and write an alphabetic character. It leads the mind
from the sensible concrete image to attend to the more formal structure of the
vocal word and its abstract elements, and contributes much to give stability and
independence to the inward realm of mental life" (Hegel, Philosophy of Mind,
trans. William Wallace, par. 459). For an interpretation of Hegel's analysis of
the relation between alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing, see Jacques Derrida,
"Le Puits et la Pyramide: Introduction a la Semiologie de Hegel," in Marges de
la Philosophie.
The tradition established by the Greek writersand it seems that Plato must
be included among themthus seems to be carried on, not only by the neo-
Platonists and Renaissance writers, but by the modern philosophers as well, who
find, by contrasting the abstraction of alphabetic writing with the symbolic in-
terpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, a fitting model for contrasting ways of
thought.
Appendix
I SOCRA TES T H E BEA U T I FU L
Isocrates is young yet, Phaedrus, but I am willing to speak my prophecy for
him.... He seems to be better in his nature than that indicated by thespeeches of
Lysias, and it is mixed with a more noble character; so there would be nothing
wonderful if, as hegrows older, heshould so excel in the case of the speeches he is
now attempting that hewould show all those who have ever engaged in speeches to
be no more than children; and further, I would not be surprised if this were not
sufficient for him, but a more godlike force would lead him to greater things; for,
by nature, my friend, there is some kind of philosophy in the mind of the man."
(279a~b)
WWI TH I N THE DRAMA, PHAEDRUS IS USED BY SOCRATES AS A NECESSARY MES-
senger to his contemporary Lysias, "cleverest writer of the day," but it is the
particular recipient of Socrates' message whom Plato addresses as the cleverest
writer of his day.
1
Socrates addresses the Platonic message to the writer Lysias
through an intermediary who wavers between love of both and is unable to
distinguish them (cf. 237b); in and through the representation of Socrates' en-
counter with that intermediary, Plato confronts his own contemporary writer
who "wavers on the border of philosophy and politics, believing himself the
wisest of men," who participates "moderately in philosophy and moderately in
politics, sharing in both as much as necessary, free from the risks and struggles to
gather the fruits of wisdom" (Euthydemus 205c-d).
2
When Phaedrus raises the question of what Isocrates is to be called, Socrates
responds apologetically (278e); although Socrates knows that Isocrates already
surpasses the speeches of Lysias,
3
he is not yet able to assign him a name, "for he
is young yet" (Phaedrus 279a). The Platonic Socrates ironically predicts Isoc-
rates' own tendency to rely on the excuse of old age as a justification for any
inadequacies in a speech he is about to deliver, for the employment of speech
rather than action, and for the use of writing rather than live conversation.
4
While Isocrates seeks to excuse his deficiencies through a plea for his listeners'
sympathy with the weakening powers of old age, the Platonic Socrates blames the
nonfulfillment of Isocrates' potential on his youth. The irony of Socrates'
prophecy for the future of Isocrates is determined by its context in a product of
writing addressed to those who live in that future and know the outcome which
Socrates claims to foresee.
5
The ambiguous status of the written work as an
imitation is thus revealed by the disparity in time between the conversation as
represented and the product of writing which represents it, for the apparent
116 Appendix
present of the written toiitation is indeed the past, and the apparent future is the
present.
Beneath the question of temporal development which Socrates seems to use as
a pretext, lies the real issue concerning the essential ambiguity of Isocrates'
nature and of his work. Isocrates himself seems to deny his identification as poet,
speechwriter, or law-writer, while he presents his "education" as devotion to
philosophy.
6
It is the significance which Isocrates attaches to the name 'philoso-
phy,' insofar as it determines the value of his art of writing, which forms the
center of the struggle that Plato conducts against him in the Phaedrus. The clue
to that struggle lies in Socrates' demand for the philosophic recognition of writing
as paidia, the very demand which Isocrates condemns in the defense of his own
philosophy.
7
On the basis of his knowledge of Isocrates' "superior nature," Socrates predicts
that "he will so surpass his present speeches that all those now concerned with
speeches will seem no more than children" (279b). Socrates' evaluation is in fact
an echo of Isocrates' own claims: in the first of his political speeches, written to
be delivered at the pan-Hellenic gathering in Olympia, Isocrates expresses his
hope to "rise so far above all the sophists who have treated the same theme that it
will seem as if no word had ever been spoken about these matters" (Panegyricus
4). The sophists whom Isocrates hopes to surpass must be Lysias and Gorgias,
who had previously treated the theme of pan-Hellenic unity in their speeches for
the Olympic festivals.
8
Immediately following his expressed desire to surpass his competitors, Isocrates
identifies his Olympic speech as "the most beautiful of speeches, dealing with the
greatest of happenings, which, while displaying the ability of the speaker, brings
the most benefit to its listeners" (Panegyricus 5). As if he were offering Isocrates a
direct response to this claim, Socrates continues his prophecy with a prediction
of the inadequacy Isocrates will experience with such speech, being led by "a
more godlike force" (279b). Isocrates finds the most beautiful speeches to be
those concerned with Greek political unity against the barbarians; the Platonic
Socrates suggests, from the divine perspective of his devotion to dialectics, that
such a standard lies merely in the plane of human opinion. The motif of the
division between divine and human, which appeared in the contrast of living
speech and the art of writing, thus emerges as the underlying theme of Plato's
dialogue with Isocrates.
Isocrates identifies philosophy with the education he offers in the art of speak-
ing, insofar as it provides the most expedient path to that phronesis which
characterizes the successful philosopher (Antidosis 271). Since phronesis alone
can recognize the course of "right conduct in man and citizen," it is responsible
for raising the state of man above that of the animals (A ntidosis 294). The power
of persuasion, which exhibits this philosophic phronesis, enables men to "come
together and found cities, make laws, and invent arts" (Antidosis 254). For
Isocrates, man, not god, is "the measure," Unlike those who "exhort their
followers to a kind of virtue and phronesis of which all others are ignorant and
Isocrates the Beautiful 117
which is disputed even among themselves," Isocrates commends a wisdom "rec-
ognized by all," which will "render the Athenians themselves prosperous, and
deliver the rest of Hellas from their present evils" (Antidosis 84-85).
The philosophy which Isocrates teaches through his art of speaking carries a
specific and practical political message: "philosophy, which educates us for pub-
lic affairs and makes us gentle toward each other," is the particular gift of Athens
to the rest of the world (Panegyricus 47). The Athenians are superior to all
others, not in waging war or in preserving laws, "but in being educated toward
phronesis and logos, those qualities which raise man above the animals and the
Hellenes above the barbarians" (Antidosis 294). Athens alone offers, for the
education of the potential rhetorician, "the greatest contests of speeches, practi-
cal experience, moderation of speech, flexibility of mind, and love of letters";
Athens has become a "teacher for all who are able to speak or to educate"
(.Antidosis 296), Athens is worthy of praise because she fosters the conditions for
the development of the very qualities which are honored in and through the
speeches written by Isocrates; the value of these philosophic speeches; which are
"honored and esteemed in all associations and for all time" (Antidosis 48), is in
fact determined by their practical judgment on the contemporary political situa-
tion. Athens is to be upheld as the leader of a pan-Hellenic union because
Athens represents philosophy, but philosophy is to be valued because it exhibits
the right path for recognition of "the true interest of Athens and of the rest of the
Hellenes" (Panathenaicus 2).
Plato judges Isocrates in his pursuit of a less than godlike impulse; but Isocrates
questions the wisdom of that impulse, assuming that, by nature, all men do not
desire to know.
9
Since the philosopher is distinguished from the many by his
self-conscious desire to understand the good for man,
10
the gap between the
philosopher and the many points to the need for the art of speaking. It is the
rhetorical art which encourages the acceptance of the philosopher's phronesis by
the city; this mediating function benefits the philosopher as well as the city. The
virtue of moderation, both assumed and produced by the art of persuasion,
represents Isocrates' solution to the gap between the theoretical value of philoso-
phy and the actual practices of the city.
11
The intention of the rhetorical art in
providing the model for this virtue is identical with the political intention of
philosophy. The union of rhetoric and philosophy, in providing the model for
the virtue of moderation, Isocrates upholds as the ultimate justification for his
education; that education necessarily establishes the superiority of human
phronesis to any form of madness.
12
In contrast with Socrates' divine restriction
to living speech, Plato acknowledges the human perspective of his commitment
to writing; but in contrast with the human art of Isocrates, Plato associates his
dialectic art of writing with Socrates' "divine madness."
As a valid motivation for his own practice of writing, Isocrates defends that
competition and rivalry for human honor which Socrates described as the
motivation of those less than godlike souls, trampling on and colliding with each
other, striving to constantly pass each other, beneath the surface of the heavens
118 Appendix
(cf. Phaedrus 24.8b). Competition in the effort persuasion is necessary and
justified, Isocrates argues, since the final court of judgment is not divine truth
but human opinion.
14
Without any pretense of investigating "the truth about the
nature of soul divine and human," Isocrates announces that "everyone does
everything that he does for the sake of pleasures, or gain, or honor, for no desire
outside these comes into being for men" (Antidosis 21).
In his Olympic oration, Isocrates defends his competition with previous
rhetoricians on the basis of the capacity of speech to allow for a variety of
arrangements of the same argument. Because the truth is itself helpless, the
possibility of persuasion lies in the arrangement "giving us the power to make
clear to each other whatever we desire" (Nicocles 5). Isocrates analyzes this
capacity in terms of the power of speech "to make the great small and the small
great, to recount the old things in a new way or the new occurrences in an old
way" (Panegyricus 8). This very claim, which Socrates finally assigns to the
teachers of Isocrates, Gorgias and Tisias (cf. Phaedrus 267b),
15
he first intro-
duced as the general basis for defining the whole of rhetoric as an "art of
contention" (cf. 261b).
Isocrates' concern with competition is reflected in his interpretation of the
rhetorical principle distinguishing the argument of a speech from its arrange-
ment, insofar as he insists on the higher priority of demonstrating the particular
talent of a speaker or writer over demonstrating what may be true, hence held in
common.
16
In light of this principle, Isocrates bases his competition with the
rhetoricians and "eristics" on a division between those speeches concerned with
trivial subjects, where it is easy to say something original, and those concerned
with the "good and the beautiful", where it is difficult to "reach the heights of
greatness" (Helen 12).
17
In the playful speeches of the "eristics," which "follow
one road" and are "easy to find, to learn, and to imitate," the discovery alone
gives credit to the speaker; but in "trustworthy speeches of general importance,"
which are "discovered in many forms, dependent upon appropriate timing, and
of difficult composition," the speaker's success must be accomplished through
the art of arrangement (Helen 12).
In response to the competition which Phaedrus establishes, demanding a
speech no shorter and completely different from that of Lysias, Socrates makes a
distinction between "necessary arguments," in which only the arrangement is to
be praised, and those which are not necessary, in which the discovery as well as
the arrangement may be worthy of praise (Phaedrus 236a). It is, then, Isocrates'
rhetorical principle which lies beneath the competition with Lysias which Soc-
rates enacts in delivering his speeches on eros. But the difference between
"serious subjects" and "necessary arguments" marks the difference between Isoc-
rates' and Plato's respective self-reflection on their own projects. If common
human opinion determines, for Isocrates, the general importance of serious
speeches, it can only be the application of the "two ideas" of collection and
division that determines, for Plato, the necessary argument as well as its possible
arrangements. The Platonic understanding of the relation between necessary
Isocrates the Beautiful 119
argument and arrangement is demonstrated by the development of the "love as
madness" argument through the rearrangements of the three love speeches. If the
persuasive power of each arrangement of this necessary argument rests on the
presentation of a part as if it were itself the whole, the artful capacity for such
presentation is itself dependent upon recognition of the whole which is to be
suppressed in each speech taken separately. Recognition of the relation between
necessary argument and possible arrangement is thus the sign of the true art of
speaking, based on the principles of dialectics. Through this hidden transforma-
tion of Isocrates' rhetorical principle concerning the artful arrangements of a
necessary argument, Plato points to the practice of dialectics as that serious
pursuit which alone renders speech or writing worthy of the name "philosophy."
The distinction between Isocrates' human identification of philosophy with
the practical affairs of the city, and Plato's "divine" identification of philosophy
with the pursuit of dialectics is reflected in their respective understanding of the
function of art. The ironic clue for this reflection lies in Socrates' testimony to
Isocrates' superiority on the basis of his "more noble nature" and the presence of
"some kind of philosophy by nature in the mind of the man" (cf. Phaedrus
279b). Since the tension between art and nature provides the focus of his struggle
with Isocrates, Plato hides his attack beneath Socrates' investigation of the evi-
dence of the power of art in the principles of the rhetoricians. If Isocrates claims
to impart instruction in the art of speaking, he explicitly admits that it is the mere
preliminaries which he teaches; he offers no "science" for learning individual
timing and judgment, the composition of the work as a whole, and the ends
toward which it is applied.
18
All of the decisive factors for the power of persua-
sion belong to the province of natural ability and practice;
59
precisely that power
of the art which can only be supplied by a "shrewd and courageous soul"
20
Isocrates excludes from the possibility of education.
The echo of Isocrates' admission resounds in Socrates' establishment of the
conditions for the "truly rhetorical art" (cf. Phaedrus 269d). Socrates' condemna-
tion of the writers 'on the art of speaking, uttered in the voice of the "mellifluous
Adrastus or Pericles," is based on a recognition of the necessary foundation of
tekhne in the analysis of whole and part. The refinements of rhetoric which
Phaedrus admires must be submitted to these master rhetoricians, who counsel
sympathy rather than harshness for those who believe that knowledge of the
preliminaries constitutes the art of rhetoric, assigning small value to "the persua-
sive use of these and to the composition of the whole" (269c). The response of
these artful rhetoricians is couched in the words of Isocrates,
21
but Socrates'
imitation of Isocrates ironically places responsibility for the rhetoricians' inability
to define the nature of rhetoric on their ignorance of dialectics.
While Isocrates condemns, on the one hand, the "writers of the so-called arts"
who falsely claim to "teach an art of political speeches" without attributing any
power to practical experience or natural ability (Against the Sophists 9), he
ridicules, on the other hand, the "eristics" who "waste their time contending
about useless matters," and "claim to teach an exact science of the good life for
120 Appendix
man" (Against the Sqphists 3). Isocrates acknowledges, at the end of his career,
that the teachers of eristic "do benefit their students, though not as much as they
profess" (Antidosis 261). Isocrates takes his stand with those "who believe this
training is of no use in practical life," but he allows for its value as an exercise in
sharpening the mind for subjects "more serious and of greater worth" (Antidosis
265). The practice of dialectics, to which Plato assigns the unique status of
serious worth, Isocrates calls mere preparation, "gymnastics of the mind," un-
willing to give the name 'philosophy' to "training which is of no help to us in the
present either in speech or in action" (Antidosis 266).
In attacking those who believe in philosophy as an exact science, Isocrates
chooses to examine the "art of letters" as a potential model for the art of speaking:
"I would have preferred over much gold that philosophy had such power"
(Against the Sophists l l ).
22
In contrast with the fixity of the letters, Isocrates
points to the constantly changing conditions for effective speech, requiring fit-
ness for the occasion, appropriate style, and originality (Against the Sophists
13).
23
It is, of course, the acknowledgment of these very conditions which
compels Socrates to insist on the "adaptation of speeches to souls" as the re-
quirement for the rhetorical art (cf. Phaedrus 271a, 271d, 273d, 277b-c). With
the same recognition of that immediacy and particularity which seem to make
any techne of logos impossible, Isocrates defends, as the necessary preparation for
effective speech, the primary importance of natural ability, followed by the
usefulness of "empirical exercise," only slightly improved by education (Against
the Sophists 15). Transforming Isocrates' formula, Socrates lays down as the
conditions for the "truly rhetorical art" natural ability, knowledge, and practice
(Phaedrus 269d); through Socrates' slight addition of "knowledge," Plato indi-
cates his judgment on Isocrates' whole education.
The models which Socrates chooses for the art of speaking are, nevertheless,
medicine, tragedy, and music (cf. Phaedrus 268b-269b), where the composition
of elements into a harmonious whole requires, besides knowledge, experience
and judgment of "what is fitting." Not the grammatical art, but the arts of
healing, poetry, and music, illuminate the relation between the claim of rhetoric
to be an art and its purpose of "leading souls with words." The stability of
structure exemplified by the alphabet as the subject of the grammatical art seems
to be an impossible model for an art of speaking concerned with the "ever-
moving motion" of soul. While Plato seems, then, to indicate his agreement
with Isocrates on the impossibility of the grammatical paradigm for the art of
speaking, he maintains, at the same time, its desirability as the necessary stan-
dard for evaluating the claims of any tekhne; only in light of such a standard,
which would allow for the recognition of human limitations, does the art of
persuasion display its necessary incompleteness (cf. Phaedrus 269d).
The Platonic echo of Isocrates' contrast between the fixity of the grammatical
art and the constantly changing conditions for persuasive speech emerges in
Socrates' explicit discussion with Phaedrus on the nature of the written word.
