The Phaedrus consists of three parts. The first part is dominated by the Palinode in which Plato presents his theory of Forms, the second is devoted to his project of scientific rhetoric, and in the third he discusses the spoken word as the medium of philosophy in contrast to writing, which is seen as its illegitimate sibling that cannot mediate wisdom.
I shall argue that Plato wrote the first two parts
in 405 B.C., in the wake of the battle of Arginusae, the last victorious naval
battle of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war; the first he wrote in
response to Aristophanes’ Frogs, the second in response to the fear that
he and Socrates might be accused of introducing the Forms as new deities. The
third part he wrote in the closing part of 405 and in the early 404, after the
disastrous battle of Aegospotami, when the aristocratic revolution was on the
cards, and the Phaedrus was seen by many as a detriment for the
political career on which Plato wanted and expected to enter.
Finally, I shall point out that the Charmides was written in 404, after the Thirty took power; I shall argue that this little dialogue is linked to the Phaedrus and sheds light on it.
But I must begin with a discussion of
the commonly accepted late dating of the Phaedrus.
I.
According to the ancient tradition,
recorded by Diogenes Laertius, the Phaedrus was Plato’s first dialogue.
Modern Platonic studies began with the rejection of this dating by Tennemann,
inspired by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. For Kant believed that he
discovered the truth, and that the only thing remaining for professional
philosophers was to discover the history of Pure Reason, that is the history of
thought that led to his discovery. Tennemann undertook this task, which he
began to pursue with his System der platonischen Philosophie, published
in 1792. With the theory of Forms in the Phaedrus Plato comes the
nearest to Kant’s a priori concepts. In Tennemann’s view, Plato must
have progressed towards the Phaedrus through a chain of dialogues, just
as the subsequent history of philosophy progressed towards Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason.
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century Schleiermacher dismissed Tennemann’s dating of the Phaedrus:
‘Surely everybody who understands the matter and who has the corresponding
personal experience will agree that true philosophy does not start with
separate special points but with anticipation at least of the whole … The
beginnings of almost all Plato’s philosophy are undeniably found in the Phaedrus,
but its undeveloped state can be seen there as well.’
This insight is valuable; the problem
lies in Schleiermacher’s ‘philosophic system of Plato’. He divided Plato’s work
into three periods. The first contained the Phaedrus, Protagoras,
and Parmenides, which laid down the first principles of Plato’s
philosophy. In the second period these principles were applied to ethics and
physics. Here belonged the Theaetetus, Sophist, Politicus, Phaedo, and Philebus.
The last, so called constructive period, was dominated by the Republic,
and contained Timaeus and Critias. Schleiermacher maintained:
‘The necessity of giving the last place to the constructive dialogues is so
great from all points of view that if dependable historical testimonies were
found which would prove that the Republic was written earlier than any
of the preparatory works, we would stand in the most vexing conflict with our
judgment about Plato and we would be thrown into the greatest perplexity of how
to make such a want of reason compatible with his great intellect.’ Let me
note: stylometric investigations proved that the Sophist, Politicus,
and Philebus were written after the Republic. (See G.R. Ledger, Re-counting
Plato, A Computer Analysis of Plato’s Style, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1989; L.
Brandwood, The Chronology of Plato’s Dialogues, Cambridge University
Press 1990; J. Tomin, The Lost Plato, Ch. 3, ‘Stylometric arguments for
and against the late dating of the Phaedrus’, published on my website in
the early 1990s.)
But that’s precisely what happened. In
1822 was published Cicero’s De re publica, discovered in the Vatican
Library by its prefect, Cardinal Angelo Mai, in 1820. Cicero says in its first
book that Socrates discarded the study of nature, and so did Plato as long as
Socrates lived. After Socrates’ death Plato devoted himself to it under the
influence of the Pythagoreans, whom he joined on his journey to Italy and
Sicily. In his dialogues he then attributed to Socrates his own thoughts on the
subject, ‘as he loved Socrates with singular affection and wished to give him
credit for everything’ (cum Socratem unice dilexisset eique omnia tribuere
voluisset, I. 16). De re publica ends with ‘Scipio’s dream’, in
which Plato presents cosmological speculations from the Timaeus. The
‘Dream’ ends with Cicero’s translation of the proofs of the immortality of soul
from the Phaedrus and the Phaedo. Cicero does not mention Plato
in connection with any of it. In his view it all went back to the Pythagoreans,
and thus to Italy and Sicily.
