Plato's Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing

PLATO'S P

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A DEFENSE OF A

P H I L O S O P H I C ART OF W R I T I N G

Ronnd Burger

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS • UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Burger, Ronna, 1947Plato's Phaedrus. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Plato. Phaedrus. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient. 3. Socrates. 4. Writing. I. Title. B380.B86 184 79-9789 ISBN 0-8173-0014-7 Copyright © 1980 by The University of Alabama Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction I. II.

vii

1

Phaedrus the Private Man

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The Multicolored Speech of Lysias

19

III.

The Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates

IV.

The Daemonic Speech of Socrates

V. VI.

31

44

The Art of Speaking and the Principles of Dialectics The Art of Writing 90 Excursus: Writing Like the Painting of Living Animals

Appendix: Isocrates the Beautiful Notes

127

Bibliography Index

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154

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Unless otherwise noted, translations from the Phaedrus are the author's.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The opportunity to work on revisions of the original draft of this project was provided by an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral research fellowship at the City University of New York Graduate Center, September, 1978-June 1979. For their thoughtful comments and suggestions I am indebted to friends, colleagues, and professors who read an earlier draft of the manuscript, as well as to the readers chosen by the press. For my confidence in defending the small worth of these writings in light of the serious pursuit which underlies them I owe the deepest gratitude to my teacher, Seth Benardete.

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INTRODUCTION

Many things in praise or blame of each of the arts Thamuz is said to have declared to Theuth, of which the logos would take too long to narrate. But when he came to the letters: "This knowledge, O King," said Theuth, "will render the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories. For it is a drug of memory and wisdom I have discovered." But Thamuz replied, "Most artful Theuth, one man is able to bring forth the art, but another is able to judge what harm or benefit it has for those who are about to use it; and now you, being father of the letters, claim for them, through good will, the opposite of the capacity they possess. For this will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn to use it, and lack of practice of memory, inasmuch as, through their trust in writing produced by external marks belonging to another, they will not recollect by themselves from within; it is, therefore, not a drug of memory but of reminding that you have discovered. And you supply to your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom; for, having become addicted to hearing without instruction, they will think they understand many things, while being for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, having become apparently wise rather than truly wise. (PHAEDRUS 274e-275b)

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ERHAPS ONLY A JEALOUS GOD WOULD CONDEMN THE ART OF WRITING FOR THE

boldness of its attempt to transcend man's natural limitations, but this divine perspective, cut off from human need, in fact illuminates the danger of the written word in concealing its effect on the activity of thinking. The discoverer of the art of writing offers men a divine power that can overcome the restrictions of human memory and the finitude of human wisdom; a suspicious god, however, takes heed of his own warning against the written word by suggesting that, if wisdom is to be anything more than the mere appearance of wisdom, thinking must always begin again at the beginning, proceeding backwards toward recovery of the fundamental perplexities which are obscured by all received opinion. In its claim to surmount this backward procedure, the art of writing presents itself as the necessary condition for continuity or development in the quest for wisdom: the illusion of beginning the journey of thought as if it had never been pursued before can be useful only if recognized as an illusion. The transmission of knowledge through the art of writing, which makes it unnecessary for every thinker to begin with a tabula rasa, promises at the same time to free human memory from the task of preserving communal opinion over time, while creating, through its independent product, the possibility of that distance from the authority of tradition necessary for the activity of thinking. Yet like ancestral tradition handed down from one generation to another, the written word seems

2

Introduction

to be not questioning but* authoritative, not adapted Ho the perspective of an individual thinker but addressed to a collective audience. The very benefit of the art of writing is, as the royal god insists, the source of its danger, for the preservation of a written tradition might produce just that forgetfulness which impedes the recognition of fundamental perplexities; the written word, with its deceptive appearance of wisdom, must be acknowledged as an obstacle to philosophic thought. Yet this divine judgment against human art is itself nothing but an imitation by human art. The condemnation of the written word in the speech of the god is in fact a recommendation for the interpretation of the written words through which that speech is imitated. It is precisely his critique against the written word, understood as a replacement for human memory, that compels the royal god to acknowledge its power as a reminder. Acting as a reminder, the dramatic representation of the judgment on the art of writing demands an examination of its apparently conclusive claim in light of the perspective of the speaker who utters it. Precluding in this way the passive submission of its reader to its own deceptive appearance of wisdom, the dialogue on writing triumphs over itself as the very obstacle brought to light by the royal god whose condemnation it represents. The dialogue between Theuth and Thamuz, which announces the danger of the written word as an obstacle to self-discovery, is said to be an ancient story handed down through generations, providing true opinion or the appearance of wisdom; but its meaning, which cannot be handed down, must be sought through an act of self-discovery, which replaces unmoving trust in the fixed authority of the tale with the motion of living thought. The paradoxical written imitation of the divine condemnation of writing thus shows itself to be only apparently self-contradictory: to heed its warning against the danger of writing is to overcome the need for that warning and thus to realize the potential value of the written word. The dialogue between Theuth and Thamuz is a model in miniature of every Platonic dialogue, whose fundamental perplexity is always determined by the tension between the living word and its written imitation: the products of the Platonic art of writing represent Socratic conversation as the paradigm of the philosophic enterprise without ever acknowledging the deed of their creator. While Platonic love of wisdom presents itself as nothing but the imitation of Socratic love of wisdom, the very act of imitation indicates the essential separation between them. Insofar as Socrates is indeed represented as the paradigm of the philosophic enterprise, an exploration of the connection between his love of wisdom and his avoidance of the activity of writing would be the necessary basis for any Platonic defense of the possibility of a philosophic art of writing. The dialogue whose particular theme consists in a self-reflection on its own nature as an imitation is Plato's Phaedrus. The dialogue's reflection on its own character as a product of writing results, ironically, in the apparent deprecation of the activity of writing. The capacity of the product of writing to replace living

3 Introduction thought with the illusion of wisdom is appropriately announced through the voice of Socrates, servant of the "despot Eros," who condemns those written words which, like the creatures of painting, always remain the same, not knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, unable to defend themselves. In contrast with the erotic vitality of living speech, writing announces the death of its creator; it is like the epitaph of thought. The Platonic dialogues commemorate the death of Socrates by replacing the living and breathing word of the speaker with a written imitation. But the condemnation of this monument of living thought conceals the ambiguity of its twofold nature, for the imitation which deceives when taken as an original may fulfill an indispensable function when recognized as an imitation: only the written word which points to its illusory appearance as a replacement of memory is able to uncover its own potential as a reminder to the knower. The very condemnation of the written word by the written word betrays that recognition of the playfulness of writing which is identified in the dialogue as a sign of the true lover of wisdom. The condition for Socrates' love of wisdom, which allows him to recognize the playfulness of writing, is knowledge of his own ignorance, which he identifies as the greatest human wisdom (cf. Apology 23b). The imitation of Socratic knowledge of ignorance by Platonic art is the claim of the Phaedrus to know of its own potential appearance of wisdom without the reality—which turns out to be the greatest human wisdom concerning the product of writing. Plato's Phaedrus thus demonstrates that the only written work which could condemn the art of writing would have to be an imitation of that erotic speech we call Socratic irony. Precisely through the acknowledgment of its own potential dangers, the Platonic dialogue sets in motion the activity of interpretation as its own realization, and thus illustrates the potential for overcoming exactly those limitations of the dead written word which Socrates condemns; when resuscitated with the breath of thought, the written corpse of the dialogue becomes a living being, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, able to defend itself against all unjust abuse. The demand that "all logos" or "every logos" be constructed like a living animal—which seems to be a description of living speech in contrast with writing—is in fact introduced in the course of the discussion between Socrates and Phaedrus as a necessary principle for the organization of all logoi, spoken or written, whose structure must be "neither headless nor footless, but having a middle and members, composed in fitting relation to each other and to the whole" (264c). But just as the character of the dialogue as a product of writing seems to violate its own condemnation of the written word, so its own structure seems to violate its explicit demand for the organic unity of all speech. For the Phaedrus seems to display, rather than the unity of an organic whole, the discontinuity of two halves; while its first part consists in three separate speeches on eros, punctuated by interludes of playful conversation between two lovers of speech, its second part consists of a discussion on the art of speaking, which begins and ends with the question of the value of writing. For centuries commen-

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Introduction

tators have argued about its unity, contending that the major subject is love, the soul, the beautiful, rhetoric or the art of speaking, or dialectics, while this very contention has led to the resigned suggestion that the dialogue is simply selfcontradictory in demanding a unity which it itself does not possess. If "all logos" and "every logos" must be constructed like a living animal, the problem of the unity of the separate parts within this dialogue ought to reflect the problem of the unity of the Platonic corpus as a whole, of which the Phaedrus represents one part parading as a whole. Precisely that function that the Phaedrus serves in the structure of the whole composed of all the dialogues, then, might reveal the theme which determines its own internal completeness as an organic whole. If the Platonic corpus is indeed the "many-membered body of a living animal," the Phaedrus is that member which serves to examine the character of the whole as an imitation produced by the art of writing. If the role of the Phaedrus within the corpus of dialogues illuminates its own internal unity, the Platonic defense of the art of writing must provide for the Phaedrus itself the hidden bond between the speeches on eros and the discussion on rhetoric and dialectics. If, however, the problem of writing does constitute the underlying theme of the Phaedrus, its unifying function is perplexingly concealed beneath an apparently random conversation. The appropriate context for the conversation seems to be furnished by the shade of a grove sacfed to the nymphs, where the two lovers of speech lie down to exchange their speeches on love. But Socrates and Phaedrus are in fact led outside the walls of the city by the "drug" of a written speech; the clever love speech which Phaedrus conceals beneath his cloak betrays the ghostly presence of the speechwriter Lysias, haunting the apparently private scene between Socrates and Phaedrus. Socrates finally presents the conversation that he seems to conduct as a solitary encounter as a message addressed to three classes of writers: Lysias and the speech writers, Homer and the poets, Solon and the law-writers. From beginning to end, this most private erotic conversation is determined by the public nature of the written word. The tension between the appearance and reality of the drama of the dialogue thus reflects the tension between the apparent disunity of the themes of eras, rhetoric, and dialectics, and their concealed unification through the question of the nature of writing. The perplexing concealment of the theme of writing in feet provides a clue to the self-concealing nature which constitutes the danger of the written word; at the same time, the very recognition of the theme of writing, which discloses the underlying structure of the dialogue as a whole, points to the potential value of the art of writing for the construction of logos displaying the unity of an organic whole. The clues to the theme that determines the underlying unity of the Phaedrus lie in the muthoi that simultaneously connect and separate the diverse parts of the conversation, marking the divisions between the speeches on eros, the discussion on rhetoric and dialectics, and the analysis of writing. The fantastic tales

5 Introduction of a nymph carried off by the god of the north wind, lovers of music turned into chirping cicadas by the Muses, and a dialogue on writing between two Egyptian animal-gods set in motion the central questions of the conversation concerning the relations between death and eras, art and nature, acquired opinion and self-knowledge, love of speeches and love of dialectics, and writing and living speech. It is precisely their capacity for illuminating the danger and power of the product of writing which allows these muthoi to provide the clues for articulating the structure and content of the dialogue. When Phaedrus questions Socrates concerning his belief in the truth of the opening myth, Socrates responds through an analogy with the inscription of the Delphic oracle, that enigmatic product of writing which commands the search for self-knowledge. Socrates' recognition of the value of the myth in initiating the search for self-knowledge in fact points to the value of the written word as a potential reminder of "that which is written with knowledge in the soul" (276a). The transcendance of the danger of the written word as a replacement for memory and the realization of its potential value as a reminder is thus represented by the problem of the interpretation of muthos as acquired opinion whose truth can only be disclosed through selfdiscovery. That problem is itself reflected in the structure of the Phaedrus, for the apparent peak of the dialogue, represented by Socrates' "mythic hymn" honoring the divine madness of eras, in fact obscures the true peak of the dialogue, which emerges only after Socrates reports his central myth about the lovers of the Muses, and interprets it exactly at midday, as a warning of the need for critical examination in the struggle against the danger of slavish possession. The paradoxical reversal in the course of the speeches on love, where the divine madness of eras is revealed to be the highest moderation, is thus mirrored in the reversal of the dialogue as a whole, where the inspired love-speeches are submitted to critical examination for the evidence of art. The unity of the two parts of the dialogue emerges only through the examination of the love-speeches as the perfect models for illustrating the principles of dialectics, which constitute the standard for the true art of speaking; this unity Socrates ascribes to chance or fate, ironically concealing the Platonic art of writing. But behind Socrates' ironic divine possession stands the dialectic art of writing, which establishes the unity of the speeches on eros, just as it constitutes the resolution of the tension between eras and art underlying the two apparently autonomous parts of the dialogue as a whole. Just as Socrates ironically ascribes the artful organization of his presumably spontaneous speeches to divine inspiration, so he announces his condemnation of the art of writing in alliance with the prophecy of a royal god. The connection between the divine madness of eros and the true art of speaking provides the ground for Socrates' acceptance of the god's warning against the danger of the written word, which seems unable to fulfill the demand for "adaptation of speeches to souls." But the shamefulness of trust in the illusory clarity and firmness of the written word (275c) Socrates identifies with the slavishness of

6

Introduction

submission to rhetorical persuasion without criticaKxJetachment (277e); the apparent superiority of living speech over the dead written word must, therefore, be replaced by the superiority of all dialectic logoi, "spoken for the sake of instruction and written in the soul" (278a). In alliance with Socrates, Plato wages his struggle against all writers whose defining characteristic as a class consists in their ignorance of the dependence of all art on the principles of dialectics. This class is exemplified by the theoreticians of rhetoric, who profess to write and teach an art of speaking that provides a tekhne of persuasion dependent only on knowledge of the opinion of the many. But the Platonic defense of an art of writing must be conducted on another front in opposition to Socrates, who condemns the dead written word in favor of a commitment to the philosophic eros of conversation, which he defends in the name of an immortal god. While the apparent moderation of Socrates' refraining firom writing is revealed to be the hubris of a divine perspective that ignores the need for human art, the Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing that appears to betray the hubris of a desire for immortality is revealed to be the true moderation of reliance on human art as the necessary path for man, who is not god. In contrast with the love of money and the sophists in the city, over against the concealment of death by art and the activity of writing, stand Socrates' disinterest in money and his presence in the sacred grove outside the city, his defense of eros and his activity of speaking. Between the poles of this conflict, which are illustrated by the content and structure of the Phaedrus, lies the space for the Platonic defense of a dialectic art of writing. The unity of the Socratic and Platonic enterprise, in its opposition to the project of the rhetoricians and sophists, is determined by the principles of dialectics, demanding knowledge of the structure of the whole and parts of the beings, and of soul, and of the effects of particular speeches on particular souls. Yet in its demand for an integrated knowledge of self-moving ever-moving soul and of the silent, immobile beings, the dialectic art seems to be nothing more than an ideal standard, based on the seemingly impossible convergence of a principle of motion and a principle of rest. This double principle shows up in the Phaedrus as a conflict between ems and death, between Socrates' erotic dialectics, with its recognition of the spontaneity and particularity of living speech, and the art of writing, with its recognition of the fixity and stability of the silent "beings beyond the heavens." But these opposing paths appear equally incapable of fulfilling the goal of the dialectic art, for the self-moving motion of soul as the ground of Socratic conversation seems to be an obstacle to the objective vision of the ideas, while the authoritative silence of the dead written word seems to preclude the activity of living thought. It is, however, precisely that convergence of motion and rest demanded by the principles of dialectics that is exemplified by the Platonic dialogue itself. For the opposition of Socratic eros and the art of writing is in fact simply a polarity constructed within the unity of the dialogue: the Platonic Socrates, who is only

Introduction

7

an image rendered "young and beautiful" by the art of writing (cf. Second Letter 314c), provides the voice through which the Platonic written word comes to life. The Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing thus preserves that profound sense of irony which Socrates himself would be compelled to admire in the playful imitator who made him immortal.

I

P H A E D R U S T H E P R I V A T E MAN

How are you speaking, oh best Socrates? Do you believe that what Lysias composed in a long time at leisure, and he the cleverest writer of our day, I, being a private man, could recite from memory in a manner worthy of that one? Far from it; yet, I would wish for that more than for much gold. (228a)

Precisely because the Platonic dialogue is a dialogue and not a treatise, the philosophic question which constitutes its theme must emerge through the nature and opinions of a particular character in a particular situation; the dramatic representation of Socrates and Phaedrus, then, must illustrate the "adaptation of speeches to souls" which is laid down as a fundamental condition for the dialectic art of speaking and, by implication, for that product of writing which claims to be an imitation of dialectic speech. If the unifying theme of the Phaedrus consists in the Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing, that defense comes to life through the drama of Socrates' interaction with an individual whose natural response to the product of writing fulfills all the potential dangers against which the dialogue itself becomes a warning. Socrates and Phaedrus engage in a conversation about love and rhetoric because their likeness to one another consists in the love of speeches; but while Socrates must make himself into an image which Phaedrus will follow because he sees something of himself in it, he must, at the same time, uncover the innocent inconsistency of Phaedrus as a lover of speeches who has no understanding of their power. Phaedrus is a "lover of the Muses," threatened by the danger of becoming their captive; that danger is exemplified by his admiration for the written speech of Lysias with which he deceptively lures Socrates into their private conversation. Phaedrus's delight in the product of writing as an amusement for leisure hours betrays him as the perfect victim of the poet, the speechwriter, and the law-writer, hence the perfect model of their power and danger. Socrates demonstrates his knowledge of Phaedrus's nature by finally identifying him as a mere messenger commanded to report his conversation with Socrates in the grove of the nymphs to the writer Lysias in the heart of the city. The unacknowledged influence of public opinion beneath his apparent commitment to privacy, the transparent coyness of his identifi-

Phaedrus the Private Man

9

cation with the role of the passive beloved, render Phaedrus the proper intermediary in the contest between Lysias and Socrates—between the rhetorical art of Lysias's nonlover and the erotic dialectics of Socrates' divine lover. But Phaedrus is the appropriate interlocuter for illustrating the theoretical issue of the dialogue only because his own character and interests point beyond themselves to the Platonic defense of a philosophic art of writing, which emerges as the true mediation between human art and divine eros.