The very qualities which Isocrates demands for the application of the
Isocrates the Beautiful 121
grammatical paradigm, Socrates sets forth as the deficiencies of the written word
(cf. 275d-e). But Socrates does not preclude the possibility of an art of writing
which might benefit from the value of those qualities while overcoming their
potential dangers, thus fulfilling the conditions which justify the claim to the
status of an art. The echoes in the Phaedrus of Isocrates' arguments concerning
the inadequacy of the alphabet as a model for the art of speaking thus manifest
Plato's defense for the activity they share.
24
For Isocrates, in contrast, the inade-
quacy of the grammatical paradigm only serves as the basis for concluding the
impossibility of any exact knowledge, and it is precisely that impossibility which
serves as the ground for his vindication of his own art of writing.
Since Isocrates' very rejection of knowledge of the letters as a paradigm for the
art of speaking is expressed through the products of his writing, he too must
weave the defense for his practice into its products. But in his letters to men of
action, urging them to policies based on his own prudent judgment, and in his
political speeches offered to the assembly as counsels for decision, Isocrates
frequently begins with a condemnation of written speech. His accusation that
writing is inadequate in replacing spontaneous conversation, is unable to defend
itself, and is nonresponsive to changing conditions, are echoed in Socrates'
reproaches against the dangers of the written word. Isocrates' defense of his art of
writing, no less than Plato's, must be carried out through the implications con-
cealed in a written condemnation of the written word.
In his letter To Philip Isocrates establishes a distinction between oral speeches
and those which are read, on the basis of their power of persuasion; while all men
assume the former to be "serious and urgent," they believe the latter to be written
for "display and personal gain." The cause of this belief is the nature of the
written work, which is "robbed of opinions of speech and of voice," as well as of
"changes in delivery and of timeliness, and of interest in the matter, with no aids
for content and persuasion, but stripped of all these accessories, naked, being
read by someone unpersuasively with no feeling, as though doing arithmetic"
(To Philip 25). With this covert praise for the objectivity of writing, Isocrates
recommends that Philip set aside all the difficulties mentioned and, having
before him only the "actual facts," examine the arguments one by one, "with
reason and philosophy," avoiding the opinions of the many.
In his letter To Dionysius I socrates excuses his reliance on a written letter
because of his advancing age, admitting that it is better to come in person, not
only because it is easier to make things cl ear in person and because everyone
trusts more in what is spoken than in what is written, "listening to the former as
to propositions and to the latter as to products of poets," but further, because the
absence of the writer provides no defender for those statements which are not
understood or not believed (To Dionysius 1). Again, however, I socrates con-
cludes the introduction with the advice that Dionysius disregard these difficulties
and direct his attention to' the serious content of the problems themselves.
Isocrates begins his first major political speech with the distinction between
men of action, who have the power to make decisions and determine history, and
122 Appendix
those skilled in speegh, who, for the most part, "waste their
1
time on trivial
matters. But beneath this distinction Isocrates offers the description of deeds as
common to all, in contrast with the ability to make use of these deeds at the right
time in beautiful speeches, as the particular gift of the wise (Panegyricus 9). Such
skill in speech, when expressed through the product of writing, renders its pos-
sessors "not only men of power in their own cities, but also honored in others"
(Panegyricus 50). Isocrates concludes the speech with the recommendation that
those writers who now waste their time on trivial matters should follow his own
example, "writing speeches which will deliver their authors from present distress
and win for them the credit of bringing to pass great blessings for the rest of the
world" (189)."
In a written speech which assumes the guise of a live courtroom trial, Isocrates
defends his own life and his work against the charge that he is guilty of corrupting
his pupils by teaching them to make the worse argument appear the better,
contrary to justice.
26
Isocrates introduces the speech by describing the difficulty
of the enterprise facing him: "having to grasp as a whole such an extent of ideas,
to harmonize and bring together so many kinds of speeches, to make smooth
connections and to make all the parts consistent" (Antidosis 11). That such a
project is only possible for the art of writing Isocrates confirms in his recom-
mendation that the reader not try to run through the whole at once, that is, not
submit uncritically to its appearance as a spontaneous communication. Isocrates
begins his defense with the same criticism that Socrates urges against the revilers
of Lysias (cf. Phaedrus 258c): he is condemned for his speechwriting by those
who make use of the same activity to express their condemnation (Antidosis 14).
While Isocrates appears to deny the value of writing by adopting the disguise of
living speech, his introduction to the speech testifies to his belief in the power of
the written word "to create a true image of my life and my mind, to make known
the truth about me to my condemners, and to leave behind for posterity a
monument more beautiful than statues of bronze" (Antidosis 6).
Supporting the tacit implications of his political speeches, Isocrates presents
the strongest defense for his activity of writing in his epideictic speeches, whose
underlying theme consists in reflection on their own nature as products of writ-
ing. It is in these speeches of display, dealing directly with the problem of
rhetoric, that Isocrates sets forth the justification for writing as a necessary politi-
cal act.
27
The role of the art of rhetoric, as a necessary mediation in the conflict
between philosophy and the city, must be effected through the activity of writing,
which "reaches through all the cities of Hellas" (Evagoras 74). By creating an
immortal image of a noble character which young men will wish to imitate, the
product of writing leads to "the study of philosophy" (Evagoras 76). If the written
work has the power to lead the citizen to philosophy, it possesses the capacity, at
the same time, to bring philosophy to the city. The political usefulness of
philosophic phronesis depends upon its capacity for transcending the sphere of
the private, which is possible only through the public address of the written word.
But the political effectiveness of philosophic prudence also requires the discre-
Isocrates the Beautiful 123
tion of selectivity in its address. Both philosophy and rhetoric share the conflict
between the necessity of universal publicity and the desire for individualized
discretion; only the art of writing, with its capacity for simultaneously revealing
and concealing, can resolve this inevitable tension (cf. Busiris 2).
As a model for the political usefulness of the philosophic product of writing,
Isocrates presents his eulogy of Evagoras; the purpose of the rhetorical exercise of
praising a great man is to provide the necessary vehicle for persuading young men
to practice philosophy (Evagoras 76). It is not Evagoras's life but Isocrates'
product of writing which is able to accomplish this, transforming one who is
"mortal by birth" through an "immortal memory" (71). Isocrates thus reveals the
real object of praise to be the written speech itself:
I think that likenesses of bodies are beautiful memorials, but more worthy are those
of deeds and thoughts, which are to be observed only in speeches composed by art.
I prefer these first, knowing that beautiful and good men want to be magnified not
for beauty of the body, but desire to be honored for that of deeds and wisdom; then,
statues necessarily remain where they are set up, but speeches are carried all over
Hellas and, having been spread among gatherings of reasonable men, are wel-
comed by those who are more to be esteemed than all others; finally, no one can
make the nature of the body like molded figures and paintings, but the habits of
others and the thoughts which arc ensouled in words, it is easy to imitate for those
not choosing to be idle but desiring to be good. (74)
In a speech which is introduced as not serious, and therefore "not calling for a
dignified style" (Busiris 9), Isocrates provides another eulogy as a model for the
power of the written word. In the content of this eulogy, Busiris, king of Egypt, is
praised for his accomplishments in establishing laws and political organization,
effected through the division of his subjects into classes of priests, soldiers, and
artisans, a division which supplies the best model for government as well as for
the discussions of philosophers (17). Busiris is finally praised for his assignment of
the older and wiser men as rulers, of the younger as students of astronomy,
arithmetic, and geometry, those subjects considered by some to be most condu-
cive to virtue (22). Isocrates indicates the significance of this playful rhetorical
exercisewhich seems to contradict his customary attack against those who
believe philosophy can be based on real knowledgeonly through its context in
a written letter. The letter which frames Isocrates' speech on Busiris is addressed
to the rhetorician Polycrates, who must be shown a fitting model for a eulogy in
place of his own self-defeating attempt; Polycrates is therefore criticized for his
praise of Busiris, which is in fact a condemnation, and for his condemnation of
Socrates, which is in fact a commendation. It is not the mere absurdity, but the
danger of such exercises which necessitates I socrates' correcti on, insofar as "phi -
losophy, which is already hated, would be hated even more because of such
speeches" (49).
It is, then, through the fiction of this written letter that Isocrates illuminates
the true significance of his "playful" speech: the eulogy of Busiris is, in fact, a
124 Appendix
praise of Socrates, wfth the underlying purpose df making philosophy acceptable
to the many.
28
Isocrates begins this letter with the claim that he conceals his
views from everyone but his intended audience (2); through his art of writing
Isocrates claims to possess the very ability that Socrates denies to the written word
in his apparent condemnation at the conclusion of the Phaedrus (cf. 275e).
Isocrates warns his reader of his writing's power to conceal the true meaning
intended for the few beneath the beautiful surface intended for the many. Be-
yond the activities of mathematical studies and political leadership, it is the
activity of writing on which Isocrates bestows the highest honor, and the com-
plexity of the written word which is praised as the condition for fulfilling the true
function of rhetoric in reconciling philosophy and the city.
The power of the written word is again covertly praised in Isocrates' Helen, his
eulogy of "the beautiful." Isocrates introduces his eulogy of Helen with a discus-
sion of his own art of speaking, condemning those who "are pleased to set up
some abstract and self-contradictory subject, then discuss it in a reasonable way,"
such as "those who try to prove the identity of courage, wisdom, and justice
that they are not separate natural faculties but forms of one knowledge" (1). He
recommends that "those who waste their time in such useless contending ought
to give this up and pursue the truth, instructing their students in the practical
affairs of the city and training to expertise," inasmuch as "likely opinion about
the useful is preferable to exact knowledge of the useless" (4).
29
Such rhetoricians
have no concern with affairs which are private or public, but "are most pleased
with speeches having no practical service for any particulars" (10). Mocking their
arguments, such as the demonstration that "the life of a beggar is more enviable
than that of the rest of men," Isocrates finds most ridiculous their attempt to
persuade their listeners of their exact knowledge of politics, which they never
demonstrate in actual deeds (9). The arguments Plato uses to condemn the
political rhetoricians for their lack of theoretical knowledge
30
Isocrates turns
against Plato for his lack of any practical achievements.
After contrasting the ease of speaking on trivial subjects with the difficulty of
producing serious speeches of general importance, Isocrates introduces his
speech on Helen as the model for a proper eulogy, in contrast with the in-
adequate attempt of his predecessor on the subject.
31
Through the contradiction
between his demand for serious topics, concerning the practical affairs of the
city, and his apparently playful treatment of a mythological theme,
32
Isocrates
exhibits the complexity of his writing, compelling his reader to look for the real
meaning of "Helena," possessor of the highest degree of beauty, which is itself
"most precious and most divine" (Helen 54). For all men give homage to the
beautiful as to gods, prefer slavery to the beautiful rather than ruling over others,
call all other slaves flatterers but call servants of beauty "lovers of the beautiful"
(56). That Socrates' mythic hymn praising eros as love of the beautiful seems to
echo Isocrates' glorification of Helen as the paradigm of the beautiful should not
be surprising, for the model of each speech is the legendary recantation
Stesichorus was compelled to produce after speaking ill of Helen.
Isocrates the Beautiful 125
After affirming the power for punishment and reward that Helen wielded over
the poet Stesichorus, Isocrates describes as well her nocturnal visit to Homer,
commanding the composition of the poem on the Trojan War (65). By attribut-
ing the glory of Homer's poem not to his art but to Helen's natural beauty,
Isocrates recalls the paradoxical juxtaposition at the opening of his speech be-
tween the playful theme of Helen's beauty and the demand for serious subjects of
general importance. But Helen is a serious subject worthy of Isocrates' attention
because she gives her name to the Hellenes, a name which should be applied to
"those who share our culture rather than to those who share a common blood"
(.Panegyricus 56). Whereas Socrates revealed the truth behind his praise of the
beautiful to be the divine madness of philosophic eros, Isocrates reveals the
serious significance of Helen's beauty to be her role in uniting the Greeks and
preventing their slavery to the barbarians (Helen 67).
But the foundation of Hellenic unity, which Isocrates identifies as devotion to
beauty, depends in the last analysis upon the ability of the philosopher to speak of
the beautiful in a worthy manner. Twisting the apparent subordination of
Homer's art to Helen's natural beauty, Isocrates thus justifies his own art of
writing, through the identification of Helen with "the arts and philosophic
studies" (67), The conclusion of Isocrates' model for the rhetorical art thus
confirms his opening discussion of that art: the true object of praise is not Helen
but the writer of her proper eulogy (cf. Helen 14). As a model of the beautiful,
Helen may represent the arts and philosophic studies, but the value of the arts
and of philosophy is itself determined by their function as the source and the
effect of Greek unity, represented by Helen's role as the cause of the first com-
mon expedition against the barbarians (67). In the concealed identification of
Helen with philosophy, Isocrates exhibits that art of writing which he shares with
Plato. But while Isocrates, from his human perspective, subordinates or equates
love of the truth to love of Athens and of Hellas, Plato indicates that a "divine"
perspective would demand the subordination of love of Athens and of Hellas to
love of the truth.
Through the echo of Isocrates' eulogy of Helen in Socrates' eulogy of divine
eros, Plato directs our attention to Isocrates' defense of the practice of writing as a
necessary political act which, unlike living speech, can reach "all the cities of
Hellas" and can achieve immortality through human honor. Like Plato, Isoc-
rates denies the validity of the "art of letters" as a model for the art of speaking, on
the basis of the impossibility of fixed knowledge of that which is constantly
changing; but precisely in light of that impossibility, Isocrates' defense for his
own activity of writing is grounded on its power to preserve the prudence of
reasonable insight into political affairs and the persuasiveness of true opinion
artfully presented. The highest value of the product of writing Isocrates therefore
ascribes to its capacity for uniting all those who speak the same language and
share the same culture, who ought, for that reason, to join together in a cohesive
political community.
This political power of the art of writing, which allows it to create an audience
126 Appendix
over space and"time? must be defended, over against the Socratic commitment to
living speech, in the written work of Plato no less than that of Isocrates; but
insofar as the source of the value of the written word is not restricted to prudence
based on the persuasiveness of true opinion, the Platonic defense of the art of
writing must be determined by that love of wisdom which motivates the private
conversations of Socrates and his companions. The product of writing which
Isocrates considers a wasted effort, devoted to trivial or impossible matters, Plato
therefore identifies as a playful reminder which can evoke in its reader the only
serious activity, that of dialectic thought and speech (cf. Phaedrus 277e-278b).
Only the product of writing moved by this "more godlike force" can be defended
as worthy of the name 'philosophy.' While such writing may not be the most
effective for "speaking and acting before fellow men," it is, as far as human
ability admits, "pleasing to the gods" (cf. Phaedrus 273e).
N OT E S
Chapter I
1. As the portrait of an encounter between Socrates and one other individual, the
Phaedrus may be linked with the Euthyphro, Crito, Ion, Cleitophon, Menexenus, Al-
cibiades I and 11, Hipparchus, Minos, and Hippias Major. Of these dramatic repre-
sentations, the Phaedrus exhibits the most private setting, yet it is at the same time the
most explicit in suggesting that the conversation is for the sake of someone other than the
present interlocuter.
2. The condemnation of poetry as "imitation of imitation" in Book X of the Republic
(597e) points to the role of the poet as servant, consciously or not, of the political regime,
imitating artifacts (opinions) created by the craftsman-legislator. "Legislators and poets are
the makers of the horizons constituted by law and convention; or, to use the symbols of
the cave image, they are the men who carry the statues and other things the reflections of
which the prisoners see" (Alan Bloom, ed., The Republic, "Interpretative Essay," p. 504).
3. Socrates makes a special point of asking about Phaedrus's meeting with Lysias "in
town," where he has been entertained at the house of Epicrates, formerly owned by
Morychus, near the Olympeium. Epicrates, according to a scholiast on Aristophanes'
Ecclesiasusae 71, was a rhetorician and demagogue; in his speech, Against Epicrates and
His Fellow Envoys, Lysias accuses him of theft for having accepted a bribe when acting as
envoy to the Persian king. Morychus is a man whose fame in antiquity rested not on the
minor tragedies he composed, but on his reputation for gluttony. See the scholiast on
Aristophanes' Achami am 887, Wasps 506, and Peace 1008. Phaedrus, a glutton for
speeches, is entertained by a feast of words from Lysias, staying in the home of a famous
glutton!
4. Socrates acknowledges his debt to the ode of Pindar: "My mother, Thebes of the
golden shield / I will consider your interest even greater than business" (Isthmia 1.1).
Socrates ironically suggests that hearing the diatribe between Lysias and Phaedrus is for
him the equivalent of those interests of the city which transcend personal pursuits of
leisure.
5. In his description of the most rudimentary city, Socrates suggests that the absence of
the evils of private property and leisure may be, at the same time, the absence of the
necessary (though not sufficient) conditions for philosophy. See Republic 369b-372e; cf.
Statesman 272a-d; Laws 670a-d.
6. Socrates seems to deny the distinction Aristotle affirms between practical virtue or
political actionswhich are unleisurely, aim at some other end, and are not desirable for
their own sakeand philosophy or theoriawhich requires self-sufficiency, leisure, and
unweariedness as far as possible for man, seems superior in serious worth, aims at no end
beyond itself, and has its pleasure proper to it (Nichomachean Ethics 10.7, 1177bl 5-20).
