Socrates meets Phaedrus while walking through the streets of Athens. Pheadrus says that he has been sitting all morning with Lysias, the son of Cephalus, and now desires to talk a walk outside the city walls. Socrates asks how Phaedrus spent his time with Lysias. Apparently, Phaedrus and other men listened to Lysias deliver a speech on love. Phaedrus recounts: “Lysias argues that it is better to give your favors to someone who does not love you than to someone who does” (227c).

Socrates expresses a keen interest in hearing Lysias’s speech. But Phaedrus claims that “a mere dilettante” like himself could never recite the speech in a manner worthy of Lysias—much less from memory (227d). Socrates retorts that he knows Phaedrus well enough to see through this pretense. According to Socrates’ conjecture, Phaedrus asked Lysias to repeat his speech many times and even read over Lysias’s text in order to commit it to memory. He then set out for the country, where he could practice reciting the speech. Along the way, he happened to meet Socrates. Although Phaedrus desperately wanted to recite the speech, he feigned reluctance coyly.

Without commenting directly on this conjecture, Phaedrus agrees to let Socrates hear the speech. He maintains, however, that he really did not memorize the speech verbatim. He thus proposes to summarize the “general sense,” listing all the arguments in “proper order” (228d). But once again, Socrates sees through Phaedrus’s deception. Noticing an object in Phaedrus’s left hand, Socrates surmises that Phaedrus has a copy of the original speech and merely wanted to practice his own speechmaking. The truth now revealed, the two set off to find a quiet spot to read.

As they approach a plane tree on the banks of the river Ilisus, Phaedrus asks Socrates whether he believes in the legend of Boreas and Oreithuia—which allegedly took place on the banks of the Ilisus. Socrates declares that “it would not be out of place for [him] to reject it, as [the] intellectuals do” (229c). But he consequently would have to find ingenious ways to explain the legend’s many fantastic aspects in a rational manner. Such demythologization would take a long time. And Socrates claims that he has no time to waste over such matters, since he is still unable to know himself—“and it seems ... ridiculous to look into other things before [he has] understood that” (230a).

In the meantime, the two have reached the plane tree. Socrates expresses a deep appreciation for the loveliness of their natural surroundings, to which Phaedrus responds that Socrates appears “totally out of place” (230c)—for Socrates habitually stays within the city, where he can learn from people. Only with the prospect of hearing Lysias’s speech has he been lured into stepping outside the city walls.

Analysis

Socrates thrives in the culture of the city—in ancient Greek, the polis. As a philosopher, he devotes himself to talking to various people in Athens and learning from them (230d). He always stays in the city and thus appears “totally out of place” on the rare occasion that he sets foot outside it (230c). Apart from the Phaedrus, the only Platonic dialogue that features Socrates leaving the city is the Republic. But even in the Republic, Socrates would not have needed to step foot outside the city walls to visit the Athenian port Piraeus (Nehamas and Woodruff, x). The Phaedrus, then, features a unique and strange setting.

Equally strange is the fact that Socrates leaves the city for a speech. Plato portrays Socrates consistently as one who neither enjoys nor practices long speeches. Indeed, Socrates’ preferred mode of discourse—the “Socratic method”—involves a series of short questions and answers known as elenchus. Yet, in the Phaedrus, the prospect of hearing Lysias’s speech reduces Socrates to a sort of “hungry animal” who will follow Phaedrus’s copy of the speech anywhere (230e). As Alfred Geier notes, “there is a touch of madness in Socrates here” (145). What has come over him?

Socrates explains that Phaedrus has “found a potion to charm [him] into leaving” (230d). The word translated as “potion” is the ancient Greek pharmakon, which can refer either to a medicine or a poison. This pharmakon is none other than Lysias’s speech in writing. Taking this fact as starting point, the French critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida has expounded a reading of the Phaedrus in his influential essay “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Derrida and other historical readings aside, however, the Phaedrus does not make clear why a speech on love should represent such a powerful attraction for Socrates. Even so, once Socrates leaves the city, his touch of madness acquires a clear etiology.

We have seen that Socrates is a man of the city or polis. In ancient Greek culture, the culture of the polis is often associated thematically with rationality and order—particularly when opposed to madness outside the city (apolis). Euripides’s Bacchae represents one such example, and the Phaedrus follows in the tradition. Outside the city, Socrates will be inhabited by gods and nymphs to produce elaborate speeches of his own. Moreover, his daimonion, or small demon, which we see occasionally in other dialogues, will appear to counsel him against returning prematurely to the city (242c).

The final point of note in the introduction invokes the famous ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself.” When Socrates claims that he has no time to explain away the myth of Boreas and Oreithuia, he invokes the inscription on the stone at Delphi: on one side is written, “Know thyself”; the other side reads “Nothing in excess.” The two sides of the stone are very close to suggesting a duality between reason and madness, or polis and apolis. In addition to eros and rhetoric, the Phaedrus also treats the theme of madness and thus may reveal the benefits of some excess—notwithstanding the oxymoronic nature of the phrase.

Lysias’s speech takes the form of an imaginary address from an older man to a younger one. In the opening, the speaker claims that he can still “get what he is asking for” (i.e., sex) without being in love with the boy (231a). He proceeds to raise multiple arguments against love in such a relationship:

(1) The lover will regret giving favors after his desire subsides, while the non-lover will view favors like business transactions.
(2) The non-lover will be able to indulge in pleasures without having to worry about their negative impact on his business or personal life (i.e. “he can’t complain about love’s making him neglect” other matters; 231b).
(3) The lover will treat former lovers (i.e. boys) poorly when he finds a new object of desire.
(4) There is no sense in giving sexual favors to a man in love, since such a man “will admit that he’s more sick than sound in the head” (231d).
(5) Love limits one’s choice; it is more likely to find someone who “deserves your friendship” if one does not care about love.
(6) The boy who is afraid of the stigma surrounding relations with an older man is better off with a non-lover, since the lover is more likely to boast about his relations.
(7) Whereas lovers will always be seen as giving in to desire, people will not fault non-lovers for spending time together—for “one has to talk to someone, either out of friendship or to obtain some other pleasure” (232b).
(8) Lovers are jealou,s and jealousy often leads to enmity; relations with a non-lover, who has attracted a boy with his personal merits, will always lead to friendship.
(9) Lovers are usually first attracted to a boy’s body rather than his character, so they may not want to remain friends afterwards.
(10) A lover is easily carried away in excessive pleasure as well as anger; such excesses are not conducive to a long-lasting friendship.
(11) Contrary to what a boy may think, strong love can exist without erotic love, just as we have trustworthy friends and family.
(12) It is proper to give one’s favors to those who can best return them rather than to those who are in the most need: “friends often criticize a lover for bad behavior; but no one close to a non-lover ever thinks that desire has led him into bad judgments about his interests” (234b).

Finally, the speaker declares that the speech does not urge boys to dole out their favors indiscriminately to non-lovers—at least not any more than a lover would ask a boy to give in to all his suitors. The goal of the speech has been to benefit both parties rather than to cause harm. The speaker concludes: “If you are still longing for more, if you think I have passed over something, just ask” (234c).