T T H E Phaedrus

is AMONG THOSE PLATONIC DIALOGUES WHOSE TITLE IS THE

name of the chief or sole individual with whom Socrates converses.1 Even before establishing the subject of their investigation, Socrates expresses his interest in Phaedrus himself; by the conclusion of their encounter, however, Socrates treats Phaedrus as a mere intermediary, commanded to deliver the message of the dialogue to its intended audience: Lysias and the speechwriters, Homer and the poets, Solon and the law-writers. If this conversation is appropriately addressed, finally, to those classes of writers responsible for shaping the opinions of the political community, 2 it is nevertheless transmitted through a private individual, whose interests center on the subject of love, the care of the body, and an appreciation of speech as mere recreation. Phaedrus's status as interlocuter thus raises a fundamental problem of interpretation, for the conversation which Socrates shares with Phaedrus points, from the outset, beyond Phaedrus, just as its themes of love, rhetoric, and dialectics point beyond themselves to that which reveals their unity. The dialogue begins with Socrates' question concerning the source and goal of Phaedrus's movement: "Dear Phaedrus, to where and from where?" While Phaedrus, in the company of Socrates, spends his time at a grove sacred to the nymphs and the river god, he begins his day in the very heart of the city, entertained by a feast of Lysias, a wearing away (diatribe) of empty time. 3 Phaedrus himself is in motion, but Socrates wishes to understand that motion by discovering the stability of its source and its goal. Both the source and the goal of Phaedrus's motion, however, lie outside himself; considered in isolation from the influences which determine his own direction, Phaedrus seems incapable of representing that "self-moving motion" which Socrates later identifies as the being and logos of soul (cf. 245e). While Phaedrus is eager to share Lysias's feast with Socrates, on the condition of his having leisure to hear it, Socrates transforms this condition into a matter "higher than business" (227b). 4 In betraying his love of speeches for the sake of amusement, Phaedrus comes to light as an individual who thrives on freedom and leisure without redeeming those conditions through the practice of philoso-

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Plato's Phaedrus

phy.5 Socrates, in contrast, reveals his love of speech as an urgent and most serious matter;6 but the playfulness of Socrates' attention to the serious importance of sharing Lysias's feast even Phaedrus discerns (cf. 234d). The irony in Socrates' elevation of his encounter with Phaedrus to a matter "higher than business" he betrays in concluding their discussion by identifying it as mere amusement (paidia, cf. 278b). In his initial, seemingly arbitrary, remark on the serious importance of the playful rhetorical speech that Phaedrus admires, Socrates ironically foreshadows the theme of the dialogue as a whole. For just as Socrates later discerns the paidia of the love-speeches he shares with Phaedrus only by recognizing the serious value of the principles of art which they reveal (cf. 26 5d), he silently indicates that his apparent condemnation of the necessary playfulness of the written word is in fact the only condition for the recognition of its serious value (cf. 277e-278b). Phaedrus meets Socrates at the walls of the city because he seeks, on the advice of the physician Acumenus, unwearying exercise on the country roads.7 While Socrates suggests a walk along the Illisus, Phaedrus, barefoot in the hot summer sun, readily agrees. If shoes represent the arts and the city, 8 Phaedrus joins Socrates only this day in a retreat from that sphere. What for Phaedrus is a matter of adapting to the physical necessities of the environment, however, is for Socrates a sign of independence from those necessities.9 Spotting a lofty plane tree with shade and a moderate breeze as a fitting destination, Phaedrus betrays the subordination of his desire to hear speeches to his desire for physical comfort. It is because of the heat of the noonday sun that Phaedrus wants to continue the conversation at the conclusion of Socrates' first speech (242a), and only because the heat has grown gentler that he is finally willing to leave (279b). Phaedrus considers Socrates the perfect audience for the enigmatic lovespeech composed by Lysias; his assurance of Socrates' passionate interest seems to imply his memory of the encounter represented in the Symposium,10 where Phaedrus is "father of the speech," the man who complains that Eros is the one god with no proper eulogy in his honor (Symposium 177c). u Phaedrus's desire for a eulogy of Eros is announced through the voice of the physician Eryximachus, whose orders Phaedrus follows without critical detachment, as a slave follows those of his master.12 Phaedrus's friendship with the physicians13 and his characterization as one of the lighter drinkers at the banquet, betray his willingness to practice moderation only for the sake of bodily well-being. But while he seems, therefore, to be tied to what is most private, the guidance for that concern comes only from the accepted opinion of those who claim to possess an art: Phaedrus's apparently natural self-interest is penetrated, without acknowledgment, by the opinions of the public experts he reveres. The speech with which Phaedrus initiates the Symposium is, in fact, a selfeulogy, for his description of Eros mirrors his own position: Eros is the first of the gods and hence occupies the position of greatest honor. It is the authority of age which gives Eros his honor, and his honor which makes him the source of our

Phaedrus the Private Man

11

greatest blessings (Symposium 178c). The signs of the power of love Phaedrus finds in the feelings of shame for the shameful and love of honor for the beautiful; the effects of love are determined by appearance and reputation: not truth but honor, not guilt but shame before others. These signs, as Phaedrus insists, are necessary for the performance of great and beautiful deeds, both in the individual and in the city (178d). 14 So far is Phaedrus from awareness of any conflict between the condition of eros and those of the political community, that he believes the perfect realization of each will necessarily coincide. Phaedrus's "best city," therefore, consists of a band of lovers, motivated by competition for honor and avoidance of the shameful. The ideal effect of love is that spiritedness exemplified by the menos of Homer's heroes (Symposium 179b);15 the mildmannered Phaedrus gives honor to the god Eros by identifying him as the source of inspired rage. The inspiration which Socrates will present as the lover's active pursuit of the god in whose footsteps he follows (cf. Phaedrus 248a), Phaedrus presents as the lover's passive receptivity of the courage breathed into him by a god. But the unmistakable mark of true love Phaedrus finds in the willingness for self-sacrifice, manifest in Alcestis's desire to die for Admetus, and Achilles' determination to give up his life for Patroclus (Symposium 179b-c). Phaedrus's conviction that death is the ultimate test of love is brought under examination in Socrates' report of the speech of Diotima, in which eros is understood as the principle through which the mortal nature seeks, as for as possible, to be immortal (Symposium 207d); the self-sacrifice of Alcestis and Achilles is thus identified, in Diotima's speech, not as a longing for death, but as the desire for a "deathless memory" (208d). Phaedrus's own understanding of the honor earned by those who embrace death as the testimony of love makes him, as Socrates announces in the Phaedrus, the appropriate audience for a myth about the Muses, who punish their self-forgetful lovers with death (Phaedrus 259b—d). It is not, however, the self-sacrificer in general on whom Phaedrus bestows his praise; Achilles, the beloved, must be admired more than Alcestis, the lover, for the highest honor belongs, not to the lover who sacrifices himself out of the compulsion of desire, but to the beloved who, in all his perfection, freely chooses to give up his life for his lover (Symposium 180b). In his identification of the response of the beloved as the sign of the power of Eros, Phaedrus in fact betrays the projection of his own self-image as passive beloved. The illusion involved in mistaking Eros as beloved rather than as lover is uncovered in Socrates' narration of the speech of Diotima, which illuminates the paradoxical character of a god who must represent, not the fullness and perfection of an object of desire, but the incompleteness of desire itself. The illusory identification of Eros with the beloved is revealed, through the speeches which Phaedrus and Socrates exchange in their private encounter, to be the common assumption of every love-speech, which consists in the attempt to flatter the passive beloved in order to make him become an active lover. Through his self-identification as beloved, Phaedrus shows himself to be the fitting victim

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Plato's Phaedrus

of the persuasive power of such erotic rhetoric."Precisely that susceptibility is displayed by Phaedrus's admiration for the clever speech of Lysias addressed by a "nonlover" to "one of the beautiful," which Socrates finally explains as the lover's attempt to attain the favors of his beloved by making himself into an image of the beloved, that is, the nonlover (cf. Phaedrus 237b). In the attempt to obtain Socrates' desire for sharing the speech he admires, Phaedrus coyly contrasts himself, as private individual (idiotes), with Lysias, "cleverest writer of the day." By attributing the excellence of Lysias's work to its composition over a long time at his leisure (228a), Phaedrus betrays his reductive understanding of the value of the potential disinterestedness of the written work, which may indeed depend upon its freedom from urgency. In expressing his own response to Lysias's work, Phaedrus reveals the same reductive understanding, for what he desires more than gold is the ability to repeat the speech from memory. 17 Not the ability to think, to understand, to discuss, to defend, to attack, but only to recite from memory is what he most admires, and he finds no higher praise of that desire than its priority over his love of money. Through his association of money and leisure, writing and memorization, Phaedrus in fact unwittingly points to the true grounds for Lysias's activity of writing and for the condemnation of the written word which Socrates expresses.18 Whether the love of speech that Phaedrus professes is one which Socrates shares, Socrates can discover only by looking through the veil of Phaedrus's coyness. Socrates therefore enters into the activity of seduction by asserting the interdependence of his own self-knowledge and his knowledge of Phaedrus: "Oh Phaedrus, if I don't know Phaedrus, I have forgotten myself' (228a). Socrates can, apparently, possess such knowledge either because Phaedrus is a mirrorimage of himself, or because he mistakes Phaedrus for such an image, or because Phaedrus temporarily becomes such an image in the presence of Socrates. If "love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves," 19 Phaedrus and Socrates would follow each other because each sees in the other the projection of himself, while once following, he is set in the motion of becoming like what he follows.20 Today Phaedrus is fortunately barefoot, but Socrates is almost always so; the self-knowledge which Socrates desires may perhaps demand an uncovering of the illusory likeness which he claims to share with Phaedrus. Socrates does not address Phaedrus directly but speaks of him in the third person, giving Phaedrus a separate image of himself to observe. Socrates forms a community with Phaedrus in order to examine an objectified image of him; he creates for Phaedrus that necessary internal otherness which Phaedrus's innocent coyness seems to preclude. Socrates thus implies that the knower is not the experiencer but the observer. The fulfillment of this implication, however, depends upon the Platonic dialogue itself, as a product of writing; as an imitation of the encounter between Socrates and Phaedrus, the dialogue provides for its reader the distance necessary for overcoming the partial perspectives of the participants represented within it.

Phaedrus the Private Man

13

It is only this distance which illuminates the tension within Socrates' implication of his own likeness to Phaedrus. For the description of Phaedrus's activity is markedly unlike anything Socrates ever reveals of himself. Phaedrus not only listened once, but commanded Lysias, who was easily persuaded, to repeat (228a-b); Socrates, presumably, would have been asking questions, not commanding repetition. Phaedrus, unsatisfied, at last took the book to examine what he most desired, then, when tired, took his customary walk outside the walls hoping to practice reciting the speech from memory (228a-b); Socrates would only have continued the conversation with the writer of the speech, hoping to arrive together at some understanding of the nature of the subject under discussion. Phaedrus's interest in Lysias's speech is absorbed by his desire to memorize it; Socrates' interest in the speech is stimulated by the perplexities raised in thinking through its inexplicit assumptions. The internal division within the love of speeches which Socrates shares with Phaedrus thus hints at the ambiguous value and danger of writing, for the potentially repeatable identity of the written word has no necessary connection with the identity of shared understanding. Through his particular response to Lysias's speech, Phaedrus is thus shown to be the appropriate character for illustrating the essential ambiguity of the written word. Socrates accuses Phaedrus of desiring to recite the speech even if no one would willingly listen;21 he is a deceiver who poses as one not desiring to speak, like a lover pretending to be a nonlover. This accusation Phaedrus interprets as a threat from Socrates. 32 Phaedrus seems to understand compulsion as being in absolute opposition to pure willingness, acknowledging neither the possible alternative of persuasion nor the element of compulsion inherent in desire. It is because Phaedrus acknowledges no intermediary between willingness and force, because he is completely unaware of the power of persuasion, that he is its perfect victim. He therefore willingly submits to Socrates' playful threat of force by offering to replace the feast given by Lysias with his own rearrangement, in condensation (228e). If Phaedrus displays his willingness to practice deception in his eagerness to perform his own rhetorical gymnastics (228e), it is precisely the nature of the written work he conceals beneath his cloak that creates the condition for such deception; Phaedrus admires the cleverness of the very speech that mirrors his own deceitful character. While Phaedrus has a true opinion of the speech as a rhetorical showpiece, his refusal to acknowledge its status as a "game" of writing betrays his own ignorance of the deceptive power of the speech which constitutes the paradigm of writing in this dialogue on writing. Recognizing Phaedrus's concealment of the speech beneath his cloak, just as he recognized Phaedrus's concealment of his desire to speak beneath the appearance of self-deprecation, Socrates refuses to allow Phaedrus to take responsibility

for the deceptive speech which reflects his own character. He therefore insists on hearing Lysias himself (228e), whose presence he identifies with that of his written work. Socrates forces Phaedrus into the role of actor with Lysias as poet precisely because this role exhibits not only Phaedrus's character, but the nature

14

Plato's Phaedrus

of the product of writing, waiting in silence to be^brought to life. Socrates begins his playful threats by placing responsibility for the compulsion to speak on Phaedrus himself, separating that Phaedrus from the external Phaedrus who feigns unwillingness; he concludes by attributing responsibility to Lysias for the speech recited though not necessarily understood by Phaedrus as intermediary. While Socrates repeatedly commands Phaedrus to lead the way on their path along the Ilissus (229a, 229b, 230a), Phaedrus, lover of muthoi (cf. 259b), finally asks Socrates whether they have arrived at the spot where Boreas is said to have carried off Oreithyia. Socrates, a "stranger outside the city" (230d), knows exactly where the altar of Boreas marks the location of the mythological event (229c), while Phaedrus mistakenly believes they stand at the very spot: "Is it not from here? for the stream appears pleasing and pure and transparent, fit for girls to play by" (229b). Without being aware of it, Phaedrus himself anticipates his own identification with the mountain nymph Oreithyia, 23 for Socrates will soon try to "carry off' Phaedrus with beautiful speeches, eliciting Phaedrus's promise of a statue in his honor (235d-e, 236d). Socrates renders Phaedrus's mythological allusion even more appropriate by adding a reference to Pharmakeia, companion of Oreithyia (229c), just as he later claims that the charm which captures his attention and lures him on is not Phaedrus himself, but Phaedrus playing with the drug (pharmakon) of the speech by Lysias (230d, 234d, cf. 274e). While the myth Phaedrus recalls serves as an image of the natural seduction scene taking place, Socrates' supplement hints at the role in that scene played by the seductive drug of the written work.24 Phaedrus's desire to invest the natural beauty of the scene with the spirit of a mythological seduction establishes the pattern of the dialogue as a whole. Just as the discussions on speaking and writing will be introduced by appropriate myths addressed to Phaedrus, so here the myth Phaedrus introduces, which tells the tale of a mountain nymph playing with her companion Pharmakeia and carried off by the god of the north wind, provides a prelude for the theme of the lovespeeches which follow, In his wonder about their natural setting, Phaedrus only wants to know if Socrates is persuaded of the truth of the muthologema, whether or not the event actually occurred. In response to Phaedrus's question, Socrates declares himself out of place (atopos), for, unlike the "wise men" (sophoi), he does not simply disbelieve in the truth of the myth. If he were a sophisticated disbeliever, Socrates suggests, he might interpret the story of a maiden carried off by the passionate god Boreas as merely a concealed account of a woman pushed off a rock by a blast of wind (229d); a legend about eros would be interpreted by the artful sophoi as a concealed image of death. The "truth" of the muthologema would be identified as merely a naive personification by those whose cleverness makes them blind to the inner experience for which the myth creates a poetic image. In contrast with the sophoi, who attempt to rationalize a mythological tale as the image of a natural occurrence, Socrates looks for the worth of the myth in its hidden understanding of soul. He himself is moved by the urgency of the de-

