The Apology and The Phaedrus

Apology

• Born in Athens 425 B.C.
• A student of Socrates

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We come now to the greatest and most renowned of the pupils of Socrates, for whom it was reserved to complete the work planned and begun by the master. We speak of Plato.” (“Pre-Scholastic Philosophy 28”, p. 1) (pdf)

“he borrowed also from Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Parmenides,” (“Pre-Scholastic Philosophy 28”, p. 1) (pdf)

“Plato was born at Athens, B.C. 425. He was originally named Aristocles. Ha was the son of Aristo, a descendant of Codrus, and of Perictone, who was a descendant of Dropides -a near relative of Solon, and who was also a cousin of Cretias, one of the Thirty Tyrants.” (“Pre-Scholastic Philosophy 28”, p. 1) (pdf)

“In the year B.C. 367, after the death of Dionysius the elder, Plato undertook another journey to Sicily.” (“Pre-Scholastic Philosophy 28”, p. 2) (pdf)

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Some Housekeeping

• Weekly assignments will be done in class, on Mondays
• Readings for the week will be posted on Fridays

Phaedrus

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It is important to begin the actual first day of this course having read Plato’s The Apology. Plato was a fifth century writer, along with his mentor Socrates, and Aristotle, is credited with establishing the method of discourse known as philosophical. In this text, likely written by Plato himself, Plato recounts the trial of his mentor Socrates. Socrates is brought before the classical Greek equivalent of a courtroom. There are some notable differences however. Perhaps these were relevant in the reading, perhaps not.

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Denouncing Poetry

Denouncing Rhetoric

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“Like all reflective people, philosophers dislike rhetoric as it is commonly practiced, bemoan the decline of public speech into mere persuasion and demagoguery, and generally think of themselves as avoiding rhetoric in favor of careful analysis and argument.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 4) (pdf)

“As an object of academic study, the subject of rhetoric seems best left to English professors who specialize in the long history of manuals on techniques of persuasion and such.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 4) (pdf)

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We would also need to compare sophistry and rhetoric.

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“And Plato struggles with rhetoric—or sophistry as it is sometimes also called, although the two are not necessarily identical—repeatedly.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 4) (pdf)

That is what we are looking at here in the Phaedrus, a longer address as to what is the difference between poetry / rhetoric, and philosophy, namely the expressing the love of wisdom appropriately.

“Indeed, much of the final book of the Republic is an attack on poetry, and there is no question but that a quarrel between philosophy and poetry is a continuing theme throughout Plato’s corpus.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 2) (pdf)

“Plato agrees that Homer is indeed the educator of Greece, and immediately adds that Homer is “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets.”” (Griswold, 2020, p. 3) (pdf)

“Readers of the Phaedrus have often wondered how the dialogue hangs together. The first “half” seems to be about love, and the second about rhetoric.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

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However, this is misleading as it does not characterize the intent of the work.

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“To begin with, the first half of the dialogue contains explicit reflections on rhetoric; for example, Socrates draws the distinction between what we would call the “form” and the “content” of a discourse (235a).” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

On the one hand, we have the form of what is being said while on the other, we have the content, specifically what is being said.

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Consider:

[235a] I was attending only to the rhetorical manner, and I thought even Lysias himself would not think that satisfactory. It seemed to me, Phaedrus, unless you disagree, that he said the same thing two or three times, as if he did not find it easy to say many things about one subject, or perhaps he did not care about such a detail; and he appeared to me in youthful fashion to be exhibiting his ability to say the same thing in two different ways and in both ways excellently.

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3 speeches at center here. In the first, Plato parody’s Lysias, a famous Greek orator and speech writer.

2. In the second, we keep the same form as the second

3. The third is an allegory cast into the form of a myth.

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“The first is a brilliantly executed parody of the style of Lysias (an orator and speech writer of significant repute). The second speech simultaneously preserves aspects of its fictional” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

“The second “half” of the dialogue does not discuss the nature of love thematically, at any length, but it does in effect propose that discourse prompted by the love of wisdom —philosophy—is true rhetoric.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

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“Poetry is once again cast as a kind of speech making (258b3)” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

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contrast between poetry and speech.

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“The second “half” of the dialogue does not discuss the nature of love thematically, at any length, but it does in effect propose that discourse prompted by the love of wisdom —philosophy—is true rhetoric.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“what’s really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or badly” (258d4–5).[28]” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“The answer to this crucial question constitutes one of the most famous contributions to the topic. In essence, Socrates argues that someone who is going to speak well and nobly must know the truth about the subject he is going to discuss. The sort of theory Polus and Callicles maintained in the Gorgias is false (see Phaedrus 259e4–260a4).” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“We are told here that the extant manuals of rhetoric offer the “preliminaries” to the true art of rhetoric, not the thing itself (269b7–8).” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“An artful speech exhibits its artfulness in its structure, one that—since in the best case it embodies the truth—retraces or mirrors the natural divisions of the subject matter” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“itself. It will not only be coherent, but structured in a way that mirrors the way the subject itself is naturally organized.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 22) (pdf)

“In one of Socrates’ most famous images, a good composition should exhibit the organic unity of a living creature, “with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work” (264c1–5).” (Griswold, 2020, p. 22) (pdf)

“Readers of the Phaedrus have often wondered how the dialogue hangs together. The first “half” seems to be about love, and the second about rhetoric.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

“To begin with, the first half of the dialogue contains explicit reflections on rhetoric; for example, Socrates draws the distinction between what we would call the “form” and the “content” of a discourse (235a).” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

“The first is a brilliantly executed parody of the style of Lysias (an orator and speech writer of significant repute). The second speech simultaneously preserves aspects of its fictional” (Griswold, 2020, p. 20) (pdf)

“frame (the first was a paradoxical sounding address by a “non-lover” to a “beloved”), develops that frame (the non-lover is transformed into a concealed lover), and deepens the themes in an impressive and philosophically enlightening way. The third (referred to as the “palinode” or recantation speech) contains some of the most beautiful and powerful images in all of Greek literature.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

“The themes of poetry and rhetoric, then, are intertwined in the Phaedrus.” (Griswold, 2020, p. 21) (pdf)

About the Translation

You may or may not have heard about project Gutenberg before, it is however a online repository of free books. The project itself consists of the digitization of books that have lapsed into the public domain negating worries about copy-write. Because of this however, there may be some better more contemporary translations available. Meaning that there may be a current translation of the text that does a better job of getting an original author’s intended meaning. All this means is that if you perhaps develop a more extended interest in any of the readings from project Gutenberg, it would probably be beneficial to look up a more recent translation.

Benjamin Jowett, the translator for our addition of the Phaedrus, was born in the beginning of the 19th century which gives you a sense of the age of this particular translation.

According to the introduction for our version of the Phaedrus hosted on Project Gutenberg and written by Benjamin Jowett,

Phaedrus and the Philosophy of Love

“The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, another of Plato’s works, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. What does this mean? Together, both the Phaedrus and the Symposium give us a complete, though perhaps obscure, picture of Plato’s philosophy of Love, which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech.” ()