One of Plato’s most complex dialogues, the Phaedrus offers further criticism of sophistic rhetoric, presents a new, philosophically coherent art of rhetoric, and demonstrates the new rhetorical art in a challenging, unexpected way. In the first half of the dialogue, a chance encounter between Socrates and Phaedrus, who is an admirer of Lysias, Athens’ foremost speechwriter, leads to an impromptu, privately staged epideictic contest between Lysias and Socrates on the theme of erOs, or desire. The contest culminates in what is known as Socrates’ Great Speech (244a-257b). The epithet is due to the speech’s sustained brilliance, expansiveness, imagination, and intensity, and also to the fact that within the dialogue it is presented as both a tour de force of rhetorical display and, in a challenge to the genre of rhetorical display, a deadly serious discourse on desire and the pursuit of knowledge. In the second half of the
Dialogue, Socrates analyzes the speeches of the first half and describes what a true art of rhetoric would be like. Rejecting the rhetorical theories of contemporary sophists, Socrates proposes instead a vast, new art of discourse that includes dialectic and psychology and pretends to an effectiveness only dreamt of by contemporary rhetoricians. What is the nature of this Platonic art of rhetoric and what is the purpose of Socrates’ Great Speech?6
Like other Platonic dialogues, the main concern of the Phaedrus is to vindicate Plato’s conception of the philosophical life against rival pursuits, and the Phaedrus is no less emphatic in advocating a complete and fundamental revolution in values than are such dialogues as the Apology, Gorgias, and Republic. But the Phaedrus does not contain an argument to establish the priority of philosophical values and rhetoric’s dependence on philosophy. Even the claim that dialectic, or philosophical reasoning, is necessary for rhetoric does not establish the priority of philosophy: dialectic is introduced into rhetoric for the purely instrumental reason that it is effective for persuasion (261a-266c). Rather, the burden of establishing the priority of philosophy falls entirely on the one place in the dialogue where the case is made for philosophy’s absolute priority for ordering human affairs, and that is Socrates’ Great Speech on desire.
Uniquely in the Platonic corpus, the Phaedrus places at the center of the inquiry the very question that lies at the heart of the rhetoricians’ own enterprise, namely, how discourse persuades and how an understanding of persuasion can be implemented by art. Plato rejects sophistic rhetoric in this dialogue not because it interferes with philosophy - although it does - but because it fails at its own task of composing persuasive speeches (266c-270e). Focusing on what happens in the soul when persuasion takes place, Plato outlines an art of persuasion based on arousing desire in the auditor’s soul. By composing Socrates’ Great Speech and assigning to rhetoric, as it were, the task of demonstrating the priority of philosophy, Plato demonstrates both the seriousness of his rhetorical endeavor and the efficacy of his new rhetorical art.7 The Phaedrus thus looks at rhetoric as more than just a tool of mass political communication, useful to the ruling philosopher in his dealings with the citizens under his care. Understood as the art of arousing and directing desire (erOtikl techne), which in fact is Socrates’ particular expertise (227c, 257a), rhetoric becomes ‘a kind of soul-moving power (psychagOgia) of discourse’ (261a), that is, an art of awakening in souls their natural desire for the good and the beautiful, of educating souls and turning them towards philosophy.
The first half of the dialogue demonstrates psychagogia in action. Phaedrus is a connoisseur of rhetoric, but he is misguided, since he sees in Lysias a polished but entirely conventional speechwriter, the height of rhetorical perfection. Socrates elicits from Phaedrus a reading of a speech by Lysias (230e-234b). The speech, composed by Plato for the dialogue, plays on the conventions of Athenian pederasty: an older man propositions a young man, arguing that the young man should have sex not with a man who desires him, but with the speaker precisely because he does not desire him.8 Lysias’ speech is pure fluff, intended to impress Athens’ smart set with the author’s wit and rhetorical flair, and as such it is not without interest. Yet what might have been appropriate as a rhetorical bagatelle is out of place, and egregiously exposed, in Plato’s world. The speech is barely coherent (235a, 263d-264e), to say nothing of its crass cynicism presented as enlightened self-interest. Drawing Phaedrus under his educational sway, Socrates piques Phaedrus with a speech of his own that aims to improve on Lysias’ (237a-241d). Though Socrates’ speech makes the same paradoxical plea for sex without desire as did Lysias’, Socrates’ speech is a better one: much clearer, better organized, and far more coherently argued. But Socrates’ purpose becomes evident when he suddenly detains Phaedrus by pleading the necessity for yet another speech, a recantation of the one he just gave, since, like Lysias’ speech, it slandered the god Eros by portraying erOs as something bad and to be avoided. Like all the gods, Eros is good and the source of only good things.
Lysias’ speech and Socrates’ first speech are meant for rhetorical display, where the purpose is to entertain the audience and win admiration for the author. Socrates’ Great Speech (244a-257b) incorporates rhetorical display but also endeavors to benefit the imagined young man with informed, honest advice. This is rhetoric with serious purpose: the god must be appeased and the young man must be helped to make the right decision about a partner and desire. Now Socrates describes the blessings of erOos and advises the young man to accept the attention of an older man who genuinely desires him. The Great Speech departs from the previous speeches also with respect to the means of persuasion. It does not argue from expediency or calculate advantage by weighing alternatives. Rather, it consists mostly of a narrative that describes the harrowing, arduous journey of the soul towards its proper goal, the overcoming of mortality through the knowledge of Being. The soul is likened to the ‘combined force of a team of winged horses and their winged charioteer’ (246a). Striving to reach the rim of heaven and in the company of the gods to gaze directly upon Being, the most beautiful sight there is, the charioteer struggles to control his team of one obedient horse and one recalcitrant one. The travails of the journey are intense, as is the joy upon success. The narrative moves back to earth and to the struggle to establish an erotic-philosophical relationship that will lead to a life in pursuit of wisdom and ultimately to the immortality achieved through knowledge of Being. Throughout the narrative both the charioteer in pursuit of Being and the lover in pursuit of a beautiful beloved are driven by the divine desire that alone can bring them to their goals.
