Phaedrus Part 5: Rhetoric, Writing, and Friends
The semester is wrapping up, and finals have begun. I just got done with my sociology exam, and one of the questions was how did sociology relate to my major. Plato’s statements about what make a good rhetorician go hand in hand with my answer: he says, “a nature needs to be analysed,” reflecting the infamous phrase, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It is true though; my sociology textbook explained that sociologists try to examine things in a way that does not take the “natural” for granted as being “natural,” but instead makes the familiar strange. So it is in philosophy, an authentic person is someone who is aware of things and thoughtful, contemplative, and perhaps analytic– not just on autopilot, going through the motions. Because being thoughtful in this way makes people closer to truth, according to Plato, their natural skills as a rhetor are going to be more wholesome if coupled with the mindset of examining life.
Of course, for Plato, the nature that needs to be most examined is the nature of the soul as opposed to the body, but we can forgive him that. He says that it is the soul that must be convicted, and in my rhetoric class we certainly were taught to act with that mindset; we were taught to develop an emotional connection with the audience. But at the same time, the body is important, not just the words: we were graded on tone of voice, volume, the frequency of crutch words, hand motions, and all around physical presence. Socrates speaks about knowing the audience well, too, which is good– recognizing that different people will accept different methods of employing emotion.
Then, the dialogue ends with some criticisms of writing. I came across this before from a secondary soure (I believe it was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman when he gives a brief history of media in the beginning of the book). Although Theuth, the Egyptian god who invented writing, wanted to improve the wisdom and memory of the people; Socrates’ assessment, however, is that writing in fact decreases the skill of memory and consequently wisdom; by relying on writing they do not rely on their own mind. It makes sense that Plato would have this understanding in terms of his ontology; the immaterial realm (the mind/soul) is the only real, whereas material things are more often than not hindrances to the world of the Forms. Also the recollection theory of education is recognized; the soul already has in it all the knowledge it needs– the best writing can do is remind it of that, but it is more proximate for the soul to be reminded by voice, which is mutable just like life, whereas writing is immutable and “dead.”
The ending of the Phaedrus is beautiful. Socrates offers a prayer, a wonderful prayer that displays the realm of all truth lies at the heart of the philosopher, the lover of wisdom. He asks Phaedrus if anything else needs to be asked for except for inner health, saying he thinks his words seem sufficient. Phaedrus says “Offer it for me too, Socrates; friends should share everything.” How wonderful! Socrates a good friend! Friends share everything, including speeches, which are hopefully not written, but spoken so that they can share in wisdom together. Friends share shade of a tree in a hot day so they can keep one another awake as they contemplate the real world. And friends journey through life together, as Socrates ends the dialogue, “Let us be going.” (Italics mine).
Phaedrus Part 4: Introduction to Rhetoric
Again I am amazed at the imagery that Plato invokes of the surrounding scene. While Plato is setting up for a discussion about rhetoric and writing and what makes it good as opposed to bad, he starts talking about the cicadas, and the heat, and how normal mortals would be prone to sleeping because of mental incompetence; but they are engaged in philosophical dialogue, and as such, they can be “deaf” to the cicadas, get away from their senses, and think upon higher matters. Yet at the same time, I am noticing a more positive treatment of the material world than I usually allow myself to see in Plato; he does not deny the beauty of the world, on one level, I think I now understand; he just says that ultimately it is unfulfilling.
In the beginning of the speech the word “seem” appears; Phaedrus is under the impression that an orator will be classified as good if he knows what will seem true to the people; true knowledge does not necessarily matter. What a platonic word! Things that seem to be one thing, but really are not… that could be described as the philosopher’s goal, to get beyond what seems to what really is. Socrates fascinatingly addresses rhetoric herself, and refers to the arguments against rhetoric as an art as “noble creatures.” Again the notion of dialectic tension arises, but is not seen as a hindrance, but a benefit.
They then follow the correct methodological approach and define what rhetoric is: the art of persuasion, whether it is in a court room or in politics or in any form of conversation. He then turns to the speeches that were read/ given earlier. Socrates starts talking about whether we all have the same notion in mind when a word is uttered; he distinguishes between some words that are “obvious” and everyone would clearly have the same notion, and other words that have more uncertain of a meaning. Other philosophers would disagree, and say that every word is uncertain, and every word needs interpretation. Also interesting is that Socrates criticizes Lysias for the order in which his speech is delivered; that his beginning statement should have been at the end, mostly. I took a rhetoric class in high school my junior year, and we were taught that as well; the structure of the speech was intrinsic to how it was delivered. Oddly enough, he then says that it is better to have begun with a bad definition of love than with no definition at all, even though his point earlier was that rhetoric can only be good if it is concerned with true knowledge. A bad definition of love does not seem like true knowledge to me.
The section on definitions the editors included a note that said this might be the most boring part of the dialogue for modern readers… but it brought back memories of my classical education! I feel like the rhetoric class was Plato reworked… it probably had plenty of quotes from Socrates that I neglected to put to memory in my ignorance. The structure of a speech as follows: Introduction, Statement of Facts, Argument, Proof and Refutation, and Conclusion. So many of my speeches that year had to follow that format, and it was obnoxious… but beneficial I’m sure.
The final installment in this series will be on Rhetoric and Philosophy and the Inferiority of the Written to the Spoken Word.
Phaedrus Part 3: Love and the immortality of the soul
This is the last section in the series until Socrates switches gears and begins discussing rhetoric. Here he argues that love is a good sort of madness, since it is divinely inspired, and in fact it is linked to the immortality of the soul, since it is the “wings” of the soul as they ascend to the heavenly reality.
This is especially interesting for me, since I have looked at the immortality of the soul as argued in other dialogues, but here Socrates is just giving a speech; there is no real “dialogue” for any sort of dialectic discussion. Instead, I’m just supposed to take what Socrates is saying about the gods as true, or else be deemed heretical, undoubtedly. His explanation about the different levels of incarnation that the soul can experience that is more in tune with reality or not is interesting; I had heard it explained, but never from Plato’s own mouth. Before he gets into the incarnation stuff, however, he quickly states his argument for the immortality of the soul that it is that which moves the body, and is not moved by anything other than itself, making it immortal. Apparently, unlike the other arguments given in other places, this one is so self-explanatory that it needs no further discussion.
I found really interesting Socrates’ assessment that people find what they love in people based on which god they follow. If they follow Zeus, they will find wisdom-seekers and leaders attractive, and the same goes for the other gods and their attributes. Although Socrates thinks that all souls are immortal and ultimately will love everything real, I couldn’t help thinking about this in a Christian way.
I watch a television show called Dollhouse in which people give up the right to their personalities… they become just shells of bodies that various personalities and skill sets can be uploaded into, like a computer. There is one guy, a former FBI agent, who is trying to figure out where the dollhouse is, so he can free everyone, since he believes you cannot get rid of a person’s soul; it is going to leave a residual imprint on the body, no matter what. Simarlarly, Christians tend to have the notion that every person, while having a universal vocation as human beings, has a very particular imprint, that often is called their “soul,” that is unique to who they are. So I’m wondering, if as Christians who have unique imprints, if we find love and attraction in other humans based on what we have been uniquely imprinted to love in God.Perhaps that is an obvious conclusion to reach… but interesting nonetheless, and pretty easy to relate to one’s own life. When I find someone attractive, if I contemplated why, would I find that it was because they resembled what I love in God? What does that say about my particular imprint of a soul?