Phaedrus the Private Man

15

mand, "according to the Delphic inscription, to know myself (229e). Having no leisure for the rustic wisdom of the sophoi, Socrates replaces their clever but laborious interpretations of the Centaur, Chimaera, Gorgon, Pegasus, and the others, with the investigation of whether he is himself "a monster more manytangled and raging than Typhon, 2S or a tamer and simpler animal, partaking by nature of a divine and quiet lot" (230a). Socrates is primarily concerned with his ignorance of the nature of his own hubris, which, according to his own image, must be either bestial or divine. If muthos represents the poetic wisdom of man's self-understanding, Socrates demonstrates the necessity of its subjection to critical examination in the service of self-knowledge; his model is the Delphic inscription (gramma), whose elucidation requires from Socrates a lifetime of investigation.26 Between the sophistic rationalization of the muthos of Boreas and Oreithyia as a concealed account of death, and Socrates' acceptance of it as an account of eros, stands Phaedrus's concern with the muthos as an object of true opinion. In the process of expanding Phaedrus's understanding of truth, Socrates provides a model for the reader of that muthos represented by the drama of the dialogue as a whole. While Socrates is about to engage in his own production of a many-tangled monster as image of the soul, he first offers his advice on how to listen to the muthoi with which he, as artful rhetorician, attempts to "lead souls through words" (cf. 261a). Just at the end of this discussion of myths, Socrates and Phaedrus arrive at the sacred resting place where they will lie down for the love-play of their speeches (230a). Unusually aware of his surroundings, Socrates praises the beauty of the katagoge to which Phaedrus has guided them. 27 He admires the lofty plane tree and shady willow, the cool spring and pleasant breeze, the statues of nymphs and of Achelous, the shrill summer music of the cicadas, 28 and the grass thick enough to lie down on. 2 9 Just after this inspired praise for the natural beauty of the grove, Phaedrus declares Socrates a wonder, most out of place, "artlessly appearing to be led like some kind of stranger and not a native" (230d); Socrates does not belong abroad, not even outside the walls of the town. 30 Phaedrus, however, shows no understanding of the connection between Socrates' interest in erotics and his attachment to the city, which Socrates explains as the result of his love of learning, not satiable by country places and trees, but only by the men in town (230d). 31 The unconscious irony of Phaedrus's reproach against Socrates is illuminated by the conscious irony of Socrates' later imitation. When Socrates praises the beauty of the grove, Phaedrus calls him amazing, artlessly appearing as a stranger outside the city (230d); when Phaedrus later begs to continue the conversation, complaining of the heat from the noonday sun, Socrates calls him "godlike about speeches and artlessly amazing" (242a). While Socrates' praise for the natural beauty of their resting spot conceals the truth of his love of learning, Phaedrus's professed love of speeches seems to conceal his actual concern with the environment. This reversal points to the problem of the relation between the natural beauty of a silent vision and the beauty of speech, which is finally transformed to

16

Plato's Phaedrus

the problem of the-relation between the beautiful beloved and the persuasive lover (cf. 255b-d), The drama of the dialogue provides at the outset an ironic clue for the reconciliation of this conflict: Socrates has been led outside the city by Phaedrus's bait, the pharmakon of a silent speech in a book. Once Phaedrus has gratified Socrates with his recital of the speech of Lysias, Socrates responds by suggesting the possibility of another speech, different and not worse, though he has forgotten how and from whom he heard it (23 5d). Phaedrus commands Socrates not to reveal its source, but only to deliver the speech itself. He tries to tempt Socrates with a promise of his own, like that of the nine archons, to set up at Delphi a golden life-size image, not only of himself but of Socrates as well. 32 The love of honor and of gold, characterizing Phaedrus's promise, stands in marked contrast to Socrates' later praise of the divine madness of the oracle of Delphi (244a) and to the lover's worship of the beloved himself, "like a statue" (251a). When Socrates imitates Phaedrus's dissembling, offering a rearrangement of the necessary argument of Lysias's speech, Phaedrus enthusiastically responds with the promise of another immortal memorial, a statue of beaten metal next to that of the Cypselids at Olympia. 33 The temptation of political fame seems to Phaedrus the proper lure for seducing Socrates to speak about love in this most private setting. Socrates responds to Phaedrus's threats and promises by imitating Phaedrus's former coyness, claiming the inadequacy of his private status (idiotes) in contrast with that of the poet Lysias (236d). Undeterred by Socrates' self-adornment, Phaedrus finally makes use of the compulsion of desire; he threatens to withhold what he believes Socrates loves most unless Socrates delivers to him the treasure he claims to hold within himself (236e). The lover's promise of future benefits through oaths and prayers, which Socrates is about to condemn in speech (241a), Phaedrus now enacts in deed. Searching for the god to guard his present oath, Phaedrus swears by the. plane tree which shelters them never to read or report another speech unless Socrates produces one of his own. 34 To the compulsion of desire, ironic as it may be, Socrates at last submits, granting his favors as if he were a prostitute. Imitating the shameful speech hidden under Phaedrus's cloak, Socrates cloaks his own head so as to avoid the shame of looking at Phaedrus or being seen by him. 35 But Phaedrus is uninterested in Socrates' dramatic flourishes; as long as the speech itself is delivered, the conditions for it, the intention behind it, its living context, can all be ignored. Considerations of distinctions in purpose, of the difference between speech directed toward grasping the truth and that directed merely toward persuasion, are immaterial to Phaedrus. In the transition between the conclusion of Lysias's speech and the delivery of his own, Socrates makes himself into an image which Phaedrus may follow because he sees something of himself in it. Once Phaedrus has granted his favors by delivering the speech of Lysias, "the shell has fallen the other way" (cf. 241b) and the roles of pursuer and pursued are exchanged; the game between lover and beloved which Socrates describes in his first speech is thus reflected in the intricate mirror-play which ensues between the two lovers of speeches. Phaed-

Phaedrus the Private Man

17

rus's final praising of Lysias's speech for its excellence with regard to "names" (234c) duplicates his initial praise of it as most clever in its advocacy of the "nonlover" (227c); Socrates' response that he follows in the divine frenzy (234d) recalls his description of Phaedrus's desire for someone to share in his revel (228b); Phaedrus's admiration for the comprehensiveness of the speech (234e) matches his earlier claim of inability to compete with its skillfulness (228a); Socrates' restricted criticism of its rhetorical redundancy (235a) echoes his original projected criticism of its content (227c-d); Phaedrus's promise of erecting statues at Delphi and Olympia (235d, 236b) recalls Socrates' praise of the statues of nymphs and Achelous marking their sacred spot (230b); Socrates' concession of producing a rearrangement of the necessary argument (236a) reflects Phaedrus's concession of offering a summary (228d); Phaedrus's imitation of Socrates' vaunted knowledge of Phaedrus (236c) is followed by Socrates' imitation of Phaedrus's self-deprecation as simply a private man (236d); Phaedrus's oath by the plane tree (236e) recalls Socrates' praise of it (230b); Socrates' submission to Phaedrus's threat of withholding future speeches (236e) echoes his original selfdefense as a lover of learning (230d); finally, Socrates' covering his head in shame (237a) mirrors Phaedrus's concealment of the speech of Lysias under the folds of his cloak (228d). The ironic tension within the apparent reiteration of themes in the scene preceding Lysias's speech by the scene preceding Socrates' speech in fact explodes the alleged likeness uniting Socrates with Phaedrus. The interdependence of self-knowledge and knowledge of others which Socrates prizes so highly is precisely what Phaedrus lacks. His concern with bodily health, his evaluation of speeches as proper pleasures for leisure hours, his removal from any sense of urgency or necessity confirm Phaedrus's self-understanding as a very private individual. But his unquestioning acceptance of authority, his concern with reputation and appreciation of political honor show that Phaedrus's self-deceptive pursuit of the noble pleasures of privacy lacks the critical awareness of the public forces upholding and shaping that pursuit. It is this condition which allows Phaedrus to praise Lysias's persuasive speech about love, later claiming that there is no private use for the art of rhetoric (261b) and to insist that the really powerful force of the art of rhetoric is manifest only in public assemblies (268a). Phaedrus is a lover of the Muses who does not know of their power over men (cf. 259b); in the attempt to bring Phaedrus to an awareness of the forces which move him, Socrates must share with him an examination of the art of writing. This examination serves to reveal Phaedrus's ignorance of himself, his servitude to the authority of acquired opinion, his trust in the external without internal recollection (cf. 257a). Socrates' knowledge of Phaedrus's soul is the reflection of philosophic knowledge of the status of the written word. Just as Phaedrus excitedly reports to Socrates the universal assumption of the rhetoricians—that the art of speaking requires no knowledge of the just, the good, or the beautiful, but only knowledge of what will seem so (260a)—Socrates discovers in Phaedrus the proper vehicle for his own message in response. In

18

Plato's Phaedrus

recognition of this ppportunity, Socrates takes on the role of divine inspiration, attempting to possess Phaedrus, who, like the rhapsode possessed by the poet possessed by the Muse, may then repeat his message to the proper audience (cf. 277e). 36 Socrates enacts this playful enslavement of Phaedrus in the course of their encounter37 because he can communicate with Lysias only through the mediation of Phaedrus, who is torn between them (cf. 257b). The speech which Socrates delivers under Phaedrus's compulsion, praising the moderation of "acquired opinion striving toward the best" over the hubris of "natural desire for pleasure" (237e-238a), must then represent the necessary mediation between the condemnation of ems by Lysias's calculating nonlover and the glorification of eros by Socrates' mad lover. Socrates' concern with Phaedrus is determined by his understanding of the necessary dialectic mediation between eros and noneros. Behind the veil of Socrates' interest in Phaedrus lies the reality of Lysias's presence through his product of writing: "For I suspect you have the speech itself. If that is so, believe this about me: while being very fond of you, in the presence of Lysias himself I have no intention of lending myself to you to practice on. But come, show it" (228d-e).

I I

THE M U L T I C O L O R E D SPEECH OF LYSIAS

Do you really think I will try to speak, against the wisdom of that one, more multicolored? (236b)

The illusion of a private encounter between two lovers of speeches is suddenly exploded by Socrates' recognition of the presence of Lysias through his product of writing, a "drug" admired for the multicolored (poikilos) wisdom it displays, Lysias, ghostwriter for the Athenian law courts, is the fitting

fabricator of the speech which deceptively hides its character as a product of writing beneath the mask of a direct address by a declared nonlover seeking the favors of his beloved. Lysias's praise of nonlove, as a relationship of exchange for the mutual benefit of two contracting parties, mirrors the nature of his activity of writing as an instrument in the service of moneymaking, whose effectiveness depends upon its power of concealment. The paradigm of writing in the dialogue on writing, which consists appropriately in a condemnation of eros, elicits Socrates' struggle in the defense of eros, although Socrates himself admits that the deceptive and one-sided speech necessarily expresses some part of the truth: the madness of eros may be justifiably condemned for its lack of artful control and for its arbitrary selectivity, hence its danger as the fundamental obstacle to universality. But this condemnation of eros is based upon the illusion of the speech as an actual address, for the very notion of a true nonlover would seem to preclude the possibility of desire for the favors of a particular beloved; the nonlover who cannot speak to any particular individual must represent, it seems, the politician who woos the many as one, offering his services in the interests of the demos. The tension between the private particularity of eros and the apparent universality of the demagogue wooing the demos is appropriately revealed through the tension between the appearance of the speech as an actual address and its reality as a product of writing, for it is not only the content of the speech by Lysias, but the essential nature of the written word which constitutes an address to everyone in general and to no one in particular. The seemingly self-contradictory speech of Lysias thus reflects the silence of the written word in its nonerotic relation to

another

20

Plato's Phaedrus a public audience. The content of the Speech, which cannot be brought to life as an actual address, calls into question the justification of the lover's demand for reciprocity in love, and in doing so points to the nonmutual erotic relationship between the lover of ideas and the object of desire which he seeks. The necessary silence of Lysias's written imitation of the speech of the nonlover thus emerges as a representation of the silence and immutability of the "beings beyond the heavens" in granting favors to the lover of ideas. The multicolored speech of Lysias, with its praise for the objectivity of the nonlover over against the madness of the lover, ironically conceals the germs of the Platonic defense of the art of writing. Just as the sophist's desire for the acquisition of money mirrors the philosopher's desire for the acquisition of wisdom, the tekhne of Lysias, which defends the moderation of nonlove in the service of desire, ironically mirrors the Platonic tekhne, which defends the necessity of nonlove for the transformation of human eros for a particular individual to the divine eros of dialectics.

and Phaedrus lie down to read. At the conclusion of the recital Socrates insists that he is overcome {ekplagenai) by the daemonic speech of Lysias because of watching Phaedrus "made bright while reading it" and following in his divine frenzy (234d). 1 It is not Phaedrus, however, but the feast which he offers that has lured Socrates to the fountain of the nymphs; not Phaedrus/Oreithyia but Lysias/Pharmakeia attracts Socrates' attention: "But you seem to haive discovered the pharmakon to bring me out. For as they lead hungry creatures holding out a branch or some fruit, thus it appears that you, holding out speeches in books, would lead me all over Attica or wherever else you wish" (230d-e). 2 The speech of Lysias that Phaedrus conceals in his left hand beneath his cloak is introduced as an occasion for deception; the paradigm of writing is presented in light of its power for deceit. Beyond the innocent proclivity for disguise that marks Phaedrus's character lies the intentionally cloaked nature of Lysias's work, whose effect always depends upon the success of deception. The choice of Lysias as the fitting representative for the power of deception seems to be motivated by Lysias's historical identity as ghostwriter for the litigants of the Athenian law courts.3 The universal invisibility of the writer beneath the mask of his written work is, in the case of Lysias, doubly present because of his political status as a noncitizen of Athens, interested in the affairs of the city but barred from active participation.4 Lysias's art, however, is pursued less in the public interest of the

Multicolored Speech of Lysias

21

city than in the self-interest of monetary gain; his rhetorical skill is rarely directed to the deliberations of the public assembly, being for the most part focused on the legal disputes of private citizens protecting their own possessions and reputations.5 Without prolonging the centuries-old controversy as to whether the speech recited by Phaedrus is an actual work of the historical Lysias,6 it may be assumed, for reasons which should become increasingly obvious, that a speech which so perfectly coincides with the specific function of Plato's own arguments and dramatic purposes must be the result of art, not of chance. The speech whose style and content might so easily be attributed to Lysias himself deserves the crucial position it has in the dialogue only because it introduces precisely the themes which determine the organic unity of the dialogue as a whole; the speech attributed to Lysias, no less than the speech Socrates ironically attributes to the poet Stesichorus (244a), exhibits the "speechwriting necessity" (cf. 264b-c) which could only issue from the Platonic art of writing. Insofar as this principle can be generalized, the allegedly authentic speeches incorporated into the dialogues would represent Plato's own ability to set forth the positions of his historical characters—like his fictitious ones—more succinctly and appropriately than would be possible by simply interjecting what might happen to be their actual work.7 Lysias's fame in antiquity as a successful speechwriter rests on his ability to make the written speech reflect the character of the speaker who recites it as his own.8 The ability which is said to be the essence of Lysias's skill thus constitutes a link with the art of imitation practiced by Plato in producing the speeches which reflect the characters of the various figures in the dialogues. Like the love of speeches which unites Socrates with Phaedrus, however, the art of imitation which unites Plato with Lysias must be examined in light of its internal articulations. The complexity of needs and desires which are suggested at the conclusion of the Phaedrus as the motivation for the Platonic art of writing, cannot be identified with the need and desire for money which is suggested as the primary motivation for Lysias's art of writing (cf. 264c-d, 266c). In order to fulfill its purpose, the written work of Lysias must conceal its character as a product of writing.9 If, however, the necessary concealment of the writer behind his written work constitutes the common ground for the art of Plato and that of Lysias, the concealment which Plato practices in the attempt to overcome the dangers of the dead written word must be distinguished from the concealment which Lysias practices for reasons of self-interest dictated by economic and political advantage. If the written speech attributed to Lysias in the Phaedrus is intended to reflect the character of the speaker who recites it, it should provide a minor in which Phaedrus's image is cast. The fitting equivalent, for Phaedrus's nature, to a legal speech of accusation or defense, or a public speech of council for political action, would be the persuasive speech to his beloved of a coy lover parading as a nonlover. The nonlover, whose role Phaedrus so readily accepts, identifies his own self-interest, in the narrowest sense, with the self-interest of the nonloving

22

Plato's Phaedrus

beloved whose fa vers he seeks; he therefore condemns the madness of love, both in its human and unacknowledged superhuman manifestations. Certainly Phaedrus, who identifies himself with the passive beloved, could find nothing more clever than a speech about love written from the viewpoint of the beloved, a speech whose content concerns the lack of justification for the beloved's returning love to his lover. In spite of everything Socrates later claims in his criticism, Lysias's speech appears to have great persuasive power, over Phaedrus at least (cf. 234c). 10 In the central section of the dialogue Socrates suggests that the greater the extent of ambiguity in the word, hence in its referent, the greater the power of rhetoric to deceive (263b). The power of Lysias's speech must, then, rest on some unanalyzed ambiguity; that ambiguity, as Socrates and Phaedrus later agree, is the quality of eros which allows it both to be condemned as harmful to beloved and lover alike, and to be praised as the greatest of goods (263c). The ambiguity of eros provides the necessary foundation for the rhetorical persuasiveness of Lysias's speech precisely insofar as that ambiguity is successfully concealed; the ground of Lysias's deceit can be illuminated, therefore, only through an understanding of the ambiguity of eros, which requires a critical analysis of the lovespeeches, based on the activity of collection and division (cf. 265d-266b). u Only on the basis of that subsequent critical analysis can Socrates justify the fundamental principle of rhetoric that allows him to accept the "necessary argument" of Lysias's speech while attacking only its rhetorical form (236a). The argument of the speech which Socrates is compelled to accept is its attempt to "praise the reasonableness of the one," presumably the nonlover, and to "blame the unreasonableness of the other," presumably the lover (236a). If, however, Socrates' first speech results from a criticism of the rhetorical form of Lysias's speech separate from its argument, his second speech demonstrates the inseparability of this argument from the structure of its arrangement; despite Socrates' initial claim of attending only to the rhetorical form of the speech and not to its contents (235a), the defectiveness of the formal organization of Lysias's speech is finally shown to be determined by the one-sided falsification of its necessary argument. Socrates begins his criticism of the speech with the claim that Lysias seems to say the same thing two or three times without any apparent logical order, "exhibiting his ability to speak now one way and again in another way, saying both excellently" (235a); Socrates ironically states this very claim two or three times. 12 Socrates' criticism seems to imply his disapproval of the unnecessary redundancy and nondeductive character of Lysias's arguments; but that apparent implication conceals Socrates' awareness of the true complexity of this multicolored speech (cf. 277c). While Phaedrus remains unaware of this complexity, the reader of the dialogue is warned that the words which appear to "always say the same" (cf. 27 5d) may express a multitude of meanings demanding distinct levels of interpretation. When Socrates later asks Phaedrus if he knows of some "speechwriting necessity" for the way Lysias "put these together one after another," Phaedrus

