Phaedrus

​PHAEDRUS: I have heard about this in the following way, my dear Socrates: that there is no necessity for one who is going to be a rhetorician to learn what is really just, but rather what would seem so to the multitude who will judge, nor what is really good or beautiful, but whatever will seem so; for persuading comes from these, but not from the truth. SOCRATES: “An utterance not to be cast aside,” indeed, it must be, Phaedrus, whatever the wise may say, but we must examine whether they are saying something of weight; and indeed, what has now been said must not be dismissed. PHAEDRUS: You speak rightly. SOCRATES: Let us consider it in this way. PHAEDRUS: How? SOCRATES: If I should persuade you to acquire a horse to defend against enemies, and both of us were ignorant of what a horse is, but I happened to know this much about you: that Phaedrus considers a horse to be that of the domestic animals which has the largest ears— PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous, Socrates. SOCRATES: Not yet, indeed. But what if I should seriously try to persuade you, composing a speech of praise about the donkey, calling it a horse and saying that the beast is thoroughly worth acquiring both at home and on campaign, being useful to fight from and capable of carrying baggage and beneficial for many other things? PHAEDRUS: That would indeed be completely ridiculous by now. SOCRATES: Is it not, then, better to be ridiculous and friendly than clever and hostile? PHAEDRUS: So it appears. SOCRATES: When, therefore, the rhetorician who is ignorant of good and evil, taking a city in the same condition, persuades it, not making his praise about “the shadow of a donkey” as if it were a horse, but about evil as if it were good, and having studied the opinions of the multitude, persuades them to do evil instead of good, what kind of harvest do you think rhetoric will reap after this from what she sowed? PHAEDRUS: Not a very decent one. SOCRATES: Have we, then, my good friend, reviled the art of speeches more rudely than is proper? But she might perhaps say: “Why indeed, you wondrous men, do you talk nonsense? For I do not compel anyone who is ignorant of the truth to learn to speak, but, if my advice is worth anything, to acquire that first and then to take me; this, however, I say as a great thing, that without me, even for the one who knows the things that are, there will be no more persuading by art.” PHAEDRUS: Will she not speak justly, in saying these things? SOCRATES: I say so, indeed, if only the arguments that attack her testify that she is an art. For I seem to hear certain arguments approaching and protesting that she lies and is not an art, but an artless routine; “of speaking,” says the Spartan, “there is no genuine art without having grasped the truth, nor is there ever one hereafter.”

PHAEDRUS: There is need of these arguments, Socrates; but bring them here and examine what and how they speak. SOCRATES: Come forward, then, noble creatures, and persuade Phaedrus, the father of beautiful children, that unless he philosophizes sufficiently, he will never be capable of speaking about anything. Let Phaedrus answer. PHAEDRUS: Ask. SOCRATES: Would not rhetoric, then, as a whole, be a certain art of leading the soul through words, not only in courts of law and whatever other public assemblies, but also in private ones, the same concerning small things and great, and no more honorable when rightly applied to serious matters than to trivial ones? Or how have you heard these things? PHAEDRUS: No, by Zeus, not entirely in this way, but it is said and written by art mostly concerning lawsuits, and it is also spoken concerning public harangues; but I have not heard of it further. SOCRATES: But have you heard only of the arts of speeches by Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed when they had leisure at Troy, and have you become unheard of those of Palamedes? PHAEDRUS: Yes, by Zeus, I have of Nestor’s, unless you are fashioning some Gorgias as a Nestor, or some Thrasymachus and Theodore as an Odysseus. SOCRATES: Perhaps. But let us leave these men; you tell me, what do the opponents do in courts of law? Do they not indeed contradict each other? Or what shall we say? PHAEDRUS: Exactly that. SOCRATES: About what is just and unjust? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Will not, then, the one who does this by art make the same thing appear to the same people at one time just, and, when he wishes, unjust? PHAEDRUS: Why not? SOCRATES: And in public speaking, will he not make the same things seem to the city at one time good, and at another time, in turn, the opposite? PHAEDRUS: Just so. SOCRATES: Do we not know, then, that the Eleatic Palamedes spoke by art, so that the same things appeared to his hearers to be both similar and dissimilar, both one and many, both at rest and in motion? PHAEDRUS: Very much so. SOCRATES: The art of contradiction, therefore, is not only about courts of law and public speaking, but, as it seems, about all things spoken there would be this one single art, if indeed it exists, by which one will be able to assimilate everything to everything of the things possible and to those for whom it is possible, and to bring into the light when another assimilates and conceals. PHAEDRUS: In what way indeed do you mean this? SOCRATES: I think it will appear to those who seek in this way. Does deception occur more in things that differ much, or in things that differ little?