Complete Works (121 page)

S
OCRATES
: Phaedrus, you don’t understand the expression “Pleasant [e] Bend”—it originally referred to the long bend of the Nile.
³⁶
And, besides the bend, you also don’t understand that the most ambitious politicians love speechwriting and long for their writings to survive. In fact, when they write one of their speeches, they are so pleased when people praise it that they add at the beginning a list of its admirers everywhere.

P
HAEDRUS
: What do you mean? I don’t understand.

[258]
S
OCRATES
: Don’t you know that the first thing politicians put in their writings
³⁷
is the names of their admirers?

P
HAEDRUS
: How so?

S
OCRATES
: “Resolved,” the author often begins, “by the Council” or “by the People” or by both, and “So-and-so said”
³⁸
—meaning himself, the writer, with great solemnity and self-importance. Only then does he go on with what he has to say, showing off his wisdom to his admirers, often composing a very long document. Do you think there’s any difference between that and a written speech?

[b] P
HAEDRUS
: No, I don’t.

S
OCRATES
: Well, then, if it remains on the books, he is delighted and leaves the stage a poet. But if it is struck down, if he fails as a speech writer and isn’t considered worthy of having his work written down, he goes into deep mourning, and his friends along with him.

P
HAEDRUS
: He certainly does.

S
OCRATES
: Clearly, then, they don’t feel contempt for speechwriting; on the contrary, they are in awe of it.

P
HAEDRUS
: Quite so.

S
OCRATES
: There’s this too. What of an orator or a king who acquires [c] enough power to match Lycurgus, Solon, or Darius as a lawgiver
³⁹
and acquires immortal fame as a speech writer in his city? Doesn’t he think that he is equal to the gods while he is still alive? And don’t those who live in later times believe just the same about him when they behold his writings?

P
HAEDRUS
: Very much so.

S
OCRATES
: Do you really believe then that any one of these people, whoever he is and however much he hates Lysias, would reproach him for being a writer?

P
HAEDRUS
: It certainly isn’t likely in view of what you said, for he would probably be reproaching his own ambition as well.

S
OCRATES
: This, then, is quite clear: Writing speeches is not in itself a [d] shameful thing.

P
HAEDRUS
: How could it be?

S
OCRATES
: It’s not speaking or writing well that’s shameful; what’s really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or badly.

P
HAEDRUS
: That is clear.

S
OCRATES
: So what distinguishes good from bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did or will write anything—whether a public or a private document, poetic verse or plain prose?

P
HAEDRUS
: You ask if we need to? Why else should one live, I say, if [e] not for pleasures of this sort? Certainly not for those you cannot feel unless you are first in pain, like most of the pleasures of the body, and which for this reason we call the pleasures of slaves.

S
OCRATES
: It seems we clearly have the time. Besides, I think that the cicadas, who are singing and carrying on conversations with one another
[259]
in the heat of the day above our heads, are also watching us. And if they saw the two of us avoiding conversation at midday like most people, diverted by their song and, sluggish of mind, nodding off, they would have every right to laugh at us, convinced that a pair of slaves had come to their resting place to sleep like sheep gathering around the spring in the afternoon. But if they see us in conversation, steadfastly navigating [b] around them as if they were the Sirens, they will be very pleased and immediately give us the gift from the gods they are able to give to mortals.

P
HAEDRUS
: What is this gift? I don’t think I have heard of it.

S
OCRATES
: Everyone who loves the Muses should have heard of this. The story goes that the cicadas used to be human beings who lived before the birth of the Muses. When the Muses were born and song was created for the first time, some of the people of that time were so overwhelmed [c] with the pleasure of singing that they forgot to eat or drink; so they died without even realizing it. It is from them that the race of the cicadas came into being; and, as a gift from the Muses, they have no need of nourishment once they are born. Instead, they immediately burst into song, without food or drink, until it is time for them to die. After they die, they go to the Muses and tell each one of them which mortals have honored her. To [d] Terpsichore they report those who have honored her by their devotion to the dance and thus make them dearer to her. To Erato, they report those who honored her by dedicating themselves to the affairs of love, and so too with the other Muses, according to the activity that honors each. And to Calliope, the oldest among them, and Urania, the next after her, who preside over the heavens and all discourse, human and divine, and sing with the sweetest voice, they report those who honor their special kind of music by leading a philosophical life.

There are many reasons, then, why we should talk and not waste our afternoon in sleep.

P
HAEDRUS
: By all means, let’s talk.

[e] S
OCRATES
: Well, then, we ought to examine the topic we proposed just now: When is a speech well written and delivered, and when is it not?

P
HAEDRUS
: Plainly.

S
OCRATES
: Won’t someone who is to speak well and nobly have to have in mind the truth about the subject he is going to discuss?

P
HAEDRUS
: What I have actually heard about this, Socrates, my friend,
[260]
is that it is not necessary for the intending orator to learn what is really just, but only what will seem just to the crowd who will act as judges. Nor again what is really good or noble, but only what will seem so. For that is what persuasion proceeds from, not truth.

S
OCRATES
: Anything that wise men say, Phaedrus, “is not lightly to be cast aside”;
⁴⁰
we must consider whether it might be right. And what you just said, in particular, must not be dismissed.

P
HAEDRUS
: You’re right.

S
OCRATES
: Let’s look at it this way, then.

P
HAEDRUS
: How?

