Taking the authorial/initiator position, I’d like to tell you what I gleaned from today’s conversation.
The artifact we excavated referred to as Phaedrus and attributed to one Plato (constructed as male in the literature) is a valuable find because the form itself appears to have challenged the primacy of a form we would call (with due deference to the impossibility of translation) “popular drama” or “popular oral performance” (this observation I place in the mouth of Robbie). This apparently innovative form (we have to remember that antecedents were located among the Sophistic fragments or may have been lost—or “unsaved” as in the case of women’s or non-Greek discourse), this written, simulator-of-the-oral dialogue, points to the limitations of language even as it lays claim to the awful seductive power of language. It is thus built directly on the very kind of discourse it denigrate and undermines its loud and insistent claims for separation from that bad discourse. We might say then that the accusations against certain kinds and forms of mesmerizing speech and against writing itself are dismissed summarily by the form itself, a written form whose stupefying effects are masked under a construct of clarity and analysis, an effect wrought by a forceful projection of dialectic—by way of medium and topic.
So on the one hand, the dialogue seduces by creating the illusion of a new and powerful way of collective knowledge making—specifically, knowledge making about language, yet it prevents us from understanding language because it exemplifies fully its contradictory character: it imitates contemporaneous oral/gesture drama even as it denigrates imitation; it draws on cultural memory to formulate an argument against cultural memory. It inserts into history “real persons” –oops—the imitations of real persons (what we would call representations), and this in itself is a powerful form of seduction, seduction into a elite group of interlocutors who speak in special ways about language, who practice language in special ways, and who are made willing to engage in confrontational dialogue about these practices and speeches. People have believed in this fiction for centuries upon centuries. Thus Phaedrus carves out an imaginary speech territory where contending-with-words men are invited to assent to a new way of contending-with-words. Perhaps this artifact is really an advertisement for the Academy: Come my beauties and here you will learn the arts of dialectic (this is an observation I attribute to Sarah, who may reject or accept my fiction). The Phaedrus masks this seduction into a language practice by foregrounding carnal seduction and working towards its legitimation (this I place in the mouth of Gerard, with emendations), thus distracting the audience while simultaneously suggesting that love and discourse are of the same order of things (bottom line thinking for Soc. is figuring out the fine lines between concepts) even as it guilelessly arguing that they are not.
Clearly reading Plato can drive one to madness.
10 comments:
I do believe that the dialogue is making a comparison between love and discourse. Socrates draws a parallel between lovers and those who practice the art of discourse. His sentence, "As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their loves" is a pithy comment.
Socrates asks, "And when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place of a horse puts good for evil being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about 'the shadow of an ass,' which he confounds with a horse, but about good which he confounds with evil - what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be likely to gather after the sowing of that seed?"
In his monologue about lovers, Socrates warns the fair youth "know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness, he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you."
Evil will befall the youth who is in such a relationship as evil will result from the intentional misuse of discourse where the orator persuades in order to further his own desires. In both situations, Socrates sees damage - damage to the youth taken advantage of by the lover and dmage to the society lied to by the orator.
To emend me is to compliment me.
I’m interested in Plato’s contradictions that Dr Romano has brought up: how Phaedrus imitates drama while denigrating it, draws on cultural memory to argue against cultural memory, and invents “real” persons having a “real” dialogue. And for me, I think the line I brought up in class encapsulates all of Socrates’s contradictions. He accuses Phaedrus of being a “horrible man … [who’s] really found the way to force a lover of speeches to do just as [he] says.”
By the time I read this line, the word “lover” has been repeated many times and until now, in a carnal context. The word has become a pneumonic device or trigger for associations of physical love. Retaining this association, and now spoken in the context of being an audience member for a good speech, the line becomes heavy with innuendo toward Phaedrus. As an innuendo, Socrates names (without naming) Phaedrus as the man in their suggestive and figurative couple, leaving Socrates as the boy. And if Phaedrus can force his lover, Socrates, to do as he says, I think Socrates is now describing a relationship that is not based in logic—he is beguiled by a clever speaker.
This line seems like persuasion is being compared in a negative light to the lesser of the two love affairs, the erotic versus the sophistic. Pushing beyond the innuendo, I also think this line comments on Helen’s, in which the “intentional misuse of discourse” is “where the orator persuades in order to further his own desires.” Plato is maddening to me because every single line begins to sound ironic. Not that I consider this a bad thing. I cannot remember which contemporary rhetor wrote this. I think it comes from Booth’s Rhetoric of Irony. One of the strengths of irony is that it doubles your audience.