Multicolored Speech of Lysias

23

protests that Socrates flatters him in believing him able to perceive accurately this principle of order in his work (264b-c). But Phaedrus thus points to the compelling reasons for the composition of the speech, for Lysias's apparent artlessness in feet conceals the character of the speech as a written work based on the traditional rhetorical arrangement of introduction, narrative, argument, and conclusion. 13 The apparent inadequacy of the rhetorical form which Socrates criticizes is precisely what impresses Phaedrus as a sign of the exhaustiveness of the speech, which he considers unsurpassable, for no one could speak "more fully or worthily" (234e). Because Lysias does indeed seem to say the same thing again and again in different ways, the structure of the speech remains hidden beneath its appearance of random spontaneity. The clues for its principle of organization, however, are provided in Socrates' later examination of the speech, in the course of the discussion on the conditions for an art of rhetoric (cf. 264a). The opening (231a), in which "Lysias attempts to swim backwards against the current of the speech, starting from what should be its end" (264a), constitutes a logical summary of the centra] argument. The remainder, which seems to be "thrown out in a flood" (264b), consists of a loose enumeration with no deductive structure, as is confirmed by the unusual frequency of purely mechanical connectives in transitions between sentences. 14 Lysias begins with the assumption that his argument is already known: "About my affairs you know, and how I believe these things to be advantageous for us you have heard" (231c). The inconsistency of the speech which follows is first indicated by its opening statement, which has the character of a proper conclusion. 15 The justification for this self-contradictory opening, which seems to be a conclusion, lies in the assumption of previous familiarity with the argument of the speech. But the status of the speech as a product of writing, whose repeatability justifies its assumption of prior familiarity and its consequent circular form of presentation, is necessarily concealed by the speaker who utters it. For the concealed character of the speech, exhibiting the disinterested detachment of a written display, would contradict the speaker's initial statement of his persuasive intention: "I deserve not to fail in what I ask just because I do not happen to be your lover" (231a). In defense of this claim to his own worth, the nonlover contrasts his own motivation with that suggested by the common opinion about lovers: "For lovers regret their well-doing when their desire ceases, but there is no time when it is fitting for nonlovers to regret. For they do well to the best of their ability, not out of necessity but willingly, according to their view of what is best for their own interests" (231a). Lovers are to be distrusted because they provide benefits out of passion, which is necessarily unenduring; when they eventually calculate the harm they will bring to their own interests, they will regret their unreasonable kindnesses; nonlovers, on the other hand, acting out of reason, provide benefits with regard to their own interests, and are therefore always reliable. Appropriate to the persuasive intention of the speech, the inexplicit definitions of lover and

24

Plato's Phaedrus

nonlover which constitute its fundamental premise already incorporate condemnation and praise.16 Hidden beneath these implicit definitions lies the silent assumption that health consists in the pursuit of self-interest, whereas the selfforgetfulness of passion represents an inevitably temporary state of illness. The implications of this assumption are unfolded in the loosely connected series of contentions that follows. Because nonlovers act solely from the rationality of self-interest, they avoid any conflict with neglect of personal affairs, calculation of self-injury, or quarrels with relatives, and can therefore eagerly do whatever they think will please the beloved (231b). Because lovers, on the other hand, are willing to be hated by others to please the beloved, whenever they fall in love again they will injure the old love to please the new one (231c). Lovers themselves admit the sickness of their lack of control and therefore cannot approve of the actions they committed through passion when they regain their senses (23Id). Beyond the pain experienced because of the transitory nature of erotic passion, the speaker condemns the restricted particularity of granting favors to a lover in contrast with the greater selectivity among nonlovers (23Id); he thus confirms his identification of the beloved as a nonlover whose response is assumed to be completely free from any compulsion of desire. By indicating the tension between the narrowness of individual love-relations and the public relations of friendship or political community, and hence condemning the compulsory and arbitrary selectivity of eros, the nonlover cannot help but point to the truth of its limitations. It is not the intrinsic value of the relation with a nonlover, however, which accounts for its superiority, but rather its advantage for public opinion. For the appearance of the beloved with his controlled nonlover would be indistinguishable from any innocent friendship, and would therefore not arouse the prejudices evoked by the appearance of the beloved with his lover, who would constantly attempt to show off his passion. The nonlover must, then, artfully pursue his self-gratification in secret; he thus avoids following the expressed opinions of men and instead chooses what is really best (232a). In contrast with the jealousy and possessiveness which force the lover to keep his beloved from associating with the wealthy, the educated, or anyone else possessing some good, the nonlover, favored for his excellence (presumably his wealth or education), would hate those not wishing to associate with the beloved, as though he himself were slighted by them (232c-d). The nonlover finally affirms the inconstancy of love on the basis of its foundation in "desire of the body" (23 2e), while simply assuming, in contrast, the primacy of friendship in the relationship with the nonlover. Yet the nonlover insists that even if the beloved were to grant him his favors, their friendship would not be lessened by the experience, since he would do so out of calculation and not out of passion. In the central sentence of the speech, the speaker switches to the first person, insisting that it is better to yield to "me" (233a). This sudden admission of the speaker's own self-interest immediately precedes his identification of the true superiority of the nonlover with the objectivity of his judgment. Such objectivity

Multicolored Speech of Lysias

25

is contrasted with the lover's constant praise for the words and deeds of his beloved, necessarily distorted by his fear of displeasing the beloved and by the blindness of his passion (233b). The objectivity of the nonlover ironically consists in the calculation of his own self-interest, as a guarantee for the stability of the relationship: "But if you yield to me, f shall associate with you caring not only for present pleasure, but for future advantage" (233c). Whatever the association is that Lysias praises in the name of the nonlover, he relies, for its honor and value, on identifying it with the firmness of long-lasting friendship or family ties (233d), whose motivation is nonetheless assumed to depend upon the satisfaction of mutual self-interest. By demonstrating the absence of justification in the lover's demand for requited love, the nonlover presents his own version of Socratic irony (cf. 227d); he suggests that the beloved who grants favors to lovers ought always to confer benefits, not on the best, but on the most needy (233d). In opposition to such foolishness, the speaker insists on the reasonableness of granting favors only to the most deserving, who are not only most able to repay the beloved (233e), but also most secretive about the affair (234a). Such reasonableness is confirmed by the attitude of friends or relatives, who never blame the nonlover for managing his own affairs badly (234b). Only in conclusion does the speaker confirm his seductive purpose, admitting that he does not advocate granting favors to all nonlovers, since the favors would then be worth less, and could not, moreover, be kept secret (234c). In revealing this purpose, the nonlover himself betrays the erotic particularity he had originally condemned and thus discloses his character as a concealed lover. The self-contradictory character of the speech introduced in its opening statement is thus confirmed in its conclusion: "From it never harm but advantage to both should come" (234c). If the unidentified subject of this final statement were understood as eros, the conclusion of the speech would contradict its prior argument, describing the necessary harm of the erotic relation; if the subject represents nothing but the proposed association for mutual benefit, the conclusion would be merely a tautology, repeating the original assumption of the speech as a whole. The relationship of exchange for the mutual benefit of two contracting parties, which Lysias praises in the name of the nonlover, is grounded on the principles of exchange in the economic sphere.17 The nonlover, who is not carried off beyond the bounds of self-interest, must persuasively demonstrate his own merits in a proportion equal to the desired youth and beauty of the beloved;18 to accomplish this, the nonlover must compose an advertisement against his competitor, the lover. That such a conception of love for the sake of mutual selfinterest is destructive of the very nature of love, Socrates attempts to demonstrate in his recantation, which he introduces by expressing his fear of "buying honor among men in exchange for sinning against the gods" (242d). At the conclusion of this recantation, Socrates condemns the nonlover's intimacy (oikeiotes) as "mortal and thrifty economizing," which "begets in the soul of the loved one that

26

Plato's Phaedrus

illiberality praised bylhe many as virtue" (256e).*The nature of the erotic relationship advocated by the speech of Lysias is thus shown to be the fitting image for the nature of his activity of writing, which serves as an instrument in the service of money-making. The attempt to make sense of Lysias's speech in light of the utilitarian nature of the relation it advocates is based upon the admission of desire for self-benefit with which the nonlover concludes his address. The written speech can parade as an actual address only if the nonlover acknowledges the purely semantic significance of his designation.19 But that semantic interpretation, with its implicit acknowledgment of the nonlover's self-interest, would contradict the apparently persuasive purpose of the speech, which can be supported only if the nonlover's self-designation is taken literally. Since, however, the very notion of a true nonlover would seem to preclude the possibility of desire for a particular beloved, the speech cannot be the actual conversation between two individuals that it appears to be. 2 0 The nonlover can be truly a nonlover and hence fulfill his persuasive purpose only if the speech acknowledges itself as a product of writing; as an acknowledged product of writing, however, the speech can no longer parade as the actual address of an alleged nonlover to a particular beloved. Because the self-contradiction of Lysias's speech consists in the impossibility of its being an address to any particular beloved, it seems to indicate the conditions for persuasion and submission in the association, not of individual lover and beloved, but of ruler and ruled in the city. 21 The portrait of the speaker who disclaims his love in the sense of being carried away, but demands the favors of another for his own benefit, is in fact a description of the potential ruler seeking to gain the favors of the electorate.22 This wooer of the demos must provide an assurance of his own completeness, personal disinterest, and perfect self-control, as well as a pledge of his willingness and ability to satisfy the needs and desires of those he seeks to rule. Lysias's portrait of the demagogue courting the favors of the people through his persuasive power of speech presents itself appropriately through the voice of the nonlover. 23 The intentional deceptiveness of Lysias's art thus makes him the fitting representative for the rhetoricians, whose knowledge of the opinions of the many, as Socrates later affirms, enables them to persuade the city by "praising evil under the name of good" (260c). When Phaedrus later denies any awareness of a private use of the art of rhetoric (261b), he unwittingly confirms the impossibility of Lysias's speech on the level at which it is presented and the necessity of its reinterpretation. The unacknowledged political influence underlying the apparently private nature of Phaedrus's character is reflected in the speech he admires. The deception that Phaedrus innocently enacts in hiding the reality of the speech as a written work is mirrored in the content of the speech, hiding its political significance beneath the guise of a private seduction. 24 This necessary reinterpretation of the apparently private address by the nonlover to the beloved as the campaign speech of a demagogue to the demos is appropriately uncovered through the recognition of its character as a product of writing, which necessarily addresses a collective

Multicolored Speech of Lysias

27

audience. 25 The written speech of Lysias thus mirrors the nature of the written dialogue in which it appears, where the apparently private love-scene between Socrates and Phaedrus is finally acknowledged as an address to the speechwriters, poets, and law-writers. The condemnation of eros as the fundamental obstacle to objectivity and to artful control, which constitutes the necessary argument of Lysias's speech, is spuriously accomplished through the acceptance of the illusion of the speech as a private address; the necessary silence of the nonlover's speech is concealed by the expressed intention of the speech as an effort of persuasion (cf. 227c). But this very need for persuasion as it is reflected in the argument of the speech raises a legitimate question concerning the lack of justification for mutual love between lover and beloved. It is precisely through this lack of justification that the nonlover achieves his victory over the lover, who desires the favors of his beloved simply on the basis of his own love. The problem of nonreciprocity in love, and the consequent absence of justice in the erotic experience, should be resolved by Socrates' description of the divine madness of eros, characterized by a self-forgetfulness which obliterates the demand for equitable returns (cf. 252a). But it is only the recognition by the beloved of the blessings brought to him by the divine madness of his lover which constitutes the basis for his own conversion to the role of lover (255d); even divine madness does not overcome the desirability of responsiveness from beloved to lover. The very possibility of mutual divine madness between lover and beloved, as Socrates' recantation attempts to demonstrate, requires the unification of love for another individual with the love of wisdom. The object of love with which the lover of wisdom seeks some kind of communion, however, is not a mutually responsive ensouled being, but "the beings which always are" (249c); in their fullness and self-sameness, the beings lack nothing, they contain no impulsion toward becoming, no mutual desire for their human lover. 26 The possibility of achieving the desired mutual love between individuals seems, paradoxically, to depend upon the existence of a love which cannot be reciprocal. This silence of the ideas in granting favors to the lover of ideas is first suggested by Lysias's speech, which calls into question the justification of the demand for reciprocity in love. A persuasive and deceptive speech made by a concealed lover to his beloved, with its underlying political significance as the address of a demagogue to the demos, thus comes to light, finally, as a description of the ideas in their objectivity and absence of desire. Once its illusory pretense is unveiled, the nonlover's speech points to the character of that "nonlove" necessary for the vision of the ideas portrayed in Socrates' mythic hymn to eros (cf. 247c). 27 Lysias's nonerotic art of writing thus represents the necessary opposition that reveals the limitations of Socrates' praise for the madness of eros, awakened by desire for a particular beloved. But the speech of the nonlover, who claims to possess objectivity through the mastery of desire, discloses the germ of truth in its condemnation of eros only in light of its nature as a product of writing cop-

28

Plato's Phaedrus

structed by art in the absence of desire; the silence and immutability attributed to the written word at the conclusion of the conversation (cf. 275d-e) represents, therefore, the universalization of Lysias's speech as a model for the silence and immutability of the "beings beyond the heavens." While the argument of Lysias's speech thus implicitly provides a description of the nature of the ideas in relation to the lover of wisdom, its arrangement confirms such an interpretation. The cyclical character and repeatability attributed to the speech in the course of its examination (264e) recalls Socrates' image of the "feast on the beings," enjoyed by the gods carried round by the revolution of the heavens (cf. 247c). Socrates' description of the process of coming to know as an activity of discovering experienced as remembering (249c) is in fact suggested by the opening statement of Lysias's speech, with its paradoxical assumption of previous familiarity, which Socrates only criticizes for its inadequacy without acknowledging its implication. In their later examination of the beginning of Lysias's speech, Phaedrus is commanded by Socrates to read (anagndsesthai), that is, "to know again"; language itself provides the clue to the character of the written word as a representation which involves re-cognition." 28 If mere repeatability is a sign of the absence of truth, the appearance of knowledge without reality—Phaedrus only wants to repeat the speech of Lysias, neither acknowledging its presence nor investigating its meaning—such repeatability is, nevertheless a necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge, insofar as recognition of the truth of any claim to knowledge seems to imply the awareness of having always already known. 29 These contradictory aspects of repeatability constitute the essential danger and power of the written word (cf. 275a). 30 The product of writing thus competes with the divine madness of eros as the necessary condition for the possibility of knowledge as recollection; the germ of this competition lies hidden within the poikilos written speech of Lysias's nonlover,31 Socrates likens the cyclical speech of the nonlover to the epitaph on the tombstone of Midas the Phrygian (274d); the tombstone seems to be the perfect image for the paradigm of writing, which cannot be brought to life without self-contradiction.32 But the connection of writing with death, evoked by the epitaph, is in fact transformed by the very content of that epitaph, which presents itself as a model for the immortality of the written word:33 A bronze maiden am I; I lie upon the tomb of Midas. As long as water flows and tall trees flourish with leaves, Remaining in the same place upon a much-lamented tomb, I shall declare to those passing by that Midas is buried here. (264d)

The hubristic speech of the inscription suggests that the everlasting life of flowing water and flowering trees is attainable by man only through the art of writing exemplified by the inscription itself; it thus recalls the tension in the opening scene between the sacred grove and the speech which is to be recited there. The pnoTavtnp sneaks through the voice, frozen for all time, of a bronze maiden;34 the

Multicolored Speech of Lysias

29

statue of the bronze maiden remains silent without the written epitaph to ensoul it, but the written epitaph requires^the response of those passing by in order to bring the bronze maiden to life. The epitaph points to the desired immortality and immutability sought in the activity of writing, but the condition for the fulfillment of that desire seems to require the seemingly impossible convergence of the dead written word and the living presence of its reader. The desire suggested by the epitaph seems incapable of being fulfilled by the speech of Lysias, of which the epitaph is an image, for precisely because it contradicts its own illusory pretense as an actual address while concealing its true character as a product of writing, Lysias's speech necessarily remains recalcitrant to ensoulment. While the epitaph may be the appropriate image for the product of writing in general, the specific image for the written speech of Lysias is the tombstone of Midas the Phrygian, mythical model for the self-destructive capacity of excessive love of gain. 35 The connection between the love of money and the activity of writing points to the particular character of Lysias's work, which originates in the house of the rhetoricians near the Olympeium and seems to be out of place among flourishing trees and flowing water in the grove of the nymphs and Pan. In contrast with the natural beauty of the sacred grove where Socrates recites his inspired speeches, the "sophistication" of the city represents the ground for the connection between writing and money-making, which arise along with, and as conditions for, the development of the arts. The dialogue thus suggests the analogous connection of barter and money as vehicles of exchange for goods of the body, with speech and writing as vehicles of exchange for goods of the soul. If barter represents that natural human interaction guided by the exchange value of objects, money comes into use as a means of standardizing such interaction, although the art of money-making may become an end in itself, with the intention of preservation and accumulation;36 if speech represents that natural human interaction guided by the relations among the "beings which always are," 37 the art of writing comes into use as a means of standardizing such interaction, but may become a vehicle for preservation and accumulation. 38 Writing, like money, may become an end in itself and thus cease to represent any genuine exchange of thinking; precisely this danger is shown in Phaedrus's admiration for the dead written speech of Lysias. The connection between the love of money and the art of writing is established in opposition to the gods outside the city, to whom Socrates addresses his final prayer requesting only the wealth of wisdom (279b). The division which Socrates articulates between external wealth and internal wisdom is immediately preceded by a division between the external product of writing and the internal "word written in the soul" (277c-278b). Socrates' final prayer seems to be the fitting conclusion for the conversation he conducts outside the walls of the city, wandering barefoot along the river, praising the beauty of the sacred grove, experiencing the inspiration of the local gods and finally of his own daimonion. But Socrates' alliance with love and nature, hence his self-willed alienation from the city, is a