Analysis

Lysias’s speech addresses the practice of pederasty—a sexual relationship between an older man and a younger boy. Although such relationships were often shunned in the public eye (cf. 255a-b), they occurred commonly in ancient Greece and particularly in Athens. Pederasty did not necessarily interfere with relationships with women; the older man could be married, and the younger boy often married later in life. In the fourth part of The Use of Pleasure, Michel Foucault treats the complicated sexuality of the Greeks—in part drawing from K.J. Dover’s study Greek Homosexuality. For the purposes of this essay, suffice it to note that an age difference between males was the defining feature of pederasty. As Nehamas and Woodruff point out:

What the two participants. . . took from their relationship was, at least in theory, radically different: the older man received pleasure; the younger, education and edification. (xvi)

Lysias’s speech takes the general model of pederasty and expounds a strictly utilitarian version of it. Erotic love, or Eros, according to Lysias, represents a mad force that drives the older man to excessive, irrational actions. It is a turbulent force—and as such it should be eliminated entirely from relationships. What remains between the non-lover and boy will be useful to both parties: sexual pleasure for the older man and an allegedly better education for the younger boy. Love essentially introduces entanglements that interfere with what matters for both parties. The speech repeatedly suggests the importance of sex, as in the following lines with sexual entendres: “I don’t think I should lose the chance to get what I am asking for” (231a); “what is most important to you already” (232c); “If you are still longing for more, if you think I have passed over something, just ask” (234c).

It remains questionable whether erotic love can really be excised from sex in the manner that Lysias proposes; we do not yet have a counter-argument to compare with Lysias’s argument. More importantly, if this speech is to have relevance for readers today--beyond the issue of love vs. sex--we should be considering the implications of the argument for the relationships among actions done for utility, those done for pleasure, and those done because they are inherently good.

In addition, knowing that the subject of rhetoric is to come, we should be thinking about what parts of the soul are acted on by the art of rhetoric--the parts that love, the parts that seek benefits, or the parts that seek the good--or all of the above. Does the person listening to a rhetor put himself in the position of the lover, should he focus on utility when listening, and should he seek to be educated rather than drawn in uncritically by the rhetoric?

Socrates declares that he has shared Phaedrus’s “Bacchic frenzy” and is now “in ecstasy” after the delivery of Lysias’s speech (234d). Phaedrus is skeptical about Socrates’ sincerity, but for Phaedrus, the speech is a serious matter. He asks Socrates: “Do you think that any other Greek could say anything more impressive or more complete on this same subject?” (234e). But Socrates answers the challenge and critiques the speech.

Socrates wonders whether the speech should be praised for its content rather than its style (such as its turns of phrase, clarity, and so on—its rhetorical elements). Praise of content fuels Phaedrus’s argument in favor of the speech; he believes that Lysias has omitted “nothing worth mentioning about the subject” (235b). But Socrates disagrees, suggesting that Lysias himself views style as more important than content. To support this point, Socrates points out the redundancy of the speech: it is as if “to demonstrate that [Lysias] could say the same thing in two different ways, and say it just as well both times” (235a). Socrates also refutes Phaedrus by claiming that Socrates can make a better speech himself—not with original ideas but with ideas borrowed from Sappho, or Anacreon, or some other prose writer.

When Phaedrus presses Socrates to give such a speech, however, Socrates beats a hasty retreat in several ways. First, he states that it is very difficult to make a speech that differs so much from the previous speech. He concedes, however, that Lysias makes an irrefutable argument in praising the non-lover for remaining more rational than the lover. Socrates now praises Lysias’s speech for its “skillful arrangement” as well as its more original, tangential points (236a). At this point, Phaedrus allows Socrates to “presuppose that the lover is less sane than the non-lover” in his own speech (236b). When Socrates continues to resist, Phaedrus declares that he will make Socrates speak by force if necessary. Finally, Phaedrus convinces Socrates to speak by threatening to withhold all future speeches.

Analysis

This section is all about maneuvering and about speeches, though the content of the contested issues is never far from hand. Phaedrus expects Socrates to praise the content of Lysias’s speech, but Socrates’ first reaction is to marvel at the speech’s ecstatic effect on Phaedrus—and consequently on himself. One way to understand Socrates’ reaction involves the opposition between style and content. What struck Socrates about the speech was not its argument but how the argument was delivered. More precisely, Socrates was struck by how Phaedrus delivered the argument that had been written down. Alfred Geier reads, in this passage, a ravishment on Socrates’s part by Phaedrus (160-1).

As for Lysias’s speech itself, Socrates raises two points of criticism in response to Phaedrus: first, that Lysias also is more concerned with style than content; second, better arguments about love have been made elsewhere, perhaps by the poets Sappho and Anacreon, or even by prose writers. In order to corroborate this second point, Socrates claims that he can make a better speech. This speech will contain no original ideas—for the Socratic philosopher is like an “empty jar”—but derives his speech from words that he has heard from others (235d) and which have stood up to scrutiny.

In relation to this idea of the empty jar, it is interesting to recall that Socrates was willing to reject the myth of Boreas and Oreithuia by a process of demythologization. Are the words and ideas that fill his empty jar not all sorts of myths? After all, do poetry or hearsay stories contain any more truth than the myth of Boreas and Oreithuia? Indeed, even as Socrates readies to deliver his own speeches with careful logical reasoning, he will himself be forced to rely on myths to illustrate his arguments. This section leads us to think about the relationships between poetry and prose, myth and argument, and oral and written delivery of arguments.

What finally motivates Socrates to give a speech is the threat that he will no longer be allowed to hear speeches by Phaedrus. (Compare Lysistrata.) The maneuvering in this section yields insight into what motivates Socrates—or, at least, what Socrates wants Phaedrus to think about what motivates the philosopher.

Socrates invokes the Muses at the beginning of his speech. The speech tells the story of a boy or youth who had many male lovers. One of these men persuaded the boy that “he was not in love, though he loved the lad no less than others” (237b). The man made a speech to convince the boy to give his favors to the non-lover rather than the lover.

The speaker begins by noting the importance of understanding the “true nature of a particular subject"—for otherwise the inquiry will end up in conflict and confusion (237c). In the case of the boy and the non-lover, the speaker asserts that they must first define love and its effects. Love is a kind of desire. Yet men who are not in love also desire the beautiful. To distinguish a man who is in love from a man who is not, then, one must realize the two principles that rule men: the “inborn desire for pleasures” and the “acquired judgment that pursues what is best” (237d). When the former is in control, the state is called “outrageousness” (hubris). When the latter takes command, the state is called “being in your right mind” (sophrosune) (237e-238a). “Outrageousness” has several names, among them the desire for food (gluttony) and the desire for drink. But the desire that is the most powerful—the one that has led to this very speech—is the desire to “take pleasure in beauty”: eros (238c).

At this point, Socrates breaks off his speech and notes that he is “in the grip of something divine” (238c). He attributes his peculiar flow of words to Socrates’ physical location:

There’s something really divine about this place, so don’t be surprised if I’m quite taken by the Nymphs’ madness as I go on with the speech. I’m on the edge of speaking in dithyrambs as it is. (238c-d)

The speaker next asks rhetorically, “What benefit or harm is likely to come from the lover or the non-lover to the boy who gives him favors?” (238e). Since the lover is driven by outrageous desire, he will surely seek what is most pleasurable in his boyfriend. Such a “sick man” takes pleasure in the weaker rather than the stronger, so the boy will necessarily be weaker—or the man will try to make him weaker. By the same token, the man will delight in the boy’s mental defects rather than his strengths, and the man’s jealousy will steer the boy away from positive influences. Such a man will serve no use as mentor or friend, since he will retard rather than develop the boy’s intellectual development. As for the boy’s physical development, the same can be said: the man will prefer a soft, unmanly boy to one over whom he can wield total control. Furthermore, the man will also prefer a boy lacking family and possessions, so that he can continue to “pluc[k] the sweet fruit” from the powerless and dependent boy (240a).

