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Journal Topics

First Reading (227a-257b) — Why love-speeches?

Plato's Phaedrus features three speeches on love. Yet Phaedrus isn't about love; it's about rhetoric. So a question for you: Why do you think Socrates uses love speeches to explore rhetoric?

In eventually coming up with a positive take on erōs (the first two speeches are anti-erōs, the third is strongly pro-erōs), is Socrates hinting emotion really can underlie a positive and constructive relationship between lover/beloved, teacher/pupil, leader/led?
- If you're wondering whether I have in mind charisma, rhetoric, and politics, the answer is yes, that's exactly what I have in the back of my mind — especially the possibility that, for a number of our sources, erōs was one of the chief ways that ancient Greeks would talk about charismatic leadership whether in politics or in anything else
But can true freedom — in a democratic context, political freedom (democratic freedom) — really be possible if actors are driven by forms of madness like erōs? Could it be that, looking beyond the realm of love, reason, not passion, will best guide us to prudent choices?

Second reading (257b to end) and whole dialogue — Horses and Democracy

We can understand Socrates' soul = chariot-team metaphor as an allegory for two kinds of love: chaste, self-controlled love, and wild, carnal love. But can't we can also understand it as an allegory of political leadership or guidance? How, then, might Socrates' discussion of rhetoric, which Socrates' defines as "soul guidance," relate to that? Is soul guidance like demos-guidance, is it democracy? Is the unruly horse's resistance to guidance like democracy - is the unruly horse a demos? Will the ones guiding the horses really be looking out for his "beloved," the dēmos, or themselves?

If you're wondering whether I have in mind Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy, you're right. I trying to figure out if Plato, in sort of giving rhetoric a chance, might not be sorting out the practicalities of democratic leadership, which perhaps within his system of thought may finally need those experts to look out for it. How, then, to resist those temptations to which the unruly soul is drawn?

Text Facts

Plato son of Ariston ( 428/7-348/7) was an Athenian aristocrat (related to the oligarch Critias on his mother's side), a disciple of Socrates, a philosopher concerned with moral definitions (what is the nature of justice, of "the good," etc.) and with the ultimate foundations of reality outside the the world of sense-perception (the "theory of forms").

Plato's theory of forms (ideai, eide) says that all the objects encountered in the world of sense-perception are but pale reflections of eternal and unchanging forms or prototypes in the world beyond the senses, the world accessible only to the mind - the "real" world in the upper heaven. So too for abstractions and moral concepts: virtue in this world is but an imperfect emanation from the perfect "idea" or "form" of virtue in the world beyond.

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Phaedrus

SCENE: Under a plane-tree, by the banks of the river Ilissos, just outside the walls of the city of Athens

DRAMATIC DATE: For various reasons, probably during the period 418-416 BCE

DATE OF COMPOSITION: Possibly during Plato's "middle" period (earlier 300s BCE).

Outline of Argument

This is a Socratic dialogue, i.e., a fictitious conversation in prose between the philosopher Socrates (who left us no written works) and one or more interlocutors (other speakers).

Employing three epideixeis ("sample" or "display" speeches) to make its point, Plato's Phaedrus concerns rhetoric, which can be defined as the art of persuasion or the art of making speeches or, as Socrates himself puts it in the dialogue, "a universal art of enchanting the mind (tekhne psukhagogia, "psychagogic art") by arguments (logoi). . ." (261a-b).

This dialogue can, in fact, be regarded as an answer to the sophists (about whom more later in the semester), and can be read as such by our class. At the same time, it can be read as a charter text in the evolution of rhetoric as a formal discipline in the Western tradition.

Prelude (227a ff.)

Socrates and Phaedrus meet up. Seek a suitable spot outdoors to enjoy some rhetoric.

Like the overture to an opera, many foreshadowings here of themes and motifs later on.

Part 1. Epideixis ("demonstration," 230e-257b)

Here, three speeches on love, each in its own way an epideixis, or demonstration of rhetoric and argument:

Lysias' speech, arguing that a handsome youth should favor the non-lover over the lover: the former is unstable and dangerous to the younger man; the latter, sane and thus capable of being beneficial.
Socrates' first speech, arguing the same, basic thesis as Lysias, though benefiting from superior organization and coverage of key points, like definition. (Socrates acknowledges the sophistic basis of the argument, which he upholds only very reluctantly. But his recasting of that argument brings into sharp focus drawbacks of Lysias' treatment.)
Socrates' second speech, in which he "recants" his previous speech, above all, its thesis, and argues a point closer to his own convictions, namely, that eros is a good form of madness. Thus the authentic lover (erastes) is to be preferred to all others. (This third and last speech spends much time on metaphysics and cosmology — why?)

