Excerpt from “Phaedrus” By Plato
SOCRATES: What’s left, then, is aptness and ineptness in connection with writing: What feature makes writing good, and what inept? Right?
PHAEDRUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, do you know how best to please god when you either use words or discuss them in general?
PHAEDRUS: Not at all. Do you?
SOCRATES: I can tell you what I’ve heard the ancients said, though they alone know the truth. However, if we could discover that ourselves, would we still care about the speculations of other people?
PHAEDRUS: That’s a silly question. Still, tell me what you say you’ve heard.
SOCRATES: Well, this is what I’ve heard. Among the ancient gods of Naucratis[1] in Egypt there was one to whom the bird called the ibis is sacred. The name of that divinity was Theuth[2] and it was he who first discovered number and calculation, geometry and astronomy, as well as the games of checkers and dice, and, above all else, writing.
Now the king of all Egypt at that time was Thamus,[3] who lived in the great city in the upper region that the Greeks call Egyptian Thebes; Thamus they call Ammon. Theuth came to exhibit his arts to him and urged him to disseminate them to all the Egyptians. Thamus asked him about the usefulness of each art, and while Theuth was explaining it, Thamus praised him for whatever he thought was right in his explanations and criticized him for whatever he thought was wrong.
The story goes that Thamus said much to Theuth, both for and against each art, which it would take too long to repeat. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “0 King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “0 most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
PHAEDRUS: Socrates, you’re very good at making up stories from Egypt or wherever else you want!
SOCRATES: But, my friend, the priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, while it seems to make a difference to you, Phaedrus, who is speaking and where he comes from. Why, though, don’t you just consider whether what he says is right or wrong?
PHAEDRUS: I deserved that, Socrates. And I agree that the Theban king was correct about writing.
SOCRATES: Well, then, those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that writing can yield results that are dear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant of Ammon’s prophetic judgment: otherwise, how could they possibly think that words that have been written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?
PHAEDRUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support.
PHAEDRUS: You are absolutely right about that, too.
SOCRATES: Now tell me, can we discern another kind of discourse, a legitimate brother of this one? Can we say how it comes about, and how it is by nature better and more capable?
PHAEDRUS: Which one is that? How do you think it comes about?
SOCRATES: It is a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent.
PHAEDRUS: You mean the living, breathing discourse of the man who knows, of which the written one can be fairly called an image.
SOCRATES: Absolutely right. And tell me this. Would a sensible farmer, who cared about his seeds and wanted them to yield fruit, plant them in all seriousness in the gardens of Adonis in the middle of the summer and enjoy watching them bear fruit within seven days? Or would he do this as an amusement and in honor of the holiday, if he did it at all?[4] Wouldn’t he use his knowledge of farming to plant the seeds he cared for when it was appropriate and be content if they bore fruit seven months later?
PHAEDRUS: That’s how he would handle those he was serious about, Socrates, quite differently from the others, as you say.
SOCRATES: Now what about the man who knows what is just, noble, and good? Shall we say that he is less sensible with his seeds than the farmer is with his?
PHAEDRUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Therefore, he won’t be serious about writing them in ink, sowing them, through a pen, with words that are as incapable of speaking in their own defense as they are of teaching the truth adequately.
PHAEDRUS: That wouldn’t be likely.
SOCRATES: Certainly not. When he writes, it’s likely he will sow gardens of letters for the sake of amusing himself, storing up reminders for himself “when he reaches forgetful old age” and for everyone who wants to follow in his footsteps, and will enjoy seeing them sweetly blooming. And when others turn to different amusements, watering themselves with drinking parties and everything else that goes along with them, he will rather spend his time amusing himself with the things I have just described.
PHAEDRUS: Socrates, you are contrasting a vulgar amusement with the very noblest-with the amusement of a man who can while away his time telling stories of justice and the other matters you mentioned.
SOCRATES: That’s just how it is, Phaedrus. But it is much nobler to be serious about these matters, and use the art of dialectic. The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge—discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human being can be.
PHAEDRUS: What you describe is really much nobler still.
SOCRATES: And now that we have agreed about this, Phaedrus, we are finally able to decide the issue.
PHAEDRUS: What issue is that?
SOCRATES: The issue which brought us to this point in the first place: We wanted to examine the attack made on Lysias on account of his writing speeches, and to ask which speeches are written artfully and which not. Now, I think that we have answered that question clearly enough.
PHAEDRUS: So it seemed; but remind me again how we did it.
SOCRATES: First, you must know the truth concerning everything you are speaking or writing about; you must learn how to define each thing in itself; and, having defined it, you must know how to divide it into kinds until you reach something indivisible. Second, you must understand the nature of the soul, along the same lines; you must determine which kind of speech is appropriate to each kind of soul, prepare and arrange your speech accordingly, and offer a complex and elaborate speech to a complex soul and a simple speech to a simple one. Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully, to the extent that its nature allows it to be used that way, either in order to teach or in order to persuade. This is the whole point of the argument we have been making.