The lover thus becomes basically an obsessive and controlling lecher whose company is entirely vile and distasteful. In this sense, the lover is worse than a flatterer or mistress—who at least bring some immediate pleasure. And while the lover’s love itself is “harmful and disgusting,” the love will also eventually fade (240e). Afterwards, the boy will be forced to chase after his undelivered rewards, angry that he has given favors to a lover rather than a non-lover. The lover has been “harmful to his property, harmful to his physical fitness, and absolutely devastating to the cultivation of his soul, which truly is ... the most valuable thing to gods and men” (241c). The speaker concludes: “Do wolves love lambs? That’s how lovers befriend a boy!” (241d). Socrates thus concludes his first speech, stating that Phaedrus will have to “accept this as the end of the speech” (241d).

Analysis

Socrates’ first speech provides a counterpart to Lysias’s argument. Rather than presenting the benefits of the non-lover, Socrates addresses the negative influences of the lover. Eros can be a form of madness in which the inborn desire for beauty overwhelms one’s sense of morality and control in pursuing what is best (i.e., hubris overwhelms sophrosune). Such madness destroys both the soul and body of the boy and will bring him no benefits. Note that in general, hubris could overwhelm sophrosune with regard to anything that a person desires as beautiful.

Socrates does not go on to argue the merits of the non-lover, since such an argument would put him in Lysias’s position as seducer. Readers at this point should want to know more about how the desire for the good, or even the desire for the beautiful, differs from the outrageous eros of the lover. But Socrates has engaged in competition with Lysias as an orator rather than as a philosopher. As Nehamas and Woodruff note, Socrates “produces a counter-epideictic speech and makes an implicit claim to have beaten the orator at his own game.” This makes for a “peculiar situation, since Lysias is one of the great orators of the time, while Socrates officially disavows any knowledge of rhetoric” (xviii).

To justify the quality of his speech, Socrates evokes the divine forces of the Nymphs, saying that they have possessed him with speech. As he breaks off mid-speech, he claims to be “on the edge of speaking in dithyrambs” (238d). A dithyramb was originally a choral poem sung in the worship of Dionysus or Bacchus—the god of fertility and wine, who often inspires madness. In The Birth of Tragedy, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche described Dionysian forces of madness as antithetical to the Socratic or Apollonian embodiment of reason. In what light, then, should we see or trust Socrates’ putatively divinely-inspired speech?

The question has inspired much debate in Phaedrus scholarship. As Graeme Nicholson notes, some have seen in Socrates’ speech a “real concern for the welfare, especially the moral welfare, of the boy,” whereas others have seen Socrates as “repressing his own eros, and, owing to self-hate, painting eros in ugly colors” (120-1). It is also important to remember that we owe this depiction of Socrates to Plato. At this point, as at so many other points throughout the Phaedrus, the reader is invited to consider why Plato introduces such ambiguities and thematic layers in the dialogue.

Phaedrus objects to the abrupt conclusion of Socrates’ speech, having thought that Socrates was about to explore the merits of the non-lover. Socrates explains, however, that he stopped in order to prevent himself from getting too carried away. He says to Phaedrus: “Don’t you realize that the Nymphs to whom you so cleverly exposed me will take complete possession of me?” (241e). It should suffice to say that every disadvantage of the lover has its corresponding advantage in the non-lover. Socrates fears that his speech may become excessively “epic,” so he sets out to cross the river on the path back to Athens.

Phaedrus holds Socrates back, suggesting that it would be better to wait for the noontime heat to pass. Abruptly, Socrates praises Phaedrus’s speechmaking abilities and declares that Phaedrus has inspired to him to produce a second speech after all. As he was about to cross the river, Socrates explains, he saw a “familiar divine sign” (his daimonion): “whenever it occurs, [it] holds me back from something I was about to do” (242c). The sign has made Socrates understand that he has committed an offense against the gods. Both his own speech and Lysias’s speech were “foolish, and close to being impious” (242d).

Love, after all, is Aphrodite’s son—one of the gods. And “if Love is a god or something divine ... he can’t be bad in any way” (242e). Socrates must therefore correct his previous speech, in which he vilified love. He explains that he will use an “ancient rite of purification”: when Stesichorus was blinded for speaking ill of Helen, he composed a poem to retract his earlier statement (i.e., a Palinode). So too will Socrates compose a Palinode to Love. He will wash out the bitterness of the previous speech (for if it were to be heard by a noble man in love, it would make Socrates seem vulgar and ignorant). All of this is music to the ears of Phaedrus, who is eager to hear a second speech and promises to make Lysias compose a speech on the same subject.

Analysis

Socrates, it turns out, has proved to be a skillful rhetorician. Having completed a speech favoring the non-lover, Socrates now will retract his earlier statement and turn to argue the exact opposite. The nymphs and their divine madness play not only a vital but a deeply ambiguous role in Socrates’ speeches: at first, they inspire Socrates to argue skillfully against the lover; now, they will help him deliver his second speech on the importance of eros, which seems to favor the lover.

The reader might have expected that Socrates was going to give his second speech on the merits of the non-lover, but he is going to correct his first speech instead. This leads us to think about whether the initial division between lover and non-lover was fair after all. Would not it be best for someone to desire and pursue the good—and also to be in love with it? Something seems inadequate in the non-lover who holds himself back. Maybe there are two kinds of lovers: one for which eros is outrageous and damaging, and one for which eros is not outrageous but suited to its object.

While the appearance of Socrates’ daemon is fitting to the setting of the countryside—where Socrates finds himself apolis and entirely out of place—the dialogue offers no particular reason for its mysterious warning. Maybe Phaedrus is the kind of person who would draw damaging conclusions from a speech against love, so love must be re-mythologized in a way that will help Phaedrus make good decisions. Perhaps this is why Socrates draws on the story of Stesichorus in order to “purify” himself in the correct manner. Myths are useful, and while one may find it best to reject a particular myth as untrue on its face, for various reasons it may not be worth one’s time to do so.

The second speech begins by denying that there was any truth in the preceding speeches. The only reason a boy should prefer the non-lover over the lover is if madness were “bad, pure and simple”; “but in fact the best of things have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god” (244a). There are several kinds of such divine madness:

(1) The madness that accompanies the work of the prophetesses of Delphi and the priestesses of Dodona, or prophets in general. (The speaker conflates the two similar but unrelated words for "madness" and "prophecy"—manike and mantike.) This madness guides entire cities as well as individuals.
(2) The madness that consoles or provides relief to those in hardship, which can occur in the form of prophecies, prayers, mystic rites, and consequent purification.
(3) The madness from the Muses, which awakens the soul to “a Bacchic frenzy of songs and poetry” (245a).
(4) Love is the fourth kind of madness, which will be discussed at length.

The speaker sets out to prove that love is a beneficial and divine madness. This proof requires an understanding of the soul, both human and divine. “Every soul is immortal”: the soul is a “self-mover” and thus is incapable of being destroyed or started-up; it has neither birth nor death (245c). As for the structure of the soul, to describe what it actually is would be a divine task—but it is possible to describe what it is like. The soul is like “the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a). While the horses and charioteers of the gods are all of good breed, men possess a mixture: if goodness graces one horse, than the opposite will plague the other, making it painful to drive the chariot.