The portrayal of erOs in the Great Speech is so vivid, the narrative tension so intense, and the vision of transcendence so triumphant (250b-c) that the auditor himself acquires a desire for the very experience that is portrayed. ErOs, vividly portrayed, arouses eros? In the moment when such intense erOs is fixed on its goal, all thought of the conventional goods that belong to everyday life is obliterated; erOs knows only the object it desires. Socrates aims to make the auditor feel the attractions of divine erOs so intensely that he will desire that erOs himself and move towards it on his own. This is the means of persuasion that gives the Great Speech its compelling quality and departs from anything implemented or even imagined by contemporary sophists and speechwriters.
As the Great Speech comes to a close and the power of erotic rhetoric has been demonstrated, Phaedrus has progressed in his education. He has had his attention turned from Lysias to Socrates, from the thin amusement and weak persuasion of conventional rhetoric to the riveting and potentially transcendent pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, and beauty. Now engaging Phaedrus in a discursive argument more suited to overt instruction, Socrates looks back at the earlier speeches and takes up the question of what it is that makes discourse persuasive (259e-260e), in answer to which Socrates produces an account of what a true art of rhetoric would consist in (260e-274b). This portion of the dialogue contains Plato’s most important theoretical innovations to the art of rhetoric.
First, Plato enlarges the scope of rhetoric. From its political orientation as taught by the sophists and discussed in the Gorgias, it becomes a universal art of discourse, embracing ‘all things that are said’ (261a-e), that is, discourse which is public and private, extemporaneous and prepared, spoken and written, epideictic and dialectical. The underlying properties that make discourse educational in any setting are, from the perspective of the art, fundamentally the same. Second, when Socrates says that ‘the art of rhetoric is a kind of soul-moving power (psychagogia) of discourse’ (261a), he prefigures psychology as an essential part of rhetoric. The soul is the material on which the art of rhetoric operates - it is souls that are to be moved - so rhetoric must have a comprehensive understanding ofthe soul and the ways in which discourse affects souls (268b-272b). Socrates envisages a vast elaborate network of souls, persuasive tasks, and speeches, arrayed systematically to enable the trained rheitor to reliably convince anyone of anything by responding to the natural qualities of the auditor’s soul (271b-272b). Persuasion is not a matter of words, phrases, forms of argument, and all the other linguistic phenomena that are catalogued in the sophists’ rejected rhetoric books (266c-267e), but the methodical creation of desire in the auditor’s soul.
Third, Socrates argues that the proficient rhetor must have knowledge of the subject matter of his discourse, not because he needs that knowledge in order to benefit the auditor (which is true and was argued in the Gorgias), but because his ability to persuade (regardless of the purpose of persuasion) is enhanced by such knowledge (259e-262c). Rhetoric’s persuasiveness lies at least partly in the coherent demonstration of a case, no matter what the case is: rhetoric is an art that ‘enables [the rheitor] to make out everything to be like everything else, within the limits of possible comparison’ (261e). To this end, Socrates introduces dialectic, which is a systematic way of thinking, arguing, and acquiring knowledge. Dialectic takes many forms in Plato, but it always constitutes for him the primary form of philosophical argument. The claims made for dialectic in the Phaedrus are general and go well beyond the requirements of advanced philosophical reasoning. A speaker uses dialectic ‘in order to define each thing and make clear whatever it is that one wishes to instruct [one’s audience] about on any occasion’ (265d). Socrates asserts that dialectic imparts clarity and consistency to his speeches on desire (265d) and gives rise to his ability to speak and to think: ‘I am myself a lover of these divisions and collections [i. e., the basic procedures of dialectic], that I may gain the power to speak and to think’ (266b). Speaking and thinking are common to all human beings. Clarity and consistency are as much rhetorical virtues as they are logical ones. In the Gorgias., Socrates opposed his dialectic to Gorgianic epideictic rhetoric (447a-c, 448c-d). In the Phaedrus, however, Socrates brings dialectic into alliance with the true art of rhetoric. The new rhetorical technoe is thus not a replacement for the politically convenient, flattery-like persuasiveness offered by the sophists, but is useful only to the knowledgeable speaker. The new technoe requires the speaker to use his knowledge to shape the medium in which the message is delivered, enabling him to persuade by means of instruction, and thus avoid flattery.
The scientific rigor and comprehensiveness of the art of rhetoric contemplated in the Phaedrus go far beyond anything that had been attempted or even conceived by previous and contemporary sophists. When mastered, the entire scheme of using discourse to manipulate desire is claimed to be necessarily effective in producing persuasion (271b). It is this guarantee of effectiveness, tied to its use in philosophical education, that allows Plato to claim for his project the status of technl that he denies to the feeble and fallible rhetorical project of sophistic contemporaries. In view of the scale of the endeavor, Phaedrus wonders whether there might be a shorter, easier route to an art of this kind; Socrates shows that there is none (272b-274b).
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