The Phaedrus: dialogue transcends the written

The Phaedrus, to pilfer a phrase Socrates himself uses in the same dialogue, is a “beast more complex than Typhon”  (230a).  But our fascination does not extend equally to each of the many topics brought up in this dialogue.  One of the areas of interest for many readers happens to be “speech” as such, discussed near the end of the dialogue.  Plato’s antagonistic critique of the written word often garners the immediate attention of those coming to the dialogue for the first time.  The conspicuous attention this critique demands is understandable.  The “attack” on the written word comes within the context of the written word.  That is to say, a dialogue, composed of written words itself, is criticizing the written word.

The main points against writing are as follows:

1)     Writing is a crutch for memory.  Instead of aiding our memory, writing disables our latent ability to know something within ourselves  (275a-b).

2)    Writing is not dynamic.  It cannot answer questions, but must resort to its author to resolve any difficulties brought about by its misuse or misunderstanding  (275d-e).

3)    Writing is not personalized.  Writing has no detailed knowledge of the soul of the listener, and therefore lacks the requisite adaptation to this soul that speech requires (276e).

Whether one agrees with this list of shortcomings, one could at least sympathize with the thrust of the criticism.  Perhaps these are the pitfalls of the written word, one could admit, but there are also benefits.  A book, for instance, “lives” longer than its author.  Also, one cannot well go on changing his opinion if it has once been laid out in black and white.  The written word is not fickle: to turn objection number 2 on its head, it says the same thing forever.

However, neglecting the relative worth of the written word for a moment, it is quite another thing for Plato, on his own principles, to act as if the written word were the proxy for the author himself.  This would seem a clear contradiction of the implicit principle at work throughout the entire polemic against writing, namely, that writing is not a person.    But this is in fact what we do see.

Phaedrus:  In reality, Socrates, I did not at all learn the very words [of Lysias’ speech]; however I did learn the intention of nearly all the speeches, in which ways the lover differs from the non-lover.  I will go through summarizing each of them in order, beginning from the first.

Socrates:  …showing me first what you have in your right hand under your cloak.  For I guess that you have the speech itself.  And consider this about me, that I really am partial to you, but when Lysias is present, it is not at all seemly to provide myself to you for practice.  But go on and show me.

Φαῖδρος
τῷ ὄντι γάρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, παντὸς μᾶλλον τά γε ῥήματα οὐκ ἐξέμαθον: τὴν μέντοι διάνοιαν σχεδὸν ἁπάντων, οἷς ἔφη διαφέρειν τὰ τοῦ ἐρῶντος ἢ τὰ τοῦ μή, ἐν κεφαλαίοις ἕκαστον ἐφεξῆς δίειμι, ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου.

Σωκράτης
δείξας γε πρῶτον, ὦ φιλότης, τί ἄρα ἐν τῇ ἀριστερᾷ ἔχεις ὑπὸ τῷ ἱματίῳ: τοπάζω γάρ σε ἔχειν τὸν λόγον αὐτόν. εἰ δὲ τοῦτό ἐστιν, οὑτωσὶ διανοοῦ περὶ ἐμοῦ, ὡς [228ε] ἐγώ σε πάνυ μὲν φιλῶ, παρόντος δὲ καὶ Λυσίου, ἐμαυτόν σοι ἐμμελετᾶν παρέχειν οὐ πάνυ δέδοκται. ἀλλ᾽ ἴθι, δείκνυε.
Phaedrus 228d-e

Phaedrus here stops his game, and confesses to hiding the speech, as the pair seeks a suitable spot to stop and read the speech.

Well before the critique of writing begins, at 275, Socrates is coaxing Phaedrus to share with him the latest speech of Lysias.  As is clear from the context, Phaedrus disavows any verbatim knowledge of the speech, but nevertheless is surreptitiously attempting to practice his unskilled rhetoric on Socrates.  Socrates will brook none of it, and demands to see Lysias himself.  What is it that we readers expect, before having been subjected to the critique of writing, when Socrates makes this demand?  As Plato probably anticipated, our reaction as readers was probably an expectation that “Lysias” was actually the written speech of Lysias himself.  If this is the case though, how can this be reconciled with the later idea that the written is only a limited representation of the author and not at all the person proper?  Why does Socrates, given what we know he will defend later, use a speech as a proxy for Lysias’ presence?

The most obvious answer is that Socrates wishes to “out” Lysias as a writer of speeches.  He will not allow Lysias to speak beyond the boundaries of his created medium.  As such, Socrates creates a notable dichotomy between this speech and the speeches that he himself will offer.

More curious however, is the presumption that while Lysias’ speech is static, with all its concomitant problems, Socrates’ offered speeches are not.  Is there any reason to believe that Socrates own speeches are exempt from the pitfalls of writing I highlighted above?