So long as the soul’s wings are in good condition, it will be able to fly through heaven. But a soul without wings will come down to earth and acquire an earthly body, thus forming together a “living thing, or animal, and has the designation ‘mortal’” (246c). (The speaker thus rejects the view that gods are immortal beings made of body and soul.) The soul’s wings are nourished by “beauty, wisdom, goodness, and everything of that sort,” which lift it high up in heaven; “but foulness and ugliness make the wings shrink and disappear” (246e).

A great procession of chariots flies through heaven, led by Zeus and followed by other gods and spirits. There are many wonderful sights and places in heaven. The banquet in heaven, however, takes place on a steep hill. While the gods’ chariots can climb the hill easily, the other chariots struggle with the weight of the bad horse. Once at the top, the gods stand on the ridge and gaze at what lies beyond heaven. Of this “place beyond heaven,” the speaker will attempt to “speak the truth”:

What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman. (247c-d)

Those souls who are closest to the gods will also have a view of reality, though made imperfect by the distraction of the horses. Many souls, however, will never make it to the top. After great pains, they will fall back down “without having seen reality, uninitiated,” leaving them only with their own opinions (248b).

All souls yearn to stand on the plain of reality and truth. The grass that grows there is the “right food for the best part of the soul”; it “nourishes soul’s wings” (248c). Moreover, the souls that manage to glimpse reality will remain unharmed until the next circuit, whereas other souls will fall down to earth.

The souls will take different forms in their first incarnations: (1) philosophers, or lovers of beauty, or cultivated men; (2) kings or commanders; (3) statesmen, household managers, or financiers; (4) trainers or doctors; (5) prophets or priests; (6) poets or other representational artists; (7) manual laborers or farmers; (8) sophists or demagogues; (9) tyrants. Leading one’s life with justice will improve one’s fate within this hierarchy. But a life of injustice will lead to punishment. Each soul must live out a ten-thousand-year cycle, except for those who practice philosophy, whose cycle is three thousand years. In addition, the soul lives through thousand-year cycles on earth, at the end of which the soul will be able to choose its new kind of life based on its experiences and recollections.

The reason the philosopher’s soul is able to grow wings in three thousand years is because it stays closest to the reality beyond heaven. The philosopher stands closer to the divine than other humans. This brings us to fourth kind of madness: “that which someone shows when he sees the beauty we have down here and is reminded of true beauty” (249d). This is the best kind of madness—the madness of love that possess a man when he sees a beautiful boy. Of course, only a few souls remember reality well enough for such madness to be triggered by earthly things. To those souls, however, the radiance of beauty can be perceived vaguely, even on earth. By contrast, less radiant forms like justice, self-control, and wisdom do not shine out.

The vision of Beauty on earth evokes a fear for the divine, followed by a deep reverence. When a man perceives a truly beautiful boy, he feels a chill and then begins to sweat. The stream of beauty flows into his eyes, warming him up and feeding his soul’s wings. The soul experiences an “aching and itching” sensation akin to that which a child feels at the first growth of teeth—a sensation that is soothed by the flow of joyful beauty (251c). In the absence of the boy, the aching and itching return as a throbbing pain; but the memory of the boy allows the soul to recover its joy.

This mixture of pain and joy is love. Love enslaves the soul and makes it forget everything else because “in addition to its reverence for one who has such beauty, the soul has discovered that the boy is the only doctor for all that terrible pain” (252a-b).

The way the soul acts on earth—including its relation to the boy—depends entirely on the god with which it traveled in heaven. An attendant of Zeus, for example, will “be able to bear the burden of this feathered force [i.e., love] with dignity” (252c). But one of Ares, the god of war, might act more belligerently and mistreat the boy as well as others. The souls who will most likely be able to consummate their relations with boys are the followers of Zeus, Hera, or Apollo—those who “show no envy, no mean-spirited lack of generosity” and who “make every effort to draw [the boy] into being totally like themselves and the god to whom they are devoted” (253b). This path to capturing a boy relates back to the structure of the soul.

As previously noted, the soul is composed of thee parts: two horses and a charioteer. The horse on the right side is the better, nobler one, who is a “lover of honor with modesty and self-control” (253d). The horse on the left is uglier and wilder, “companion to wild boasts and indecency” (253e). At the sight of beauty, the right horse retains a sense of shame and does not move, while the left horse leaps forward in an attempt to jump on the boy. As for the charioteer, he yanks back the reins in fear when he recalls the reality of Beauty standing next to Self-control. A struggle thus arises between the three elements, at the end of which the bad horse is tamed and the lover’s soul finally “follows its boy in reverence” or awe (254e).

As for the boy, he may initially resist the lover. But he eventually allows the man to spend time with him since good naturally associates with good. And as he spends time with the man, the boy realizes that the friendship with a man inspired by a god exceeds all other friendships in his life. Eventually, the boy also begins to feel the effect of desire flowing through him. He thus “has a mirror image of love in him” and acts on the desires “to see, touch, kiss, and lie down with [the man]” (255e).

Meanwhile, the bad horse begins to pull against the charioteer’s reins again. If the man and boy practice modesty and self-control, they will follow the path of philosophy and grow wings after death. And “there is no greater good than this that either human self-control or divine madness can offer a man” (256b). But if the man and boy let the bad horse slip out of control, they may consummate their relationship, albeit sparingly. In this case their souls will remain wingless after death—but nonetheless will not slip further down, since they will have begun the journey upwards by trying to sprout wings. In both cases, then, a lover’s friendship brings a boy divine benefits. A non-lover’s companionship, on the other hand, only brings a boy “cheap, human dividends” (256e). Thus Socrates concludes his speech and palinode.

Analysis

Socrates’ second speech, also known as his Great Speech, overshadows the previous two speeches in style, length, and content. Although it is decidedly uncharacteristic of Socrates to speak so imaginatively at such great length, many of the most important Socratic (or Platonic) ideas derive from the Great Speech. As a paean to eros, the speech can be broken down roughly into three parts: (1) the importance of madness; (2) a picture of the immortal soul’s life and structure; (3) an exploration of platonic love.

(1) Both Lysias and Socrates thus far have posited the corruptive and evil nature of madness. In the Great Speech, however, Socrates paints a more complex picture of madness. To be sure, it has negative influences; “but in fact the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god” (244c). The four types of madness are later classified as gifts from Apollo, Dionysus, the Muses, and finally Aphrodite. Socrates suggests, then, that logic and reason (logos) are not sufficient for the highest modes of human life. As Graeme Nicholson notes, for example, “the barren intellectualism of Lysias’s address, devoid of. . . all forms of eros, would signify the deviant situation in which the soul as a whole was overshadowed by, subordinated to, logos” (197). Socrates himself gives us a converse example: outside of his usual intellectual confines of Athens, the Nymphs and gods inspire him to deliver his Great Speech.

(2) The importance of madness reappears in the structure of the immortal soul as a primordial, nonrational drive. Here the deference to straight logic yields to a simile: the soul is like a chariot with two horses. All gods and men have the same structure of the soul. But whereas the gods possess perfect internal harmony, men must struggle to subordinate a wild, dark horse. This dark horse represents the nonrational and impulsive side of man, which is opposed diametrically to the rationality and self-control that the good horse represents. Both in heaven and on earth, man must constantly struggle to dominate his dark side. Note that the soul’s director, or charioteer, somehow must act both on and with rationality—and more. While this toil is eternal—since the soul is immortal—the reward is also great.