In
the Orator, written a few years after De re publica, Cicero says
that Plato wrote the Phaedrus when Isocrates was senior and Plato
his aequalis (42). As Stallbaum pointed out, the Romans called seniores
men between forty-five and sixty years of age. But after
the Orator Cicero changed his mind concerning the dating of the Phaedrus.
In the Tusculan Disputations he reproduces his translation of the proofs
of immortality from De re publica i.53,54), retrospectively acknowledges
Plato’s authorship, and insists that those views were Plato’s own (i.39,49);
Plato derived them from the Delphic ‘Know thyself’ (Nosce te), understood
as ‘Know thy soul’ (Nosce animum tuum) (i.52,53). He says that
‘influenced by these and similar reasons Socrates sought out no advocate when
on trial for his life, and did not humbly entreat his judges’ (His et
talibus rationibus adductus Socrates nec patronum quaesivit ad iudicium capitis
nec iudicibus supplex fuit, i.71). This suggests that Cicero received
information that Plato conceived his proofs of the immortality of soul during
Socrates’ lifetime; his Letters to Atticus provide a clue concerning its
source.
In the end
of 46 B.C., in the intercalary month, Cicero wrote to Atticus, an authority on
Greek and Roman antiquities, that he greatly appreciated his finding time to
read the Orator (Letters to Atticus XII, 6a). From
Cicero’s letter of May 28, 45 B.C. we learn that Atticus suggested to him that
he ought to read Dicaearchus’ books. Cicero welcomed the suggestion and asked
Atticus to send him the books. In his letter of May 29 he wrote “Please send me
Dicaearchus’ two books About the Soul (Dicaearchi peri psuchȇs
utrosque velim mittas) and in a letter of June 3 he acknowledged accepting
the books (Letters to Atticus XIII, 31-33). In the Tusculan
Disputations, written in 45 B.C., Cicero refers to Dicaearchus repeatedly,
invoking Plato and Socrates against his view that ‘the soul is nothing at all’
(i.24), for ‘Dicaearchus argued most incisively against this immortality’ (acerrime
Dicaearchus contra hanc immortalitatem disseruit, i.77).
Now we can turn to Diogenes on the
dating of the Phaedrus: logos de prȏton grapsai auton ton Phaidronˑ kai
gar echein meirakiȏdes ti to problȇma. Dikaiarchos de kai ton tropon tȇs
graphȇs holon epimemphetai hȏs phortikon (III.38). This statement falls
into three parts. Hicks translates the first two parts: ‘There is a story that
the Phaedrus was his first dialogue. For the subject has about it
something of the freshness of youth.’ In his translation, the first part is
based on the second part. As early as 1792 the element of ‘youthfulness’ was
identified by Tennemann with the theme of love. Diogenes’ source was dismissed
as a pedant who could not envisage Plato writing on love with passion in his
later years.
Arguing against this view, I shall
begin by focussing attention on the connective kai gar. It can
occasionally have the force of the causal ‘for’, but it usually introduces a
clause that merely corroborates what was said before. For example, in Apology
34d3-5 Socrates addresses an imaginary critic: ‘My friend, I have a family, and
indeed (kai gar), as Homer says, I am not “of a tree or of a rock”, I am
a man.’ The connective kai gar introduces the quotation from Homer to
give a special touch to Socrates’ ‘I am a man’, but Socrates’ ‘I am a man’ does
not depend on the quotation from Homer.