7. Socrates demonstrates his awareness of Phaedrus's particular concerns in his playful
promise to follow Phaedrus "to Megara and back again" (228a), quoting Herodicus the
physician, known to us from the Republic (406a-b) as a valetudinarian and from the
Protagoras (316e) as an example of the sophist in disguise.
8. In the corpus of the dialogues, the only character who never appears with shoes is the
wandering, homeless Eros! (Symposium 203d).
128 Notes to Chapter III
9. Socrates' endurance in the face of physical hardship is reported by Alcibiades in his
description of the campaign at Potidaea: "But again, his endurance of the wi nter,... he
went out only in a cloak as he usually wears, and went over the ice unshod more easily
than the rest of us in our shoes. The soldiers looked askance at him as though he despised
them" (Symposium 220b).
10. After Phaedrus's request for a set of speeches about eros has been proposed, Socrates
announces that no one could vote in opposition, "For I myself could not decline, when I
claim to know nothing but the erotika" {Symposium 177d-e).
11. When Socrates, in preparation for his recantation to eros, asks Phaedrus whether
he believes "Eros is from Aphrodite and some kind of a god" (242d), Phaedrus only
answers, "So it is said," apparently remembering Diotima's identification of Eros as
neither human nor divine. See Symposium 202e.
12. When Eryximachus, son of the physician Acumenus, recommends abstinence
from heavy drinking due to its harmfulness, Phaedrus immediately declares the constancy
of his obedience (Symposi um 176d).
13. Attending a gathering of the sophists, Phaedrus is seated with Eryximachus and
others at the feet of Hippias, listening to him answer questions on nature and the heavenly
bodies (Protagoras 315c).
14. Phaedrus's immediate concern with honor recalls the description in Book I X of the
Republic (549a) of the "timocratic" man, as one who is a lover of the Muses and of
listening to speeches though not himself a rhetorician, harsh to slaves, gentle to the
freebom, submissive to rulers, loving honor, devoted to gymnastics, loving money as he
grows older, neglectful of the true Muses concerned with speech and philosophy.
15. Cf. Iliad 10.482, 15.262.
16. In identifying the willingness for self-sacrifice as a sign of true love, Phaedrus seems
to betray his understanding of eros infected by thumos. See Republic 440d.
17. The sophist Hippias whom Phaedrus admires (cf. Protagoras 315c) considers his
most brilliant art to be that of "mnemoni cs" (Hi ppi as Minor 368d).
18. Socrates later compares Lysias's speech to the epigram on the tombstone of Midas
the Phrygian, greatest lover of gold (264c). Socrates then characterizes Phaedrus, Lysias,
Thrasymachus, and the others as men who teach an art of speaking to "those willing to
pay them as kings" (266c).
19. "Di u minne ist der natur, daz si den menschen wandelt in die dine, die er mi nnet,"
as Heidegger quotes Meister Eckhardt, adopting an expression of Dionysius the Areopa-
gite. Martin Heidegger, "Das Di ng," in Vortrage und Aufsatze, ed. Clemens
Grafpodeweis (Pfullingen: Leske Verlag, 1954), vol. 2, p. 49.
20. The attraction of likes as a basis for friendship is taken up in Socrates' discussion
with Lysis: "They [the poets] speak not carelessly, displaying their opinions about those who
happen to be friends; they say god himself makes them friends, leading them toward each
other. They speak, I believe, like this: 'Always the like god leads to l i ke'" (Lysis 214a).
21. That the foremost condition for persuasion is the willingness of an audience to
listen is suggested by the dramatic opening of the Republic, when Polemarchus,
Adeimantus, and their companions, trying to detain Socrates and Glaucon from returning
to town, command them: "You must either prove yourselves the better or stay here"; when
Socrates asks, "Why is there not the alternative of our persuading you that you should let
us go?," Polemarchus replies, "But could you persuade us if we refused to listen?"
(Republic 327c).
22. When Theodorus protests against Socrates' forcefulness, claiming, "I t is not easy,
129 Notes to Chapter III
Socrates, for someone to sit with you and not be forced to give a logos... for you do not
let anyone go who approaches you until you have forced him to strip and wrestle in
speeches," Socrates excuses himself by pleading his "terrible love of these gymnastics"
('Theaetetus 169a-b).
23. Socrates soon identifies his divine frenzy inspired by Phaedrus's brightness (234d)
with his nympholepsy inspired by the gods of the place, of which Phaedrus is said to be the
cause (238d). At the close of his first speech, Socrates again associates Phaedrus's inspira-
tion with possession by the nymphs (241c).
24. "Par son jeu, Pharmacee a entraine vers la mort une purete virginale et un dedans
inentame. A peine plus loin, Socrates compare & une drogue les textes ecrits que Phaedre
a apporte avec lui. Ce pharmakon, h la fois remede et poison, s'introduit deji dans le corps
du discours avec toute son ambivalence" (Jacques Derrida, "La Pharmacie de Platon," p.
78).
25. Typhon, a grisly-monster with one hundred dragon heads, conquered and cast into
Tartarus by Zeus, is a rebel against the established order of the gods. In the Fables
(197.125-26) of Hyginus Mythographus, it is said that Typhon represents the Egyptian
equivalent of the Greek god Pan, to whom Socrates finally addresses his prayer for inner
beauty. See Fontes Historiae Religiones Aegyptiacae, p. 349. Plutarch contends that the
explanation of the Greek name sheds light on the nature of the Egyptian god, for
tetuphonai means "to be crazy" (Ofl si s and Osiris 357d),
26. See Apology 23b, 29d.
27. In his commentary on the Phaedrus, Marsilio Ficino interprets the resting spot as
the Academy, the plane tree as Plato, the chaste (hagnos) willow (dgnos) as pure love, the
fountain of the Muses as communal wisdom. "In Phaedrum, commentaria et ar-
guments," p. 359.
28. Socrates, with ironic foresight, includes in his praise the shrill (liguron) summer
music of the cicada chorus, and thus foreshadows his later invocation of the "shrill-
voiced" Muses, relating their epithet to the musical race of the Ligyans. But Socrates'
apparent praise of the cicada music here, like his later praise of the Muses, is in fact a
recognition of the danger of seduction.
29. Socrates' praise for their resting spot, beginning with an oath "By Hera" (230b),
may suggest that the model for the scene is Homer's portrayal of Hera's seduction of Zeus,
in the soft grass of the cloud created by Zeus to assure the privacy of their love-making,
which is in fact moved by Hera's political intention of diverting Zeus' attention. See Iliad
14.262. In Pausanius's description of an altar-site on the Achelous, he includes a
sanctuary of Hera covered with figures of nymphs, or sirens, relating the story of Hera's
persuading the nymphs to compete in singing with the Muses, who, winning the contest,
punish the nymphs by plucking out their wings and making crowns for themselves of them
(Description of Greece 9.34.3).
30. Thus the laws of Athens report the evidence for Socrates' acceptance of them: "For
you would never have remained in the city more than all other Athenians, if you had not
been more pleased than they; for you never went out of the city to a festival or anywhere
else, except for military service. You never made any other journey, like other men, and
you had no desire to know any other city or other laws, but found us adequate and our
city" (Crito 52b).
31. Socrates thus foreshadows the irony of the apparent praise he later bestows on the
ancients, who were content in their foolishness to listen to "oak and rock" if only the truth
were spoken (275b-c).
130 Notes to Chapter III
32. Aristotle reports^hat the archons of Athens hach to swear an oath to set up a gold
statue for any transgression of the laws, before taking office (Athenian Politeia 7.1). If the
oath for the archons was a promise with respect to breaking the law, Phaedrus apparently
sees Lysias's speech as the law which he and Socrates are about to transgress.
33. Aristotle chooses the offerings of the Cypselids as a model for the tyrant's practice of
impoverishing bis subjects to prevent them from conspiring against him (Politics 5.11,
1313b22).
34. In the context of this dialogue, filled with the playfulness of etymologies, one might
indulge in the playful association of the plane tree (platanos) with its poetic fabricator
Plato. Socrates and Phaedrus have sought a resting spot for their speech in the shade of the
plane tree, but it is in fact the Platonic dialogue which provides a protective shelter for the
speeches of Socrates and Phaedrus. See note 27 above.
35. In his discussion of shame and shamelessness in Book II of the Rhetoric, Aristotle
claims, "We feel shame about something if it is done openly, before all men's eyes, hence
the saying 'Shame dwells in the eyes'" (1384a33-35).
36. Cf. Ion 535e-536b.
37. The clue to this enslavement is provided by Socrates' implied address to Phaedrus as
pai at the beginning of his recantation (244a), and by his implied references to Phaedrus at
237b, 237c, 238d, and 243e. The understanding of pai as "slave" or "beloved" is neces-
sary in order to account for the illusory impression of youth which Phaedrus displays,
granting the validity of the arguments demonstrating that he must be a middle-aged man
in this dialogue. These arguments are based on the fact of his participation in the
Protagoras, whose dramatic date is generally accepted as somewhere around 433 B.C.,
along with the evidence in this dialogue that Phaedrus and Lysias are both in Athens and
that Sophocles and Euripides are both alive, the Phaedrus therefore supposedly taking
place around 415 B.C. See G. J. DeVries, A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato, pp.
6-7.
Chapter 11
1. A deceptive speech which condemns the madness of eros affects Socrates as a source
of divine inspiration! Even Phaedrus suspects Socrates' playfulness (234d). In his admis-
sion of being overcome, Socrates foreshadows his own transformation of Lysias's speech,
where the experience of falling in love consists in being overcome (ekplettontai) by the
vision of the beautiful (2 50a). But this experience of being stricken by amazement in the
face of the beautiful is presented as a cause of ignorance, of misunderstanding one's own
condition. That danger is again acknowledged in Socrates' story about the cicada tribe,
arising from those men who were overcome (exeplagesan) by delight in song at the birth of
the Muses (259b).
2. In replacing the image of a branch or fruit with that of a drug, Socrates points to the
danger of the artificial product of writing, which supposedly carries him away from
himself (cf. 275a). Lysias's poikilos speech shares the nature of "names," compared in the
Cratylus (394a-b) to physicians' drugs whose true medicinal value always appears the
same to the physician while different colors and perfumes make them appear different to
the uninitiated.
3. Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes the speeches of Lysias as "simple and artless" in
appearance, with an artificial illusion of naturalness: "Beneath the semblance of artless-
ness his art is concealed" (De Lysias 1,16). The power of Lysias's reputation as speech-
writer for the law courts seems to lie behind the story of the proposed speech he wrote for
131 Notes to Chapter III
Socrates' defense after the indictment was drawn up by Meletus: "Socrates read it and said,
'A beautiful speech, Lysias, but not fitting for me, for it appears to be more forensic than
philosophic.' When Lysias questioned, i f it is beautiful, how can it fail to suit you?,'
Socrates replied, 'Would not beautiful cloaks and shoes be just as unsuitable for me?'"
(Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.40-41).
4. In the first book of the Republic, Lysias appears at his home in the Piraeus, with his
brother Polemarchus and his father Cephalus, a Syracusan invited by Pericles to settle in
Athens, where the family was occupied with a prosperous business as shield manufactur-
ers. When the family was banished from Athens by the thirty tyrants, Polemarchus was
put to death, while Lysias escaped to Megara, where he spent the year in exile, devoting
his time and remaining funds to the supporters of the democracy. These events are
described by Lysias himself in the speech Against Eratosthenes, delivered upon his return
to Athens in 403, when he was granted the right of citizenship, although that right was
almost immediately revoked. With his funds depleted, Lysias turned to the business of
writing speeches for the Athenian law courts, where he himself could never appear in
person. See R. C. Jebb, Attic Orators from Antiphon to haeos, pp. 142-52.
5. Of the thirty-three extant speeches attributed to Lysias, only threeAgainst the
Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution, the Funeral Oration, and the Olympic
Orationare not forensic speeches of accusation or defense.
6. Ancient testimonies refer to "the erotic speech of Lysias" without confirming the
authenticity of the speech. For a report of the debate, see DeVries, A Commentary on the
Phaedrus of Plato, pp. 11-14.
7. As an example, consider the myth and its interpretation which Protagoras delivers to
Socrates in Plato's Protagoras (320d-328c).
8. EKonysius of Halicarnassus, describing Lysias's excellence in mimesis, praises his
skill in character representation, exhibited by his ability to imitate the thoughts, diction,
and style of the speaker (De Lysia 1.15).
9. The speech whicli Lysias composes to be delivered in the law court must look more
like spontaneous speech than spontaneous speech itself. "When it comes to the rhetori-
cians, however, who does not know which are the best.,. Lysias, for his brevity, simplic-
ity and coherence of his thought, and for his well-concealed cleverness" (Dio Chrysostom
On Training for Public Speaking 11).
10. In contrasting the persuasive power of Lysias with that of the rhetorician Isaeus,
Dionysius of Halicaniassus asserts that the speeches of Lysias, "even when anything but
honest and straightforward, arouse no suspicion because of their simple style" (De haeo
1.97); it seems to be this concealed artfulness which persuades Phaedrus of the superiority
of Lysias's love speech.
11. Eros, like the just and the good, produces faction in our common understanding
rather than harmony (cf. 263a). But the same ambiguity which is necessary for rhetorical
persuasion seems to be necessary as well for "collection and division," thus indicating the
unity of rhetoric and dialectics. Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.1, 1354a 1-15, 1355a4-b25.
12. The confirmation of Socrates' irony lies in the repetitions produced by Plato in the
course of the dialogue as a whole: at least five times Plato has Socrates repeat the require-
ments for the art of speaking or writing (cf. 270d, 271a, 271d, 273d, 277b). It is only in
light of the subtle additions or omissions marking each repetition that the otherwise
concealed context and purpose of the argument become visible; the same principle of
interpretation would seem to be applicable to the repetitions in the written speech of
Lysias.
132 Notes to Chapter III
13. Dionysius -of Hdlicarnassus praises the heuresis^of Lysias's speeches, his ability to
discover arguments or ideas, but advises pupils to turn to other models for better
oikonomia or power of arrangement. He admits, nevertheless, that all of his speeches are
divided into proem, narrative, proofs, and epilogue (De Lysia 1,15, 27).
14. Every new argument is introduced by such connectives: eti de- 231a6, 231b6,
232d6, 233d5; kai toi- 231c7; kai men de- 231d6, 232b5* 232e3, 233a4; kai men de kai-
233d9; toinun- 231e3.
15. At the end of the Rhetoric (3.19, 1420b2-5), Aristode provides an example of an
appropriate conclusion for a well-arranged speech, citing the final statement of the one
speech known to have been delivered by Lysias in his own name: "I will conclude my
accusation. You have heard, you have seen, you have suffered, you have the facts; judge."
Cf. Against Eratosthenes 99. This conclusion seems to be echoed in the opening lines of
the love-speech which Plato's Phaedrus attributes to Lysias.
16. For the fault of eulogizing his art as if it were under censure before answering "what
it is," Socrates condemns Gorgias's student and spokesman, Pol us, who appears "to have
practiced more in what is called rhetoric than dialegesthai" (Gorgias 448e).
17. In his discussion on friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics (8.2) Aristotle estab-
lishes a division of friendship based on the different possible objects of love: the useful, the
pleasant, and the good, yielding the friendship of utility, that of pleasure, and that of the
good. He remarks that complaints and reproaches are most often to be found in the
friendship of utility, for there the lovers use each other for their own interests and each
wants to get the better bargain (8.13, 1162bl7,ff.). Aristotle affirms that such a friendship
between unlikes requires some proportional exchange to render the parties equal, noting
that in the political form the common measure is money. But when the lover loves the
beloved for pleasure while the beloved loves the lover for utility, the lover complains that
the excess of love he gives is not returned, though he might not be lovable, while the
beloved complains that the lover who previously promised all now gives nothing (9.1,
1164a 3-7).
18. Aristotle elaborates his discussion of friendship by comparing it to its corresponding
forms of justice (Nichomachean Ethics 8.13). As justice includes both the written (legal)
and the unwritten (moral), so the friendship of utility is divided into the legal, based on
fixed terms, and the moral, a general expectation of receiving as much as is given or more
(1162b22 ff.). Aristotle would thus describe the love-relation which Lysias proposes as the
moral type of utilitarian friendship parallel to the unwritten law of distributive justice.
19. Phaedrus himself praises the speech as "supernatural," especially "in names"
(234d). He understands from the outset that the cleverness of the speech has to do with the
nonlover's self-designation.
20. The proof of this impossibility is the complete absence of vocatives in a speech
which purports to be a direct address from one individual to another, in contrast with the
vocatives which begin and end both of the speeches delivered by Socrates. See Seth
Benardete, "The Condemnation of Socrates," p. 207.
21. Lysias implies that every rhetorician addresses the demos as a concealed lover. The
image of the demos as a fictitious single being, as the beloved who in fact enslaves the
potential political leader seeking its favors, is drawn by Socrates in describing the situation
of the lover Callicles: "You and I happen to suffer the same, the two of us loving two
beings, I, Alcibiades son of Cleinias and philosophy, you, the Athenian demos and
Demos son of Pyrilampes." Gorgias 481d-e; cf. Gorgias 516a.
