Philosophical Reflection
Text 1: Phaedrus - Plato
• Goal of the conversation by Socrates: to persuade Phaedrus to the transformation to an even
more passionate love of philosophical knowledge, which is the fine oratory’s essential
prerequisite.
• Socrates and Phaedrus are discussing Lysias’ speech, which they think is artless.
• When is a speech well written delivered, and when is it not?
—> Only what will seem just to the crowd who will act as judges is important; the truth does not
matter when we talk about persuasion amongst the crowd.
• Socrates claims that adversaries in law courts speak on opposite sides, so they are just / unjust
whenever they prefer.
—> He also claims that you are more likely to escape detection, as you shirt from one thing to its
opposite, if you proceed in small steps rather than in large ones.
—> 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.
—> Therefore, the art of a speaker who doesn’t know the truth and chases opinions instead, is
likely to be a ridiculous thing - not an art at all.
• Words such as ‘good’, ‘just’, or ‘love’ are abstract; we all think of something different, even
within ourselves.
• Socrates believes Lysias chose his words at random and did not think his speech through.
• Whether Socrates’ definition of love (‘mad love’) is correct or incorrect, at least it allowed the
speech to proceed clearly and consistently with itself.
• Prodicus says that what we need are speeches that are neither long nor short, but of the right
length.
• Everyone seems to be in agreement about the ending of a speech: it must summarize everything
and remind the audience of what they’ve heard.
• Pericles was the greatest rhetorician of all, because of his natural ability and his ability for
endless talk and ethereal speculation about nature.
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,• Socrates asks Phaedrus whether it’s possible to reach a serious understanding of the nature of the
soul without understanding the nature of the world as a whole.
• Socrates claims that anyone who teaches the art of rhetoric seriously will, first, describe the
soul with absolute precision and enable us to understand what it is, whether it is homogeneous
by nature or takes many forms.
—> Second, he will explain how, in virtue of its nature, it acts and is acted upon by certain
things.
—> Third, he will classify the kinds of speech and of soul there are, as well as the various ways
in which they are affected, and explain what causes each.
—> Then, he will coordinate each kind of soul with the kind of speech appropriate to it & give
instructions concerning the reasons why one kind of soul is convinced by one kind of speech
while another remains unconvinced.
—> This is the only way speech can ever be a product of art.
• ! In order to be a good liar, you ought to know the truth and know things that are similar, because
people will believe things better that differ little from each other so deception is more likely to
occur. Knowledge is higher/better than persuasion.
• To be able to write as artful as possible, one should must know how many kinds of soul there
are, since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul.
—> When you know what kind of soul someone has, you know what speech is most effective for
that kind of soul.
—> Then you have mastered the art.
• People only care about what is convincing, not about what is true.
—> This is called ‘the likely’.
—> You must say something that is likely to have happened, not what actually happened - leave
the truth aside.
• Second topic of the conversation is the aptness and ineptness in connection with writing: what
feature makes writing good, and what inept?
• Theuth was the first God to discover writing; ‘a potion for reminding’, not for remembering as
Theuth claimed.
• Writing shares a strange feature with painting (page 276).
• Goal of the conversation: to examine the attack made on Lysias on account of his writing
speeches, and to ask which speeches are written artfully and which not.
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, Lecture notes Plato
• Plato always uses dialogues to keep Socrates’ memory alive.
• Rhetorics and sophists
—> Sophia = wisdom; philosophy = desire/longing for wisdom.
—> Socrates was depicted as a sophist by another philosopher.
—> Being called a sophist was seen as an insult. Sophists teached other people rhetorics.
—> Sophists can say anything they want, even if they are not knowledgeable about the theme, so
Plato does not like sophists because of that.
—> Rhetorics: the art of speaking in order to convince someone, even when you talk about a
subject in which you are not knowledgeable yourself. You are basically deceiving people when
you do this.
• Socrates makes a distinction between a debate and a philosophical dialogue.
—> Debate: to defend a certain opinion or position while giving arguments so that the audience
will believe you, and not the opposite side, so that you win the debate.
The position you have got does not have to be your own —> this is strange, because you are
supposed to be looking for the truth.
You should only bring into play the opinions of which you are convinced.
—> Philosophical dialogue: here, we do let ourselves being formed by what the other person has
to say, so that we change our opinion. You first listen to the other person and then you respond, so
you assess during the conversation what your opinion is and whether it has changed or not.
• Language is the medium by which we try to discover the whole kinds of things.
—> Problem with language: it can be used to deceive others.
—> A dialogue serves truth better than speech or a debate.
• Poetry: Homer, Greek myths, novel, poem…
—> Function poetry: they gave us an idea of how the world (or reality) came to be.
—> Philosophy starts with saying goodbye to the mythical explanation of the world that poetry
provides, since they are not rational.
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