30

Plato's Phaedrus

reaction to the particular artfulness of the sophoi. Just as his admitted interest in eros is grounded in his pursuit of self-knowledge, his alliance with nature is grounded in his love of learning; the conjunction of his alliance with nature and his love of learning is in fact provided by the attraction of a speech in a book (cf. 230e). But Socrates is compelled to transform Lysias's product of writing, with its associations of lifelessness and love of money, in order to win the admiration of Phaedrus, "torn in two directions" (257b); in the course of that transformation, Socrates points to the potential unification of love and art in the activity of "love with philosophic speeches" (257b). Precisely this ground for Socrates' struggle against the sophoi is shared by the Platonic dialogue, while the very expression of that unity reveals a necessary distinction. The alienation of the external written word, implied by Socrates' concluding prayer, is thus revealed by the dialogue as a whole to be merely one aspect of its potential; like the human madness of eros condemned by Lysias, it represents a part parading as a whole. It is the purpose of the Phaedrus to indicate the existence of that whole. The poikilos speech of Lysias, therefore, which Socrates condemns as a sin against eros, provides not only the necessary argument which will be transformed into the Socratic defense of divine eros, but also the germ for the Platonic defense of an "erotic" art of writing.39

I L L

THE NYMPHOLEPTIC SPEECH OF SOCRATES

Oh daimonie, I feel that my breast is full, that I could speak against that speech another one different and no worse. Now J know well that, by myself, I have never thought of these things, being aware of my own ignorance; so, I believe, I have been filled through the ears like a pitcher from some other source; but again, from stupidity, I have forgotten how and from whom I heard it. (235c)

Phaedrus's admiration for the comprehensiveness of Lysias's speech compels Socrates to demonstrate its inadequacy by producing another speech as a rearrangement of Lysias's necessary argument concerning the superiority of the artful nonlover to the mad lover. Socrates indicates his recognition of this argument as a sin against eros by delivering the speech with his head covered in shame, imitating Phaedrus's concealment of Lysias's speech beneath his cloak. Dissociating himself from the speech that "fills him through the ears like an empty pitcher," Socrates presents the argument of the nonlover within a narrative frame, which allows him to reveal the true nature of Lysias's nonlover as a concealed lover who distinguishes himself from the mad lover he condemns by his artful control in seeking the satisfaction of his desire; that disclosure constitutes the necessary preparation for revealing the true whole of eros, suppressed by the speech of Lysias. Because Socrates' first speech must establish the human bond between the madness of identification with the bestial and the madness of identification with the divine, the definition of eros within the speech is based on the construction of a model of the human individual qua human, ruled by the competing forces of acquired opinion and natural desire for the beautiful. In the absence of any higher force, moderation based on acquired opinion is proclaimed superior to the hubris of eros as natural desire, arbitrarily restricted to desire for beauty of the body. On this basis, Socrates' nonlover deduces the necessary consequences of harm to the mind, body, and property of a beloved who grants favors to such a lover, thus organizing the apparently random reproaches set forth in

Lysias's speech while uncovering their implicit assumptions. The incompleteness of the nonlover's constructed model of man, which precludes any divine standard of natural desire or any separate principle of soul, is reflected in Socrates' sudden

32

Plato's Phaedrus interruption of tfie speech before it is complete. Phaedrus, who takes the incompleteness of the speech condemning the mad lover to be an absence of praise for the nonlover rather than an absence of praise for the divine lover, betrays his own nature as the basis for the nonlover's model of man. Just as Phaedrus represents the necessary intermediary between Lysias and Socrates, the speech he compels, praising the superiority of moderation based on acquired opinion, represents the necessary mediation between Lysias's condemnation of the madness of human eros and Socrates's recantation raising the divine madness of eras.

I N RESPONSE TO LYSIAS'S SPEECH PRAISING THE NONLOVER, SOCRATES DELIV-

ers two love-speeches, each introduced as an effort of persuasion directed toward Phaedrus (cf. 237b, 243a, 257a). Socrates' willingness to compete with Lysias is encouraged by his opposition to Phaedrus's belief in the exhaustiveness of the nonlover's speech (235b); the feeling of fullness which Socrates expresses is his awareness of that part of the whole of eros suppressed by the speech of Lysias. The perplexity of Socrates' response, however, consists in its problematic articulation into two separate and apparently opposite speeches (265a), If Socrates were not conversing with Phaedrus, and the dialogue were not a dialogue, the two speeches might perhaps be collapsed into one whole, as Socrates later indicates in his analysis of "how the speech passed over from that of blame to that of praise" (265c). But Socrates is compelled by Phaedrus to begin with the hypothesis of Lysias's speech: that "the lover is more sick than the nonlover" (236b). Phaedrus's demand for a paidia of competition seems, then, to determine the division of Socrates' response to Lysias. The speech compelled by Phaedrus must serve as the necessary mediation between the clever written work of Lysias and the recantation of Socrates, which will be believed "not by the merely clever but only by the wise" (245c). What unites Socrates' two speeches is not only their common origin as a revision of the speech by Lysias, but also their presentation as products of divine inspiration. In assigning responsibility for the speeches he delivers, Socrates presents several not evidently compatible sources.1 The sources of the first speech include: the wise men and women of old who have spoken or written about these matters (23 5b), Sappho and Anacreon or some kind of prose writers (23 5c), a stream filling Socrates through the ears like an empty pitcher (23 5d), the Muses (237a), the gods of the place (238d), the nymphs to whom Phaedrus has exposed Socrates (241e), 2 Phaedrus (244a), Lysias as father of the speech (257b), Phaedrus and Socrates together (265a). The sources of the second speech include: Phaedrus, surpassed only by Simmias as a cause of speeches (242b), Socrates'

Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates'

33

daimonion (242c), the prophetic soul (242c), Ibycus (242d), Stesichorus of Hiniera (244a), Socrates himself, moved by shame before an imagined gentleman and by fear of the god Eros (243d), Socrates and Phaedrus together (265a). The ambiguous madness of eros which constitutes the content of Socrates' speeches is reflected in the ambiguous forces of divine inspiration that stimulate them. With his ironic attribution of the artfulness of his presumably spontaneous speeches to divine inspiration, Socrates exhibits the ground for the accusation of hubris against him, and thus provides the necessary foundation for the Platonic defense of the art of writing. While Socrates introduces his allegedly spontaneous speeches as products of divine inspiration, however, the models he acknowledges for them are the works of the lyric love poets; Socrates himself does not seem perplexed about the apparent contradiction between the divine inspiration that he credits as the source of his extemporaneous speeches and their professed literary models. This assumed likeness between divine inspiration and the written word is in fact suggested by the models for the activity of writing: the poets honored by the Muses (245a) and the law-writers who believe themselves "equal to the gods" (258c). The likeness of the written word to the product of inspiration is suggested by its ambiguous independence (275a), its authoritative appearance, its potential exemplification of true opinion without knowledge. Only the possibility of alienation from divine inspiration, exhibited by Socrates' later examination of the speeches on eros, indicates the possibility of a product of writing that would elicit reflection rather than submission from its responsive reader. The recognition of this potential of the art of writing would, however, depend upon the possibility of overcoming the apparent dichotomy between the externality of the written word and the internalization of living speech; the apparent dichotomy between writing and spontaneous speech would have to be transformed into a division within the nature of the written word itself. The mirror reflecting this transformation of the division between speech and writing to one within writing itself is provided by the movement unfolded in the course of Socrates' two speeches on eros, finally presented as parts of one whole (cf. 265c-266b). While both erotic speeches are introduced as the result of divine inspiration, the first is generated by the madness of Socrates' being carried outside himself, the second by a divine reminder from within himself. While the nymphs and Pan produce the effects of their inspiration through the beautiful vision of the sacred grove and through the illuminated face of Phaedrus as he reads the speech of Lysias, Socrates' daimonion is heard as a "voice" from within. If possession by the nymphs and Pan puts Socrates beside himself and thereby leads him astray, the inspiration of the daimonion puts him in touch with the roots of his error and thus opens the path for purification. External possession by the gods of the place leads to excess, inducing Socrates to forget himself (238d); internal possession by the daimonion works as a force of restraint, issuing inhibitive commands which reflect Socrates' knowledge of himself (242c). If the inspiration of the first speech fills Socrates through the ears like an empty pitcher, the impulse for the second speech acts as "a reminder of what he

34

Plato's Phaedrus

already knows" (cf. 275c). The inner inspiration of Socrates' recantation, which allows him to return to himself, points to the decisive potential of the written word as reminder, but the defense for that potential requires a demonstration of its inherent dangers. Those dangers are portrayed by the external possession of Socrates' first speech, which seduces him away from the self-knowledge necessary for his recognition of eros as a whole. Phaedrus's proposal of a competition between Lysias and Socrates is based on his admiration of Lysias's speech for its complete coverage of the subject, so that no one could speak "more or more worthily about it" (235b). In his state of inspiration brought on by Phaedrus's delight, Socrates suddenly remembers his disapproval of the one-sided content of the speech, in contrast to his original reproach against the redundancy of its form (cf. 23 5a), Although Socrates finds himself filled with the memory of the speeches and writings of "ancient and wise men and women," in his convenient stupidity he has forgotten "how and from whom" (235d). 3 Socrates surmises, nevertheless, that his knowledge of eros comes from Sappho the beautiful, or Anacreon the wise, those poets who refuse to praise the sanity of the nonlover.4 Sappho and Anacreon are the poets who write hymns, not to the gods, but to their loves, for each would claim that "my loves are my gods."5 On the model of the works of these poets,. Socrates' speech must demonstrate that persuasive power whiqh might move the beloved PhaedTUS to become a lover. Phaedrus's demand for a speech "better and no shorter and completely other than the one in the book" (23 5d) could be fulfilled only if Lysias had composed a speech of complete falsehood; but not even the worst writer can err entirely, Socrates explains, for error consists only in omission, that is, in the illusion of taking a part for a whole (23 5e). Understood as a part, the thesis of any speech may in fact be a necessary argument, misleading only insofar as it is mistaken for a whole. On this basis Socrates establishes the first principle of the art of rhetoric: with regard to a necessary argument, only the arrangement is worthy of praise, while the nonnecessary argument, which is difficult to discover, deserves praise for itself in addition to its arrangement (236a). 6 Since the necessary argument of Lysias's speech is based upon the confusion of one kind of love with all love, it is the ambiguity of eros itself which provides the ground for that argument and its possible arrangements (cf. 263c). Acknowledging the necessity of Lysias's argument condemning the madness of eros, Socrates insists that it is only the arrangement which could be blamed for its inadequacy. The speech Socrates is about to deliver represents, therefore, nothing but the rearrangement of Lysias's necessary argument, but only the nonnecessary argument underlying Socrates' recantation uncovers the one-sided falsification of the condemnation of eros, and thus reveals the whole of which every arrangement of Lysias's necessary argument is only a part. The mere rearrangement of Lysias's speech, based on the hypothesis of its necessary argument, Socrates must deliver with his head covered in shame, as a sign of the sin he is about to commit. Socrates' knowledge of himself enables him

Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates'

35

to recognize his sin as a lack of complete vision; in his imitation of self-blinding, Socrates dramatically reveals that the appropriate punishment for lack of complete vision is identical with the sin itself. Socrates' simulated self-blinding thus serves as a warning that his first speech on eros must be understood in the context of its compulsory delivery, its attribution to a source external to himself, and its motivation by the desire to compete with Lysias for the admiration of Phaedrus. That awareness of the error or sinfulness of the speech which Socrates pretends to acquire at its conclusion (242c) is in fact present at its inception. Socrates opens his speech with an invocation to the shrill-voiced Muses (237a); he requires their aid in order to make himself appear to Phaedrus even wiser than he now seems to be. The Muses, who punish their own lovers with death and grant their favors only to those who do not succomb to their charms (cf. 259b-d), are the antierotic patrons of those who practice an art, hence the proper recipients of Socrates' request for aid in appearing beautiful by speaking in the name of the nonlover, condemning the madness of eros.7 Socrates must begin by flattering Phaedrus's self-identification with the beloved, the nonlover represented by Lysias, but Socrates displays the artfulness which the Muses seem to have granted him by establishing a narrative frame for the nonlover's speech, which renders explicit the purposes left inexplicit in the speech of Lysias. In making his speech a narrative one, and not direct discourse, Socrates refrains from identifying the argument of the speech as his own. By accounting for the perspective of the nonlover who delivers the speech, Socrates' narrative report seems to overcome the illusory objectivity exhibited by a direct dramatic representation.® The deceitfulness of Lysias's illusory imitation of the nonlover's direct address is thus avoided by Socrates' enclosure of the nonlover's address within the narrative frame which illuminates its particular perspective.9 Even with the safeguard of his narrative frame, Socrates begins the speech of the nonlover by announcing the transparent principle of his rhetorical art: the only beginning for counseling well consists in an agreement upon definition— not necessarily with regard to truth—and the deduction of consequences from that agreement (237c). 10 In exemplifying this hypothetical-deductive rhetorical art, Socrates' nonlover proceeds to establish a definition of eros which leads Phaedrus to draw the necessary consequences concerning its harm to the beloved who accepts it. The premise of this definition is that love is a desire (epithumia), but inasmuch as "desire for the beautiful is also the condition of nonlovers," the definition requires a further criterion for distinguishing eros (237d). This criterion is discovered on the basis of a constructed model of the human individual, a model which implicitly expresses the underlying assumption of the speech as a whole. The model of man constructed by Socrates' nonlover indicates that all human action is determined by the struggles and competition of "two ruling and leading ideai," not in the soul, but "in us": "the natural desire for pleasure" and "acquired opinion striving for the best" (237e). Moderation by convention, based on the "victory of acquired opinion through speech" is named sophrosune; the

36

Plato's Phaedrus

"victory of natural desire without speech, dragging toward pleasure" is named hubris (238a). Since, however, hubris is "many-named," being "many^ftnembered" and "many-formed," the particular madness of eros has not yet been defined. Although Socrates' nonlover acknowledges the complex division of hubris as a whole, he conceals the possibility of any beautiful or honorable part, any divine potential. In elucidating this complex whole, therefore, the nonlover offers the examples of desire for food and for drink (238b); since eros is, presumably, only one part of hubris, the nonlover may apparently be at the same time a glutton and a drunkard!11 Passing over the many "kindred desires," the speaker proceeds to that part of hubris called eros: "desire led toward pleasure in the beautiful, forced by kindred desires toward beauty of the body" (238c). 12 Whether the desire for pleasure in the beautiful demands the possession of its object, on the model of food and drink, or whether it perhaps requires the distance of contemplation, is a question which the nonlover never raises. The link between such desire and its compulsion toward beauty of the body remains an unexamined assumption; Socrates' nonlover never asks whether there could be a "natural desire dragging toward pleasure in the beautiful," which would represent the motive force of the "love of wisdom."13 At the completion of this definition, Socrates interrupts the speech in order to declare himself inspired, and thus denies his responsibility for the speech which issues from his mouth. Having just condemned the hubris of being carried away, Socrates proclaims the hubris of his own condition. Socrates' outburst into dithyrambics is a sign of his attack of nympholepsy,14 but the cause (c3itias) of that attack is Phaedrus himself (238d). If the speech is, indeed, bewitched (katapharmakeuthentos) by Phaedrus (242e), its rhetorical form and content must express Socrates' knowledge of Phaedrus's nature. Socrates would then paint a portrait of Phaedrus as a man moved by the struggle between natural desires, forced toward enjoyment of physical beauty, and acquired opinion striving toward the right, without philosophic eros as reconciliation. Phaedrus himself, the cause of Socrates' nympholepsy, provides the guide for the model of man underlying the speech he inspires; in leaving the defense against this nympholepsy in the hands of "god" (538d), Socrates hints at the daemonic awareness that what he now presents as a whole is, in fact, only a part. Socrates' interruption of the speech serves to distinguish himself from the nonlover who has just laid down the definition of eros as a premise and can now draw the proper consequences of advantage or harm for a beloved who grants favors to such a lover. In deducing these consequences, the apparently random order of Lysias's speech is organized into a descending hierarchy of harm to mind, body, and property. The underlying assumption of this argument is that one who is enslaved to pleasure will desire to make his beloved as pleasing as possible; but since the lover is sick with madness, he will find pleasure only in what is inferior to himself and therefore under his complete control (239a). The nonlover begins, therefore, by describing the lover's efforts in maintaining

Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates'