22. Lysias's speech does not itself resolve the question of whether "the art of wooing the
133 Notes to Chapter III
electorate with promises differs from the speeches of the private part of the art of love,"
implicitly raised by the Eleatic Stranger's distinction between private and public "hunt-
ing" in the search for the sophist. See Benardete, "The Condemnation of Socrates," pp.
194-95.
23. The speech of the nonlover puts on the appearance of the condition Socrates
demands in Book VII of the Republic (52 lb) for potential rulers of a well-governed city:
"But what we require is that those wooing it should not be lovers of rule; for if that is so,
there will be a battle of rival lovers."
24. I f the sophistry of Lysias's speech, as a mirror of Phaedrus's character, is a model of
doxomimesis, Phaedrus would seem to represent the "simple mimetic," who, in his
foolishness, believes he knows that of which he has merely an opinion, while Lysias
would represent the "ironic mimetic," who, "because of much tumbling in speeches,
suspects and fears that he is ignorant of that which he pretends to know." See Sophist
268a.
25. The paradigm for this character of the written word is the written law (cf. 257c),
which the Eleatic Stranger likens to the orders of a professional gymnast who must direct a
crowd of men at once: "and so we must believe that the lawmaker, commanding the herd
and maintaining justice about contracts toward each other, will never be able, by making
laws for a whole crowd, to give accurately the fitting for each" (Statesman 294e~295a).
26. The essential characteristics of the beings which the Eleatic Stranger must supple-
ment with the reality of soul and mind is the absence of life and motion (Sophist
248e-249b).
27. "I n sum: the baseness of Lysias's speech contains a serious teachi ng.... As always
in Plato, the low prefigures the high." Stanley Rosen, "The Role of the Non-Lover in
Plato's Phaedrus," p. 437.
28. The activity of reading is thus the fitting model for the problem of knowledge
understood as recognition. See Statesman 277e-278d.
29. Cf. Meno 80d-86b.
30. "Ce mouvement [the repeatability of the written word] n'est pas un accident
sensible et empirique, il est li a l'idealite de 1'eidos, com me possibility de la repetition du
mi me." Jacques Derrida, "La Pharmacie de Platon," p. 125.
31. The speech of the nonlover is like the poikilos nature of the sophist, which the
Eleatic Stranger cannot grasp with one hand only. See Sophist 226a.
32. Lysias's writteri speech is like Protagoras's book Truth, a shrine for the. oracular
pronouncement that "of all things, man is the measure"; Protagoras's Truth remains
plausible only as a dead product of writing, whereas, if brought to life, it becomes true
neither to himself nor to anyone else. See Theaetetus 152a, 171c. See also Benardete,
"The Condemnation of Socrates," pp. 64-66.
33. The tombstone epigram is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, who gives credit to
Simonides for citing the poem as evidence for the belief that "all things fall short of the
might of the gods," adding that it is not the statue but the verses of the poet which alone
endure. Lives of Eminent Philosophers 1.89.90.
34. The presence of the tombstone statue recalls the statue of Boreas (221c), the figures
of nymphs and Achelous (230b), Phaedrus's promises for a golden statue of himself and
Socrates at Delphi (23 5d) and for a statue in beaten metal of Socrates at Olympia (236b),
the desire of the lover to sacrifice to his beloved as to an idol or a god (257a), the lover's
adorning his beloved like a statue to honor and worship him (252d). The statue, in each
case, seems to be the fitting image for the problem of the tension between motion and test,
134 Notes to Chapter III
between the desire for ifving responsiveness and the desire for immortality, in the experi-
ence of eros.
35. Cf. Republic 408b; Laws 660e.
36. Cf. Republic 416e-417a; Laws 742a-d, 743d-e.
37. See Phaedrus 249b-c, 263b-c, 265d-266b, 270d, 273d-e, 277b-c; cf. Cratylus
386d-388c.
38. Cf. Timaeus 23a.
39. Socrates himself admits, in reluctantly concluding his critical examination of
Lysias's speech, that it exhibits " paradeigmata useful to contemplate if not to imitate"
(264e).
Chapter III
1. Because his usual custom is to question his interlocuter, Socrates often ironically
attributes the long monologues he delivers to some other source. Cf. the speech of
Diotima in the Symposium and the speech of Aspasia in the Menexenus.
2. When the speeches are taken up as models for the discussion on tekhne, Socrates first
attributes the paradigmatic status of the "two speeches" (dual number) to the gods of the
place and the prophets of the Muses, denying that he possesses any art of speaking. After
unsuccessfully examining the speech of Lysias for the presence of a definition, Phaedrus
assures Socrates of the presence of a definition at the beginning of Socrates' speech
(singular), which Socrates attributes to the nymphs and to Pan (263d). The artfulness
which Socrates attributes to the gods of the place in defending the moderation of nonlove
provides an ironic opposition to the hubris caused by Socrates' daimonion in defending
the madness of eros.
3. In introducing the doctrine of recollection in the Meno (81a), Socrates paradoxically
claims that his understanding of all learning as a process of recovering what is within
oneself has been acquired from "ancient priests and priestesses" who knew how to give a
logos of their own teachings.
4. Like the speech Socrates is about to deliver, the madness of love portrayed by Sappho
and Anacreon is only silent, not contradictory, about the possibility of "divine madness."
In the Dissertations (24.18) of Maximus of Tyre, the love moving Sappho is identified
with the "art of love" of Socrates, both being captivated by beautiful persons and practic-
ing the same sort of love, he of males and she of females. In confirming Socrates' "wild
love" of Phaedrus, Maximus of Tyre cites Sappho's description of the erotic experience:
"As for me, love has shaken my wits a down-rushing whirlwind that falls upon the oaks."
Dissertations 24.9, cited in Greek Lyric Poetry, ed. J. M, Edmonds, vol. 1, p. 155.
Anacreon is mentioned by Pausanius (Description of Greece 1.25) as the first poet after
Sappho whose chief theme was love.
5. Reported as the reply of Anacreon when asked why he did not write hymns to the
gods, in a scholiast on Pindar Isthmia 11.1, cited in Greek Lyric Poetry, ed. J. M.
Edmonds, vol. 2, p. 127.
6. Socrates will attempt to provide a philosophic ground for the common principle of
the rhetoricians, used to justify competition based on the partiality of every speech. Cf.
Lysias Funeral Oration 2; Isocrates Helen 11-13; see Appendix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
7. The mythical tale of the nymphs who punish their nonloving beloved by blinding
him, transformed into the tale of the Muses blinding Stesichorus for speaking ill of Helen,
is now enacted by Socrates, blinding himself for speaking ill of Eros. Cf. Diodorus Siculus
135 Notes to Chapter III
8. The difference between Lysias's dramatic representation of the nonlover's speech and
Socrates' narrative report reflects the structural difference between those Platonic dia-
logues (like the Phaedrus) taking the form of dramatic representation, and those dialogues
taking the form of narrative report. The distinction between direct discourse, which
consists of the image of a conversation with no specific point of view, and narrative
discourse, which presents the image of a conversation from the point of view of its
reporter, might be considered in light of the division which the Eleatic Stranger estab-
lishes between the image-making art of eikastike, producing an imitation attentive only to
the dimensions of that which it represents, and the art of phantastike, producing an
imitation which takes into account the perspective of its observer. See Sophist 23 5d-236c.
9. Lysias's direct discourse would represent the "mi meti c" poetry which Socrates con-
demns in Book III of the Republic (392d ff.) because of the deceptive character of its
imitation, insofar as the speaker is forced to assume a role other than his true nature.
10. The rhetoricahprocedure of Socrates' first speech seems to reflect the hypothetical-
deductive method which Socrates assigns, in his image of the divided line, to the class of
dianoia, where "the soul is compelled to use hypotheses in the investigation, not proceed-
ing to the arche, as if it were unable to remove itself from and rise above its hypotheses,
but using images" (Republ i c 511b). The model for this activity is the method of the
geometricians, who "postulate certain assumptions and, taking their start from these,
pursue the inquiry from this point on consistently, concluding with that for which they
began the investigation" (510c).
11. The term 'nonlover' seems to operate like the 'not-beautiful,' which the Eleatic
Stranger uses to illustrate the nature of "the other," for the not-beautiful is not only
determined by its being other than the beautiful, but, viewed from another perspective,
has a determinate identity of its own. See Sophist 257d-258b.
12. The tyrannical nature of the speaker's activity in establishing this definition is
reflected in the content of the definition itself; the etymological source of eros, elsewhere
connected with "asking questions" (eroton, Cratylus 398d), is now appropriately linked
with "force" (rhome, 238c).
13. Socrates' nonlover precludes without examination the possibility of some progres-
sive movement beginning with eros of beauty of the body, as Diotima relates in her
initiation to the mysteries of eros. See Symposium 210a212a.
14. Socrates describes his axiomatic definition of eros, condemning the madness of
being carried away, by means of enthusiastic poetry in honor of Dionysus, patron of the
experience of being carried away! But his description should be taken in light of
"dithyrambics" as a sign of the ridiculous, as in Cratylus 409c, where one of Socrates'
longest and most absurd etymologies is called "dithyrambic."
15. Cf. Republic 427e.
16. Socrates' nonlover seems to ridicule Phaedrus's glorification of the indomitable
courage of a "small band of lovers" against all enemies. Cf. Symposium 179a.
17. The summary of the nature of the lover appears to echo Socrates' summary of the
nature of the tyrant: "jealous, faithless, unjust, friendless, impious, receiving and nourish-
ing all evils, most unhappy himself and rendering those around him so" (Republ i c 580a).
18. In Socrates' recantation, it is precisely the eunoia of the true lover which guarantees
the beloved's recognition of the value of the relationship and his return of like affection
(255b).
19. The identification of the lover with the tyrant is confirmed by this concluding verse,
for it is the tyrannical man in the Republic who is likened to the wolf: untame, never
136 Notes to Chapter III
20. The daimonion, ,fvho influences the erotic particularity of Socrates' attachment to
individual interlocuters (cf, Theages 128b), seems to have restrained Socrates from the
public act of writing just as it restrained him from participation in politics (cf. Republic
496c).
21. Compare Phaedrus 249d-250d with Phaedo 73b-76e.
Chapter JV
1. Cf. Theages 128b.
2. "We are offered a key to the character of Socrates by the wonderful phenomenon
known as 'the daimonion of Socrates.' In exceptional circumstances, when his tremen-
dous intellect wavered, he found secure support in the utterances of a divine voice that
spoke up at such moments. This voice, whenever it comes, always dissuades. In this
utterly abnormal nature, instinctive wisdom appears only in order to hinder conscious
knowledge occasionally. While in all productive men it is instinct that is the creative-
affirmative force, and consciousness acts critically and dissuasively, in Socrates it is
instinct that becomes the critic, and consciousness that becomes the creatortruly a
monstrosity per defectumi" Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter
Kaufmann, p. 88.
3. Diogenian suggests that the significance of this line from Ibycus lies in the proverb
"as ancient as Ibycus," used of foolish persons on the grounds that Ibycus gave up the
opportunity for ruling as a tyrant over his fellow citizens, Proverfcs 1.207, cited in Greek
Lyric Poetry, ed. J . M. Edmonds, vol. 2, p. 83. In modeling his own expression of guilt
on that of the poet Ibycus, Socrates recalls another image from Ibycus, which he hears
from Parmenides in their conversation together: "Love's approach makes me tremble like
an old champion horse of the chariot race when he draws the swift car all unwillingly to
the contest" (quoted in a scholiast on Parmenides 136e). While Parmenides compares the
preparation for philosophy to the experience of eros, he understands the link between
them to be nothing but compulsion.
4. The significance with which Plato imbues Stesichorus's legend about the phantom
Helen is revealed in the course of Socrates' discussion with Glaucon about pleasure and
pain in Book I X of the Republic, where Helen is introduced as an image for the phantoms
of true pleasures mixed with pains, "shadow-paintings" colored by the context of needs
which create them, "begetting raging and senseless loves for themselves to be fought over"
(586c). With the image of the phantom Helen, Plato enters into a tradition of the poets
(cf. Euripides Helen 605 ff.; Electro 1282 ff.); but Plato must certainly be thinking of his
contemporary, Isocrates, who uses the same story for the defense of his own art of writing
in the service of the beautiful (cf. Helen 64). See Appendix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
5. The same irony with which Plato portrays Socrates' inspiration in the Cratylus
(396d), originating with the seer Euthyphro, who provides Socrates with divine knowledge
of the original truth of words whose meaning has become hidden, is here present in the
description of his inspired knowledge of the etymologies of. the names of those responsible
for the speeches on eros.
6. See Herman Sinaiko, Love, Knowledge, and Discourse in Plato: Dialogue and
Dialectic in Phaedrus, Republic, Parmenides, p. 101.
7. In establishing the proper place of pleasure in the hierarchy of goods at the conclu-
sion of the Philebus, Socrates condemns the many who trust in the observation of the
"loves of the beasts" as "augurers trust in birds," rather than in the "inspired speech of the
philosophic Muse" (67b).
137 Notes to Chapter III
8. In the defense of his life before the Athenian court, Socrates discloses his attitude
toward the prophetess of Delphi, whose oracular utterance he accepts, indeed, as the
central mission of his life, but only by virtue of subjecting it to examination in a lifelong
effort to refute it. See Apology 20c-23b.
9. In the Phaedo, after poetically speaking in the language of the mysteries, Socrates
proclaims that it is the truth alone that is the real purification, along with moderation,
courage, justice, and wisdom. He elaborates by praising the men who established the
mysteries as being "not unenlightened," based on his own interpretation of their hidden
meaningthat the true mystics, who are rare, are the philosophers (69c).
10. Cf. Protagoras 347e; Hippias Minor 36 5d; Apology 22b-c; Ion 533e-534d; Laws
719c, 801b-d; Republic 600e-601a.
11. The divine madness of ems seems to be as "many-membered" and "many-formed"
as the complex hubris which Socrates' nonlover described in the previous speech (cf.
238a-b).
12. Socrates thus attempts to fulfill in his recantation the demand he repeatedly lays
down as the necessary starting point for any "artful" speaker (cf. 237c, 259e, 271a, 27I d,
273d, 277b-c).
13. It has been suggested that Plato's demonstration is an attempt to connect the arche
of Ionic natural philosophy with the Orphic-Pythagorean religious belief in the immortal
soul. See J, B. Skemp, Theory of Motion in Plato's Later Dialogues, pp. 3 ff. Skemp
suggests that the demonstration is influenced by the argument of the Pythagorean
Alcmaeon, who attempts to prove the immortality of the soul on the basis of its kinship
with the immortal, through its "ever-moving motion, for everything immortal is in
continual motionthe sun, the moon, the stars, and the whole heavens" (cf. Aristotle De
anima 40Sa29-bl ). Socrates' proof, however, does not attempt to demonstrate the im-
mortality of soul by analogy with the continuous movement of the heavens, but to derive
the continuous movement of the heavens and of all becoming from the ever-moving,
self-moving motion of soul as its arche.
14. Neither Socrates' argument nor his myth, however, explains how the generation of
'corporeal motion by soul is possible.
15. The justification for the identification of soul as self-moving motion in the argu-
ment with which Socrates begins the speech he delivers to Phaedrus seems to await the
account of eros which follows the initial demonstration of immortality. The particular
ground of the argument may not coincide, therefore, with that which underlies the
Athenian Stranger's identification of self-motion (in Book X of the Laws) as the logos for
the nature of the being whose "name" is psuche, just as "a number divided into two equal
parts" is the logos for the being whose name is "even" (895d-896b). In the Stranger's
argument, it is the identification of soul with life which allows for its identification with
the self-moving, while the opposite order of proof seems to be intended in the argument
Socrates delivers to Phaedrus.
16. Aristotle argues that "that which moves itself must comprise something which
imparts motion but is unmoved, and something which is moved but does not necessarily
move anything else; and either both are in contact with one another or one is in contact
with the other" (Physics 8.5, 258al 8-21).
17. Socrates' eikon may perhaps carry with it the long tradition, from Homer through
Parmenides, of the chariot as an image for the "journey of the soul."
18. If the soul is divided into different parts for different activities, asks Aristotle, what
holds it together? Is the unifying agent itself single or multiform? (De Anima 41 I b6-.1J).
138 Notes to Chapter III
19. The contrast Socrates suggests in his images rifthe divine and the human soul
recalls Homer's images, contrasting the chariots of the gods, represented by the yoked
team of "two swift horses with brazen hooves and flowing manes" of Zeus (Iliad 8.41-42)
or of Poseidon (Iliad 13.23), and the "mixed" team of Achilles, with its immortal "wind-
swift" pair supplemented by a mortal thoroughbred (I liad 16.148-54).
20. Pindar speaks of the altar at Olympia dedicated to the "twelve gods" for the
worshippers of a cult founded by Heracles (Olympia 10.50). Herodotus and Thucydides
both speak of the altar to the "twelve gods" at Athens. See Histories 2.7, 6.108; History of
the Peloponnesiart War 6.54.6-7.
21. "The same impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consumma-
tion of existence, seducing one to a continuation of life, was also the cause of the
Olympian world which the Hellenic 'will' made use of as a transfiguring minor. Thus do
the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live itthe only satisfactory theodicy!"