In the famous allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic, Plato evokes a world of perfect Ideas, or Forms, that reside in a realm higher than that of man. The Phaedrus paints a similar picture. When the soul grows wings and travels through heaven, its ultimate reward is to see what lies beyond it: true Knowledge, true Justice, true Self-Control, and so on. These are the perfect Forms that life on earth can only attempt to imitate. Souls that are lucky enough—or practice enough control over the dark horse—will be able to climb high enough in heaven to catch sight of such Forms. According to Socrates, this upward voyage brings the human soul its greatest reward.

(3) Eros, then, involves seeing beauty on earth and recalling the true Beauty seen in heaven. As such, the madness of eros itself represents an essentially positive force. The real danger of eros resides in the dark horse as it rushes impulsively towards the vision of beauty—specifically, a beautiful boy. Many souls will give in to such impulses and consummate their relationships with sexual pleasure. But the truly noble soul will be able to reign in such impulses with modesty and self-control. Such a soul belongs to a philosopher, who will be rewarded by a return to heaven after three thousand years instead of ten thousand. And “there is no greater good than this that either human self-control or divine madness can offer a man” (256b).

The popular notion of a “Platonic relationship” derives from the above discussion in the Phaedrus. The phrase is often used to indicate a romantic relationship devoid of sexual intimacy. Socrates’s definition of a good pederastic relationship, however, does not exclude such intimacy on an absolute basis. So long as the man and boy treat each other respectfully and thoughtfully, occasional, controlled sexual pleasures may well be acceptable to the soul. Both parties simply must know their own limits and keep the soul’s dark horse under tight harness. Again, this relationship is a symbol of all such loves. As the inscriptions on the stone at Delphi remind Socrates: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.”

Phaedrus is deeply impressed by Socrates’ speech and believes that Lysias will be unable to match it with a speech of his own. Besides, Phaedrus notes, a politician has recently criticized Lysias as a “speech writer,” so Lysias may be reluctant to compose a speech to begin with. Socrates defends Lysias, however, stating that the man would not be so easily intimidated—and that the politician did not mean his comment as a reproach. Phaedrus retorts that “the most powerful and renowned politicians are ashamed to compose speeches or leave any writings behind” for fear of being called “sophists” (257d). But Socrates makes Phaedrus understand the contrary: “the most ambitious politicians love speechwriting and long for their writings to survive” (257e).

Politicians are actually in awe of speechwriting, for their legislative resolutions are much like speeches. Legislative writing begins by acknowledging the writer and “remains on the books” when it is politically successful (258a). Such was the case of writing practiced by Lycurgus, Solon, and Darius, all famous lawgivers in history. Socrates posits that none of these men would reproach Lysias for being a writer. He concludes: “It’s not speaking or writing well that’s shameful; what’s really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or badly” (258d). The question, then, becomes how to distinguish good writing from bad writing.

At this point, Socrates notes that they have plenty of time to discuss the question. Besides, the cicadas are watching them. They will laugh at Socrates and Phaedrus if they see the two succumb to the midday heat and break off conversation. On the other hand, if they see the two engaged in conversation, “they will be very pleased and immediately give [the two] the gift from the gods they were able to give to mortals” (259b).

Socrates explains this gift, which Phaedrus has not heard of. Before the birth of the Muses, cicadas used to be human beings. When the Muses came into existence, some people became so obsessed with singing that they died from forgetting to eat and drink. These people became cicadas, to whom the Muses gave a gift: they begin singing at birth and need neither food nor drink until death. And when they die, they report to the Muses “which morals have honored her.” To Calliope and Urania, they report humans “who honor their special kind of music by leading a philosophical life” (259d). Thus, there are many reasons for Socrates and Phaedrus to discuss rhetoric.

Analysis

After Socrates concludes his Great Speech, the dialogue transitions to a discussion of rhetoric and writing. This marks the thematic midpoint of the dialogue, coinciding with midday. The following points have been introduced in order to be discussed: (1) the social standing or reputation of the speechmaker; (2) the permanence of writing; and (3) the difference between good and bad speeches, spoken or written.

Socrates offers further justification for continuing the discussion by commenting on the singing cicadas. As Nehamas and Woodruff note: “Consonant with the respect for myth and traditional theology which his visit to the countryside has produced in him, [Socrates] describes the cicadas as the Muses’ messengers” (xxx). The cicadas serve as reminders that the two friends should discuss philosophy instead of languishing under the noon heat. Alfred Geier also suggests that Socrates tells the tale to “war[n] Phaedrus that he is in great danger of becoming like one of those men who loved poetry without nourishment and so died and became a cicada” (184). Rhetoric, in other words, needs some sort of philosophic backing.

Socrates wonders whether a good and noble speech must address the truth of the issue at hand. Phaedrus has heard that a good speech is merely a matter of seeming good—and that persuasion is more important than truth. Socrates proposes that they investigate this last notion.

Say, for example, that Socrates were trying to convince someone to fight on horseback. And say that Socrates knew nothing about horses except that Phaedrus believes they are tame and have long ears. If Socrates were to make a speech praising donkeys—calling them horses—and advised Phaedrus to employ donkeys at home and at war, that would be evidently ridiculous. Socrates and Phaedrus thus decide that it would better to be “ridiculous and a friend” than “clever and an enemy” (260c). But when a rhetorician who cannot distinguish between good and bad advises a city that also knows no better, he is clearly sowing rhetorical seeds for a “crop of really poor harvest” (260d).

Socrates notes that some may defend the art of speaking in the following manner: the speaker does not force anyone to learn speechmaking without knowing the truth; on the contrary, he advises others to come to him only after they have mastered the truth—for only then will they be able to convince others of the truth. Phaedrus wonders whether this is a fair defense. Socrates replies by evoking yet another argument: such a defense testifies to “not an art but an artless practice.” For “as the Spartan said, there is no genuine art of speaking without a grasp of truth, and there never will be” (260e). Socrates invokes “noble creatures” to convince Phaedrus that “unless he pursues philosophy properly he will never be able to make a proper speech on any subject” (261a).

Through a series of questions and answers, Socrates leads Phaedrus to deduce several points. (1) Rhetorical art in general is a way of “directing the soul by means of speech” (261a). (2) Rhetoric involves the same art of speaking, be the subject important or trivial, public or private. (3) Artful speakers can take both sides of an argument by making things seem similar or dissimilar. (4) To know the similar and dissimilar, one must know the truth about each thing one discusses. (5) “Therefore,” Socrates concludes, “the art of a speaker who doesn’t know the truth and chases opinions instead is likely to be a ridiculous thing—not an art at all” (262c).

The two men now turn to Lysias’s speech for examples of the “artful and the artless” (262c). But first, Socrates remarks that he himself does not possess any art of speaking, for his speeches contain an example of deception notwithstanding knowledge of truth. That said, the two proceed to examine how Lysias writes artlessly. Socrates begins by establishing two points. (1) Some words like “iron” are clear; others like “just” are more ambiguous. Audiences are more likely deceived—and rhetoric has greater power—with the ambiguous words or subjects. (2) The artful speaker must know the “class to which whatever he is about to discuss belongs” (263c).