37

the inferiority of his beloved, keeping him "ignorant not wise, cowardly not courageous, a poor speaker not eloquent, slow of wit not clever" (239a). The reference to wisdom and courage provokes an expectation of the other traditional virtues, moderation and justice, 15 but Socrates' nonlover replaces those virtues with his own realistic ideals; superiority of mind, according to the nonlover, may be based on wisdom and courage, but it also requires rhetorical skill and cleverness to cover up intemperance and injustice. In promising by implication to maintain the superiority of the beloved by encouraging his wisdom, courage, eloquence, and cleverness, the nonlover in fact presents himself as a proper model for the beloved whose favors he seeks. By attacking the jealousy of the lover as desire for exclusive possession of the object of love, the nonlover, despite his explicit intention, hints at the possibility of a love whose object might unite rather than divide those who pursued it. The most advantageous association, therefore, which the jealous lover is accused of holding off from his beloved, is "divine philosophy" (239b). This indication of the tension between the particularity of erotic passion and the desired objectivity of "divine philosophy" reveals the truth of the nonlover's condemnation of the madness of eras, but only by suppressing the possibility that "divine philosophy" may itself constitute the ultimate standard of eras. Yet despite the one-sided determination of ems he has articulated, based on the "necessary argument" of Lysias's written speech, Socrates' nonlover justifiably brings to light the necessarily nonerotic element of "divine philosophy" and thus corrects in advance, as it were, the equally unbalanced presentation of philosophy as eros, which characterizes Socrates' recantation. From his account of the harm suffered by the mind of the beloved who yields to a lover, the nonlover proceeds to an account of the harm to his body. An explicit consideration of eros in relation to the body is necessarily taken up in a speech based on the model of the human individual, of man qua man. What the nonlover attacks, however, is not the sexual experience of erotic passion, but the lover's effort to maintain his beloved's dependence. The lover is therefore blamed for his attempt to keep his beloved soft, brought up not in sunshine but in shade, "unacquainted with manly toils and sweat, but used to a delicate and unmanly way of life" (239d). 16 It is again Phaedrus himself, the light drinker, lover of grass and shade, stroller on the unwearying country roads, who fills the role of beloved for the nonlover who courts him. The triadic structure of the nonlover's argument concerning the harmfulness of association with a lover leads from the examination of mind and body to that of property. On the assumption that whatever is dear to the beloved is necessarily hated by his jealous lover, it is inevitable that their interests can never coincide. In identifying the dearest possessions with father, mother, kinsmen, and friends (239e), the speaker betrays his acceptance of Lysias's economic model of human relations. Because he wishes to enjoy without disturbance what is most pleasant to him, the lover necessarily comes into conflict with the beloved's attachment to the privacy of home and family (240a). In this conflict, the jealous lover bears

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ironic resemblance to tire city, as well as to the demands involved in the pursuit of philosophy; but while the city and the pursuit of philosophy would claim to represent the interests of a more comprehensive community or of a higher order than that of the family, the lover resents the private attachments of his beloved only because of his own supreme possessiveness and uncontrolled desire. Having established the inevitable harm to the beloved from his association with a lover, the speaker goes on to deny even the possibility of pleasure. By admitting that the flatterer, like the courtesan, may indeed bring pleasure to the beloved (240b), the nonlover attempts to justify his own promise of providing pleasure, if not benefit, to the beloved he addresses. In contrast, the burden of compulsion which the lover exerts on his beloved, based on the compulsion of desire which the lover himself experiences, serves as a fundamental source of pain in their association (240c). While Socrates is about to describe in his recantation to eros the pain experienced by both lover and beloved from the compulsion of their longing, he identifies that very pain as a sign of the growth of the capacity for desire, which constitutes the source of our greatest blessings (cf. 251c). Only the nonlover chooses pleasure and pain as the proper criteria for judging the value of the relationship with a lover or a nonlover. Having accomplished his condemnation of love as harmful and unpleasant while it lasts, the nonlover finally turns to the evils that ensue when love has ceased. Socrates' rearrangement again avoids the randomness of Lysias's speech, where the condemnation of eros itself is constantly confused with the reproach against its inevitable cessation. According to the model constructed by Socrates' nonlover, the inevitable evanescence of the victory of eros guarantees the lover's return to reason and his repudiation of former promises; "the shell has fallen the other way, and he changes his part and runs away" (241b). The metaphor of the game, with its reversal of roles for pursuer and pursued, mirrors the activity transpiring between Socrates and Phaedrus, but this game is interpreted by the nonlover in light of Lysias's utilitarian model of love, where each participant is after the fulfillment of his own needs, expecting payment in return for any benefits provided. The nonlover finally gratifies Phaedrus with a summary of his speech, a rhetorical device which Phaedrus expects and admires (cf. 228d, 267e). To accept a lover is to yield to one who is "faithless, irritable, jealous, unpleasant, harmful to property and bodily condition, and most harmful to the cultivation of the soul, than which there neither is nor will be anything in truth more honorable for gods or men" (241c). 17 Whereas the body of the speech proceeds in a descending hierarchy from mind [dianoia) through body to property, the speaker concludes his attack against the harmfulness of eros in an ascending hierarchy from property through body to the soul (psuche), to which he suddenly ascribes the greatest honor in truth for gods and men. With this sudden replacement of mind by soul, and acknowledgment of the divine as a standard for the human, Socrates' nonlover points to the incompleteness of the speech which has borrowed its "necessary argument" from Lysias's condemnation of eros. Only in this

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39

fleeting moment does the nonlover hint at the possibility of some force of nature which is higher than acquired opinion; he thus prepares the bridge to Socrates' second speech as the complementary part of a whole, and justifies the apparently abrupt beginning of that speech, announcing that the proof for the divine madness of eros depends upon an examination of "the truth about the nature of soul, divine and human" (cf. 245c). The harm to the beloved who grants his favors to the mad lover is affirmed in the conclusion of the nonlover's speech by the identification of the affection (philia) of the lover, not as good will (eunoid), 18 but as appetite to be satisfied: "As the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover loves his beloved" (241c). 19 The artful speech which begins ironically with an invocation to the Muses consists in a condemnation of nature, but only by restricting nature to those forces inferior to acquired opinion, by identifying nature with the bestial rather than with the divine. When Socrates suddenly interrupts his speech, begging Phaedrus not to listen any longer, but "to let the logos have its telos" (24Id), Phaedrus's only reaction is disappointment that the speech is unfinished; he thus confirms, his fundamental influence on the underlying assumptions of the speech, for he identifies its incompleteness with its absence of praise for the conventional moderation of the nonlover, not with its absence of praise for the divine madness of the true lover. Socrates protests that he has already passed from the dithyrambics of his opening section with its definition of eros to the hexameters of his concluding verse; anticipating the danger of possession by the nymphs to whom Phaedrus has exposed him, Socrates questions how he might poeticize if he "begins to praise the other" (241 e). With this ambiguous reference, Socrates acknowledges his neglect in praising the divine lover at the same time that he shares Phaedrus's awareness of his neglect in praising the nonlover. If Socrates were to grant to that "other" all the advantages denied to the lover, he would have to praise the nonlover for his artfulness and his objectivity; taking up the "necessary argument" of Lysias's speech, without imitating the self-contradictory, concealed desire motivating Lysias's speaker, the true nonlover whom Socrates would have to praise for possessing all the advantages denied to the mad lover is the nonerotic art of writing. Surely the nymphs would possess him, Socrates claims, if he were to do so. T o be possessed by the nymphs is to become a beloved, a nonlover incapable of experiencing erotic desire. The mountain nymph Oreithyia, with whom Phaedrus so easily identified himself, is indeed the first model for the nonloving beloved carried off by a passionate lover; but only Socrates, and not Phaedrus, admitted that her role must be shared by Pharmakeia, for the comprehensive account of non-eros must include, not only the calculating nonlover, who seeks the satisfaction of appetite without being carried away by self-forgetfulness, but also the nonerotic "drug" of the written word. Possession by the nonerotic nymphs must constitute the "divine frenzy" in which Socrates follows, struck with amazement while looking at Phaedrus's face, made bright by reading the

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Plato's Phaedrus

nonerotic written speeqja of Lysias (cf. 234d). It is the "prophets of the Muses" and the "gods of the place"—Pan and the nymphs—whom Socrates later praises for the artfulness displayed in his first speech delivered in the name of the nonlover (262d), and again the nymphs and Pan whom Socrates credits for the artful beginning of that speech, which establishes with no prior defense a determinate definition of eros as the premise of its condemnation (263d). The sacred resting spot, which Socrates enthusiastically describes upon their arrival, belongs to the nymphs and the cicadas, prophets of the Muses (cf. 259b-d), and it is the "fountain of the nymphs and the Muses" that Socrates identifies as the source of the message, represented by the critical discussion on art in the second half of the dialogue, which Phaedrus and Socrates are finally commanded to deliver to all the "writers in the city" (278b). In the presence of Phaedrus, in competing with the speech of Lysias, Socrates justifiably fears the threat of possession by the nymphs; but in the original interruption of his speech, he already acknowledged the responsibility of "god" in averting their attack. The nymphs and the Muses seem to be allied, over and against Eros and Socrates' daimonion, for the possession of his soul. This conflict of the antierotic nymphs and Muses with the daimonion who reminds Socrates of the divine madness of eros is illustrated by the apparent chronological sequence of inspirations Socrates undergoes as the foundation for the deceptive two-ness of his speeches, the pretense of each part to be a whole. But Socrates placed his defense against the nymphs in the hands of god even before reaching the conclusion of his speech for the nonlover; the postponement in the delivery of his second speech, like the delay before the first speech and the interruption within it, allows Socrates to entice Phaedrus to use compulsion and thus become an accomplice in the contest against Lysias. Before continuing the discussion, Socrates is careful to reaffirm his separation from the speech just delivered. The muthos will suffer what it must; Socrates himself must cross the river before experiencing any more of Phaedrus's compulsion (242a). Phaedrus reacts to Socrates' reminder of his compulsion by declaring his own slavery, not to the demands of the logos nor of Socrates' soul, but to the dictates of the environment; they must speak in order to wear away the time until the sun goes down. Socrates proclaims Phaedrus "godlike about speeches" and "artlessly amazing" (242e); his apparent praise of Phaedrus's artless desire for speeches, motivated by his concern with the environment, is the mirror image of Phaedrus's earlier exclamation about Socrates' artless strangeness outside the city, motivated by his concern for speaking with "the men in town" (cf, 230d). But if Phaedrus is indeed "godlike about speeches" because of his request to converse (dialegesthai) about what has been spoken, that request cannot be fulfilled without uncovering the suppressed part of the whole of eros, which the first two speeches have ignored. Socrates' desire to correct the speech just delivered in the name of the nonlover is based on his understanding of the need to articulate the polar opposite of that "nonlove" exemplified by Lysias's dead and silent writing. Socrates therefore

Nympholeptic Speech of Socrates'

41

replaces Phaedrus's godlike request to discuss the speeches already delivered with his own proposal for granting the favors of another speech; Socrates repays Phaedrus for entering him into competition with Lysias by entering Phaedrus into competition with Simmias the Theban as producer of speeches (242b). Simmias, who compels Socrates to deliver speeches on the immortality of the soul, is held up as a standard for Phaedrus in the transition between Socrates' speech condemning the human madness of eros and his speech praising the divine madness of eros. By comparing Phaedrus to Simmias, Socrates points to the inadequacy of his first speech, praising the moderation of acquired opinion, as a true reconciliation of the conflict between the nonerotic art represented in and by Lysias's written speech and the divine madness of eros represented in and by Socrates' recantation. In its implicit function as a mediation of the tension between death and eros, the speech Socrates first delivers under Phaedrus's "bewitching" must be judged in light of the speeches Socrates produces under the compulsion of Simmias; in a moment between the two speeches on eros delivered to Phaedrus, the Platonic Socrates calls to mind the conversation he conducts in the Athenian prison on the last day of his life, narrated by Phaedo in the dialogue which bears his name. Socrates begins that final conversation by explaining his occupation in the interval between his trial and his death. The delay resulting from an Athenian ritual of purification allows Socrates to carry out his own ritual of purification, engaging, apparently for the first time in his life, in the activity of writing (Phaedo 60e-61b). His composition of a hymn to Apollo and metrical versions of the muthoi of Aesop have been motivated, Socrates explains, not by the hope of competing with the poet Evenus, who had inquired about the rumor of Socrates' writing, but in fulfillment of his obligation to the Muses, whom Socrates, perhaps under the influence of his daimonion,20 has neglected for a lifetime. Only now, after his conviction by the Athenian demos, does Socrates express his suspicions about his response to the dream which had repeatedly occurred to him throughout his life, commanding him to "make music and work at it" (60e); this dream, which Socrates had always interpreted as a sanction for his eros of philosophic conversation, "the greatest music," only now elicits from Socrates a more literal interpretation as a command to produce "demotic music," With this apparent expression of guilt on the day he is to drink the hemlock, Socrates reveals a bond between writing and death, over against his lifelong activity of conversation and eros. Socrates concludes his report of his poetic activity with a message of farewell to Evenus, advising him, if he is truly a philosopher, to follow Socrates' present path as quickly as possible. Disturbed by the implication that the philosopher would consider death desirable, Simmias demands that Socrates defend himself, as in a law court, for his willingness to die, when it means separation not only from the gods who are said to be our good masters, but from his present companions as well. Socrates takes up this challenge through a defense of philosophy as the practice of dying, identified as a "separation" (64c). Like the purification of

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writing, which relieves Socrates of his guilt for following his eros of philosophic conversation, the practice of dying is a separation which constitutes an act of purification (67c). Moved by the fear of death as an annihilation of the self, Socrates' interlocuters understand purification through the practice of dying to be a separation of the soul from the body; they demand, therefore, a proof of the immortality of the soul as the necessary condition for the success of Socrates' self-defense (7la—b). But beneath the series of arguments on immortality, which fails to "charm" away the powerful fear of death, Socrates reveals his own understanding of the practice of dying as an attempted separation, not of the soul from the body, but of concern with logos from concern with the self (99d-102a). The Platonic Socrates, represented in the hours before his death, silently suggests that the separation which constitutes the practice of dying is in fact accomplished by the Platonic dialogue itself, replacing the individuality and spontaneity of the living Socrates with the logos of a written image. When, however, Socrates' account of his turn toward logos does not satisfy Simmias, who is overwhelmed by his awareness of the magnitude of these questions and the natural weakness of the human mind (107a-b), the dying Socrates offers him a concluding myth about the fate of the soul after death, Socrates' allusion to Simmias in his description of Phaedrus's compulsion adumbrates the focus of the speech he is about to deliver as a purification, which begins with a proof for the immortality of soul and reaches its peak in the praise of divine eros as stimulus for the act of recollection.21 The guilt Socrates experiences from delivering his nympholeptic speech condemning the madness of eros, based on a model of man with no separate principle of soul, can be purified only through his recantation, based on an attempt to demonstrate the "truth about the nature of soul divine and human" (245c). Socrates' praise of the divine madness of eros reveals that part of the whole of eros suppressed by the "dead" written speech of Lysias; in uncovering that possibility, however, Socrates' recantation necessarily condemns all "nonlove," without revealing the value of that alienation from the madness of eros exemplified by the Platonic art of writing. The connection between the art of writing and the practice of dying Socrates discloses through their common opposition to the madness of eros; but in the attempt to gain victory over the claims of the nonlover, Socrates cannot establish a reconciliation between the highest potential of the madness of eros and the highest potential of the nonerotic practice of dying. It seems that the dialogue has not yet completed its reflection on the myth which initiates the love-speeches, interpreted by the sophoi as a concealed logos about death, and accepted by Socrates as an account of the experience of eros. Whereas Simmias provokes Socrates' recognition of the necessity of purification from eros through a defense of philosophy as the practice of dying, Phaedrus provokes Socrates' recognition of the necessity of purification from the subordination of eros to conventional moderation through a defense of philosophy as the highest standard of eros. The juxtaposition of Phaedrus's compulsion with that of

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Simmias thus points to the necessary conjunction of philosophy as eros with philosophy as the practice of dying, but Socrates only indicates the desirability of that conjunction as a goal which he does not fulfill. In comparing Phaedrus with Simmias, Socrates indicates the insufficiency of acquired opinion as a bond between madness and art, between philosophy as eros and philosophy as the practice of dying, without examining the claim to represent that bond sdt forth by the Platonic art of writing. Compelled to purify himself from his sin against eros, which he discovers through his sudden awareness of the prohibitive presence of his daimonion, Socrates announces only the opposition between the two speeches he delivers to Phaedrus.

