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Text Access

Online Bingdev reading, click here. To jump to 11-Dec quiz study guide, here.

Suggested Reader Response Topics

• Please note that you're invited, even encouraged, to make one or both of your SWAs the basis of the essay you'll be writing. So it'll be important to get to these, and on time, i.e., no later than two hours before the class meeting for which the reading in question has been assigned. More on SWAs @ Syllabus

6-Sep 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?

• Is it because of something special about love? About rhetoric? Do Plato's own words tell us anything? How do you react?

11-Sep Reading (257c-279b) — "Socratic" Rhetoric?

In this, the second big section of Phaedrus, Socrates elaborates on what he thinks rhetoric should involve if done right. What for Socrates is the difference between and good and bad rhetoric? What, if anything, is rhetoric good for?

• What does Socrates think? What do you think?

11-Dec (last) Reading (whole dialogue) — Horses and Democracy

Go back and read the whole Phaedrus again. Then think about, and answer, the following two questions in relation to soul=chariot-team metaphor, the text as a whole, and the entire course:

QUESTION: 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? Does Socrates seem to see a valid role for rhetoric in a democracy if soul guidance (rhetoric) has to wrestle with such an unruly team?

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.)
3. 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 erōs 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 erōs is fundamentally a good thing, nevertheless strains to "revalorize" something that Greeks typically took to be a bad thing, namely, erōs, conventionally viewed 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:

1. 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
2. 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.

Quiz 3 (11-Dec) Study Guide

On THU, 10-Dec, there will be a VERY SHORT QUIZ of material covered in class assignments and lectures 15-Nov through and including 27-Dec (Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Assemblywomen; Plutarch's Alcibiades).

• NOTE: NO SPECIAL "TERMS" DIMENSION. That does NOT mean you don't have to be up on your terms relevant to the readings and course generally. What it means is, simply, that questions will be geared exclusively to READINGS, not to completing definitions of terms from the Terms page, or to matching terms to proper definitions.

It will be very short, plain, non-interpretive, and straightforward — a "fact-check" quiz more than anything else to encourage attentive reading and in-class listening.

It will also be MULTIPLE CHOICE, including a "none of the above" choice for each question.

Specifically, expect:

• Multiple choice questions targeting. . .
• Class-assigned readings, for which know. . .
  • authors (where appropriate, you won't have authors' names for everything)
  • titles (where appropriate, you won't have titles for everything)
  • characters, key actors/speakers (where appropriate)
  • basic and crucial content info