In
order to decide which is the function of kai gar in the given case, we
must enquire into the meaning of meirakiȏdes ti (‘something juvenile’) in
the ancient references to the dialogue. Hermias says in his commentary on the Phaedrus
that Plato’s critics maintained that Plato in the dialogue argued for and
against love ‘like a juvenile’ (hȏsper meirakion), and contended against
the speech of Lysias as a ‘contentious youngster’ (philoneikou neou, Hermias
9). The ancients did not see the theme of love as a streak of juvenility, but
the contentious manner in which Plato presented it, and in which he argued
against Lysias. Hermias’ testimony is supported by Themistius who in Oration
xxvi addressed philosophy with the words ‘and you were not afraid that
someone might accuse you of ‘juvenile behaviour’ (meirakieuesthai) when
you contended against Lysias’.
ANow
we can turn to Dicaearchus’ censure. The word that Dicaearchus used in
criticising the dialogue is phortikon. In the Phaedrus this term
signifies contentious ridiculing of one another ‘as the comic writers do’ (to
tȏn kȏmȏidȏn phortikon, 236c). In Hermias the link between meirakiȏdes
ti and phortikon is obvious: The ancient critics alleged that ‘like
a juvenile’ (hȏsper meirakion) Plato exposed Lysias ‘to comic ridicule’
(kȏmȏidountos ton rȇtora, Hermias 9). The collocation of particles de
kai that links Dicaearchus’ criticism to the preceding statements
concerning its dating and character is not adversative (‘however’) but
assentient and progressive: ‘moreover’, ‘in addition’, ‘and what is more’.
Previous critics censured merely the contentious manner, in which Plato
attacked Lysias and argued for and against love; Dicaearchus extended this
censure to the dialogue in its entirety. Dicaearchus’ testimony is valuable,
for he was a distinguished disciple of Aristotle, and he wrote a Life of
Plato.
The reference to Dicaearchus,
preserved in Diogenes, was made after he published the books in which he
criticised the Phaedrus. But the ancient tradition concerning the dating
of the Phaedrus, reflected in the attribute of juvenility, goes back to
the time of Plato. Xenophon says that ‘Charicles and Critias, intrusted by the
Thirty with drafting laws, inserted a clause that made it illegal to teach ‘the
art of speaking’ (logȏn technȇn), i.e. the rhetoric,
Memorabilia I.ii.31)’. (The second part of the Phaedrus is
devoted to the project of scientific rhetoric, which as such can be taught).
Then they sent for Socrates, showed him the law, and forbade him to hold
conversations with the young. Socrates asked them to fix the age limit below
which a man is to be accounted to be young. “So long,” replied Charicles, “as
he is not permitted to sit in the Council, because as yet he lacks wisdom. You
shall not converse with anyone who is under thirty.” The Thirty thus forbade
Socrates to speak with Plato, who was in his early
twenties. (Xenophon maintains that he never heard Socrates teaching rhetoric,
nor knew of anyone who professed to have heard him do so (Memorabilia loc.
cit.). Xenophon could have referred to the Phaedrus as a testimony,
for Socrates says there: ‘I don’t think I share in any science of speaking’ (ou
gar pou egȏge technȇs tinos tou legein metochos, 262d5-6). Socrates’ denial
did not preclude the Thirty to attribute the teaching of rhetoric to Socrates.
The incident hurt Plato. In the Lysis,
written after the restoration of democracy, in 403, Socrates enumerates the
things Lysis would like to do, but is forbidden because of his youth – he can
visit a newly opened Palaistra, but only under the guardianship of a paidagȏgos,
a well trusted slave appointed by the boy’s parents for that role. Then he
points to all things his parents enjoy him doing, like reading, and playing a
musical instrument. When the boy acknowledges that he is not allowed to do
things he does not know how to do, Socrates gets to the point: ‘So your father
is not waiting for you to come of age to trust everything to you, but on the
day he considers that you know better than himself, he’ll trust both himself
and his property to you … What about the Athenians? Do you think they’ll trust
you with their affairs, as soon as they realise that you know enough?’ – Lysis
replies: ‘I do.’ (209c,d).