I

V

THE DAEMONIC SPEECH OF SOCRATES

fust when I was about to cross the stream, my good one, the daimonion and the sign that usually comes came to me—it always holds me back from something I am about to do—and I thought I heard some kind of voice which forbade my going away before purifying myself as though having sinned against god. (242c)

Socrates is held back from ending his persuasion of Phaedrus with a condemnation of eros by the sudden recognition of his daimonion, which speaks to him through a voice within himself, reminding him that Eros is "some kind of god." Under the influence of the daimonion Socrates himself exhibits all the forms of divine madness which he is about to describe; but the divine madness which Socrates experiences is in fact moderation and the daimonion which inspires him only holds him back from the boldness of his first speech, praising conventional moderation based on acquired opinion. The inspiration of the daimonion thus allows Socrates to remember himself; the daimonion is his own nature and his nature is eros. The enemy of eros in Socrates' speech is human art, and the paradigm of art in the dialogue as a whole is the art of writing. Through the portrait of Socrates' possession by his daimonion, Plato thus connects the hubris of Socrates' divine madness with the hubris of his restraint from writing. Since the sin which Socrates must purify consists in his implicit denial of the incompleteness of the human madness of eros, based on a model of man without any separate principle of soul, the recognition of divine eros necessarily begins with a demonstration of "the truth about the nature of soul divine and human." But the abstract argument introduced as the necessary starting point of the speech demonstrates the deathlessness of "all soul," identified as self-moving motion, without illuminating the distinctive nature of the human soul, as determined by the experience of eros. Compelled, therefore, to follow the human path of producing an image, Socrates likens the soul to the "composite power of winged horses and charioteer." In order to account for the deeds and sufferings of the human soul, Socrates' image must be viewed through an increasingly narrowed horizon o f perspective: the portrait o f the

celestial army of gods with their troops of human followers

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journeying upward to the feast on the vision of the beings beyond the heavens, must be supplemented by the portrait of the individual relation between a lover and the particular beloved he chooses in the image of the god he follows. Just as the crucial experience of the vision of the beings constitutes the ground for the particular nature of the fallen human soul, so the distinct worship of a particular god constitutes the ground for the conduct of the lover in his relation to a particular beloved. But the comprehensiveness of the vision of the beings, as well as the choice of the beloved whom the lover pursues as a reminder of his journey toward that vision, are in fact determined by the internal relations among the parts of the individual soul; Socrates must return, therefore, in the closing section of his speech, to an analysis of the complex division suggested by his original image. In this analysis, the white horse, lover of honor and true opinion, provides the same link between the restraining charioteer and the dark horse, friend of hubris and pride, as Socrates' first speech provides between the speech of Lysias, representing the nonloving silence of the ideas, and Socrates' recantation, praising the divine madness of eros. If, however, Socrates' recantation provides the poetic image for the unity of the three speeches on eros, it does so only in the context of praising divine madness; but precisely because the madness of eros can only be a divine blessing through its transformation to philosophic eros, the uncovering of the true whole, which would reveal the three love-speeches as parts, must await the critical examination displaying that alienation from the madness of eros which Socrates' mythic hymn cannot acknowledge.

^ ^ K F T E R FIRST ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS SECOND SPEECH TO PHAEDRUS,

likening him to Simmias, Socrates suddenly introduces the inspiration of his daimoniort. Only in the speech itself does Socrates begin to elucidate the enigmatic relation between the power exercised by another individual with whom he is conversing' and that attributed to the daimonion within himself.1 The daimonion insists that it be recognized; it demands that Socrates affirm his possession by divine madness, but it does so only by holding him back from something he is about to do.2 Through the warning of his daimonion, Socrates recognizes the sinfulness of the previous speeches, remembering that "Eros is from Aphrodite and some kind of god" (242d). Phaedrus, who only agrees that "it is said to be

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so/' seems to remember the speech of Diotima, where Eros is identified as a daimon megas, residing, "like all the daemonic," between mortals and immortals, with the power of interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men (Symposium 202e). This daimon Eros, which exists "between wisdom and ignorance," and is therefore a "lover of wisdom" (Symposium 204b), seems to be an image of Socrates himself. Socrates now presents himself to Phaedrus as the daimonios man who possesses that daemonic wisdom necessary for every "association and converse [dialektos] of gods with men" (cf. Symposium 203a). If the daimonion transports Socrates through the divine madness of ems, it simultaneously puts him in touch with the other forms of divine madness; it is the collection of these forms of madness which constitutes the starting point of Socrates' inspired hymn (cf. 244a). The illustrations of Socrates' divine inspiration preceding his recantation, however, only mimic Socrates' critical recognition that the previous speeches were not sufficiently comprehensive. Possessed by the daimonionr Socrates asserts his prophetic powers, demonstrating the divine madness of "mantic inspiration" (cf. 244d); but "the soul itself is somehow prophetic," as Socrates admits (242c). The inspired prophecy which reveals their previous ignorance in fact consists in Socrates' recognition of the whole previously suppressed: "For all along while speaking the speech, I was disturbed" (242c). If, as Socrates implies, he began the first speech with the second already in mind, the daimonion only warns him of what he already knows, and prophecy is none other than recovery of what has been forgotten. The demand of the daimonion for purification of their previous sin (243a) demonstrates the divine madness of mystic rites for the cleansing of guilt (cf. 244e); but Socrates' guilt consists in his acceptance of a false—because one-sided—argument, and the mystic rite of purification is only the transformation of that partial argument toward a more comprehensive truth. Illustrating the third form of divine madness, "possession by the Muses of a simple and pure soul" (245a), Socrates chooses as his model the poet Ibycus, who expresses his fear of "buying honor among men while sinning against the gods" (242d);3 Socrates' possession by the Muses, however, is in fact a description of the disturbance he has experienced throughout the delivery of his previous speech, and the recognition of his sin against Eros is the result of the compulsion of an incomplete logos. In and through his imitation of the forms of divine madness, Socrates recognizes his first speech as "missing the mark" (hamartoma), that is, either an error or a sin (242d); language itself seems to bear the consciousness of the Socratic principle that virtue is knowledge. The speeches just delivered are, therefore, both impious in speaking evil of eros, "for nothing godlike can be evil" (242e), and foolish in the pretense that they say something healthy or true in order to deceive and gain honor from some "manikins" (243a). The link between the foolishness and impiety of the previous speeches is mirrored in the link between the double motivation of Socrates' coming speech: shame before a noble character and fear of the god Eros (243c).

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Socrates illustrates this motivation through the model of the poet Stesichorus of Himera who, when stricken with blindness for speaking ill of Helen, being "of the Muses," understood the cause of his blindness and therefore immediately wrote a recantation, resulting in the recovery of his vision (243a-b). Stesichorus's recognition of his error in mistaking the appearance for the reality in the case of the beautiful constitutes the fitting model for Socrates' recognition of his error in the case of love as desire for the beautiful.4 If Helen represents the beautiful, the object of desire for the poets, it is eros itself which represents the object of desire for Socrates. The immediacy of Stesichorus's recantation suggests that it is not the result of, but identical with, his being "of the Muses," while his immediate recovery of vision is not the result of, but identical with, the knowledge exhibited in the poem. The relation between sin and blindness, or purification and vision, which is presented mythologically as chronological cause and effect, must be understood philosophically as an act which is identical with its own reward or punishment. It is, perhaps, the acknowledgment of this identity which accounts for Socrates' "greater wisdom" than his ancient teachers (cf. 243b). Socrates thus issues a warning against the distortion of the philosophic relation between an image and what it represents by the mythological presentation of that relation as one of cause and effect. This distortion underlies Socrates' forthcoming mythological account, which presents the activity of the soul as a cause of its subsequent reward or punishment, while the effect of reward or punishment is itself held responsible for the condition of the soul. Before entering into that mythological account, however, Socrates claims to contain within himself, simultaneously, the source of ignorance and punishment, as well as that of recognition and recovery; he dramatizes this self-containment by reversing his self-blinding during the first speech with the gesture of unveiling for the next (243b). The bitter taste of the previous feast must be washed out by the sweet taste that follows. When Socrates advises Lysias to do the same, Phaedrus promises to compel him, commanding Socrates to speak courageously, as one would spur a contestant about to enter some competition. Despite Phaedrus's eager delight simply to hear another speech, Socrates must first confirm its double motivation, in love of the truth and concern for Phaedrus's soul. The shame Socrates originally blamed on the presence of Phaedrus (237a) he now attributes to the thought of a "noble and gentle character," having knowledge of a free love, who would attribute the previous portrait of love to men brought up among sailors (243c). That Phaedrus is moved by this appeal to his sense of shame, and to his desire for identifying himself with the "noble and gentle character," is betrayed by his enthusiastic response (with an oath by Zeus) to Socrates' condemnation of the shamelessness o f the previous speeches.

Through the narrative frame of his first speech, Socrates uncovered the direct discourse of Lysias's speech as the address of a concealed lover to his anonymous beloved. Now that he speaks for the lover, Socrates replaces the narrative frame by direct discourse, presumably addressed to Phaedrus, as the "beautiful boy"

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whose favors are being-sought (24 3e). Socrates wafns us that this sweet speech is itself a persuasive effort intended to prevent this particular beloved from favoring a nonlover. Although he abandons the narrative frame of his first speech, Socrates nevertheless attempts to distance himself from the speech he now utters as a recantation; while responsibility for the first speech is assigned to Phaedrus of Myrrhinus, whose name indicates his "eagerness for fame," responsibility for the second speech is assigned to Stes ichor us of Himera, whose name indicates his connection with "pious speech of desire" (244a). With these opening etymologies, Socrates sets the tone for his encomium of divine madness.5 Socrates begins his recantation by affirming its polemic intention: the purpose of his speech is to refute the claim that a nonlover should be favored over a lover. Recognizing that the persuasive power—and the germ of truth—in Lysias's speech lies in its attack, not against eros as eros, but against eros as madness, Socrates must demonstrate that madness is not necessarily an evil, but, when it is a gift of the gods, the source of the greatest blessings. It is this polemic purpose which compels the first, though perhaps not the true, beginning of Socrates' mythic hymn: the necessary basis for the defense of eros against art is the collection of the class of "divine madness," of which eros will be shown to be one member. Socrates makes no claim to the exhaustiveness of his initial collection; although this seemingly arbitrary series has been foreshadowed in the prelude to the speech, the collection of forms of divine madness looks like nothing but a product of inspiration. If competition with Lysias motivates the starting point of Socrates' speech, with its arbitrary collection of kinds of madness, that initial motivation would be transcended only if and when Socrates reaches the ground for a defense of eros, which would no longer appear arbitrary and would thus constitute the true starting point of the speech. While the consideration of divine madness allows Socrates to identify eros as. one of its parts, the analysis of that part in fact reveals the madness of eros to be the moving force of every soul, hence not a part but the whole.6 Eros of the beautiful then becomes no longer one example of madness alongside prophecy, purification, and poetry, but the principle determining all human soul-types, and their highest manifestation. The arbitrary character of Socrates' initial consideration of four examples of divine madness is thus overcome only when the class of madness is revealed to be coextensive with eros, and its proper internal articulation identified with the division between divine and human. Socrates indicates the status of his collection of divine madness by beginning with an etymological connection between madness (mania) and prophecy (mantike), considered the most beautiful art because of its power to judge the future (244c). T h e absence of control or self-interested calculation is a sign of the divine

source of the power belonging to the inspired prophetess of Delphi, the priestess of Dodona, the Sibyl, and others. Their inspiration must be contrasted with the sane investigation of birds and other signs practiced through the oionistic art,7 whose name indicates the activity of supplying mind (nous) and information

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(/iistorid) to human thought (oiesis) through the intellect {dianoia) (244c-d). Not despite but because of his playful etymologies, Socrates ridicules his own praise of madness; while the ancients testify to the superiority of the mantic art over the oionistic "both in name and in deed," Socrates in fact admits that the gift of the gods, handed down through the madness of the inspired prophet, must be contrasted with all forms of human reason; since the artfulness of human interpretation stands outside the gift of prophetic madness, the fulfillment of the potential benefit of that madness must depend upon what is wholly other than itself.8 The same silent self-ridicule is reflected in the second form of divine madness—that of purifications and mystic rites to obtain release from evils arising from some ancient heritage of guilt. For the "diseases and greatest evils" which are visited on certain families through some ancient guilt seem to be identical with the madness which comes in and provides, through oracular powers, a release for those in need: the blessing of madness is release from madness. Taking refuge in prayers and services to the gods, the sufferer who practices purification should be "out of danger" for the present and for all future time; but in concluding that "he who is correctly possessed by madness has discovered a release from present evils," Socrates suggests that the benefit of madness is simply the state of self-forgetfulness it produces. Socrates' praise of the divine madness of purification, moreover, appeals to the mythical conception of inherited guilt, but in the cosmic myth he is about to deliver, Socrates understands the inherited guilt of birth, which constitutes man's original sin, to be nothing but ignorance of the truth covered over with the "food of human opinion" (cf. 248b). 9 Contrary to what he later says about assigning each of the forms of divine madness to a particular god (265b), Socrates specifies the source of divine inspiration only in relation to the third form of madness—that possession by the Muses inspiring a pure and simple soul who, "adorning thousands of ancient deeds, educates later generations" (245a). Like the self-interested augurer or the guiltridden sufferer not released by madness from the usual laws, the sane man who wishes to produce poetry by art, without madness, can accomplish nothing. The imitative art of the self-conscious poet, who calls upon the Muses as a poetic image for the state of inspiration, Socrates reduces to the deceptive calculation of an imposter. In his identification of poetry as all madness and no art, Socrates betrays the partial perspective of his mythic hymn, motivated by the desire to demonstrate the blessings of divine madness over against the claims of conventional moderation. Socrates therefore praises the self-forgetful inspiration of the poet, but this very condition, which accounts for the poet's inability to investigate the truth of what he imitates, constitutes the paradigm of the tragic flaw in all

states of possession.10 If, in fact, a "pure and simple soul" were able to produce a poetic "cosmos" in and through the madness of divine inspiration, he would be only an intermediary between the deeds of the ancients, which he adorns, and the desire for wisdom in men of later generations, whom he educates. The

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blessing delivered iu and through-the divine madness of the poet could be realized only in and through the artful human examination of his inspired creations. Having gathered this collection of the "beautiful deeds" resulting from divine madness, Socrates admits its nonexhaustive status: he can mention these and many more (245b). 11 He therefore proceeds to the fundamental argument of the speech, the demonstration that ems too is a form of madness sent by the gods for human happiness. Insofar as it is to be determined in light of the models of divine madness already established, eros would have to be understood in contrast to all human reason; its benefit would have to consist in the illusory state of self-forgetfulness it produces, and its potential blessing could be realized only through its artful transformation. The examples Socrates chooses to illustrate divine madness only show the superiority of divinely inspired prophecy, purification, and poetry to their calculating human counterparts, without demonstrating that no human art could be superior to madness in general; Socrates' praise of the divine madness of eros should, then, only show the superiority of divinely inspired love to its calculating human counterpart, without claiming its superiority to every human art. The demonstration (apodeixis) of eros as divine madness, Socrates warns, will not be believed by the merely clever, but only by the wise (243c); the clever who may not be the wise must be those "sophisticated" nonbelievers who would insist, as Socrates explained in his response to Phaedrus's inquiry, upon replacing a muthos about eros with a logos about death, and would thus be incapable of seeing the truth of the myth as an account of the human soul (cf. 229d-230a). The examination of divine eros necessarily begins, therefore, with a demonstration of the "truth about the nature of soul, divine and human" (245c). 12 The true beginning for an account of eros emerges only with a consideration of soul, which Socrates is about to identify as self-moving motion and the beginning (arche) of all becoming. If Socrates remembers the advice in his first speech— that the beginning determines what the counsel is about (2-37c)—he would now imply that the self-moving motion of soul is itself eros; indeed, every soul, as Socrates' image will soon portray, is determined by the particular form of the madness of eros that moves it. While seeing (idonta) the sufferings and deeds of the soul, it is necessary to conceive (noesdi) the truth about its nature. The clue to the significance of this disjunction between seeing and conceiving lies in the division between Socrates' imagistic myth of the journey of the soul as an account of the experience of eros, and the arche of his demonstration, defining the being and logos of soul as self-moving motion. The distinction which comes to light within this initial argument—between soul as self-moving motion and body which relies on soul as its source of motion—seems to have its self-referential reflection in the structure of the speech itself: the logos which constitutes the arche of the demonstration must have the same relation to the imagistic account which follows from it, as

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51

soul "itself by itself would have to the living body with soul as its source of motion. The demonstration of the "truth about the nature of soul, divine and human" begins with its desired conclusion: "Pasa psuche is deathless" (245c). With the unexamined ambiguity of its subject—"all soul" collectively or "each and every soul" individually—the demonstration of immortality fails to satisfy that demand for knowledge of soul with regard to the whole and its parts, which Socrates first introduced as the goal of his own pursuit of self-knowledge, and later identifies as the necessary foundation for any art of speaking. The same ambiguity concealed in the analysis of "all soul/every soul" will be repeated—not accidentally—in the principle Socrates later establishes for the artful construction of speech with organic unity: the wholeness of a living animal is the proper standard for "all logos/every logos" (cf. 264c). Socrates begins with the proof that "all soul" is deathless with the claim that the ever-moving is deathless, without justifying his implicit assumption of the identity of life and motion. Although the argument would seem to call for a proof that soul is ever-moving, Socrates first attempts to establish that only the selfmoving is ever-moving, since that which moves something else or is moved by something else, when it ceases to move, ceases to live. WTiile only the selfmoving, and not that which moves something else, is said to be ever-moving, Socrates does not take up the problem of the self-moving that is simultaneously responsible for moving something else; he silently indicates a possible tension between soul that would be ever-moving insofar as it is only self-moving, and soul insofar as it is the source of motion for body, which would therefore cease to live when it ceased moving. Having established that only that which moves itself, since it is not directed outside itself, never ceases to move, the argument should now have the task of proving that soul is precisely this self-moving. But that proof is delayed by what seems to be a digression, in which the self-moving is identified as the beginning of all things that are in motion. The digression that delays the identification of soul as ever-moving, self-moving motion is determined precisely by that tension implicit in the first stage of the argument—between soul as simply self-motion and soul as the source of motion for body. In turning from the proof of the self-moving as ever-moving to the proof of the self-moving which is directed outside itself, the argument admits its hypothetical condition: the beginning of all things in motion must be the self-moving, and this self-moving beginning must be ungenerated and indestructible, for if this were not the case, "all the heavens and all genesis" would come to rest and never again have any source of motion. 13 Given the existence of an eternal world of becoming, the beginning itself must be ungenerated, for if it were generated from anything outside itself, it would not be generated from a beginning. Nor can the beginning itself ever be destroyed, for if it were, not only could nothing else be generated from it, but it could never be generated from anything else, since everything must be generated

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from the beginnings-Only the self-moving, therefore, can provide the everpresent beginning of all motion, and this beginning can be neither generated nor destroyed if there is to be becoming at all. The expansion of the proof identifying the self-moving with the ever-moving to the identification of the self-moving with the beginning of all motion seems to be based upon the desire to demonstrate self-moving soul as the necessary source of motion for body. 14 The apparently superfluous character of this expansion is confirmed by the conclusion of the proof, which seems merely to repeat the conclusion of the original argument, that the self-moving has been shown to be deathless. Although Socrates began with the attempt to prove that soul is immortal on the basis of proving that the self-moving is immortal, he now seems to appeal to a pious acceptance of the immortality of soul as a basis for identifying soul as the self-moving. While Socrates has provided a logical argument to demonstrate that the self-moving is ever-moving, and in that sense immortal, he only claims it would be "not shameful" to identify the self-moving as the "being [ousid] and speech [fogos] of soul" (245e). 15 With this definition posited, the nature of soul as ungenerated and immortal can finally be affirmed, although the identification of the immortal and the self-moving with soul is, however honorable, not a deductive necessity. The logos which succeeds in demonstrating that the self-moving is ever-moving, and that as the source of all becoming it must be ungenerated and indestructible, must appeal to shame in identifying this selfmoving motion as the being of soul. The question of the identification of the self-moving and ever-moving points to the ambiguity in the meaning of "all soul," which has supposedly been demonstrated to be ungenerated and immortal. To uncover that meaning, the logical argument for the immortality of all soul, introduced as the necessary arche for the proof that love is a form of divine madness, must be considered in light of the mythical image of the individual soul which follows it. The description of the experience of eros based on that image portrays the source of motion in the soul of the lover as a lack; the final cause of motion for the lover is the apparent fullness of perfection in the beloved as the object of desire. Insofar as the final cause represents the beginning of motion, soul can be understood as self-moving only if it contains within itself the object of desire which moves it. 16 But while the inclusion of the object of desire within the soul is necessary for the possibility of self-motion, the perpetuation of desire itself is necessary for the possibility of eternal motion, for if desire sets the soul in motion, its fulfillment would bring the soul to rest. The relation between desire and the object of desire mirrors the paradoxical tension and interdependence of self-motion and eternal motion, for the self-moving motion of soul can be eternal only if its object of desire is both included within itself and yet always beyond its reach. What is self-moving and ever-moving must, then, be identified with the completeness of soul as collective whole, not the incompleteness of its individual parts. But just this assumption of the completeness of the self-moving motion of soul as a collective whole precludes the consideration of any telos of motion.