Nietszche, Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann, p, 43.
22. Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 12.10, 1075al l -16.
23. In the investigation of the names of the gods in the Cratylus (401b), Socrates begins
with Hestia, "first according to law," identifying her name with the ancient word for being
(essw), an identity supposedly recognized by the polis in establishing the primacy of this
goddess for ritual sacrifice. Socrates seems to suggest that men naturally, and blindly,
identify what is most private, and therefore primary for human opinion, with what is first
by nature.
24. The significance of this inclusion is perhaps suggested by Socrates' description to
Glaucon of the life of the tyrant: "Though his soul is as greedy as it is, he alone of all in
the city may never travel abroad or observe any of the sacred festivals that other free men
desire to see, but he must live, for the most part, cowering in his house like a woman,
envying the other citizens, if someone can travel abroad and see something good" (Repub-
lic 579b~c). This image of the tyrant is, strangely enough, echoed in Callicles' description
of Socrates' life as a lover of wisdom. See Gorgias 485d.
25. Cf. Republic 433a-b.
26. Socrates does not explain whether the gods who rest on the back of the heavens are
nevertheless present for the control and "caring" of "all that is soulless"; perhaps he as-
sumes the nonsimultaneity of contemplation and "caring" which the Eleatic Stranger
attributes to god in the myth he relates to the young Socrates. See Statesman 272e.
27. In its receptivity to the feast beyond the heavens, the soul may exhibit its kinship
with the unmoving beings, but the self-moving motion which defines 'soul' supplies that
active principle missing in the realm of the beings. Cf. So^ftisf 248e-249b.
28. This association of types of the soul with roles in the city is suggested by the very
names which describe them, most of which end in the suffix "-ikos," indicating the
practice of an art. Cf. Seth Benardete, "The Condemnation of Socrates," p. 168. The
exceptions to this principle, which would presumably indicate those pursuits which can-
not be understood as a tekhne, include: the philosopher, the lover of beauty, the lawful
king, one concerned with the care of the body, and some other imitator (248d).
29. The language through which the list of soul-types is expressed would seem to
suggest its arrangement in a pattern other than that of the linear hierarchy in which it is
presented. The first four roles are expressed in the genitive, after eis, with ordinal num-
bers, the fifth in the accusative, the last four roles in the nominative, with the numbers
representing the level of soul in the dative. The first four types seem, then, to portray the
soul as the active principle while the role is only a receptacle, whereas the last four portray
139 Notes to Chapter III
the role as active while the soul only receives it. If the first half of the list, beginning with
the highest, is mirrored in the last half, beginning with the lowest, the philosopher and
tyrant, first and ninth types, might be linked in terms of their determination by eros (cf.
Republic 490b, 573d); the second class, lawful king or warrior leader, might represent a
form of authority mimicked by the sophist or demagogue, the eighth class (cf. Republic
492a-493d); the third class, businessman or financier (if not politician) might be as-
sociated with the seventh class, craftsman or farmer, on the basis of their pursuit of
economic gain (cf. Republic 371 e); the gymnast or physician of the fourth class, might be
linked with the sixth class, poet or imitative artist, whose honor for the beautiful over the
good indicates honor for the body over the soul (cf. Laws 727d); the unique role allotted to
the prophet or mystic as the central type may be a self-conscious reflection on the nature
of the presentation itself as a "law of destiny."
30. This proposal might be supported by the image which Socrates offers to Theaetetus,
of the "wax block" of the soul, which retains the impressions of perceptions and thoughts,
and is considered a gift of Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses (Theaetetus 191d). Given
the possible characteristics attributed to the wax blockhard or soft, big or small, pure or
impure, or metriosSocrates in fact suggests nine possible classes of human memory. See
Seth Benardete, "The Condemnation of Socrates," p. 115.
31. Cf, Phaedo 61a.
32. Robert Brumbaugh offers a scheme for coordinating the nine types of the soul listed
in the Phaedrus with the types of polity listed in the Republic, Books VIII and IX, and the
division of classes in Republic IIIIV. See Robert Brumbaugh, Plato's Mathematical
Imagination, p. 142. Among other problems, such a coordination seems problematic in
light of the difference between the tripartite division of logistikon, thumoeides, and
epithumetikon (Republic 441a) and that of charioteer, white horse, and dark horse
(Phaedrus 246b).
33. Another conjunction of fate and choice underlies the myth of Er at the conclusion
of the Republic, where the order for the souls choosing a particular paradeigma of life is
determined by lot, but "virtue has no master, each having more or less of it as he honors
or despises it" (617e).
34. The fate of the soul which Socrates relates to Phaedrus is distinguished from the
cosmic myth of reward and punishment that Socrates relates at the conclusion of the
Gorgias by the conspicuous absence of any detailed description of punishment; this
absence makes good sense in a conversation which explicitly treats the art of rhetoric in
connection with the experience of eros, in contrast with its treatment in the Gorgias as
"useful only in the service of justice" (527c). Over against the external punishment
required for the guarantee of justice, the focus on the experience o ferns in the Phaedrus
may account for the presentation of reward and punishment as simply a continuation of a
life "worthy of that led in human form" (Phaedrus 249b).
35. "These pseudo-wholes [i.e., varieties of political regimes, each of which claims to
satisfy completely the nature of man], moreover, have their counterpart in Socrates'
second speech in the Phaedrus, where the false completeness of each human soul is due
to its following its own god and thus turning away from the ideas. The human soul,
though infected by the ideas, does not, even in the best cases, go directly back to the ideas;
it is always directed by eros away from the ideas and toward its own god, even though
without eros it could not go to the ideas." Seth Benardete, "On Plato's Timaeus and
Timaeus' Science Fiction," pp. 50-51.
36. Socrates seems to speak in the language of the mysteries in describing the "holy
140 Notes to Chapter III
sights" seen by soul in tfie pure light unencumbered by the body. Cf. Phaedo 66a, 67a,
69c, i09d~110a.
37. Cf. Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 9.12, 1171b29-32.
38. "The beautiful is not what pleases, but what falls within that fateful gift of truth
which comes to be when that which is eternally non-apparent and therefore invisible
attains its most radiantly apparent appearance." Martin Heidegger, What is Called Think-
ing?, trans. J. Glenn Gray and F. Wieck, Lecture 2, p. 19.
39. The amazement (ekplettontai) of the lover in the presence of the beautiful echoes
Socrates' declaration of his amazement (elkplagenai) at Phaedrus's brightness as he reads
the speech of Lysias (234d), and foreshadows his description of the fate of the cicada tribe,
overcome (exeplagesan) by the pleasure of song at the birth of the Muses (259b).
40. On the image of sexual love which flows through the eyes, see Euripides Hip-
poly tus 525,
41. Richard B. Onians traces the development of the language of "liquefying and
melting" to describe sexual love, citing Homer, Anacreon, Alcmaeon, and the Homeric
Hymn to Pan. He suggests the etymological connection between erao, "I love," and erao,
used in compounds meaning "I pour out." The Origins of European Thought about the
Body, theMind, theSoul, theWorld, Time, and Fate, p. 202.
42. Marsilio Ficino attempts to justify the need for an allegorical interpretation of the
imagery of the Phaedrus by quoting the observation of Nicolfonus, a contemporary
English scholar: "A man finds there so much of the eron and the eromenos, with such odd
allusions to that execrable vice, that one had need of a very vertuous thoughts and a very
charitable mind to allegorize all the strange metaphors of that discourse into a chaste
meaning." Quoted in Marsilio Ficino, Platonis philosophi quae exstant, vol. 10, p. vii.
43. In accepting the conflict between the madness of eros and the moderation necessary
for the polis as the unifying thread of the three speeches, Socrates would seem to agree
with Aristotle, that "he who is unable to live in the city, who has no need because he is
sufficient to himself, must be either a beast or a god, and not part of the city" (Politics 1.2,
1253a27-29).
44. In his state of inspiration in the Cratylus, Socrates lays down the principle that the
gods call things by the naturally conect names (391e); since, however, he later attests that
we know nothing of the gods themselves nor of the names which they call themselves
(400d), Socrates decides to investigate men and the opinions guiding them in the giving of
names.
45. Socrates, describing the burden of the pteronumos, seems to speak in a language
falling somewhere between that of the gods (pterota) and that of men (erofa potenon, cf
252c).
46. To elaborate this principle, Socrates chooses only four examples: the followers of
Zeus seek a "philosophic and ruling nature," those of Ares become murderous when
feeling wronged, those of Hera seek a "kingly one," while those of Apollo are only
mentioned, without further description (2 52c255b). The apparently arbitrary choice of
these four gods who inspire human eros recalls the apparently arbitrary collection of forms
of divine madness with which Socrates began his speech.
47. Cf. Aristophanes' speech on eros in the Symposium (192e-193a): "For the cause of
it is that our original nature was as I described and we were whole; the desire and pursuit of
that whole is called eros."
48. An illustration of this paradox emerges in Timaeus's account of the relation of the
demiurge to the cosmos he arranges: while the demiurge is said to have the eternal model
141 Notes to Chapter III
in mind as a pattern of the whole, he is described as being without jealousy, therefore
desiring to make the copy more like himself (Timdeus 29d-e).
49. Aristotle speaks of the friend as another self, of the good man's relation to himself as
that of friendship, of the general tendency to liken the extreme of friendship to self-love;
he points to a transformation of the negative implications of self-love by identifying the
"love of self' of the good man with the love of virtue (Nichomachiean Ethics 9.4,
1166a 10 ff).
50. Cf. Phaedrus 240c; Lysis 214a; Protagoras 337d; Symposium 195b; Republic 329a;
Lctws 716c, 837a; Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 8.1; Aristotle Rhetoric 2.4.
51. Cf. Ion 536c.
52. Cf Sophist 222d-e.
53. The dark horse exhibits the impulsive power of eros, but in his angry reproaches, in
his reviling of the others for cowardice and unmanliness in deserting their post and
breaking their agreement, he seems to exhibit the characteristics of thumos as well; the
white horse, who exhibits less willfulness, must be classed with his partner as an erastes,
for he too moves toward the beloved and must be pulled back by the charioteer through an
appeal to shame. Socrates' etkon thus seems to deny the validity of the common assump-
tion of the identity between the tripartite division of soul in the Republic (436a ff.) and
that in the Phaedrus, in which the dark horse would represent eras, the white horse
thumos, and the charioteer logistikos; by indicating this tension, and thus suggesting that
the division of the soul may depend upon the context in which it is considered, Socrates
again casts doubt on the possibility of fulfilling the conditions laid down for a true art of
speaking, based on knowledge of the simplicity and complexity of soul (cf. 271a, 271d,
273d, 277b-c).
54. Cf. Theaetetus 143e.
55. The white horse struggles against the dark one's compulsion toward what is finally
called "the terrible" and "the unlawful," but was first called "contrary to nature" (cf. 251a
and 254b).
56. And the problem of the unity of these parts seems to depend upon an understanding
of the suppressed unity of body and soul, In Timaeus's account of the creation of man, the
unity of soul is assumed for the immortal and divine principle, while the divided and
mortal soul arises only in connection with the body; it is, indeed, the actual structure of
the body which accounts for the division of the soul (Timaeus 69e-70a).
57. In his speech about Socrates, offered as a substitute for another speech about eros,
Alcibiades mentions himself as being one among other young men who have found
Socrates' way of loving so deceitful that he appears as beloved rather than as lover. See
Symposium 222b.
58. Cf. Laws 837a-b.
59. Cf. Lysis 214<3; Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 8.3, 1156b23-25.
60. Zeus, the beloved, who previously represented the source for the stream of desire
flowing over the lover (253a), is now the lover, who, when in love with Ganymede,
named that stream "desire" (himeron, 255c).
61. Socrates seems to recall Empedocles, for whom "all things that have come into
being are continually giving off effluences" (Fragment 89). The particularity of the stream
of beauty flowing between lover and beloved would be like Empedocles' stream of percep-
tion, where only the particular effluences of certain objects fit the passages of certain sense
organs. This interaction of like things is the basis for Empedocles' analysis of nature and of
human thought, for "all those things which are more suitable for mixture aremade liV*
142 Notes to Chapter III
one another, united through friendship by-Aphrodite" (Fragment 22). See The Presocratic
Philosophers, ed. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, p. 343.
62. "Being loved men delight in for its own sake, so it would seem better than being
honored and friendship would seem desirable in i tsel f.... But this seems to lie more in
loving than in being loved, as is indicated by the delight of mothers in loving" (Aristotle
Nichomachean Ethics 8.3, 1159a25-bl ).
63. "I n the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired" (Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann, p. 175).
Chapter V
1. "Tous les sujets du dialogue, themes et interlocuteurs, semblent epuises au moment
ou le supplement, lecriture ou, si 1'on veut, le pharmakon, sont introduits" (Derrida, "La
Pharmacie de Platon," p. 82). Derrida compares this "supplementary" treatment of the
nature of writing, which is actually the central problem, with the treatment of writing by
Saussure in the Cours, Rousseau in the Essay on the Origin of Language, and Hegel in
the Encyclopedia.
2. Cf. Protagoras 316d-e.
3. Cf. Parmenides 128a-e.
4. Cf. Sophist 229c, 267b-268a.
5. Cf. Symposium 209d-e.
6. Cf. Statesman 294b.
7. Cf. Cleon's speech in Thucydides' Mytilenian debate, History of the Peloponnesian
War 3.38.7.
8. When Theodorus makes the same statement to Socrates, "Wel l , we have leisure,
have we not, Socrates?" (Theaetetus 172c), Socrates enters into a digression comparing
the Jife and speech of the man brought up in the law courts, the slave for whom speech is a
matter of survival, and that of the man whom Theodorus calls "the philosopher," the free
man for whom speech is a matter of complete leisure. But Socrates in fact introduces his
digression while he is thinking of the urgent question of his coming trial before the
Athenian demos. Phaedrus, like Theodorus, sees his apparent leisure as a sign of his true
freedom.
9. Perhaps Plato has in mind Aristophanes' image: "Aye, the cicadas chirp upon the
boughs one month or two, / But our Athenians chirp over their lawsuits all their whole life
long" (Birds 39-41).
10. If Hesiod admits the power of just judgment to be a gift to men from the Muses (see
Theogony 75-103), he indicates, at the same time, the deceptive danger of the gifts of the
Muses (cf. Theogony 22-34).
11. The favors of the highest Muses, granted to those who pass their lives in philosophy,
are specifically separated from those of Erato (granted to love poets), and from those of
Terpsichore (granted to those who honor her in choruses, 259c); Socrates seems to
distinguish the poetry of Stesichorus, and that of the love speeches in general, from,the
activity of "logos divine and human,"
12. Cf, Phaedo 60e-61a.
13. It is precisely at noon, when the Athenian Stranger and his interlocuters seek shade
from the midday sun, that they discuss the proper form of law as a balance between slavery
and freedom, through the mediation of persuasion {Laws 722c~d).
14. H i rough the myth of the cicadas, the irony of Socrates' divine inspiration comes to
143 Notes to Chapter III
light; for the depiction of philosophy as enthusiasm is not a teaching but an image, whose
irony is established by the very logos in which that image is so artfully controlled. See
Hermann Gundert, Platon Studien, p. 22.
15. Cf. Republic 493a-c.
16. Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.1, 1355a20-b8.
17. In his discussion with Gorgias on the art of rhetoric, Socrates divides the class of
persuasion into that which produces belief without knowledge and that which accom-
plishes the production of knowledge through instruction. See Gorgias 454e.
18. Cf, Aristotle's division of the whole of rhetoric into deliberative (sumbouleutikon),
forensic (dikanikoti), and epideictic (epideiktikon). Rhetoric 1.3, 1358bl -30.
19. In the Odyssey, the act of psuchagogia is attributed to Hermes, god of speech, who
uses his golden wand to cast a spell on men's eyes or to wake them from the soundest
sleep. Practicing this art, Hermes gathers the souls of the suitors and brings them to the
dwelling place of disembodied souls (24.1). The function of "leading souls with words" is
precisely the description Isocrates offers for his own art of writing (Evagoras lOa-b). See
Appendix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
20. Cf. Parmenides 129e.
21. For the rhetorical skill of Nestor and Odysseus, see Iliad 1.249, 3.216 ff.; Socrates
seems to half-heartedly agree with Phaedrus's guess that Nestor must represent Gorgias,
while Odysseus stands for Thrasymachus or Theodorus (261c), but he is more interested
in examining the meaning of their "art of contention" than who they are.
22. Socrates attributes to the gods of the place and the prophets of the Muses (262d) the
good fortune of having the "two speeches" (dual number). In comparing the absence of a
definition of eros in the speech of Lysias with its presence in the beginning of his own
speech (singular), he assigns the art of his speech to the nymphs, daughters of Achelous,
and to Pan, son of Hermes (263e).
23. The same replacement is suggested by the conclusion of the .dialogue, where
Socrates and Phaedrus agree to deliver to "the writers in the city" the message from the
"fountain of the nymphs and the Muses" (278c).