In the Republic Plato turned
the tables on the Thirty: ‘If the guardian (ho
phylaks) shall strive for a kind of happiness that will unmake him as a
guardian and shall not be content with the way of life that is moderate and
secure and, as we affirm, the best, but if some senseless and “juvenile opinion”
(meirakiȏdȇs doxa) about happiness shall
beset him and impel him to use his power to appropriate everything in the city
for himself, then he will find out that Hesiod was indeed wise, who said that
the half was in some sort more than the whole’ (466b5-c3). This passage in
Plato’s Republic should be read against the background of Xenophon’s Hellenica
II.iii.15-56, from which I quote:
‘In the beginning Critias and
Theramenes were agreed in their policy and friendly; but when Critias showed
himself eager to put many to death … Theramenes opposed him, saying that it was
not reasonable to put a man to death because he was honoured by the commons,
provided he was doing no harm to the aristocrats (kalous k’agathous) …
Then Critias (for he still treated Theramenes as a friend) replied that it was
impossible for people who wanted to gain power [tois pleonektein
boulomenois ‘for people who wanted to have more’] not to put out of
the way those who were best able to thwart them.’ (Hel. II.iii.15-16,
tr. Brownson, op.cit,)
In the Phaedrus, the Forms are
divine essentially, ‘god derives his divinity from his closeness to the Forms’
(pros hoisper theos ȏn theios esti, 249c6). Written in 405 B.C., the Phaedrus
was protected by the amnesty issued by the democrats after their victory over
the Thirty (in 403). Accused of introducing new divinities (in 399), Socrates
expected to be accused of the views ‘he’ expressed in the Phaedrus.
Counting on the widespread characterisation of the Phaedrus as something
juvenile (meirakiȏdes ti), he said in his defence: ‘It would not be
fitting for one of my age, O men, to come before you “like a juvenile” (hȏsper
meirakiȏi) making up speeches’ (Ap. 17c4-5).
II.
Aristophanes’ comedy, the Frogs,
is pivotal for my dating of the Phaedrus. It was staged about six months
after the naval victory of Arginusae, four months after the death of Euripides,
and two months after the death of Sophocles. Dionysus is journeying to the
world below to bring Euripides back to the Athenian stage. There, a contest
between Aeschylus and Euripides, who is the best poet in the art of tragedy, is
going to take place. Dionysus is invited to be the judge. A long contest is
taking place, Dionysus appears to be favouring Aeschylus, but in the end, he
can’t decide (1411-1413).
Pluto, the Lord of the underworld,
steps in: ‘Then you’ll effect nothing for which you came?’ – Dionysus: ‘And
how, if I decide?’ – Pluto: ‘Then take the winner. So will your journey not be
made in vain’. (1414-1416, tr. B.B. Rogers)
Thus spurred, Dionysus addresses the
two contestants: ‘Listen, I came down for a poet’. – Euripides: ‘To what end?’
– Dionysus: ‘That so the city, saved, may keep her choral games. Now then,
whichever of you two shall best advise the city, he shall come with me … Let
each in turn declare what plan of safety for the state you’ve got.’ Aeschylus says
the Athenians win ‘When they shall count the enemy’s soil their own, and theirs
the enemy’s: when they know that ships are their true wealth, their so-called
wealth delusion’ (1417-1465). In a nutshell, this is the counsel which was
given by Pericles at the commencement of the war (Thucydides I. 140-144; Rogers
ad loc.)’. Dionysus declares Aeschylus the winner.
Pluto invites Dionysus and Aeschylus
to entertain them before sending them away. The actors leave the stage, and the
Chorus enters it.
In
the strophe, the Chorus sings the praise of a
blessed man who has perfected his mind. Well disposed towards the City of
Athens, he is returning home for the good of the citizens, for the good of his
relatives and friends; for he is wise (1482-1490).
In the antistrophe, the Chorus finds
it delightful not to sit babbling next to Socrates any more – having thrown
away the art, and abandoned what is the greatest in it, the art of tragedy –
realising that the pursuit of solemn arguments, those petty quibbles, activity
in which nothing is done, befits a man who had lost his reason (1496-1499).
The strophe describes the man going to
save Athens, and the antistrophe presents this man as one of those around
Socrates. Whom among them could Aristophanes see as such a man, and hope that
the audience would applaud him? Only Plato.