Thus, Socrates asks to which class love belongs—the clear or the ambiguous? Phaedrus claims that love belongs to the latter, since Socrates was able to speak of love first as harmful and then as the greatest good. Socrates proceeds to point out that he defined love clearly at the beginning of his speech. He then asks:

Did Lysias, too, at the start of his love-speech, compel us to assume that love is the single thing that he himself wanted it to be? Did he then complete his speech by arranging everything in relation to that? (236d-e)

Socrates points out that one speech advocated in favor of the lover, while the other was in favor of the non-lover. He then paraphrases what was said previously: there are two types of madness, one human and one divine, and of divine madness, there are four kinds, inspired by the prophetic Apollo, the mystic Dionysus, the poetic Muses, and the lovely Aphrodite—the fourth being the best. Treating his two speeches together, Socrates wonders: “How was the speech able to progress from censure to praise?” (265c). Given that “Fortune’s guidance” was involved, Socrates remarks that the answer holds two devices whose nature would be “quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art” (265c-d).

The first consists of “seeing together things that are scattered . . . and collecting them into one kind” (265d). This allows one to establish a clear framework of the subject. The second, in turn, consists of “cut[ing] up each kind according to its species along its natural joints” (265e). So long as the divisions are made naturally and appropriately, they serve as analytical tools. In effect, Socrates’ speech was cut into two parts. The first one cut the left-hand part, which led to the discovery of the left-hand part of madness (the dark side). And the second one, correspondingly, cut the right-hand part, which led to the right-hand part of madness (the divine side). Socrates praises this ability to “discer[n] a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many” and names it “dialectic” (266b-c). Phaedrus agrees with Socrates on the point that rhetoricians like Thrasymachus do not possess the skill of dialectic.

Analysis

Phaedrus has been influenced by the sophistic view of rhetoric, in which persuasion is valued over truth. Socrates challenges this sophistic argument with a social argument that expresses the importance of philosophic reasoning. If an orator speaks falsely but convincingly, his speech could lead people or a whole city down a dangerous path. Even if the orator harbors no negative intentions, it is dangerous to practice rhetoric without knowing the truth. Socrates claims, therefore, that sophistic rhetoric is “not an art but an artless practice.”

True rhetoric, from a philosophic point of view, directs the soul of both speaker and listener. Insofar as the speaker bears social responsibility for his speech, the true art of rhetoric must be grounded in philosophy—ideally by knowledge, but at minimum with respect for the differences among truth, opinion, and falsehood. A speech must aim to guide souls truthfully, and only a philosopher knows the art of grasping truth in a systematic way. This art can be understood as collecting and dividing—or a particular kind of synthesis, summary, and analysis. For any given subject, a full rhetoric of the subject must first sum up all the different possible meanings, observations, and arguments pertaining to the subject; then, these must be organized or divided along reasonable and natural lines, prioritizing some elements and subordinating others.

How does the philosopher’s rhetoric compare to the speeches of Lysias and Socrates so far? In the hustle and bustle of life, does a lover or a beloved have time to engage in a philosophic rhetoric? At what point must someone give up on philosophical completeness and simply make the best choice among the available alternatives, perceived incompletely and perhaps incorrectly?

Socrates finds fault in the haphazard construction of Lysias’s argument. Like the epigram on Midas’s tomb, various points of Lysias’s speech could be rearranged without really changing the argument as a whole. Perhaps this serves to illustrate how Lysias’s analysis fails to follow the “natural” lines that divide a well-structured argument. On the contrary, Lysias defined love at the beginning and arranged his speech in a sophistic manner. Again, a concern for style without much regard for content cannot characterize the art of speaking well.

Although Socrates notes that he also defined love at the beginning of his speech, he divided his arguments into two parts. And by referring to his two speeches as one, Socrates suggests that his arguments did not contradict themselves but followed a dialectic progression. In a mirror image of the Platonic soul, Socrates’ first speech addressed the dark side of madness, while his second speech addressed the divine side. His discussion on eros thus encompasses not only both sides of the argument but also both sides of the soul. As such, it reflects the truth of the subject as a whole and guides the soul in a philosophic manner. Other rhetoricians, such as Thrasymachus (who appears in the Republic), as Socrates and Phaedrus agree, do not possess such a skill of dialectic.

But does this mean that Socrates, who so often claims not to have knowledge, knows enough about love and the soul to feel confident in his speeches? Socrates is not himself on this day, being apolis. In fact, he has been able to articulate his speeches only with “Fortune’s guidance” (265c) and with the nagging of his daemon.

Has eros now been forgotten? Earlier in the dialogue, Socrates made a rudimentary distinction between style and content (234e-235a). Whereas his speeches responded to the content of Lysias’s speech, the discussion of the dialogue has now turned to style. The relationship between content and style is a question that Socrates continues to develop in the ensuing discussion of rhetoric. Was the earlier material on eros just a warm-up for this philosophical material, or is eros central to both rhetoric and philosophy in such a way that eros was the perfect prelude to the second half of the dialogue?

Phaedrus remains discontented with the understanding of rhetoric that Socrates proposes. After all, Socrates has yet to address many things—“everything, at any rate, written up in the books on the art of speaking” (266d). The two thus enumerate the many devices of speech that have been “discovered” by famous rhetoricians. After reaching the conclusion that everyone seems to agree on how to end a speech, Phaedrus is satisfied that all the major devices of rhetoric have been reviewed. Phaedrus emphasizes that these devices have “a very great power . . . especially in front of a crowd." Socrates, however, suggests that the “fabric is a little threadbare” (268a). He raises several examples by means of proof:

(1) Suppose a man has knowledge of the material contained in medical books but no practical knowledge. He claims to be a physician, since he can teach anyone the physician’s art. But this is evidently absurd. The man cannot really claim to be a physician, for “he knows nothing of the art [itself]” (268c). (2) Suppose someone approached a tragedian, such as Sophocles or Euripides, and claimed that he knew the art of composing all sorts of passages. He may believe that teaching such an art would mean teaching the art of tragedy, but evidently this would not be the case. He knows the “preliminaries of tragedy, but not the art of tragedy itself” (268e). (3) Now, suppose a great orator like Pericles has heard all the devices of rhetoric that Phaedrus and Socrates have just enumerated—devices which people write “as if they are rhetoric itself.” Such a person may be able to recognize the devices, but he would remain “ignorant of dialectic” (269b), taking the preliminaries or elements of rhetoric to be the complex art of speechmaking. One needs to know how to put these elements together to properly compose and then deliver a good speech on a particular topic for a particular environment.

Phaedrus is convinced by Socrates’ argument and now wonders how one can acquire this “art of the true rhetorician, the really persuasive speaker” (269d). Socrates suggests that, like many other things, natural ability plays a key part in becoming a great rhetorician. But there are ways to improve one’s rhetoric, and they are not to be found on the path taken by Lysias and Thrasymachus. Socrates proposes an answer by way of examining “why Pericles was in all likelihood the greatest rhetorician of all” (269e).

“All the great arts,” Socrates states, “require endless talk and ethereal speculation about nature: This seems to be what gives them their lofty point of view and universal applicability.” In addition to having natural ability, Pericles learned from Anaxagoras, who “got his full dose of ethereal speculation, and understood the nature of mind and mindlessness” (270a). Socrates thus suggests that Pericles understood something of the nature of the world as a whole. Consequently, he was able to grasp the nature and soul of rhetoric and distance himself clearly from an “empirical and artless practice” (270b). But Phaedrus does not fully comprehend this progression—from grasping the nature of the world to grasping the nature of the soul and to rhetoric. Socrates thus proposes to reexamine this view.