24. The deliberate use of ambiguity as a means of simultaneously concealing and
revealing is analyzed in Leo Strauss's discussion of Maimonides' doctrine of "speech
spoken fitfully," "according to two faces," which can be externally useful for communica-
tion to the many, and internally useful for expressing knowledge of the truth. See Leo
Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, p, 71.
25. Eros cannot be defined in the context of Socrates' second speech because it is the
encompassing whole in terms of which everything else is defined. Sec Sinaiko, Love,
Knowledge, and Discoursein Plato, p. 101.
26. Cf. Statesman 277b-c; Gorgias 505d; Philebus 66d; Laws 752a; Timaeus 32c-34b.
27. "Love has long been called a tyrant," Socrates explains to Glaucon and Adeimau-
tus, in accounting for the nature of the tyrannical man as determined by the tyranny of
desire (Republic 573b).
28. Socrates' acknowledgment of the playfulness of his mythic hymn foreshadows his
demand for acknowledgment by the philosophic writer of the necessary playfulness of his
own creation (cf. 277e-278d), "The more Plato discloses of truth for the understanding
reader, the more he denotes the conversation as paidia." Hermann Gundert, Zum Spiel
bei Platon, quoted in G. J. DeVries, A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato, p. 20.
29. Thi s tension may be indicated by the fact that, in his playful state of inspiration,
Socrates mentions only the Muses as authors of divine possession (245a), whereas, in his
144 Notes to Chapter III
critical analysis of the speech, he claims to have ascribed the fourfold division of
prophecy, mystic rites, poetry, and eros to the "four" gods: Apollo, Dionysus, the Muses,
and Aphrodite and Eros (265b),
30. It is easier to understand Socrates' abstract analysis of the principles of dialectics as a
standard for evaluation of the claims of the rhetoricians than as an account of the way
Socrates himself proceeds in conversation, or of the way in which the Platonic dialogue is
constructed as an imitation of Socratic conversation. The various accounts of the princi-
ples of dialectics presented in several Platonic dialogues do not seem to be identical with
each other, insofar, perhaps, as each is implicitly colored by the context of the discussion
in which it arises; at the same time, however, it is never immediately obvious how each of
these formal and abstract analyses is exemplified in the conversation it is presumably
intended to clarify. See Republic 51 lbd; Sophist 253be; Statesman 285a-c; Philebus
16c-17a; cf. Phaedo 99d-102a.
31. Phaedrus speaks for the physicians Eryximachus and Acumenus when he gives his
opinion of the man who knows the mere techniques of medicine: "They would say, I
think, that the man was mad when, hearing from a book or happening upon drugs, he
believed himself to be a physician, understanding nothing of the art" (268c); Phaedrus
unintentionally makes fun of his own character while anticipating the theme of the
relation between genuine knowledge and the doxosophia of the written word which is like
an artificial drug.
32. After mentioning two contemporary physicians and two contemporary tragedians,
Socrates couples Pericles with the legendary Adrastus, perhaps concealing a reference to a
contemporary rhetorician (Phaedrus surmised a reference to Gorgias and Thrasymachus
or Theodorus in Socrates' mention of Nestor and Odysseus, 261b), More important than
these playful polemics, however, is Socrates' interest in establishing a paradigm for the
rhetorician: "Not even if he were more kingly than Pelops and had the mellifluous tongue
of Adrastus" (Tyrtaeus, Fr. 8, v. 8, in Theodor Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeti).
33. In establishing the conditions for the true art of rhetoric, Plato puts into Socrates'
mouth the echo of the claim announced by Isocrates; but while Isocrates demands natural
ability, practice, and the examples set by a good teacher (Against the Sophists 10),
Socrates demands natural ability, practice, and knowledge (Phaedrus 269d). See Appen-
dix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
34. Socrates' present praise for Pericles could be contrasted with his condemning
Pericles in the Gorgias for failing to fulfill the function of the rhetorician in taming the
demos (515e). This contrast should be understood in light of the distinction between the
function of rhetoric described to Callicles as an activity of punishing (Gorgias 527c), and
its present analogy with the art of healing. But Socrates' acousation against Pericles for
making the Athenians "idle, cowardly, talkative, and greedy" (Gorgias 515e) seems to
echo his present praise of Pericles' education by the "idle talk and meteorologizing" of
Anaxagoras. When Pericles is given credit as a great rhetorician and leader, he is simul-
taneously held up as a model for the nonteachability of virtue. Cf. Protagoras 319e; Meno
94b.
35. In a discussion about the usefulness of cosmological knowledge for political practice
in De republica of Cicero, Scipio relates the story of the eclipse during the Peloponnesian
War which overwhelmed the Athenians with terror until Pericles, "supreme in influence,
eloquence, and wisdom," gave his countrymen information received from Anaxagoras
about the regularity of the phenomenon, freeing the people from their fears (De re publica
1.16.25).
145 Notes to Chapter III
36. Cf. Apology 18b-c, 19b-c, 23b.
37. Unlike the scheme of the Gorgias (465c), where rhetoric is a spurious art, related to
justice with regard to the treatment of the soul as cooking is to medicine with regard to the
treatment of the body, rhetoric in the Phaedrus is treated as a genuine art, analogous to
that of healing.
38. Aristotle questions whether the investigation of virtue requires knowledge of the
soul alone or of the man as a whole on the basis of the analogy between politics and
medicine, with an equally ambiguous conclusion (Ni chomachean Ethics 1.13,
1102a 13-2 5).
39. When Socrates offers to cure Charm ides of his headache by the use of a magical
charm whose physical effects require the prior treatment of the soul, he justifies his
procedure by the principle of the Thracian physicians of Zalmoxis, who have taught him
that knowledge of the part requires knowledge of the whole, and that health in the body
can be achieved only on the basis of health in the soul (Charmides 156d-157c).
40. The reflection of this tension is suggested in Socrates' eikon of the soul as a winged
chariot-team where the unexamined assumption of the separation of soul from body
paradoxically results in an image of the parts of the soul without mention of the whole (cf.
246a).
41. Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.2, 1356a ff.
42. It is precisely in the context of a discussion on the question of the simplicity or
complexity of soul that Socrates affirms, "from these methods which we are now using in
these speeches, we shall never accurately grasp this, as it seems to me, for another longer
and fuller road leads to this; but perhaps we can speak of it in a manner worthy of our
preceeding discussion" (Republ i c 43 5d, cf. 504a-b).
43. The human lover, whose desire for the beloved was condemned by the nonlover as
the appetite of the wolf for the lamb, has now become the rhetorician who practices an art
of persuasion based on mere opinion, Socrates perhaps has in mind his own imagefor the
rhetorician Thrasymachus. See Republic 336d.
44. In his discussion of spurious enthymemes, Aristotle attributes this doctrine of "false
probability" to Corax, condemning it for the deceitful omission of necessary qualifica-
tions. Through the same example which Socrates now analyzes, of the weakling tried for
violent assault, Aristotle claims to illustrate the justification for the charge against "making
the worse argument appear the better" (Rhetoric 2.24, 1402a 15-27).
Chapter VI
1. See the section entitled "Subjects and Purposes of the Dialogue" in the introduction
of R. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedrus. That the final discussion on the principles of artful
writing is indeed no extraneous appendage to the main theme of the dialogue Hackforth
rightly acknowledgesonly, however, because that discussion issues in "an exaltation of
the spoken words of dialectic" (p. 164). The discussion is therefore subordinate to the real
unity of the dialogue, constituted by its chief purpose, "to vindicate the pursuit of philoso-
phy as the true culture of the soul by contrast with the false claim of contemporary
rhetoric to provide that culture" (p. 9). But the recognition of this purposewhich may
indeed make it no longer necessary to ask whether the main subject of the dialogue is love
or rhetoric (p. 9)does not, in itself, account for the apparently self-contradictory status
of a written imitation of a Socratic defense of philosophy based on a condemnation of the
written word. Vindication of the pursuit of philosophy as the unifying purpose .of the
146 Notes to Chapter III
dialogue must rather be ^self-unification by the dialogue through its self-defense as a
philosophic writing.
2. Cf. Republic 473a.
3. See Timaeus 23a.
4. See Laws 656d-e; Herodotus Histories Book II.
5. See Herodotus Histories 2.78.
6. See Timaeus 24a-b; Statesman 290e; Isocrates Busiris 15.
7. See Herodotus Histories 2.144.
8. See Laws 747c.
9. See Herodotus Histories 2.2, 4, 51, 53, 58.
10. See Herodotus Histories 2.8-88.
11. Timaeus 22b.
12. See Aristotle Metaphysics 1.1, 982b23-24; Isocrates Busiris 21-22.
13. Republic 436a.
14. Diodorus Siculus offers several possible explanations for the Egyptian representa-
tion of gods as animals. See Library of History 1.86-87. The dialogue between Theuth
and Thamuz would look like a conversation between an ibis and a ram. See Herodotus
Histories 2.42. Plutarch explains that the ibis is the symbol of Theuth/ Hermes because the
"ibis reed" is the instrument for writing letters (Questionum Convivialum 9,3.2).
15. See Herodotus Histories 2.144.
16. See Herodotus Histories 2.153.
17. The Athenian Stranger speaks of the well-governed Egyptians as a model for the
desired stability of a political regime, which is to be achieved through the consecration of
all dancing and music as if it were an immutable divine code. See Lows 657a.
18. See Excursus: Writing Like the Painting of Living Animals.
19. Cf. Philebus 16c, 18b.
20. Cf. Timaeus 21e. According to Harold Innis, the opening of the Egyptian ports to
Greek trade, particularly that of Naucratis around 650 B.C., introduced the Greeks to
papyrus, which provided an efficient material for the growing influence of the art of
writing. See Empire and Communication, p. 628.
21. Theuth, god of the moon, is the secretary-herald of Ammon-Ra, god of the sun; if
Ammon is the supreme god of the "creative word," Theuth is the secondary god, respon-
sible for the differentiation of languages as well as for the art of writing. See Derrida, "La
Pharmacie de Platon," p. 100.
22. The "user," who knows the function of something, recognizes its true nature, cf.
Republic 601d ff.; Cratylus 390b; Euthydemus 289b; Aristotle Politics 3.11, 1282a20-23.
But the god-king who judges the art of writing is precisely the one who has no use for it!
23. The supremacy of Ammon after 1600
:
B.C. was an indication of the ascendancy of
Theban political rule in Egypt. See Innis, Empire and Communication, p. 20.
24. See Herodotus Histories 2.15.
25. See Plutarch Oflsis and Osiris 358c-d.
26. See Herodotus Histories 2.42,
27. In the course of investigating the Egyptian origin of the Greek gods, Herodotus
reports a legend about the identity of the oracle of Zeus at Dodona with that of Ammon in
the Egyptian Thebes; after telling the story related by the Egyptian priests of Thebes,
Herodotus reports an interesting variation related by the prophetesses of Dodona, followed
by his own explanation. See Histories 2. 5358.
28. Although Socrates does not define the unity of the arts discovered by Theuth, the
147 Notes to Chapter III
link between the art of letters and numbers, calculation, geometry, and astronomy may be
the discovery of "draughts and dice," particularly in light of its removal from the sphere of
necessity. For the metaphoric significance of "draughts and dice," see Republic 487c,
604c; Lam 739a, 820d, 903d; Hipparchus 229e.
29. "Science et magie, passage entre vie et mort, supplement du mal et du manque; la
medecine devait constituer le domaine privilegie de Thot. Tous ses pouvoirs s'y re-
sumaient et trouvaient h s'y employer. Le dieu de 1'ecriture, qui sait mettre fin il la vie,
guerit aussie les malades. Et meme les morts" (Derrida, "La Pharmacie de Platon," p.
106).
30. The ignorance which Theuth displays about the potential crime that lies hidden
within the art he wishes to bestow on men seems to be based on his lack of understanding
of human nature; the justification of his condemnation by Thamuz-Ammon is most
appropriately reflected, therefore, in the justification of Prometheus's punishment by
Zeus, represented in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, for Prometheus's ignorance of
human nature makes him blind to the fact that his crimeshis rescue of men from
annihilation, his gift of blind hopes, and of fireare inseparable from the arts he bestows
on men. See Seth Benardete, "The Crimes and Arts of Prometheus."
31. The art of "mnemonics," which the sophist Hippias, "wisest of men in the greatest
number of arts," holds in highest esteem, does not seem able to help him discover the
relation between the "true man" and the "false man." See Hippias Minor 368a-d.
32. Treatment by artificial drugs would be a dangerous interference, not only with the
natural life span of an animal, but even with the natural rhythm of its disease (Timaeus
89a-c).
33. The Egyptian word for writing (ndw-ntr) literally means "speech of the gods." See
I. J . Gelb, A Study of Writing, p. 231.
34. The art of medicine possessed by Theuth makes him the fitting deity to preside over
the preparation of the corpse, and by association, over the funeral ceremony itself. In
connection with this function, and as the discoverer of the numbers, he is the god who
"measures the duration of the lives of gods and men." S. Morenz, La Religion Egyp-
tienne, cited in Derrida, "La Pharmacie de Platon," p. 104.
35. On the ambivalent nature (or absence of nature) of the pharmakon, see Protagoras
354a; Philebus 54c; Timaeus 89c; Phaedo 63d-e; Cratylus 394b; Alcibiades I 132b;
Critias 106b; Statesman 310a; Republic 382c, 459c, 595b; Laws 649a-b, 845d-e, 957d;
Charmides 15 5e157c.
36. Cf. Sophist 229c.
37. Cf. Apology 3Id.
38. In reminding the Athenian demos that he is no different from any of them, having
particular parents and children of his own, even though he refuses to bring them forth for
sympathy (Apology 34d), Socrates recalls the fictitious tale Odysseus offers to Penelope
when she presses him to reveal his own origin: "For you did not spring from oak or rock,
like the man in the old story" (Odyssey 19.163).
39. The opposite reversal seems to be illustrated, not accidentally, by the analysis of the
written law which the Eleatic Stranger provides for young Socrates. The written law is
identified as an imitation of the regime governed by knowledge, while the unchangeable-
ness of the prohibition against violating the written law seems to make it the human
equivalent to the divine standard of rule by knowledge; but the Stranger's argument goes
on to suggest that the law, which looks hubristic, is, in the absencc of divine rule, a
human necessity, therefore a product of moderation. See Statesman 294c-301e, . ,
148 Notes to Chapter III
40. Consider Spinoza'^description of the requirements for the interpretation of a
scriptural statement, concluding with the demand for an analysis revealing the environ-
ment of the subject, that is, the life, conduct, and studies of the author of each book, who
he was, the occasion and the epoch of his writing, for whom he wrote, and in what
language, as well as an analysis of the fate of each book, A Theological-Political Treatise,
trans, R. H. M. Elwes, p. 108.
41. Cf. Cratylus 424d-4Z5b, 430b-431e.
42. See Excursus: Writing Like the Painting of Living Animals.
43. Cf, Phaedo 99d-100a.
44. The model of the alphabet is used in the dialogues (1) as a paradigm for the question
of knowledge of combined wholes without knowledge of their elementary parts
(Theaetetus 202e); (2) as analogous to the ideas and their combination (Sophist 253a); (3)
as the paradigm of a paradigm (Statesman 277d-278d); (4) as evidence for the use of an
image to obtain knowledge of the original (Republic 402a-c); (5) as a model for the
relation between name and being (Cratylus 393d); (6) as an image for the elements and
syllabic compounds of the physical cosmos (Timaeus 48c); and (7) as an exemplification of
the path Socrates claims to follow, based on the attempt to divide the infinite into a
determinate multiplicity of kinds, insofar as alphabetization divides the infinite stream of
sound and allows for the representation of the vocal syllable by weaving together the
sounded vowel and the silent consonant, each given an image in the form of the letter
(Philebus 18b-c). See Excursus: Writing Like the Painting of Living Animals.
45. Pico dela Mirandola describes hieroglyphic writing through an analogy with the
Platonic dialogue: "Our Plato, in the same sense, concealed his own beliefs behind
enigmatic veils, symbols or myths, mathematical images and obscure arguments, to such
an extent that he said in his letters that nobody could understand his thoughts on matters
divine" (Heptalus 73, trans. Douglas Carmichael), See Excursus: Writing Like the Paint-
ing of Living Animals.
46. That the Greeks did not know the true nature of Egyptian hieroglyphics but
considered them images of ideas is argued by Friedrich Creuzer, who, like Herder,
describes a progression of the human mind from the symbolism of visual imagery through
mythology to discursivc thinking. Plato, he claims, discovered a new combination, retain-
ing in the midst of discursive thinking the value of hieroglyphic symbolism, that mode
which exists "at the beginning of time, and always at the heart of truth" (Symbolik und
Mythologie der A/ ten Volker, pp. 563 ff., 680-82). See Excursus: Writing Like the
Painting of Living Animals.
47. In the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger classes, in contrast with the one true regime
governed by knowledge, all its "illegitimate" immitations (293e). The one regime which is
"legitimate," that is, in accordance with law, is in fact defined by the absence of written law,
for it can be brought to life only through the seemingly paradoxical "law of knowledge."
48. Cf. Theaetetus 150c.
49. Cf. Apology 31b.
50. The discussion of tragedy and comedy in the Philebus (49c) seems to suggest a
connection between the activity of writing and the desire to defend oneself. Socrates'
abstincncc from writing might, then, betray the same lack of concern for self-defense as
his professed abstinence from the practice of rhetoric. Cf. Gorgias 522b.