Aristophanes reminds the audience of a
well-known incident from Plato’s life. ‘When he was about to compete for the
prize with a tragedy, he listened to Socrates in front of the theatre of
Dionysus – and consigned his poems to the flames. From that time onward, having
reached his twentieth year, he became a follower of Socrates (diȇkouse
Sȏkratous).’ (Diog. Laert. III,5-6).
The Frogs closes with the
Chorus imploring the powers below: ‘give the poet ascending to light good
journey, and good counsels of great benefit to the City,
‘So we at last shall be freed from the
anguish, the fear, and the woe,
Freed from the onsets of war. Let
Cleophon now and his band
Battle if battle they must, far away
in their own fatherland’
With these three lines the Frogs
end. (Tr. Rogers).
Let us imagine Plato in his early
twenties, how must he have felt, sitting there in the theatre. To see yourself
as the leader of the Athenian State in your imagination, and to be pointed at
as such in a packed theatre, the audience roaring with applause, is very
different.
But there was something wrong with
Aristophanes’ presentation. Throwing away his tragedies, Plato was not
abandoning art (mousikȇ), he was embracing it. For philosophy is the
greatest mousikȇ, to which he invites the reader in the first part of
the Phaedrus, in the Palinode:
‘The region above the heavens has
never yet been celebrated as it deserves by any earthly poet, nor will it ever
be … This region is occupied by being which really is, which is without colour
or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by
intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates.’ (247c3-d1).
The second part, devoted to rhetoric,
is dry in comparison. To keep it within the framework of mousikȇ, Plato
situates it in the midday heat of summer, marking it with a cicadas myth. Socrates says:
‘I think that the cicadas overhead don’t fail
to observe us. If they were to see us two behaving like ordinary folk at
midday, not conversing but dozing lazy-minded under their spell, they would very
properly have the laugh of us, taking us for a pair of slaves that had invaded
their retreat like sheep, to have their midday sleep beside the spring. If
however they see us conversing and steering clear of their bewitching
siren-song, they might feel respect for us and grant us that boon which the Muses
permit them to confer on mortals. To the eldest of the Muses, Calliope, and to
her next sister Urania, they tell of those who live a life of philosophy and so
do honour to the music of those twain whose theme is the heavens and all the
story of gods and men, and whose song is the noblest of them all.’ (Pl. Phdr.
258e-259d. Abridging the myth, I used Hackforth’s translation of the Phaedrus.)
The third part is very different. It
is introduced with the myth about two Egyptian gods, Theuth and Thamus. Theuth
invents writing and presents it to Thamus: “This study, O King, will make the
Egyptians wiser and improve their memory; what I have discovered is an elixir
of memory and wisdom.” Thamus replied: “Your invention will produce
forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned … through reliance on
writing they are reminded from outside by alien marks, not from inside,
themselves by themselves … To your students you give appearance of wisdom, not
the reality of it … they will appear to know much when for the most part they
know nothing.” (274c-275b, tr. C.J. Rowe)
If philosopher writes, he does so ‘for
amusement, laying up a store of reminders both for himself, if he reaches a
forgetful old age, and for anyone who is following in the same track’ (276d,
tr. Rowe).
If we want to understand the dialogue
in its diversity, we must take into account the historical circumstances in
which it was written. Aristophanes’ Frogs were produced during the
Lenaea – a Dionysiac festival celebrated on the 12th day of the
month Gamelion (Jan.-Feb.) – of the year 405 B.C. Since the Phaedrus was
written in response to it, this is the earliest date in which the first part of
the Phaedrus could have been written. Since the second part is devoted
to Plato’s project of rhetoric founded on philosophy – Socrates tells Phaedrus
that unless he studies philosophy sufficiently well, he will be never good in
rhetoric (261a) – and it was in democracy that rhetoric was the main tool of
politics, the second part of the Phaedrus must have been written as well
in 405 B.C., prior to the disastrous battle at Aegospotami that augured the end
of democracy.