In order to “think systematically about the nature of anything,” one must take the following steps (270c). First, determine whether it is simple or complex; if it is complex, enumerate all its forms. In either case, determine its natural power—what it acts upon and what about it is acted upon. Socrates states that any other method would be like “walking with the blind.” Now, a teacher of rhetoric should be able to apply this method to the soul and and demonstrate the “essential nature” of the soul (270e). After all, rhetoric targets the soul to produce conviction. Any serious rhetorician will thus classify different kinds of speeches and souls and explain their different affects and effects. This is the only way, Socrates claims, to produce an artful speech, be it written or spoken.

The problem is that “since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul," the orator faces an extremely difficult task (271d). He must not only learn but also apply the theory of how to reach souls through words. To fully have the rhetor’s art, he must know the nature of any and every potential audience in order to be able to determine the right type of speech to use, and he must speak with the correct devices at the correct times. Phaedrus agrees with Socrates that no other path leads to the true art of speaking. But this path is evidently a “major undertaking,” so the two set out to “try to find some easier and shorter route to the art” (272b-c).

Many people say that in order to be an able rhetorician, one need not “know the truth about the things that are just or good” (272d). In law courts, after all, people only care about what is convincing. An effective rhetorician, following this path, need only address what is “likely” and pursue his argument from there. Here, Socrates invokes Tisias’s book on rhetoric, in which “the likely” is associated with the crowd’s opinion. By Tisias’s art of rhetoric, the following situation could well occur: if a weak but spirited man were taken to court for robbing a strong but cowardly man, neither man would tell the truth if the main criterion were effectiveness in persuasion. The spirited man would protest: “How could a man like me attack a man like him?” and the cowardly man, unwilling to admit his cowardice, would be forced to cover for himself by inventing some sort of lie (273c).

This anecdote, in the eyes of Socrates, shows sufficiently that the shorter path to the art of rhetoric is unacceptable. The effectiveness criterion and arguments from likelihood, all too often, lead souls to embrace what is false. The only way to truly possess the art of speaking passes through a long detour. This detour, Socrates recapitulates, involves acquiring “the ability to enumerate the sorts of characters to be found in any audience, to divide everything according to its kinds, and to grasp each single thing firmly by means of one form.” Only with such abilities can one “speak and act in a way that pleases the gods as much as possible” (273e). Indeed, wise men say that a “reasonable man” must strive to please not his equals but his masters, “who are wholly good” (273e-274a). Thus Socrates concludes the discussion of artful and artless speaking.

Analysis

Having disposed of his sophistic views on rhetoric, Phaedrus remains unwilling to relinquish all the rhetorical devices that he has learned from books. Surely, since they have been discovered and developed by so many great orators, they must serve a rhetorician well! Socrates offers several anecdotes in response. Several points here are essential. For one, knowing the elements of something is different from knowing how to put the elements together. That is, theory is not sufficient for practice. Just as one who has read books on medicine cannot credibly claim to be an able physician, so too must students of rhetoric learn more than mere rhetorical devices from books. True rhetoric, Socrates repeats, is founded on dialectic—or more broadly, philosophy.

A good rhetorician must be able to persuade souls and do it justly, not just effectively. As Socrates points out in another dialogue, Gorgias, one of the greatest possible evils is to know the truth but to intentionally put falsehood into another’s soul. How can the noble rhetor avoid this evil? He not only must be able to apply the dialectic method of collecting and dividing to any subject on which he must speak, but he also must be able to use that method to understand different kinds of souls in order to persuade each one according to its kind. Since the rhetorician must direct the soul of his listeners, he must have a perfect understanding of the soul and be able to distinguish between different audiences. What can he do for a mixed audience, where the same speech might persuade some but lead others astray?

In order to understand the nature of the soul, the rhetorician must follow the Socratic maxim “Know thyself” and strive to understand, to start with, his own soul. Thus the true art of rhetoric requires philosophy to such a degree that it cannot possibly be achieved by anyone except a philosopher. As Graeme Nicholson notes, “What the dialectician practices . . . is the full Socratic art of thinking and living, and only that gives an adequate buttress to rhetoric” (65).

The rhetorician, then, faces a superhuman task. Even Socrates himself cannot claim to have mastered the art of speaking, since he still struggles to know himself (230a). He does not even clearly understand how his daemon intervenes to keep him from making certain mistakes. Indeed, Socrates states repeatedly that his two speeches stemmed from divine inspiration rather than his own knowledge.

Given the long path that leads to mastering the art of speaking, then, Socrates proposes to look for a shortcut. As a practical matter, a shortcut seems absolutely necessary, for how else could someone deign to persuade someone about anything? As life goes on, people need to make decisions and cannot wait for philosophy or philosophers to step in. Thus, Socrates appears willing to look for a shortcut. But this is just one of many places where Socrates hides an ulterior motive; he intends to reject the shortcut.

The shortcut they examine derives from the technique of appealing to the likely, as found in Tisias’s book on rhetoric. The problem is that, as shown by the example of the weak opportunist beating the strong coward, the rhetorician’s appeal to the likely all too often obstructs rather than promotes justice and truth. This shortcut resembles sophistry in that it can easily obscure justice and truth. The path that leads to the true art of speaking, Socrates repeats, must pass through a thorough study of dialectic and philosophy. In this regard, Phaedrus contains Socrates’ advice to Phaedrus and perhaps to all speech-lovers: do not spend your time on speeches, where the best you can do is make concessions to the likely, and where the worst outcome can be truly bad, but study and live by philosophy. It seems better to withhold assent if assenting sometimes leads to accepting falsehood into the soul.

But this path seems extremely impractical. Is there no better shortcut? Do we not have to assent to many things on the basis of likelihood, just to make basic decisions every day? Plato presents us with a view of Socrates as a person who makes a lot of provisional arguments without finally deciding that he knows anything substantial. Maybe the shortcut involves seeing the true nature of rhetoric as something provisional; that is, the art of persuasion is the art of moving souls without going so far as to try to put either true or false statements in the souls of an audience. He who would go that far had better be a philosopher, not a rhetorician. That way, if people are persuaded to make decisions that turn out badly, the rhetorician may be excused on the ground that he openly admitted that he really did not provide anything more than an argument from likelihood.

If this shortcut holds, then the good rhetorician ought to learn how to express humility and how to convey various degrees of certainty and uncertainty, unlike the rhetors who claim to be able to speak persuasively on any subject.

The dialogue now turns to a discussion of writing: “What feature makes writing good, and what inept (274b)? Socrates begins by telling the story of Theuth.

Among the ancient Egyptian gods, there was one called Theuth who discovered “number and calculation, geometry and astronomy, as well as the games of draughts and dice, and above all else, writing” (274d). One day, Theuth visited Thamus, King of Egypt, urging him to disseminate the arts around Egypt. For each art that Theuth presented, Thamus offered his praise and criticism. When it came to writing, Theuth said:

O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom. (274e)

Phaedrus protests that Socrates has invented the story haphazardly. But Socrates retorts that the “priests at the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak” (275b). What difference does the origin of a story make, so long as it tells the truth? In light of this argument, Phaedrus retracts his criticism and agrees that Thamus spoke correctly about writing.