51. Cf. Sophist 241d.
52. Cf. Phaedo 116a.
53. Identifying the legitimate logos as the "living and breathing word of the speaker,"
149 Notes to Chapter III
Phaedrus speaks in the words of the sophist Alcidamus. See "On the Sophists, or on The
Writing of Written Speeches," trans. LaRue Van Hook, in "Alcidamus versus Isocrates:
The Spoken versus the Written Word." See also Appendix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
54. Evidence of Adonis as god of vegetation is furnished by the so-called "gardens of
Adonis," pots filled with earth, in which various kinds of grains or flowers were sown and
tended for eight days, chiefly by women. Fostered by the sun's heat, the plants shot up
rapidly, but, having no roots, they withered just as rapidly, and at the end of eight days
were carried out with the image of the dead Adonis and flung into the sea. See Sir James
George Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 341.
55. In the course of relating the arguments of the atheists to his pious interlocuters, the
Athenian Stranger distinguishes those arts which can produce something serious through
sharing their effects with nature, such as medicine, agriculture, and gymnastics, from
those arts which beget only playthings, such as the images produced by painting, music,
and the others (Laws 889c-d). Man himself, however, has been identified as nothing but
a "plaything" of the gods (Laws 644e).
56. In the course of describing his own art of midwifery, Socrates argues with
Theaetetus that the same art provides knowledge of the proper seed for any given soil as
well as knowledge of tending and harvesting the fruit produced (Theaetetus 149e).
57. The imprints left by the writer must be recognized as images no less than the
imprints of memory on the "wax block" of the soul, which Socrates compares to footprints
waiting to be filled in order to produce recognition (Theaetetus 193c); perhaps Socrates
imagines an enactment on the stage of the soul of the famous recognition scene in
AeschyWs Choephori (205 ff).
58. Cf. Gorgias 454e.
59. Whether or not it is written by the hand of Plato, the Seventh Letter, with its
account of the limitations of the written word, would not contradict this interpretation of
the Phaedrus as a Platonic defense of the possibility of philosophic writing. For the
conclusion of the discussion in the Seventh Letter argues only that if the writer himself is a
serious man, his most serious products are not the written words themselves, but those
which reside in "his most beautiful space" (344c), without denying the serious value of the
written words as a "reminder" of those "most serious" products of living thought. The
Second Letter, which is even less generally accepted as a genuine work of Plato, admits
only that the written works said to be of Plato are in fact those of "Socrates become young
and beautiful" (314c).
60. Cf. Philebus 39a.
61. Soul as the "mother" of logoi grown from the seeds of knowledge would be
equivalent to Timaeus's "mother space" as the receptacle of the cosmic elements, ap-
prehensible only by a kind of "bastard reasoning" (Timaeus 52b). See Benardete, "On
Plato's Timaeus and Timaeus' Science Fiction," p. 39.
62. So Aristophanes concludes the Thesmophoriasuzae (1227), another paidia .of
speeches concerned in some sense with the art of writing.
63. That the "unwritten teaching" which constitutes that truth more noble and more
serious than the playful written word is a "beyond" which is already within the dialogue as
a philosophic text, is a claim which might be contested by that approach which seeks the
ungeschriebene Lehre through historic or speculative reconstruction, depending in part on
the doctrines reported in Aristotelian or doxographic sources. See Konrad Gaiser, Platons
ungeschriebene Lehre, pp. 337, 588; Hans Joachim Kramer, Arete bei Platon und Aris-
toteles, pp. 394 ff.
150 Notes to the Appendix
64. Cf. Apology 21c, ^2c; Gorgias 502b; Republic 568c, 599b, 606e; Laws 659c,
829c-d, 957d,
65. Although Plato does not elsewhere explicitly mention Isocrates among Socrates'
companions, Plutarch reports that Isocrates was deeply grieved at Socrates' death and put
on mourning for him (Lives of the Ten Orators 838f).
66. For a discussion of Isocrates' defense of his rhetorical art of writing, and the
concealed thread of Plato's dialogue with Isocrates that runs through the Phaedrus, see
Appendix, "Isocrates the Beautiful."
67. In his conversation with Hermogenes, Socrates concludes his series of etymologies
of the names of the gods with an analysis of Pan, the double-natured son of Hermes,
discoverer of speech (Cratylus 408b). Since "logos indicates and circulates and moves all,
and is twofold, true and false. .. and the true part is smooth and divine and dwells aloft
among the gods, but the false is below and among men and rough and tragic [goatlike], for
myths and falsehoods are mostly there, in the tragic life," Pan must be correctly called
goatherd, "smooth in the upper, rough and goatlike in the lower" (Cratylus 408c-d). The
Phaedrus would seem, then, to conclude playfully with a prayer for the harmony of outer
appearance with inner beauty from Socrates-Hermes, messenger of the gods, interpreter
and discoverer of speech, to Plato-Pan, his double-natured, divine, and goatlike son,
68. Socrates' prayer to Pan recalls Alcibiades' likening of Socrates to the Silenus figures
in the statuaries, which contain, hidden inside their ugly exterior, agalmata of the gods
(Symposium 215a217a; 222a); insofar as Alcibiades' apparent praise of Socrates' modera-
tion turns out to be an accusation against his hubris (cf. 222a-b), Alcibiades' image is
most fittingly echoed in Socrates' concluding prayer to Pan.
69. Cf. Republic 521a, 551a; Laws 705b, 742e, 831c, 836a, 919b; Aristotle Politics
2.11, 1273a35-39.
70. Represented by Lysias, Epicrates, and Morychus in the heart of the city.
71. Cf. Republic 4I 6c-417b, 464c-d.
72. Cf. Lysis 207c; Critias 121a; Laws 739c-d.
Appendix
1. In the fictitious apology for his life and work composed at the end of his career,
Isocrates considers the opinion of his would-be accuser: "If, therefore, 1 would agree with
my accuser that I am the cleverest of all men and that among writers of the speeches
offensive to you there is none who is my equal, it would be more just to consider me fair
than to punish me" (Antidosis 36). Dionysius reports that Isocrates was the most famous
teacher of his time and made his school "the image of Athens" (Critique on Isocrates 1).
Cf. Jebb, The Attic Orators, vol. 2, p. 13.
:
2. That this description in the Euthydemus is a reference to Isocrates is confirmed by
the remarks which immediately precede and follow it, The passage is introduced by
Crito's report to Socrates of a conversation with a "writer of clever speeches," though not a
rhetorician nor an advocate in the law courts, who describes philosophy as "worth noth-
ing," pursued by those "who speak frivolously about nothing" (304a). In the sequel to the
passage Socrates claims, "We ought to be indulgent toward their desire and not feel
annoyed, while still judging them to be what they are" (306c), echoing the words of
Isocrates himself. Cf. Panegyricus 47; To Philip 116-18.
3. Isocrates himself repudiates his youthful activity of writing speeches for private
clicnts in the law courts. See Antidosis 46.
151 Notes to the Appendi x
4. Cf. ToDi onysi us 1; To Philip 2.4; To Antipater 13; To Alexander 1; To the children
of Jason 6; To Timotheus 10; Antidosis 9; Evagoras 73; Panathenaicus 4; Philip 2, 10-12,
149.
5. It is generally agreed that Isocrates was probably at least sixty, perhaps closer to
seventy years old, at the time the Phaedrus was written. See DeVries, Commentary on the
Phaedrus of Plato, p. 17.
6. See Evagoras 11; Antidosis 36, 81-84. For Isocrates' professed devotion to
"philosophy," see Antidosis 5, 186.
7. See Helen 11.
8. Gorgias in 408 B.C. and Lysias in 384 B.C. delivered speeches at the Olympic festival
on the theme of pan-Hellenism; it has been argued that the Panegyricus was published
around 300 B.C., but was probably not delivered by Isocrates, if at all. See Isocrates, vol.
1, Loeb Classical Library, p. 119.
9. Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 1.1, 980a21.
10. See To Demom'cus 4; Nicocles or the Cyprians 1-2; Evagoras 81; Antidosis 270-
270a, 284; Panathenaicus 30-32.
11. For an examination of Isocrates' defense of rhetoric as the center of political
philosophy and the model for the virtue of sdphrosune, necessitated by the heterogeneity
of theory and practice, see Alan Bloom, "The Political Philosophy of Isocrates," pp. 213 ff.
12. After refuting the claims of those with special skills in the arts and sciences,
Isocrates sets forth his own identification of the "educated": "First, those who manage well
the affairs they encounter daily, possessing opinions effective for the occasion and able to
surmise what is advantageous for the most part; next, those who are decent and just in
their associations, bearing contentedly and easily what is annoying and oppressive in
others, being themselves agreeable and moderate to their associates as far as possible;
furthermore, those who rule over their pleasures and are not excessively overwhelmed by
their misfortunes, but are disposed to meet them bravely in a manner worthy of our shared
nature; fourthly, and most important, those who are not destroyed by successes, not
retiring into themselves and becoming arrogant, but holding their ground in a well-
ordered manner and reasonably, not overly rejoicing in goods which come by chance
rather than in those coming from their own nature and reason from the beginning. Those
who possess a state of soul harmonious not only with one but with all of these, those, I say,
are wise and perfect men and possess all the virtues" (Panathenai cus 30-32).
13. "Indeed, honors and distinctions are gained not by rest but by struggles, which we
should strive to win, and neither our bodies nor our souls nor anything else we possess
should be spared" (Archidamus 105).
14. See Against the Sophists 2.
15. Cf. Friedrich Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, vol. 2, p. 14.
16. "But the truth is that in speeches of this kind we should not seek something new, for
in these speeches it is not possible to say what is paradoxical or incredible or outside the
circle of accepted belief, but rather, we should regard that man as the most accomplished
in this field who can collect the greatest number of ideas scattered among the thoughts of
all the rest and present them most beautifully" (To Nicocles 41).
17. Isocrates' light-hearted reference to a eulogy of salt as an example of "trivial
subjects" (Helen 12), is mimicked by Plato when Eryximachus speaks for Phaedrus, lover
of speeches, complaining about the absence of eulogies for Eros, in comparison with the
abundance of speeches of praise such as the one he knows about salt (Symposium 177b).
18. "For I say that to acquire knowledge of the elements from which we compose all
152 Notes to the Appendix
speeches is not very difficult, if someone gives himself over not to those who easily
promise, but to those knowing about these; but the choice of what elements are to be
employed for each subject, the ability to join together and properly arrange the whole, not
missing what the occasion demands but adorning the speech with striking thoughts and
clothing it in flowing phrasesthese, I say, require much study and are the deed of a
courageous and shrewd soul" (Against the Sophists 17).
19. "For ability, in speeches or in any other deeds, comes to be in those who are
endowed well by nature and exercised by experience; training makes these more skilful
and more fluent in discovering arguments for it teaches them to take from what is more
available what they would have happened to find wandering, but it cannot transform those
with inferior natures into good debators or writers of speeches" (Against the Sophists 15).
20. Socrates ironically echoes Isocrates' praise for the "shrewd and courageous soul"
(Against the Sophists 17) in describing the "artless" natural capacity of the rhetorician
who is a "clever dealer with men" (Gorgias 463a),
21. Compare Socrates' observation to Phaedrus on acquiring the "truly rhetorical
art""I f you are rhetorical by nature from the beginning, you will become a notable
rhetorician, adding knowledge and practice; when any of these is missing, you will be
incomplete" (Phaedrus 269d)with Isocrates' claim concerning natural ability, practice,
and the examples set by a good teacher: "When all of these are found together, those
philosophizing will achieve perfection; but insofar as any,of those mentioned is missing,
they will necessarily fall short of completion" (Against the Sophists 18).
22. Isocrates' wish for the power of philosophy is ironically echoed in Phaedrus's
enthusiastic wish for the capacity to memorize the speech of Lysias: "I would prefer to
have that ability over much gold" (Phaedrus 228a).
23. The same contrast is brought up by the Eleatic Stranger in the attempt to show
young Socrates the limitations of the written law: "For law could never, by comprehend-
ing the most excellent and most just for all, command the best; for the dissimilarities of
men and of actions, and the fact that nothing, so to speak, is ever at rest in human affairs,
do not permit any art whatever to declare anything simple for everything and for all ti me"
(Statesman 294b).
24. Through the hidden dialogue with Isocrates which runs through the Phaedrus,
Plato on one level enters, on another transforms, the ongoing argument between Isocrates
and Alcidamus concerning the relative value of writing in contrast with extemporaneous
speech. Thi s conflict between the claims for literary rhetoric established by Isocrates and
those of practical oratory established by Alcidamus, seems to represent a major issue
among the fourth-century schools of rhetoric. See Van Hook, "Alcidamus versus Isoc-
rates." In his speech "On the Writing of Written Speeches" Alcidamus uses almost all the
arguments which Socrates relates to Phaedrus in his condemnation of the written word:
Writing is deficient in both rhetoric and philosophy; is easily attacked; is inappropriate to
the occasion; is an easy matter which requires long premeditation and revision at leisure; is
seldom useful in human life; brings aid too late to save the day; is deficient in spontaneity
and truth, with the impression of mechanical artificiality and labored insincerity, hence
inspiring its audience with distrust and ill-will; is .most successful when least resembling
writing and most imitating extemporaneous speech, as in the speeches for the law courts;
involves inconsistencies because of its attempted use for all occasions; only reveals the
wisdom of its producer when he has the manuscript in his hands; is like confinement in
bonds, which make mental processes sluggish; demands the laborious task of memorizing
and brings disgrace if forgotten; leads to a loss of time, embarrassment, and confusion with
153 Notes to the Appendix
the slightest omission; cannot respond to opponents; stands in the way of advantages that
come of themselves, unlike the other arts which are helpful; is devoid of all life and action;
can be the vehicle of its own condemnation insofar as it is not completely condemned, but
only of lesser worth than extemporaneous speech, and must be used to show those writers
who are proud of their ability that their speeches can be easily surpassed; does not imply
carelessness of extemporaneous speech, which still requires preparation in advance of
ideas and general arrangement. "I n conclusion, then, whoever wishes to become a mas-
terly speaker rather than a mediocre writer, whoever desires to be a master of occasion
rather than of accurate diction, whoever is eager to gain the good will of his listener as an
ally rather than his ill-will as an enemy, whoever wants his mind to be unbonded, his
memory ready, and his lapses of memory unobserved, whoever has his heart set upon the
acquisition of a power of speaking which will be of adequate service in the needs of daily
life, this man, I say with good reason, would make the practice of extemporaneous
speech, at every time and on every occasion, his constant concern. On the other hand,
should he study writing for amusement and as a pastime, he would be deemed by the wise
to be a possessor of wisdom."
25. Isocrates' understanding of his speeches as capable of delivering himself and his
audience from the evils of the particular political situation at hand is transformed in the
Platonic understanding of the self-protective written word, "able to defend itself, knowing
when to speak and when to remain silent" (Phaedrus 276a).
26. The speech abounds with obvious echoes of Plato's Apology of Socrates: see An-
tidosis 21, 27, 33, 89, 95, 100, 145, 154, 179, 240, 321.
27. Precisely in those speeches which he presents as most playful, Isocrates defends the
seriousness of his own art of writing. See Evagoras 11, 81; Helen 5, 67; Busiris 9, 49.
28. I f Busiris is to be identified with Socrates, his division of classes must be an
imitation of Socrates' division in the Republic, and the Egyptian priests are an imitation of
Socrates' philosophers. See Bloom, "The Political Philosophy of Isocrates," pp. 202 ff.
29. While Isocrates' Helen appears to be a response to Plato's Protagoras (compare
Helen 1 with Protagoras 329c), Plato's Phaedrus seems to be an answer to the Helen,
arguing against Isocrates' contention that it is better to doxazein about the important than
to epistasthai about the unimportant. See R. L. Howland, "The Attack on Isocrates in the
Phaedrus."
30. Cf. Meno 93b-94a.
31. Plato seems to respond to Isocrates' eulogy of Helen as Isocrates does to that of
Gorgias. For a translation of this speech, intended to reproduce the tone of Gorgianic
rhetoric, see LaRue Van Hook, "The Encomium on Helen by Gorgias."
32. Isocrates begins the last of his political speeches with a description of his own work,
contrasted on the one hand with those playful speeches dealing with mythical themes,
"filled with monsters and falsehoods," and on the other hand from the speeches of the law
courts, "giving the impression of being written in a plain and simple style, lacking all
refinements"; Isocrates insists, "I left all these to others, and devoted myself to giving
advice on the interests of Athens and the rest of the Hellenes" (Panathenaicus 1-2),
BI BL I OGRA P H Y *-
I have drawn on the Loeb Classical Library editions of the following: Aristophanes, Birds,
Thesmophoriazusae; Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, De anima, Metaphysics,
Nichomachean Ethics, Physics, Politics, Rhetoric; Cicero, De re publico; Dio Chryso-
stom, On Training for Public Speaking; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book I;
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book II; Euripides, Electra, Helen;
Herodotus, Histories; Hesiod, Theogony; Homer, Iliad, Odyssey; Isocrates; Lysias;
Pausanius, Description of Greece, Book I; Pindar, The Odes of Pindar; Plato; Plotinus,
Ennead V; Plutarch, De hide et Osiride, Lives of the Ten Orators; Thucydides, History of
the Peloponnesian War.