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Socrates' demonstration of immortality seems to assume the perspective of its subject: the soul which has self-motion as its ousia affirms the eternity of genesis as a whole, while it is cut off from recognition of any beings at rest. The illusion of self-sufficiency exhibited in the demonstration of the immortality of "all soul" is a fitting prelude for uncovering the illusion of eros, in which the lover "madly" seeks, through union with his beloved, the perfection of a self-sufficient whole. It is precisely what is missing in the abstract analysis of soul as self-moving motion that compels Socrates to supplement his initial argument for immortality with a consideration of the idea of the soul (246a). The tension between the demonstration of the immortality of soul as self-moving motion and the subsequent need for an examination of the idea of the soul is reflected in Socrates' mythical account as a tension between the eternally living gods and the dead ideai. The eternity of self-moving motion, which Socrates has "honorably" identified as the eternal life of all soul, provides a fitting opposition for the eternally deathlike immobility of the silent "beings beyond the heavens." But the logical argument for immortality gives an account of the eternal realm of becoming while it is silent about the beings. The logos on immortality, which seems to reflect the self-sufficiency of Socrates thinking to himself, provides an abstract account of soul as self-moving motion, but only Socrates' imagistic account of the experience of eros reveals the relation between the soul and the ideai. Socrates himself acknowledges the insufficiency of his logical demonstration; he has, after all, promised to portray the pathe and deeds of the human soul, and in order to do so he must supplement the argument for immortality with a description of the "look" of the soul. But while Socrates admits the necessity of speaking about the idea of the soul, he claims to be capable of only producing a likeness. In justifying this concession, Socrates must appeal to the distinction— which was absent from his demonstration of the immortality of all soul— between divine and human, which now emerges as a methodological principle of speech: "To tell what it is would be a completely divine and long narration, but to give a likeness is human and shorter" (246a). Socrates identifies the thought and speech of "embodied soul" with the ability to make a likeness as "embodiment" of the idea; the criterion which distinguishes human speech from divine speech seems, then, to mirror the criterion which distinguishes human mortality from divine immortality, that is, the connection of soul with body (cf. 246c-d). Body apart from soul is identified, in the initial demonstration of the immortality of soul, as that which has no principle of motion within itself. In light of Socrates' indication of the connection between body and image, the absence of self-motion in body might suggest the absence of self-motion in the image, which would thus seem to be a fitting representation of the unmoving idea. But the absence of motion in the idea is the sign of its self-sufficiency, whereas an image which presented itself with the implicit claim of self-sufficiency would conceal the being toward which it points. Only the image which, like a living body, could come to life by the motion of soul, would be capable of illuminating that which it represents. If the Platonic text presented itself as that "completely

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divine and long narration," which would constitute the adequate expression of an idea, it would dispense with its imagistic character as a dramatic representation. It is only by indicating its own non-self-sufficiency through the acknowledgment of its status as an image that the dialogue abandons any claim to be the adequate expression of an idea, hence a replacement of living thought; in pointing beyond itself to that of which it is merely an imitation, the dialogue realizes its potential for "self-moving motion." The immortality which Socrates now assigns to the self-moving motion of all soul, he finally attributes, through the metaphor of generation, to the cycle of legitimate logoi cultivated by the dialectic art (cf. 277a). The demonstration of immortality identifies the ousia and logos of soul as self-moving motion; in seeking a proper image which will reveal the deeds and sufferings of the individual soul, Socrates chooses a conveyance which may be said to be self-moving only when taken as a compound whole. But this image, "the composite power of winged horses and charioteer" (246a), 17 refers only to its parts, while the inanimate vehicle itself that unites these parts is never mentioned. 18 The image itself indicates, without explicitly acknowledging, that the growing together of these parts is not a natural phenomenon but only the result of their common function in a human artifact. Each part is simply and by nature a whole, but the whole itself is a complex unity which is not natural. If the unmentioned vehicle, as that which is moved, represents the body, it would seem that the separate parts which supposedly constitute the soul only come together in the presence of the body. Since, moreover, the same image is originally introduced for the souls of gods and men, Socrates seems to suggest from the outset that the gods of his mythic hymn, like the traditional gods of the poets, constitute man's projected image of his own nature. But the division between divine and human, first introduced through the distinction between the consideration of an idea and the production of an image, now shows up as a differentiation in the particular nature of the chariot team as an image for the soul: while the horses and the charioteer of the gods are "good and from the good," those of the others are "mixed" (246b). 19 The connection with an "earthly body," which marks the human state in distinction from the divine, necessarily determines the nature of the soul itself. The structural distinction of the human team is evaluated in terms of its function: the importance of the disparity between one horse's being a gentleman, "beautiful and good and from such," and the other's being "opposite and from the opposite," lies in the difficult and troublesome driving it causes (246b). The mixed nature of the human soul-team must be understood in light of the standard of the divine team, but Socrates acknowledges the deceptiveness of his imagistic speech, for it is only out of human ignorance that "we fabricate, neither seeing nor sufficiently knowing god, an immortal being with soul and body grown together for all time" (246d). As a projection of the human image to its desired state of perfection, the poet's fabrication of the gods seems to mirror the experience of eros, in which the lover projects his own ideal onto his chosen beloved, whom he worships as a god.

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But the fabricated gods, which may be nothing but man's idealized selfprojections, constitute at the same time the necessary standard for man's selfunderstanding. The human soul, with its mixed breed of horses, originally presented as a given fact of nature, must, therefore, be elaborated as the consequence of a fall from perfection (247b). While the fall seems to result from the lack of harmony in the team of horses, the disparity of the team is itself the result of the fall to imperfection. The inferiority of the human condition, defined by virtue of its distinction from the divine, can be accounted for only through the causal circularity between the limitations resulting from the given nature of the human soul and the deficiency of its own activity. The breed of horses which determines the human or divine status of the chariot-team is reflected in the condition of its wings, which seem to belong neither to the horses nor to the charioteer, but only to the unmentioned whole. While the task of caring for all that is without soul belongs to the perfect, fully winged "all soul," the task of originating motion for an individual body belongs to the soul which has lost its wings, becoming a living animal by taking on an earthly body (246b-c). Whereas the account of self-moving motion identifies "all soul" as a principle of life, Socrates now indicates that to be an "ensouled animal" is to be subject to death (246c). The condition of corporeality, hence mortality and individuality, characterizes the wing-growing human team in contrast with the divine; but Socrates betrays the problematic status of his image of the gods' winged chariot-team by acknowledging that the wing participates "more than anything else of the body" in the godlike (246c). The upward motion which constitutes the natural power of the wings represents the desire for the divine, that is, "the beautiful, the wise, the good, and all such" that nourish the wings, while the "shameful and the evil" are the cause of their destruction. But Socrates identifies the divine (to theion) which nourishes the wings of the soul in distinction from his image for the gods; the upward motion of the wings is directed, not toward the gods, who are themselves perfectly winged, but toward that which makes the gods godlike. In order to illustrate the loss of wings, which causes the fall of the human soul, in contrast with the fully winged divine soul, Socrates paints a portrait of the universe as the battlefield of a cosmic army, filled with squadrons of war chariots, in which the troops of human teams are divided by the taxis of the divine leaders whom they worship and follow (247a). In describing the divine leaders of this cosmic army, apparently representing the traditional twelve member corpus of the Olympian gods (oi dddeka theoi),20 Socrates imitates the poets, whose gods are only "beautifications" of human types.21 The boundaries of the celestial army of gods are constituted by its leader, Zeus, "ordering and caring for all," and by Hestia, who "alone remains in the house of the gods" (247a). Zeus is the general, the "first," whose supremacy implies universality.22 If Zeus is to the army of gods what the philosopher is to all men (cf. 252e), he must represent that principle of soul most aware of the whole as a whole. In contrast, Hestia, who represents the earth, the hearth, the private, whatever is most one's own, 23

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remains at rest in the center and hence obtains n1 15 1 /-

159

Index 139 (n.34), 143 (n. 18, n.19), 144 (n.32, n.33), 145 (n.37, n.43, n.44); and persuasion, 6, 13, 22, 2 6 - 2 7 , 48, 64, 69-70, 74-76, 84-89, 102-04, 116, 128 (n.21), 142 (n.13), 143 (n.17) Rosen, S., 133 (n.27) Rousseau, J. J., 113 Sinaiko, H., 143 (n.25)' Skenip, J. B., 137 {n.13) Soul {psuche), 38-39, 42, 4 4 - 4 5 , 50-69, 7 5 - 7 6 , 9 9 - 1 0 2 , 104, 107-08, 149 (n.61); chariot-team as image of, 4 4 - 4 5 , 54-57, 6 4 - 6 6 , 137 (n.17), 138 (n.19), 141 (n. 53); classes of, 55, 57, 59, 62-63, 85, 87-88, 102, 138 (n.28, n.29), 139 {n.32, n.33, n.35); complexity of, 59, 64, 84-88, 102-03, 141 (n.56), 145 (n.38, n.39, n.42); and self-knowledge, 5, 12, 14-15, 6 2 - 6 3 , 67; as self-moving

motion, 6, 44, 50-54, 101, 108-09, 137 (n.13, n . l 5 , n.16), 138 (n.27) Spinoza, B., 148 (n.40) Strauss, L., 143 (n.24) Thucydides, 142 (n.7) Van Hook, L., 152 (n.24) Vico, G., 113 Whole and parts: of the dialogue, 3-5; of eros (see Eros, complexity of); of logos (see Logos as living animal, and logographic necessity); of the love-speeches, 18, 30-32, 34, 3 9 - 4 0 , 4 5 - 4 6 , 59, 66, 71, 80, 102, 108; of soul (see Soul, complexity of); of writing, 30, 33, 42, 9 8 - 1 0 1 , 108. See also Dialectics, as collection and division

References to Other Platonic Dialogues Apology 20c-23b, 137 (n.8); 34d, 147 (n.38) AlcibiadesI 132b, 147 (n.35) Charmides 155e-l57e, 147 (n.35); 156d157c, 145 (n.39) Cratylus 390b, 146 (n.20); 391e, 140 (n.44); 394a-b, 130 (n.2), 147 (n.35); 396d, 136 (n. 5); 398d, 135(n.l2);400d, 140 (n.44); 401b, 138 (n.23); 408b-d, 150 (n.67); 409c, 135 (n.4); 424d-425b, 148 (n.41); 430b-431e, 148 (n.41) Critias 106b, 147 (n.35) Crito 52b, 129 (n.30) Euthydemus 289b, 146 (n,20); 304a, 150 (n.2); 306c, 150 (n.2) Gorgias 448e, 132 (n. 16); 454e, 143 (n.17); 463a, 152 (n.20); 465c, 145 (n.37); 481d-e, 132 (n.21); 485d, 138 (n.24); 502b, 150 (n.64); 515e, 144 (n.34); 522b, 148 (n.50); 527c, 139(n.34), 144 (n.34) Hipparchus 229c, 147 (n.28) Hippias Minor 368a-d, 128 (n.17), 147

Ion 535e-536b, 130 (n.36) Lfjws 644e, 149 (n.55); 649a-b, 147 (n.35); 657a, 146 (n.17); 660e, 134 (n.35); 722c-d, 142 (n.13); 727d, 139 (n.29); 739a, 147(n,28); 820d, 147 (n.28); 845d-e, 147 (n. 35); 889c-d, 149 (n. 55), 895d-896b, 137 ( n . l 5 ) ; 9 0 3 d , 147 (n.28); 957d, 147 (n.35) Lysis 214a, 128 (n.20) Meno 81a, 134 (n.3); 94b, 144 (n.34)

Parmenides 136e, 136 (n.3) Phaedo 60e-61b, 4 1 - 4 2 ; 63d-e, 147 (n.35); 64c, 41; 66a, 140 (n.36); 67a, 140 (n.36); 67c, 42; 69c, 137 (n.9), 140 (n.36); 71a-b, 42; 73b-76e, 136 (n.21); 99d-102a, 42, 144 (n.30); 107a-b, 42 Philebus 16c-17a, 110, 144 (n.30); 18l^c, 110, 148 (n.44); 19b-c, 148 (n. 50); 54c, 147 (n.35); 67b, 136 (n.7)

Protagoras 315c, 128 (n. 13, n. 17); 319e, 144 (n.34); 320d-328c, 131 (n.7); 329c, 153 (n.29) Republic

327c, 128 (n.21); 336d, 145

•

160 (n.29); 382c, 147 ( n J 5 ) ; 392d, 135 (n.9); 402a-c, 148 (n.44); 406a-b, 127 (n.7); 416c-417b, 150 (n.71); 435d, 145 (n.42); 436a, 141 (n.53);440d, 128 (n.16); 441a, 139 (n.32); 459c, 147 (n.35); 464c-d, 150 (n.71); 487c, 147 (n.28); 490b, 139 (n.29); 492a-493d, 139 (n.29); 496c, 136 (n.20) ; 504a-b, 145 (n.42); 510c, 135 (n. 10); 511b-d, 135 (n. 10), 144 (n. 30); 521b, 133 (n.23); 549a, 128 (n.14); 566a, 135 (n.19); 573b, 143 (n.27); 573d, 139 (n.29); 579b-c, 138 (n.24); 580a, 135 (n.17); 586c, 136 (n.4); 595b, 147 (n.35); 597e, 127 (n.2); 60Id, 146 (n.20); 604c, 147 (n.28); 617e, 139(n.33) Second Utter 314c, 7, 149 (n.59) Seventh Letter 344c, 149 (n.59) Sophist 226a, 133 (n. 31); 235d-236c, 138 (n.27); 248e-249b, 133 (n.26); 253a, 148 (n.44); 2531>-e, 144 (n.30); 257d258b, 135 (n.ll); 268a, 133 (n.24) Statesman 272a-d, 127 (n.5), 138 (n.26);

Index 277d-278d, 133 (n.28), 148 (n.44); 285a-c, 144 (n.30); 293e, 148 (n.47); 294b-295a, 133 (n.25), 152 (n.23); 294c-301e, 147 (n.39); 310a, 147 (n.35)

Symposium 176d, 128 (n. 12); 177b, 157 (n. 17); 177c, 10; 177d-e, 128 (n. 10); 178c, 11; 179a-b, 11, 135 (n.16); 180b, 11; 192e-193a, 140 (n.47); 195b, 141 (n.50); 202e, 46, 128 (n.ll); 203a, 46; 203d, 127 (n.8); 204b, 46; 207d, 11; 208d, 11; 210a-212a, 135 (n. 13); 215a-217a, 150 (n.68); 220b, 128 (n.9); 222a-b, 150 (n.68)

Theaetetus 149e, 149 (n. 56); 152a, 133 (n.32); 169a-b, 129 (n.22); 171c, 133 (n.32); 172c, 142 (n.8); 191d, 139 (n.30); 193c, 149 (n.57); 202e, 148 (n.44) Timaeus 21e, 146 (n.20); 29d-e, 141 (n.48); 48c, 148 (n.44); 52b, 149 (n.61); 69e-70a, 141 (n.56); 89a-c, 147 (n.32, n.35)