Forming the backdrop to this speechifying is what's termed pederasty, in Athens of the time, a quasi-institutionalized practice whereby an older man would court an younger male, an adolescent on the cusp of manhood. (Once a young man's beard had grown in he was considered no longer desirable.) The sexual favors granted by the younger man (the "beloved") to the older (the "lover") were viewed as expressing gratitude for the mentoring the latter provided to the former — more here.

I have described the first two speeches as sophistic, and the third as a departure. But I should point out that both of Socrates' speeches (= speeches 2 and 3) contain elements of sophistic rhetoric and/or argumentation:

Socrates' first speech (second speech in dialogue) seeks to improve on Lysias' initial attempt to make the weaker argument (that a beloved should favor non-lovers) appear stronger
Socrates' second speech (the third and last speech in the dialogue), while it argues what seem to be convictions held by Socrates would appear to believe, namely, that eros is fundamentally a good thing, nevertheless strains to "revalorize" something that Greeksin certain ways often took to be a bad thing, namely, eros, conventionally viewed not somply as something closely associated with pleasure and other goods, but also as a disease and source of pain and sorrow. Socrates is, therefore, arguing uphill, still engaging in the kind of project the sophist Protagoras apparently concerned himself with: to make the weaker argument appear stronger

Part 2. Didaxis ("instruction," 257c-279b)

Note that in the foregoing, Phaedrus presents himself as little more than a connoisseur of rhetoric, a kind of "speech-aholic" deriving mainly pleasure from speeches.

Socrates, as he is in the Gorgias, is here likewise distrustful of rhetoric as a discursive mode (as a way to communicate through language). As it is non-dialogical (no back-and-forth), it does not lend itself to dialectic, which for Socrates represents the highest form of instructive logos (logos = reason, language, speech, argument).

But, unlike the Socrates we encounter in the Gorgias, Socrates here is willing to give rhetoric a shot, to see if he can bring it as "close to spec" as possible. Put differently, rhetoric here is (as in the Gorgias) amoral, but does it have to be immoral?

This ethics of rhetoric is illustrated, if not exactly explained, in the epideixis section (part 1):

Speeches one (Lysias') and two (Socrates'), it turns out, exemplify sophistic argument: they seek to make the weaker argument (favor the non-lover) stronger. That's not the way to go. . .
Speeches two and three (Socrates') score higher than one (Lysias') in point of organization, avoidance of ambiguity, and so on
Speech three (Socrates' recantation) illustrates Socratic or philosophical rhetoric at its fullest: it privileges knowledge over opinion, carefully systematizes its subject matter, arranges its topics carefully, looks to the character, needs, and overall "mind-guidance" (psukhagogia) of its audience (Phaedrus). But as philosophical rhetoric, does it actually make the stronger argument (favor the lover) stronger still? Is it what the patient (Phaedrus with his rhetoric addition) really needs?

Note one recurring motif here, that of the pharmakon, or "drug/poison" (pharmakon means both). That resonates powerfully with the idea of rhetorical speech.

Pharmaka ("drugs," "potions") figure prominently in Gorgias' Helen, where rhetorical speech, a "mighty potentate," is compared to pharmaka explicitly in terms of their respective effects on the body and mind. For Gorgias and Plato both, rhetoric is psukhagōgia, "mind guidance." It is pharmakon.

So we could, perhaps, rephrase the question as: "Can rhetorical speech possibly function as a good pharmakon, i.e., as a beneficial drug rather than a poison?

Socrates tries his best as he sketches out his ideas for a better rhetoric, which must, according to Socrates, involve:

Knowledge. You can't, anymore, not know. (Sorry, Nick: a BA in kicking ass and taking names won't cut it!) You must, therefore, know:
- Your subject matter and truth more generally. Philosophy, therefore, as a prerequisite for both rhetoric and (!) sophistic
- Your audience, and audience-psychology generally
Systematization. If rhetoric is to be an art (a tekhne) and to qualify as a formal branch of knowledge (episteme), its elements need to be defined and described — need to be systematized. Socrates and Phaedrus do not fully follow through on such a project, but they do note the work that has to be done, and even acknowledge work that has been done on:
- Argument from probability (Gorgias' specialty)
- Topoi ("commonplace" arguments, Polus')
- Structuring
- etc.

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