PHAEDRUS: Absolutely. That is exactly how it seemed to us.
SOCRATES: Now how about whether it’s noble or shameful to give or write a speech—when it could be fairly said to be grounds for reproach, and when not? Didn’t what we said just a little while ago make it clear
PHAEDRUS: What was that?
SOCRATES: That if Lysias or anybody else ever did or ever does write—privately or for the public, in the course of proposing some law—a political document which he believes to embody clear knowledge of lasting importance, then this writer deserves reproach, whether anyone says so or not. For to be unaware of the difference between a dream-image and the reality of what is just and unjust, good and bad, must truly be grounds for reproach even if the crowd praises it with one voice.
PHAEDRUS: It certainly must be.
SOCRATES: On the other hand, take a man who thinks that a written discourse on any subject can only be a great amusement, that no discourse worth serious attention has ever been written in verse or prose, and that those that are recited in public without questioning and explanation, in the manner of the rhapsodes,[5] are given only in order to produce conviction. He believes that at their very best these can only serve as reminders to those who already know. And he also thinks that only what is said for the sake of understanding and learning, what is truly written in the soul concerning what is just, noble, and good can be clear, perfect, and worth serious attention: Such discourses should be called his own legitimate children, first the discourse he may have discovered—already within himself and then its sons and brothers who may have grown naturally in other souls insofar as these are worthy; to the rest, he turns his back. Such a man, Phaedrus, would be just what you and I both would pray to become.
PHAEDRUS: I wish and pray for things to be just as you say.
SOCRATES: Well, then: our playful amusement regarding discourse is complete. Now you go and tell Lysias that we came to the spring which is sacred to the Nymphs and heard words charging us to deliver a message to Lysias and anyone else who composes speeches, as well as to Homer and anyone else who has composed poetry either spoken or sung, and third, to Solon and anyone else who writes political documents that he calls laws: if any one of you has composed these things with a knowledge of the truth, if you can defend your writing when you are challenged, and if you can yourself make the argument that your writing is of little worth, then you must be called by a name derived not from these writings but rather from those things that you are seriously pursuing.
PHAEDRUS: What name, then, would you give such a man?
SOCRATES: To call him wise, Phaedrus, seems to me too much, and proper only for a god. To call him wisdom’s lover—a philosopher—or something similar would fit him better and be more seemly.
PHAEDRUS: That would be quite appropriate.
SOCRATES: On the other hand, if a man has nothing more valuable than what he has composed or written, spending long hours twisting it around, pasting parts together and taking them apart-wouldn’t you be right to call him a poet or a speech writer or an author of laws?
PHAEDRUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: Tell that, then, to your friend.
PHAEDRUS: And what about you? What shall you do? We must surely not forget your own friend.
SOCRATES: Whom do you mean?
PHAEDRUS: The beautiful Isocrates.[6] What are you going to tell him, Socrates? What shall we say he is?
SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus. But I want to tell you what I foresee for him.
PHAEDRUS: What is that?
SOCRATES: It seems to me that by his nature he can outdo anything that Lysias has accomplished in his speeches; and he also has a nobler character. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, as he gets older and continues writing speeches of the sort he is composing now, he makes everyone who has ever attempted to compose a speech seem like a child in comparison. Even more so if such work no longer satisfies him and a higher, divine impulse leads him to more important things. For nature, my friend, has placed the love of wisdom in his mind. That is the message I will carry to my beloved, Isocrates, from the gods of this place; and you have your own message for your Lysias.
PHAEDRUS: So it shall be. But let’s be off, since the heat has died down a bit.
SOCRATES: Shouldn’t we offer a prayer to the gods here before we leave?
PHAEDRUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: 0, dear Pan, and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? I believe my prayer is enough for me.
PHAEDRUS: Make it a prayer for me as well. Friends have everything in common.
SOCRATES: Let’s be off.
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Originally written ~370 B.C.E. This translation of Phaedrus is by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1995, pp. 551-556.
[1]Naucratis was a Greek trading colony in Egypt. The story that follows is probably an invention of Plato’s in which he reworks elements from Egyptian and Greek mythology.
[2]Theuth (or Thoth) is the Egyptian god of writing, measuring, and calculation. The Greeks identified Thoth with Hermes, perhaps because of his role in weighing the soul.
[3]As king of the Egyptian gods, Ammon (Thamus) was identified by Egyptians with the sun god Ra and by the Greeks with Zeus.
[4]Gardens of Adonis were pots or window boxes used for [growing] plants during the festival of Adonis.
[5]A person who recites epic poems, especially one of a group in ancient Greece whose profession it was to recite the Homeric poems (The Iliad and The Odyssey) from memory.
[6]Isocrates (436-338 B.C.E.) was an Athenian teacher and orator whose school was more famous in its day than Plato’s Academy.