Helen has offered some excellent insights into the relation of the themes of love and rhetoric in Phaedrus. What I think is interesting in Socrates’ second speech about love here is all the connections to other Platonic dialogues. The speech is prompted by the same Socratic daimon that Socrates describes in the Apologia, the one that always denies rather than affirms. This Socratic daimon is the first known articulation of conscience or superego, and it would be easy to see in Socrates’ discussion of the “two guiding and ruling principles”—the “natural desire of pleasure” and the internalized or “acquired opinion which aspires after the best”—a prefiguration of the constructs of id and superego. However, in the Symposium, Socrates (Plato) speaks of another daimon with regard to love, and this daimon in contrast ratifies rather than rejects. Both daimons are understood as inducing a kind of divine possession, of an ilk similar to prophecy, Dionysian initiatic frenzy, and poetry (the last of which Socrates identifies as madness in the Ion as well). The notion of love as madness was common to Greek culture; the iconic image that we have inherited of Eros/Cupid as an ephebic archer was also used by the Greeks to depict the influence of diseases (see Jane Ellen Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, the section on the Ker or bacillus). This fact intimates that, although the Greeks have attributed a divine origin to love, it was not necessarily regarded as a positive thing, and that this is an innovation of Plato’s. This would make sense given that Lysias’ speech assumes the opposing stance, that non-love is superior.
Here is the problem then: if Socrates (Plato) is making a parallel between love and rhetoric as Helen has illuminated, then why is divine madness rather than reason endorsed in the speech? It does not sit easily with his subsequent allegory of the chariot, in which the good horse is the rational impulse, or with his later assertion that truth is approached through rational dialectical processes of categorical divisions and generalizations.
(Incidentally, Plato’s chariot metaphor for the soul I have located in a text antecedent to the Phaedrus: the Katha Upanishad III. 3-4).
I'm not sure if my comment follows this particular discussion or if I should have started a new post, but as it does pertain to love and rhetoric, I'll post my comments and questions here.
Near the end of Phaedrus, Socrates says that the written word is inferior because it is only an image of the speech. Then he says the “just and good and honorable” (i.e., philosophers, i.e. Socrates) “will not seriously incline to ‘write’ his thoughts...sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others” but will only write for the “recreation and amusement.” My question is this: were these dialogues written by Plato himself? I know it is a basic question that I should already know the answer to at this stage, but if Plato actually wrote Phaedrus (rather than someone transcribing the words from a dramatic, oral presentation), then are we to think of the dialogue as only entertainment? And if so, is part of the entertainment the seduction of Phaedrus and is Socrates using his second speech as a form of self-promotion in the seduction? Or is the dialogue both a serious discussion about language and soul development as well as seducing entertainment?
I wonder this because first, throughout the second speech and subsequent dialectic “conversation,” he certainly privileges philosophers (the good and the just, those who adequately remember the holy things once seen, etc.) over speech makers/sophists/Lysias et al. He positions himself as superior to Lysias, his competitor in both rhetoric and love. Then, near the end of the dialogue, he gives a fairly succinct “definition” of a proper rhetor (“Until a man knows the truth of the several particulars of which he is writing or speaking, and is able to define them as they are, ..and …divide them until they can longer be divided...and until...he is able to discern the nature of the soul,.. and discover the different modes of discourse…and to arrange and dispose them is such a way [as to address several natures]..until he has accomplished all this, he will be unable to handle all arguments…either for the purpose of teaching or persuading…). I think this definition (right word?) can be mapped almost directly onto his second speech, which proves his point and again positions him as superior to Lysias and any other “older man” interested in Phaedrus.
In following the various posts which are concerned with the inconsistencies in Plato's/Socrates' methods of pedagogy, I think that it is interesting that P./S. continually uses a posteriori (experientially or sensory-based) schemes and modes of storytelling (myths) to persuade Phaedrus to accept such a priori (purely intellectual) entities as the Forms.
While I've been trained to read Plato through what Poster would call an "analytic" lens, dealing with recently new and difficult issues such as (the lack of) authorial intention and the "open", dramatic nature of any one of Plato's dialogues has compounded my problems in reading these texts. I think it can be safely said that Plato ardently desired to aspire to a sort of philosophical idealism, but the methods that he perhaps knowingly (mis)employed made it difficult for him to accept much of what he had written in any text (hence the continual reconsideration of soul-based theories of identity, the inherent challenges in knowing the Forms); in other words, the dialogue with himself might often have had unsatisfactory elements.