With an anachronism, Plato indicated
the time he finished the dialogue. He chose for it a crucial moment in the
first part. In his first speech, after describing the lover’s harmful
attentions to the boy, Socrates was to narrate the benefits the non-lover would
bestow on the boy. Instead, he says to Phaedrus ‘Not a word more shall you have
from me; let that be the end of my discourse’ (241d1-3). As he was about to
leave, Phaedrus begged him to stay and discuss what was said. Socrates stopped:
‘Phaedrus, you’ve a superhuman capacity when it comes to speeches, you’re
simply amazing. Of the speeches which there have been during your lifetime, I
think, no one has brought more into existence than you … Simmias the Theban
is the one exception; the rest you beat by a long way.’ (242a7-b5, tr.
Rowe). At the time of the dramatic staging of the first part of the dialogue –
the Peace of Nicias, signed 421, abandoned 414 B.C. – Simmias was a little boy.
This we can infer from the Phaedo, where we find Simmias and Cebes,
Socrates’ interlocuters, referred to as youngsters (89a3).
Implicated in profaning
the Eleusinian mysteries, Phaedrus was in exile since 415 B.C.; this is the
latest possible dramatic date for the Phaedrus.
Simmias could not come during the war.
Eager to see Socrates as soon as it was possible, he presumably came to Athens
when ‘the Peloponnesians with great enthusiasm began to tear down the walls [of
Athens and of Piraeus] to the music of flute-girls, thinking that that day was
the beginning of freedom of Greece.’ (Xenophon, Hellenica II.ii.23, tr.
C.L. Brownson). The anachronism implies that Plato finished the Phaedrus
after he witnessed Simmias’ eager questioning of Socrates and everyone around
him.
That Simmias came to Athens as soon as
it became possible can be corroborated by the Charmides, for the Charmides,
as well as the Phaedrus must have been written before Critias exchanged
Theramenes at the helm of the Thirty ‘aristocrats’, who came down to history as
the Thirty Tyrants.
In its opening section, the Charmides
is reminiscent of the philosopher’s struggle in the Phaedrus to contain
his erotic infatuation. Socrates narrates: ‘Charmides came and sat between me
and Critias. Well, by then, my friend, I was in difficulties … when Critias
told him I was the man who knew of the remedy [Charmides complained to Critias
of his headaches], he gave me a look that is impossible to describe … That was the
moment, my noble friend, when I saw what was inside his cloak. I was on fire, I
lost my head, and I considered Cydias to be the wisest man in the matters of
love. When speaking of a handsome boy, he said, by way of advice to someone,
“Take care not to go as a fawn into the presence of a lion and be snatched as a
portion of meat.”. I felt I had been caught by such a creature. All the same,
when Charmides asked me whether I knew the remedy for his headaches, I somehow
managed to answer that I did. “What is it, then?” he asked. I replied that it
was a leaf, but that there was a charm that went with the remedy … without the
charm the remedy was of no use … I learned it when I was on an expedition with
the army from one of Thracian doctors, the ones who are said actually to be
able to give men immortality … He said that all things, both good and bad, in
the body and in the whole man, originated in the soul and spread from there …
One ought, then, to treat the soul first and foremost … He said that the soul
was treated with certain charms, my dear Charmides, and these charms were
beautiful words. As a result of such words self-control (sȏphrosunȇ)
came into being in souls.’ (155c4-157a6, tr. Donald Watt)
This section in the Charmides can
be seen as Plato’s retrospective glance at the Phaedran Palinode, but it
recalls especially the following passage in it: ‘At the beginning of our story
we divided each soul into three elements, and compared the two of them to
horses and the third to their charioteer. One of the horses is good and one not
… Now when the charioteer sees the vision of the loved one, so that a sensation
of warmth spreads from him over the whole soul and he begins to feel an itching
and the stings of desire, the obedient horse, constrained now as always by a
sense of shame, holds himself back from springing upon the beloved, but the
other, utterly heedless now of the driver’s whip and goad, rushes forward
prancing … At first the two indignantly resist the idea of being forced into
such a monstrous wrong-doing, but finally, when they get no peace, they … agree
to do what he bids and advance. So they draw near, and the vision of the
beloved dazzles their eyes. When the driver beholds it the sight awakens in him
the memory of absolute beauty; he sees her again enthroned in her holy place
attended by chastity (sȏphrosunȇ). At the thought he falls upon his back
in fear and awe, and in so doing inevitably tugs the reins so violently that he
brings both horses down upon their haunches …’ (Pl. Phdr. 253c7-254c2,
tr. Walter Hamilton)
At the end of the dialogue Socrates
bewails his inability to make a proper investigation; he did his best to
discover what sȏphrosunȇ (‘self-control’, ‘self-knowledge’, ‘chastity’
in Hamilton’s translation of the Phaedrus) was, and failed. But
Charmides waves Socrates’ ignorance aside – ‘I don’t really believe you at all’
– and expresses his wish to be instructed by Socrates. Critias not only
approves, he orders him to let himself be educated by Socrates. Charmides says:
‘I’d be behaving terribly if I didn’t obey you, my guardian, and didn’t do what
you tell me.’ – Critias: ‘I’m telling you.’ – Charmides: ‘Well then, I’ll do
it, starting today.’ (176b9-c3).