How is it possible, then, that a book on the art of rhetoric can possibly “yield results that are clear or certain?” (275c). How could rhetoricians possibly believe that their writing “can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?” (275d). Socrates points out several related problems inherent to writing. (1) Like painting, it has no understanding of itself and “continues to signify just the same thing forever” (275d-e). (2) It does not discern between appropriate and inappropriate audiences. (3) It always needs the support of its writer (or “father”); for “alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support” (275e).

Socrates and Phaedrus agree, however, that such discourse also has a “legitimate brother”—namely “the living, breathing discourse of a man who knows, of which the written one can be fairly called an image” (276a). Socrates compares a noble writer to a farmer who sows gardens of letters for his own amusement. Later in life, he will have plenty of “reminders” for himself. Moreover, his followers will also be able to appreciate these reminders in bloom. Socrates concludes by once again praising dialectic:

The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge—discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows . . . Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human being can be. (277a)

Analysis

Phaedrus’s initial response to Socrates’ story of Theuth contains an implicit but grave accusation of sophistry. Has Socrates not simply made up a myth to bolster his own ideas about writing? Rather than sidestep the accusation by resorting to the “empty jar” argument, Socrates proposes an entirely new line of reasoning (cf. 235d). So long as a document or speech contains the truth, he claims, the source does not matter. Although Phaedrus accepts this claim immediately, it remains unclear how Socrates gained the knowledge contained in the myth of Theuth and Thamus.

The myth itself suggests the ambiguity of social consequences that was introduced by the technology of writing. On the one hand, Theuth claims that writing serves as an instrument to improve memory and wisdom; on the other hand, Thamus believes that people will rely too much on writing and consequently lose memory and wisdom. Insofar as both beneficial and harmful qualities are ascribed to writing, Plato’s reference to writing as a pharmakon is appropriate. Earlier, Socrates referred to the copy of Lysias’s speech using the same word—“potion” in ancient Greek, which can refer either to a medicine or poison. Writing, like rhetoric and like administering potions, appears to be a neutral art, one that can turn out either well or badly depending on the content and the audience.

Socrates proceeds to emphasize the negative side of the pharmakon that is writing. The essential problem of writing is that it is a dead kind of speech. Unlike living, breathing discourse, writing can neither change its argument nor respond to criticism. Writing also lacks the ability to distinguish between audiences—an important skill that Socrates requires of proper dialecticians (cf. 271b). Writing cannot direct the souls of readers in a proper fashion; metaphorically, it requires a “father” for guidance and support.

The key notion here, however, is that some writing can embody dialectic and thus become a “legitimate” child that does not require the father’s presence. Which writing embodies universal knowledge for a universal audience? Or does Socrates mean the opposite—that the knowledge and the audience are so specific that they include only the philosopher himself (and perhaps his trusted friends and students), so that the writing must be for amusement and to trigger memory?

In between the universal audience and the individual audience, Socrates and Phaedrus have focused on the public nature of rhetoric. In a courtroom or in the political arena, rhetoric moves audiences. It directs souls. For this reason, Socrates deems sophistry particularly dangerous, which is why noble rhetoricians and dialecticians must know the souls of their audiences and use the correct manner and content of speech. Writing, then, faces an impossible task if it is engaged in the business of persuading souls: no matter how much knowledge and truth it contains, no argument can be free of the potential to harm or misguide an audience. Besides, casual readers will read philosophy in order to learn about philosophy rather than to actually think philosophically, and a little such knowledge can be a dangerous thing--just as a little book-knowledge of rhetoric or of potions can turn deadly.

But if the philosophical writing is fundamentally private in nature—for the philosopher’s own amusement, or for his close friends or students—then its potential for harm is largely overcome. Such writing may not be intended to move others, though others may eventually find amusement in it themselves. Is even this kind of writing possible? How can the writer ensure that the writing never gets into the wrong hands, where it could be misunderstood?

The idea that writing is safest and most effective when it is shared privately is an idea that returns us to the relationship between the young student and the non-loving teacher. In this private relationship, ideas can be exchanged intimately between souls—most of all through words, and secondarily through writing—in an environment where neither party intends to deceive the other for the sake of love or some other passion, but both engage together in the philosophical pursuit of truth—and where their rhetoric does not depend on knowing all types of souls, but only each other’s.

As they conclude, Socrates and Phaedrus recall that they initially set out to “examine the attack on Lysias on account of his writing speeches, and to ask which speeches are written artfully and which not” (277a-b). They have observed two points integral to the art of speech: (1) one must know the truth and be able to define everything on which one speaks; (2) one must understand the nature of the audience’s soul(s) and prepare every speech accordingly. Furthermore, anyone who believes that he writes down matters of great importance should be reproached. For the worthy man will only write for the sake of amusement—and learning about what is “just, noble, and good.” Such discourse can be called the man’s “legitimate children” and may spread naturally to other good souls (278a). The producer of such discourse can be called a philosopher—a wisdom lover. On the other hand, the man who dwells on his writings will be called a “poet or a speech writer or an author of laws” (278d-e). Finally, after a prayer to the gods, Socrates and Phaedrus set out on the path back to the city—and to their respective favorites, Isocrates and Lysias.

Analysis

See the analysis of the previous section for insight into the conclusion of the dialogue from a philosophical point of view. Here, Socrates mainly summarizes what has come before, reaffirming the overarching importance of philosophy for spoken and written discourse. By extension, he disparages all those who dwell on their writings at the expense of philosophical dialectic. The philosopher, Socrates repeats, would only write—even legitimate discourse—for the sake of amusement.

But having written Phaedrus and so many other dialogues, can Plato justify thinking of himself as a philosopher? Arguably, the Socratic teachings could not have spread so widely and lasted so long without Plato's writings. Is it perhaps legitimate for an author to write of the dialectic discourse of others? Is there a way to produce a piece of writing that can survive the test of time across various audiences and still be philosophically or rhetorically valuable beyond a small, private group, without causing harm by leading some readers astray? If so, perhaps the Socratic dialogue, very carefully constructed, leaving the casual reader no worse off and providing entertainment for philosophical readers, is Plato’s answer.

The return to Athens signifies a return to normalcy, at least on the part of Socrates. But the mention of Isocrates—a famous Greek orator, associated with the school of Sophists—concludes the dialogue on a troubling note. For if Isocrates is indeed Socrates’ favorite, then are we to see that even Socrates fails to inspire his beloved student to take up philosophy rather than rhetoric? The Socratic way of life, after all, proves tragic, leading to Socrates’ death by poison. Is this the fate a philosopher who abhors public rhetoric should expect?

• Biography of Plato
• About Phaedrus
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Glossary of Terms
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Introduction: 227a-230e
• Summary and Analysis of Lysias’s Speech: 230e-234c
• Summary and Analysis of Socrates' Challenge of Lysias: 234d-237b
• Summary and Analysis of Socrates' First Speech: 237b-241d
• Summary and Analysis of Socrates' Recantation: 241d-243e
• Summary and Analysis of Socrates’ Second Speech: 244a-257b
• Summary and Analysis of Transition to Discussion of Rhetoric: 257b-259d
• Summary and Analysis of Discussion of Rhetoric, Part I: 259e-266c
• Summary and Analysis of Discussion of Rhetoric, Part II: 266c-274b
• Summary and Analysis of Discussion of Writing: 274b-277a
• Summary and Analysis of Conclusion: 277a-279c
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