We can imagine that the conversation with Phaedrus is different because Socrates handcrafts a couple different speeches to Phaedrus himself, along, of course, with the intervening discourse we read in between the speeches and framing the entire dialogue.   But on to a greater discrepancy: What about the dialogue itself?  The dialogue itself is not crafted to our personal needs, is it?  The simple answer is no.  Charitably, we must admit that such personalization is impossible in a dialogue format, because it is, as Socrates notes of written work in general, mute and unchanging.  However, it does model conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus, which, in the context of the philosophical conversation about speech, is easily expandable into our own situations by way of analogy.  Furthermore, and more obviously, the dialogue quite clearly makes the point that the written is limited in so far as it cannot answer questions and respond, although this criticism cannot be sustained with the same force as it can with a dialogue.  The dialogue genre, while nevertheless written, seems to be the most endurable, the most tolerable, form of the written.

The dialogue is different.

The nature of Socrates’ Divine Sign

In the Symposium, with Phaedrus, Pausanias, Agathon, Aristophanes, and Eryximachus, in turn, having fashioned their own “odes” to the god of Love, Socrates renders his own praise amongst the symposiasts.  His speech assumes a quasi-religious authority as he recalls the teaching of Diotima, a Mantian priestess.[1]  The whole of Socrates speech deviates little from merely relating the content of this conversation.  At one point, as he relates the conversation, Socrates brings up the topic of the daimonian.

 [Diotima said,] “and the entire divine (daimonion) is halfway between god and mortal”
“And it has what power?,”I [Socrates] said.

 “Interpreting and transmitting the things of men to gods and the things of gods to men, namely the petitions and sacrifices of men, and from the gods, the commands and the things exchanged for the sacrifices, and because it is in the middle, it fills up both completely, with the result that the universe itself contributes to itself.  Through this also the whole of the prophetic and the priestly art moves…”

 καὶ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ δαιμόνιον
μεταξύ ἐστι θεοῦ τε καὶ θνητοῦ.
τίνα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, δύναμιν ἔχον;

ἑρμηνεῦον καὶ διαπορθμεῦον θεοῖς τὰ παρ᾽ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀνθρώποις τὰ παρὰ θεῶν, τῶν μὲν τὰς δεήσεις καὶ θυσίας, τῶν δὲ τὰς ἐπιτάξεις τε καὶ ἀμοιβὰς τῶν θυσιῶν, ἐν μέσῳ δὲ ὂν ἀμφοτέρων συμπληροῖ, ὥστε τὸ πᾶν αὐτὸ αὑτῷ συνδεδέσθαι. διὰ τούτου καὶ ἡ μαντικὴ πᾶσα χωρεῖ καὶ ἡ τῶν ἱερέων τέχνη…
Symposium 202E

I could excerpt a little more, but I think the passage above is sufficient to make my point.  There seems to have a been a consensus in the recent past that Socrates’ daimonion did not manifest; save at those times Socrates was to be prohibited and to be forewarned.[2]  This consensus seems to have been lost.  However, the above passage could offer good, but oblique, support to this view.

If the daimonion is a type of mediator, or angel perhaps, its role does seem strangely ambiguous.  First off, grammatically it is neuter, and likewise singular.  Does this mean that there is only one “divine sign” for all human beings, and it takes turns forewarning us?  Or that it is literally that, an “it”, with no personality and no mind to speak of, merely a conducive force for the voice of the gods?

In the Crito, 31D, Socrates provides a few details about the daimonion he defends his lack of involvement in public affairs.

“There is a certain divine and daimonion thing, a voice, which Meletos even ridicules in his accusation.  This thing is a certain voice, beginning from my childhood, which, whenever it occurs always dissuades me from that which I am about to do, but it never persuades [to do something].”

μοι θεῖόν τι καὶ δαιμόνιον γίγνεται φωνή, ὃ δὴ καὶ ἐν τῇ γραφῇ ἐπικωμῳδῶν Μέλητος ἐγράψατο. ἐμοὶ δὲ τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐκ παιδὸς ἀρξάμενον, φωνή τις γιγνομένη, ἣ ὅταν γένηται, ἀεὶ ἀποτρέπει με τοῦτο ὃ ἂν μέλλω πράττειν, προτρέπει δὲ οὔποτε.

Using the theology of the Symposium to bear on the issue of the daimonion we can conclude a few things related to this Apology passage.  1) The daimonion is acting on behalf of a god(s), when it relates a prohibition to Socrates.  (2) The daimonion only prohibits, “no” is its favorite and only word.

Given the above, I believe the daimonion might be nothing more than a force.  That is, it is something impersonal, like electricity, or to use a physical analogy, a reflex.  Just as certain physical actions lead to the stimulation of a reflex, so certain mental states lead to the stimulation of a daimonion.  There is more to be investigated in this, chiefly the difficulty of reconciling this definition of daimonion with its immediate application to the god Love in Symposium.  I will post later on what I have decided.

 



[1] Diotima (lit, honor to Zeus or the god), Mantian

[2] For example, Plato, Apology and Crito, by Dyer and Seymour, 1885