I have more of a question than anything. I'm not sure what the rhetorical purpose is when Socrates describe himself as an "untaught man" in one section and in another section he describes himself as "a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell int he city are my teachers"? Gerard discusses Plato's irony and I wonder if this conflict is meant to be ironic. I find it interesting that Socrates states that he is an untaught man yet he engages Phaedrus in a long discussion and argues that Lysias speech was unacceptable. Socrates clearly believes that he proposes a better argument so are we to think that Socrates, who has no 'formal' education is naturally talented in rhetoric?
Rtstone notes that there is an inconsistency between Socrates' advocacy of both reason and divine madness as paths to Truth. To me, this is one of those instances where one does not know how to approach the ontology of what Plato/Socrates speaks of regarding souls, human beings, (in)animate life, and how these entities relate to the Forms (and the gods,who apparently have knowledge of them). Socrates states on page 16 that "a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;-this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God." Such pronouncements in regard to the One/Many problem produce problem on top of problem with regard to the apparent break between the infinite regress of sense-data, and the immutable, perfect Forms that souls are supposed to remember. I think Plato/Socrates tries to bridge this gap by making a case that divine knowledge of the Forms causes the philosopher to be "rapt in the divine"--such a situation makes "the vulgar deem him mad, [they] rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired." This species of transformation in regard to how one engages with the Forms, as opposed to the sensory world, enacts a difference in the being of the philosopher/lover. Hence, Socrates' need to defend his argument from vantages both "rational" and "mad". (Now these categories seem to become pretty cloudy. . . .)
What if Plato was using the 'dialogue' to express the his opinions in a stylized way. Often times in dance you start with the common place scene (especially in Bharata Natyam) and then add stylistic elements. Like Lord Krishna always stealing butter when he was a child is portrayed with him climbing to get the pots of butter, but stylistic elements are added. In that way, maybe Plato uses his character to talk of common place topics- ones like love that everyone can connect to- a jumping off point for his discussion of Rhetoric. The way he is uses questioning is similar in both Gorgias and Phaedrus. This could be part of his 'style.' But the obviously contrived question and answer style isn't quite consistent with dialectic. Maybe that is why we are having trouble with it? Based on my understanding of dialectic, the dialogue should include many more points of view and arguments and both (or all) contributors should equally contribute and gain knowledge to challenge their understanding. In Plato's dialogues he seems to have 1 character do most of the speaking and teacher. That character seems to be learning very little and is hardly challenged. But I argue that he might not consider this a true dialectic and that he intentionally does this to show his 'style.' His style seems to include a dominant speaker, defining and redefining (or trying to define) terminology, connecting examples to common place topics, and perhaps presenting his ideas without contradiction to get the reader to fill in those contradictions him or herself.
When we focus on what is “real” and what is ironic and what is seductive in Plato’s writing, it’s easy to get lost digging around and looking for meaning. I agree with Gerard’s comment in another post (I think); we read what the experts in rhetoric say and what the experts in philosophy say and it colors our reading of the actual text. I was really struck by a line in Poster: “These shifts are not a matter of producing new answers to old questions, but of asking new questions.” Are there any new questions? What hasn’t been looked at? Can we remove ourselves from the influence of the experts and from our own intoxication with the words, and try to come to some sort of objective understanding of Plato’s original intentions? I don’t think so. Because, the simple fact is that we will never know for sure what Plato was really trying to convey. Part of that is because it’s written and part is because it was written a long time ago. But there’s no guarantee that having been there and heard this live, that we would truly “get” what Plato meant. Even in a live performance, even when we are well versed in the ethos of the speaker, we misunderstand each other because language isn’t perfect. Meaning slips, even in the simple day-to-day conversations we have with our loved ones. Until we can do a Vulcan mind-meld, Plato and the rest of us will have to allow for a margin of error in any form of communication.
Divine madness is usually (in my reading, at least) a euphemism for inspiration; the inspirational is to some degree an intersection between the things that we may consciously process (logos) and that which is less predictable and greater than our conscious ability to process it. As such, the Phaedrus becomes more and more about alignment with inspiration, specifically with the mystic quality to be receptive to and understand the world of forms (from the cave analogy) which characterizes his philosopher par excellance. Moreover, the passage in which Socrates becomes ashamed to have made his speech about love, specifically his apology to love, suggest that the operative force he means to characterize as necessary for the correct use of rhetoric is alignment with inspiration via the facility to recognize the forms.
The fact that the model he cites in the Phaedrus is carnal is, for me at least, a tactical decision; what, after all, is instantly attractive? What captures the mind? And, as we have already read, the close, possibly physical relationship between mentor and the beloved boy is intended to be pedagogical as well as, perhaps, pederastic. Moreover, sexuality, like rhetoric, is frequently about power discrepancies, a la the forcing of Socrates and the audience at large by the powerful rhetor.
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