[b] S
OCRATES
: Suppose I were trying to convince you that you should fight your enemies on horseback, and neither one of us knew what a horse is, but I happened to know this much about you, that Phaedrus believes a horse is the tame animal with the longest ears—

P
HAEDRUS
: But that would be ridiculous, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Not quite yet, actually. But if I were seriously trying to convince you, having composed a speech in praise of the donkey in which I called it a horse and claimed that having such an animal is of immense value both at home and in military service, that it is good for fighting and for carrying your baggage and that it is useful for much else besides—[c]

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, that would be totally ridiculous.

S
OCRATES
: Well, which is better? To be ridiculous and a friend? Or clever and an enemy?

P
HAEDRUS
: The former.

S
OCRATES
: And so, when a rhetorician who does not know good from bad addresses a city which knows no better and attempts to sway it, not praising a miserable donkey as if it were a horse, but bad as if it were good, and, having studied what the people believe, persuades them to do something bad instead of good—with that as its seed, what sort of crop [d] do you think rhetoric can harvest?

P
HAEDRUS
: A crop of really poor quality.

S
OCRATES
: But could it be, my friend, that we have mocked the art of speaking more rudely than it deserves? For it might perhaps reply, “What bizarre nonsense! Look, I am not forcing anyone to learn how to make speeches without knowing the truth; on the contrary, my advice, for what it is worth, is to take me up only after mastering the truth. But I do make this boast: even someone who knows the truth couldn’t produce conviction on the basis of a systematic art without me.”

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, is that a fair reply? [e]

S
OCRATES
: Yes, it is—if, that is, the arguments now advancing upon rhetoric testify that it is an art. For it seems to me as if I hear certain arguments approaching and protesting that that is a lie and that rhetoric is not an art but an artless practice.
⁴¹
As the Spartan said, there is no genuine art of speaking without a grasp of truth, and there never will be.

P
HAEDRUS
: We need to hear these arguments, Socrates. Come, produce
[261]
them, and examine them: What is their point? How do they make it?

S
OCRATES
: Come to us, then, noble creatures; convince Phaedrus, him of the beautiful offspring,
⁴²
that unless he pursues philosophy properly he will never be able to make a proper speech on any subject either. And let Phaedrus be the one to answer.

P
HAEDRUS
: Let them put their questions.

S
OCRATES
: Well, then, isn’t the rhetorical art, taken as a whole, a way of directing the soul by means of speech, not only in the lawcourts and on other public occasions but also in private? Isn’t it one and the same art whether its subject is great or small, and no more to be held in esteem—if [b] it is followed correctly—when its questions are serious than when they are trivial? Or what have you heard about all this?

P
HAEDRUS
: Well, certainly not what
you
have! Artful speaking and writing is found mainly in the lawcourts; also perhaps in the Assembly. That’s all I’ve heard.

S
OCRATES
: Well, have you only heard of the rhetorical treatises of Nestor and Odysseus—those they wrote in their spare time in Troy? Haven’t you also heard of the works of Palamedes?
⁴³

[c] P
HAEDRUS
: No, by Zeus, I haven’t even heard of Nestor’s—unless by Nestor you mean Gorgias, and by Odysseus, Thrasymachus or Theodorus.
⁴⁴

S
OCRATES
: Perhaps. But let’s leave these people aside. Answer this question yourself: What do adversaries do in the lawcourts? Don’t they speak on opposite sides? What else can we call what they do?

P
HAEDRUS
: That’s it, exactly.

S
OCRATES
: About what is just and what is unjust?

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes.

[d] S
OCRATES
: And won’t whoever does this artfully make the same thing appear to the same people sometimes just and sometimes, when he prefers, unjust?

P
HAEDRUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: And when he addresses the Assembly, he will make the city approve a policy at one time as a good one, and reject it—the very same policy—as just the opposite at another.

P
HAEDRUS
: Right.

S
OCRATES
: Now, don’t we know that the Eleatic Palamedes is such an artful speaker that his listeners will perceive the same things to be both similar and dissimilar, both one and many, both at rest and also in motion?
⁴⁵

P
HAEDRUS
: Most certainly.

S
OCRATES
: We can therefore find the practice of speaking on opposite [e] sides not only in the lawcourts and in the Assembly. Rather, it seems that one single art—if, of course, it is an art in the first place—governs all speaking. By means of it one can make out as similar anything that can be so assimilated, to everything to which it can be made similar, and expose anyone who tries to hide the fact that that is what he is doing.

P
HAEDRUS
: What do you mean by that?

S
OCRATES
: I think it will become clear if we look at it this way. Where is deception most likely to occur—regarding things that differ much or things that differ little from one another?

[262]
P
HAEDRUS
: Regarding those that differ little.

S
OCRATES
: At any rate, you are more likely to escape detection, as you shift from one thing to its opposite, if you proceed in small steps rather than in large ones.

P
HAEDRUS
: Without a doubt.

S
OCRATES
: Therefore, if you are to deceive someone else and to avoid deception yourself, you must know precisely the respects in which things are similar and dissimilar to one another.

P
HAEDRUS
: Yes, you must.

S
OCRATES
: And is it really possible for someone who doesn’t know what each thing truly is to detect a similarity—whether large or small—between something he doesn’t know and anything else?

P
HAEDRUS
: That is impossible. [b]

S
OCRATES
: Clearly, therefore, the state of being deceived and holding beliefs contrary to what is the case comes upon people by reason of certain similarities.

P
HAEDRUS
: That is how it happens.

S
OCRATES
: Could someone, then, who doesn’t know what each thing is ever have the art to lead others little by little through similarities away from what is the case on each occasion to its opposite? Or could he escape this being done to himself?