Benardete, Seth. "The Condemnation of Socrates: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and
Statesman." Mimeographed. New York: New York University.
"The Crimes and Arts of Prometheus." Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie 107
(1964): 126-39.
"On Plato's Timaeus and Timaeus' Science Fiction." Interpretation 2 (1971):
21-63.
Bergk, Theodor. Poeta lyrici graeci. 4th ed. 3 vols. Lipsiae: B. G. Teubneri, 1878-82.
Blass, Friedrich. Die attische Beredsamkeit. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhand-
lung, 1962.
Bloom, Alan. "The Political Philosophy of Isocrates." Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Chicago, 1955.
The Republic of Plato. Translated with notes and interpretative essay. New York:
Basic Books, 1968.
Brumbaugh, Robert. Plato's Mathematical Imagination. Bloomingtorv Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1954.
Clement of Alexandria. Stromata. In Opera omnia. Edited by Reinhold Klotz. Leipzig:
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Creuzer, Friedrich. Symbolik und Mythologie der alien Volker. Leipzig: Leske Verlag,
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Derrida, Jacques. L' Ecriture et la Difference. Paris: Editions de Seuil 1967.
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I N DEX
Subjects and Persons
Alcidamus, 149 (n?53), 152-53 (n.24)
Ammianus Marcellinus, 112
Aristophanes, 127 (n.3), 142 (n.9), 149
(n.62)
Aristotle, 127 (n.6), 130 (n.32, n.33,
n.35), 131 {n. 11), 132 (n.15, n.17,
n.18), 137 (n. 16, n. 18), 140(n.43), 141
(n.49), 142 (n.62), 143 (n.18), 145
(n.38, n.44)
Art (tekhne), 5-6, 20, 30, 35, 43-44,
49-50, 58, 94, 100, 125, 134 (n.2), 147
(n.30), 149 (n, 55); of speaking (see
Rhetoric. See also Dialectics)
Beauty, 7, 15, 35-36, 47, 60-61, 64, 67,
69, 100, 107, 124-25, 140 (n.38, n.39)
Benardete, S., 132 (n.20), 133 (n.22,
n.32), 138(n.28), 139(n.30, n.35), 147
(n.30), 149 (n.61)
Bloom, A., 127 (n.2), 151 (n.U), 153
(n.28)
Body, 17, 36-37, 50-55, 62, 80, 84-86,
141 (n.56), 145 (n.40)
Brumbaugh, R., 139 (n.32)
Cicero, 144 (n.35)
City, 6, 8, 11, 15, 29, 38, 57, 62, 116-17,
122, 127 (n.5), 129 (n.30), 138 (n.28),
140 (n.43); and the demos, 19, 26, 132
(n.21, n.22), 133 (n.23)
Clement of Alexandria, 112
Creuzer, F., 148 (n.46)
Death, 11, 14, 55, 73, 147 (n. 34); and the
written word, 3, 6, 28-29, 41-43, 74,
79, 94, 109
Derrida, J ., 114, 129 (n,24), 133 (n.30),
142 (n.l ), 146 (n. 21), 147 (n. 29)
DeVries, G. ]., 130 (n.37), 131 (n.6), 151
(n.5)
Dialectics, 6, 71-72, 74, 82, 87-89, 101-
04, 108-09, 144 (n.30), 145 (n.l ); as
collection and division, 70-71, 76, 78,
80-81, 84-86, 88-89, 102
Dio Chrysostom, 131 (n.9)
Diodorus Siculus, 111, 134 (n.7), 146
(n.14)
Diogenes Laertius, 131 (n.3), 133 (n.33)
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 130 (n. 3), 131
(n.8, n.10), 132 (n.l 3), 150 (n.l )
Divine inspiration, 5, 32-33, 40, 46,
48-50, 60-63, 82, 92, 95, 108, 130
(n.l ), 143 (n.29); of prophecy, 46,
48-50, 96; of purification, 41-43, 46,
49-50, 137 (n.9); of Socrates' daimon-
ion, 33, 40-41, 43-46, 136 (n.20, n.2).
See also Gods; Madness; Muses; Poetry
Drug (pharmakon), 14, 19-20, 90, 94-95,
120 (n.2), 147 (n.32, n.35); and Phar-
makeia, 14, 20, 39, 95, 129 (n.24)
Egyptian, 90-94, 109-13, 123
Eidos, 60-61, 77, 80-81, 85-89, 102
Empedocles, 141 (n.6)
Eros, 5, 19, 27, 36, 42, 44-45, 48, 50,
52-53, 59-69, 89, 108, 128 (n. 10), 140
(n.47), 142 (n.63); complexity of, 22,
34, 71, 77-78, 82, 86; and the nonlover,
18-27, 31-32, 35-40, 68, 135 (n. 11);
and the nonloving beloved, 9, 11,
21-22, 24, 34, 61-69, 141 (n.57), 142
(n.62)
Ficino, M., 112, 129 (n.27), 140 (n.42)
Friendship (philia), 24-25, 39, 67-68,
107-08, 132 (n. 17, n.18), 141 (n.49)
Gaiser, K., 149 (n.63)
Gods, 1, 44-45, 48-50, 54-59, 62-63, 89,
92, 94, 126, 138 (n.19, n.20, n.21,
n.26), 140 (n.44, n.46); Aphrodite, 45,
144 (n.29); Boreas, 14-15, 62; Eros. *
158
Index
10-11,44-46, 58, 62, 69, 80, 127 (n.8),
128 (n.10), 140(n.4f), 143 (n.27);Hes-
tia, 55-56, 138 (n.23); Pan, 33,40, 107,
129 (n.25), 150 (n.67); Prometheus,
93-94, 110, 147 (n.30); Thamuz-
Ammon, 90-96, 146 (n. 14, n.21, n.23,
n,27); Theuth, 90-96, 109-10, 146
(n. 14, n.21), 147 (n.29, n.30); Zeus,
55-56, 94, 141 (n.60)
Greek, 93, 110-11, 116-17, 125
Gundert, H., 142 (n.14), 143 (n.28)
Hackforth, R., 145 (n.l )
Hegel, G. W. F., 113-14
Heidegger, M., I 28(n.l 9), 140 (n.38)
Herodotus, 111, 146 (n.27)
Hesiod, 142 (n.10)
Homer, 129 (n.29), 138 (n. 19), 143 (n, 19,
n.21)
Hubris, 6, 15, 31, 36, 44-45, 62, 65, 89,
108, 150 (n.68)
Idea, 35, 53-54, 80-81, 88
Immortality, 28-29, 41-42, 51-54, 72,
94, 123, 137 (n. 13, n.15)
Innis, H., 146 (n.20, n.23)
Isocrates, 106-07, 116-26, 150-53 (notes)
Kramer, H. )., 149 (n.63)
Law-writers, 4, 9, 33, 105; and the written
law, 72, 133 (n.25), 147 (n.39), 148
(n.47)
Leisure, 8-9, 12, 17, 73, 100, 127 (n.4,
n.6), 142 (n.8)
Letters {grammala), 90-94, 100, 110,
120-21; alphabetic, 91, 93, 98, 113-14,
148 (n.44); in contrast with hiero-
glyphics, 91, 93, 98, 109-14, 148
(n.45, n,46)
Likeness, 12-13, 17, 63, 67, 76, 89, 128
(n.19, n,20), 141 (n.61); as image, 50,
53-54, 67, 79, 98-99, 109, 135 (n.8);
through imitation, 2-3, 21, 62-63, 87,
95, 100, 135 (n.9)
Logos, 42, 46, 50-51, 75, 84-85, 87, 92,
98, 104, 107-09; as living animal, 3-4,
51, 71, 79-80, 97-98; and logographic
necessity, 22, 78-79; necessarv areu-
mentof? 31, 34, 38-39, 118-19. See
also Dialectics
Lysias, 4, 8-9, 12-14, 16-41, 45, 47-48,
66, 69, 71-72, 82, 84, 103, 105-07,
115-16, 130 (n.3), 131 (n.4, n.5, n.6,
n.8, n.9, n.10), 132 (n.l 3)
Madness, 5, 44- 45,48- 50, 60-62, 67-68,
89, 108; complexity of, 31-32, 48, 66,
80, 137 (n. 11). See also Divine inspira-
tion; Eros
Maximus of Tyre, 134 (n.4)
Medical art, 83-85, 94, 144 (n.31), 145
(n.37); and physicians, 10, 83, 127
(n.7), 128 (n.12, n.13)
Memory, 12-13, 57-58, 61-62, 90, 94,
123, 128 (n. 17), 139(n.30), 147 (n.31),
149 (n.57); and recollection, 28, 60-61,
80, 134 (n.3); and reminder, 2-3,
33-34, 90, 96, 100, 104-05
Moderation, 6, 35-36, 41, 44, 64, 66-68,
89, 117
Money, 20-21, 25-26, 29, 107; and gold,
12, 16, 120
Muses, 11, 17, 35, 40-41, 46-47, 49,
58-59; and cicadas, 5, 70, 73-74, 89,
129 (n.28), 142 (n.44); and nymphs,
32-33, 39-40, 105, 129 (n.23, n.29),
134 (n.7)
Myth, 4-5, 14-15, 47, 50, 68, 73-74,
92-93, 95-96, 98
Nietzsche, F., 136 (n.2), 138 (n.21), 142
(n.63)
Onians, R. B., 140 (n.41)
Pausanius, 129 (n.29)
Pico dela Mirandola, 148 (n.45)
Pindar, 127 (n.4), 138 (n.20)
Playfulness (paidia), 10, 80, 100-01,
104-05, 143 (n.28), 149 (n.55)
Plotinus, 112
Plutarch, 111, 150(n.65)
Poetry, 33-34, 46-47, 49-50, 55, 83,
105-06, 125, 127 (n.2), 134 (n.4, n.5)
Rhetoric, 17, 23, 34-35, 70-71, 75-78,
S?_8Q 1 CiH I K ">1 15 1 / -
Index 159
139 (n.34), 143 (n. 18, n.19), 144 (n.32,
n.33), 145 (n.37, n.43, n.44); and per-
suasion, 6, 13, 22, 26-27, 48, 64,
69-70, 74-76, 84-89, 102-04, 116, 128
(n.21), 142 (n.13), 143 (n.17)
Rosen, S., 133 (n.27)
Rousseau, J. J ., 113
Sinaiko, H., 143 (n.25)'
Skenip, J. B., 137 {n.13)
Soul {psuche), 38-39, 42, 44-45, 50-69,
75-76, 99-102, 104, 107-08, 149
(n.61); chariot-team as image of, 44-45,
54-57, 64-66, 137 (n.17), 138 (n.19),
141 (n. 53); classes of, 55, 57, 59, 62-63,
85, 87-88, 102, 138 (n.28, n.29), 139
{n.32, n.33, n.35); complexity of, 59,
64, 84-88, 102-03, 141 (n.56), 145
(n.38, n.39, n.42); and self-knowledge,
5, 12, 14-15, 62-63, 67; as self-moving
motion, 6, 44, 50-54, 101, 108-09, 137
(n.13, n.l 5, n.16), 138 (n.27)
Spinoza, B., 148 (n.40)
Strauss, L., 143 (n.24)
Thucydides, 142 (n.7)
Van Hook, L., 152 (n.24)
Vico, G., 113
Whol e and parts: of the dialogue, 3-5; of
eros (see Eros, complexity of); of logos
(see Logos as living animal, and logo-
graphic necessity); of the love-speeches,
18, 30-32, 34, 39-40, 45-46, 59, 66,
71, 80, 102, 108; of soul (see Soul,
complexity of); of writing, 30, 33, 42,
98-101, 108. See also Dialectics, as col-
lection and division
References to Other Platonic Dialogues
Apology 20c-23b, 137 (n.8); 34d, 147
(n.38)
AlcibiadesI 132b, 147 (n.35)
Charmides 155e-l 57e, 147 (n.35); 156d-
157c, 145 (n.39)
Cratylus 390b, 146 (n.20); 391e, 140
(n.44); 394a-b, 130 (n.2), 147 (n.35);
396d, 136 (n. 5); 398d, 135(n.l 2);400d,
140 (n.44); 401b, 138 (n.23); 408b-d,
150 (n.67); 409c, 135 (n.4); 424d-425b,
148 (n.41); 430b-431e, 148 (n.41)
Critias 106b, 147 (n.35)
Crito 52b, 129 (n.30)
Euthydemus 289b, 146 (n,20); 304a, 150
(n.2); 306c, 150 (n.2)
Gorgias 448e, 132 (n. 16); 454e, 143 (n.17);
463a, 152 (n.20); 465c, 145 (n.37);
481d-e, 132 (n.21); 485d, 138 (n.24);
502b, 150 (n.64); 515e, 144 (n.34);
522b, 148 (n.50); 527c, 139(n.34), 144
(n.34)
Hipparchus 229c, 147 (n.28)
Hippias Minor 368a-d, 128 (n.17), 147
Ion 535e-536b, 130 (n.36)
Lfjws 644e, 149 (n.55); 649a-b, 147 (n.35);
657a, 146 (n.17); 660e, 134 (n.35);
722c-d, 142 (n.13); 727d, 139 (n.29);
739a, 147(n,28); 820d, 147 (n.28);
845d-e, 147 (n. 35); 889c-d, 149 (n. 55),
895d-896b, 137 (n.l 5);903d, 147
(n.28); 957d, 147 (n.35)
Lysis 214a, 128 (n.20)
Meno 81a, 134 (n.3); 94b, 144 (n.34)
Parmenides 136e, 136 (n.3)
Phaedo 60e-61b, 41-42; 63d-e, 147
(n.35); 64c, 41; 66a, 140 (n.36); 67a,
140 (n.36); 67c, 42; 69c, 137 (n.9), 140
(n.36); 71a-b, 42; 73b-76e, 136 (n.21);
99d-102a, 42, 144 (n.30); 107a-b, 42
Philebus 16c-17a, 110, 144 (n.30); 18l ^c,
110, 148 (n.44); 19b-c, 148 (n. 50); 54c,
147 (n.35); 67b, 136 (n.7)
Protagoras 315c, 128 (n. 13, n. 17); 319e,
144 (n.34); 320d-328c, 131 (n.7); 329c,
153 (n.29)
Republic 327c, 128 (n.21); 336d, 145
160 Index
(n.29); 382c, 147 (nJ 5); 392d, 135
(n.9); 402a-c, 148 (n.44); 406a-b, 127
(n.7); 416c-417b, 150 (n.71); 435d, 145
(n.42); 436a, 141 (n.53);440d, 128
(n.16); 441a, 139 (n.32); 459c, 147
(n.35); 464c-d, 150 (n.71); 487c, 147
(n.28); 490b, 139 (n.29); 492a-493d,
139 (n.29); 496c, 136 (n.20); 504a-b,
145 (n.42); 510c, 135 (n. 10); 511b-d,
135 (n. 10), 144 (n. 30); 521b, 133 (n.23);
549a, 128 (n.14); 566a, 135 (n.19);
573b, 143 (n.27); 573d, 139 (n.29);
579b-c, 138 (n.24); 580a, 135 (n.17);
586c, 136 (n.4); 595b, 147 (n.35); 597e,
127 (n.2); 60I d, 146 (n.20); 604c, 147
(n.28); 617e, 139(n.33)
Second Utter 314c, 7, 149 (n.59)
Seventh Letter 344c, 149 (n.59)
Sophist 226a, 133 (n. 31); 235d-236c, 138
(n.27); 248e-249b, 133 (n.26); 253a,
148 (n.44); 2531>-e, 144 (n.30); 257d-
258b, 135 (n.l l ); 268a, 133 (n.24)
Statesman 272a-d, 127 (n.5), 138 (n.26);
277d-278d, 133 (n.28), 148 (n.44);
285a-c, 144 (n.30); 293e, 148 (n.47);
294b-295a, 133 (n.25), 152 (n.23);
294c-301e, 147 (n.39); 310a, 147 (n.35)
Symposium 176d, 128 (n. 12); 177b, 157
(n. 17); 177c, 10; 177d-e, 128 (n. 10);
178c, 11; 179a-b, 11, 135 (n.16); 180b,
11; 192e-193a, 140 (n.47); 195b, 141
(n.50); 202e, 46, 128 (n.l l ); 203a, 46;
203d, 127 (n.8); 204b, 46; 207d, 11;
208d, 11; 210a-212a, 135 (n. 13);
215a-217a, 150 (n.68); 220b, 128 (n.9);
222a-b, 150 (n.68)
Theaetetus 149e, 149 (n. 56); 152a, 133
(n.32); 169a-b, 129 (n.22); 171c, 133
(n.32); 172c, 142 (n.8); 191d, 139
(n.30); 193c, 149 (n.57); 202e, 148
(n.44)
Timaeus 21e, 146 (n.20); 29d-e, 141
(n.48); 48c, 148 (n.44); 52b, 149 (n.61);
69e-70a, 141 (n.56); 89a-c, 147 (n.32,
n.35)