The lines with which this discussion
and the whole dialogue ends, are narrated by Socrates as follows (he narrates
the whole dialogue to his noble friend – ȏ hetaire ‘my friend’ 154b8, ȏ
gennada ‘my noble friend’ 155d3):
‘What are you two plotting to do?’ I
asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Charmides. ‘We’ve done
our plotting.’
‘Are you going to resort to the use of
force, without even giving me a preliminary hearing in court?’ I asked.
***
These words of Socrates allow us to
determine the time in which the Charmides was written. Xenophon writes
in Hellenica II.iii.11-12: ‘At Athens the Thirty had been chosen as soon
as the long walls and the walls round Piraeus were demolished … as a first
step, they arrested and brought to trial for their lives those persons who, by
common knowledge, had made a living in the time of democracy by acting as
informers and had been offensive to the aristocrats (tois kalois k’agathois);
and the Senate was glad to pronounce these people guilty, and the rest of the
citizens – at least all who were conscious that they were not of the same sort
themselves – were not at all displeased.’ (Translation C.L. Brownson)
***
‘I shall use force,’ Charmides
replied, ‘since Critias here orders me to – which is why you should plot what
you’ll do.’
‘But there’s no time left for
plotting,’ I said. ‘Once you’re intent on doing something and are resorting to
the use of force, no man alive will be able to resist you.’
‘Well then,’ he said, ‘don’t resist me
either.’
‘Then I won’t resist you’,’ I said.
(Translation Donald Watt).
Plato must have written and published
these lines before the Thirty summoned Socrates and four others to the Round
Chamber, ordering them to go and fetch Leon of Salamis for execution. Socrates
says in the Apology that the other four went off to Salamis and arrested
Leon, but he went home (32c4-d7).
Plato narrates the incident at great
length in his Seventh letter, referring to it as the reason for his
disgust with the Thirty and his turning away from the evils of those days (SL
325a4-5). He returns to it when he speaks of the democrats, who ‘condemned and
executed the very man who would not participate in the iniquitous arrest of one
of the friends of the party then in exile’ (SL 325c2-5).
Beginning to write the Phaedrus
in 405 B.C., after Aristophanes staged his Frogs, and ending it in 404
B.C., before he conceived the Charmides, Plato wrote and published it
during the most difficult months in the life of Athens. This explains its
bewildering complexity and contradictions.
The first part is written in the
aftermath of the victorious naval battle of Arginusae. Entertaining the reader
with its peaceful atmosphere, Plato appeals to the Athenians: accept the
peaceful offer extended to us by Sparta.
The second part, devoted to rhetoric,
which was the main tool of politics, was written before the defeat and
destruction of the Athenian fleet as well, but only after the readers could
read, appreciate and judge the first part. For Socrates diminishes in it the
significance of the two speeches, which he had delivered in the first part. He
maintains that they were playfully done just for amusement (paidiai
pepaisthai, 265c8-9), and that the only thing worthy of serious attention
are the two principles of dialectic, which they exemplify. On closer look, the
two speeches do not exemplify the two dialectic principles, which Socrates
ascribes to them; Plato retrospectively denigrated the Palinode with religious
fanatics in mind.
The third part with its uncompromising
denunciation of writing was written after the disastrous battle of Aegospotami,
during the months of siege. With the prospect of an aristocratic revolution in
the air, the Phaedrus could harm Plato’s political ambitions. The first
two parts having been published, the best thing he could do was to denigrate
them as ‘writing’. From the Seventh Letter we can deduce that he wrote
the Phaedrus at the time in which he was most eager to enter politics (SL
324b8-325b1).
***
If we read the third part attentively,
we find that the dismissal of writing is directed only against the second part
of the dialogue. For after elaborating on the myth of the invention of writing
Socrates says: ‘Then now we can decide those issues, when we have agreed on
these.’ – Phaedrus asks: ‘What issues?’ – Socrates replies: ‘The ones we wanted
to look into, which brought us to this: how we were to investigate and
scrutinize the reproach aimed at Lysias about the writing of speeches, and
speeches themselves, which would be written scientifically (technȇi) and
which not (kai aneu technȇs).’ (277a6-b2)
Phaedrus spoke about the reproach
aimed at Lysias just after Socrates ended the Palinode: ‘For sometimes now I
have been amazed at how much finer you managed to make your speech than the one
before; so that I am afraid Lysias will appear wretched to me in comparison, if
he really does consent to put another in competition with it. Indeed, my fine
fellow, just recently one of the politicians was abusing him with this very
charge, and throughout all his abuse kept calling him a “speech writer”; so
perhaps we shall find him refraining from writing out of concern for his
reputation.’ (257c1-7, tr. Rowe)
With these words Phaedrus looks back
on the Palinode as Socrates’ spoken word, characterized in the third part as
the living word of philosophy, and opens the second part, devoted to rhetoric,
which is in the third part dubbed as writing, and dismissed as such. In the
third part, the prominence of the Palinode is re-ascertained.
***
I will end with the Charmides;
its closing section gives a dramatic expression to the hopes with which Plato welcomed
the revolution that followed the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war. He
welcomed Critias as the leading man among the Thirty, but only if Critias
involved Socrates in the sphere of education. For Plato, in that time, a truly
aristocratic State in Athens was unthinkable without Socrates.
When Charmides says to Socrates “I
really do think I need the charm; and as far as I’m concerned, there’s no
reason why I shouldn’t be charmed by you every day, until you say I’ve had
enough” Critias steps in: “Charmides, by doing that, you’ll prove to me that
you are self-controlled (hoti sȏphroneis, 176b6), if you turn yourself
to Socrates for charming, and don’t disappoint him in anything either great or
small.” Charmides: “Rest assured that I will follow him and won’t disappoint
him. I’d be behaving terribly if I didn’t obey you, my guardian, and didn’t do
what you tell me.’ – Critias: ‘I’m telling you.’ – Charmides: ‘Well then, I’ll
do it, starting today.’ (176b9-c3).
And as for Socrates, he was to accept
the supreme authority of Critias and the Thirty, in exchange for the full
authority in the sphere of education.
If we are to appreciate the daring
with which Plato devised this political scheme, we must read the Charmides
against the background of the following story, which Xenophon gives in his Memorabilia:
‘When Socrates found that Critias
loved Euthydemus (erȏnta Euthudȇmou, “desired Euthydemus”) and attempted
to have intercourse with him like those who enjoy bodies in love-making, he
tried to turn him away from it, saying that it was unworthy of a free man, a
man wanting to be the best (andri kalȏi k’agathȏi), to sue like a beggar
to his loved one, whose good opinion he coveted, stooping to ask a favour that
it was wrong to grant. As Critias paid no heed whatever to it, Socrates
exclaimed in the presence of Euthydemus and many others: ”Critias seems to have
the feelings of a pig, he desires to rub against Euthydemus as pigs rub against
stones.” Critias hated Socrates for this, and when he became a legislator of
the Thirty, he remembered it, and inserted a clause which made it illegal ‘to
teach the art of words’ (logȏn technȇn mȇ didaskein), thus despitefully
threatening Socrates, whom he saw no means of attacking, except by imputing to
him the practice constantly attributed to philosophers by ‘the many’, and thus
denigrate him in their eyes.’ (I.ii.29-31)
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