The Middle Speech of Plato's Phaedrus

Malcolm Brown, James Coulter

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 9, Number 4, October 1971,

pp. 405-423 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.1134

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/229231/summary

Access provided at 5 Jan 2020 09:03 GMT from Western Sydney University
 The Middle Speech
of Plato's Phaedrus
MALCOLM BROWN
JAMES COULTER

IN THE PRESENT PAPER we offer a contribution to the solution of two problems in

the interpretation of the Phaedrus? The first is the question of how we are to
"read" the middle speech. Is it, as some have suggested, 2 a generally well inten-
tioned half-way stage on the way to Plato's own position as expressed in the Great
Speech? Or should we rather conclude, as others have done, 3 that the speech is
faulty in every vital respect, and that it is repudiated by Plato in toto? T h e thesis
of the middle speech, that the nonlover is to be preferred to the lover, is clearly
rejected. But, are there nonetheless benignly placed anticipations of the full truth
to come? The second problem is the much debated one about the unity of the
Phaedrus. W e deal with this in only a general way, although we believe our inter-
pretation of the middle speech implies a clear answer to at least one part of the
problem, i.e., "is there an inherent connection between the two themes of the
dialogue, eros and rhetoric?" The question about how to interpret the middle
speech is the central one of the paper and has been treated in far greater detail.
Our main argument aims at the conclusion that in the middle speech Plato is
sketching a certain type of rhetorical sophist whose philosophy (or more accurately
"philodoxy") is totally unPlatonic. We go a step further when we venture to
identify the mentality represented with that of Isocrates. Whether or not the
stronger thesis is true, the thought of Isocrates, representing as it does at least the
type of rhetorical sophistic culture we have in mind, can be used as a touchstone
of that culture in the study of the middle speech.

1 The "we" of this paper is not an editorial fiction. The two authors have written the
piece in close cooperation and neither of us disclaims responsibility for any part of it or
for its organization as a whole. Nonetheless it is true that Brown is principally responsible
for the writing of the first half, Coulter the second.
2 E.g. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge, 1952), p. 40, who goes so far as to see
in the middle speech "a glimpse of the erastes par excellence, Socrates himself." Hackforth
is anticipated, at least in the general view that the middle speech is congenial to Platonism,
by Hermias (In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, ed. P. Couvreur [Paris, 1901], 50, 2-14).
3 The notable example of this is P. Friedl~inder, Plato III (Princeton, 1969), pp. 222-226.

[4051
406 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

Let us first review the speech to bring out some of its more obvious features.
It is delivered by a dissembling lover, in blame of love. Before the speaker gets to
the blame, he executes a definition of his subject. Moreover he insists upon the
general point that such 'theoretical preambles' ought to introduce any properly
constructed speech. The definition itself is formed on a strained etymology linking
the word eros to rhome, or force, and implies that love can only be of bodies and
pleasure from them (238C). The speaker supports the definition with an argu-
ment about the human soul: it has two parts, and two only, namely epithymia and
doxa. In the well ordered soul, doxa is in the lead position.
The preliminaries methodically taken care of, the speaker proceeds to the
substance of the attack on love. He premises it on the assumption that love can be
judged only in terms of utility, pleasure, and the trust which ioins the lovers. The
form of the attack is as follows: (1) when somatic love is measured against the
standard of utility (subdivided into psychic, somatic and financial), it is found
positively harmful, (2) it fares no better when measured against the pleasure
standard, and (3) lovers are untrustworthy: they are unlikely to remain in love. The
speaker's emphasis falls on love's effects on the soul and its education, especially
what he calls its 'philosophical' education. The injury love does to 'divine philos-
ophy' is cited in the first part of the attack; in the summing up at the end it is "the
soul's education" that tops the list of goods jeopardized by love. Education is the
holiest and most honored thing either among men or gods, either now or ever, he
says.
The speech as a whole occupies a middle position between those of Lysias
and Plato conceptually as well as in the structure of the dialogue. There is a
semblance of Plato's concern for virtue and education, and also a semblance of
Plato's method of definition. It is a middle conceptually, then, because it is like
Lysias' speech in its conception of love, but unlike it in method, whereas it is
like Plato's in method, but unlike it in the conception of love.
Who is the speaker, or what is his mentality? Let us hypothesize, on the basis
of this review of the speech, an educator whose medium is rhetoric, and whose
"philosophy" is really a "philodoxy" in sheep's clothing--a fact suggested by his
two-part psychology headed by doxa, his distorted ('demotic') conception of the
virtues (as will become clear in the sequel), and a sharp eye for utility or pleasure
conjoined with a blindness to Ideal Beauty. We may note a correspondingly
debased conception of education, and of love. More specifically we hypothesize an
educator whose technique of speech-making places him in a middle position
between the merely rhetorical style of the mindless phrase-turner Lysias and the
purely philosophical rhetoric of Plato. Could it be the same one to whom Socrates
is to bear the message about rhetoric which Phaedrus is later instructed to bear to
Lysias (cf. 278E), the educator Isocrates?
A caveat is in order. We do not mean to say that Plato aims at Isocrates as a
person only, but always at least as a representative of a species of rhetorical-
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 407

sophistic culture. Nonetheless it is worthwhile to distinguish a weaker and a stronger

version of our thesis, and to argue them in series. The weaker says only that the
doctrines and method of the middle speech characterize a mentality that fits
Isocrates quite accurately, even if it may also fit others as well; thus it implies that
Isocrates must be included, and included as a leading representative, in any group
Plato is sketching in the middle speech. The stronger form says that, just as in the
epilogue to the Euthydemus (306A-C, where Isocrates is almost certainly the one
ridiculed), 4 so in the Phaedrus Plato's sketch aims at Isocrates himself. Plato's
criticism conceives of Isocrates as somehow in the middle position between rhetoric
and philosophy, a position in which the anonymous figure comes off worse than
either extreme in trying to combine both activities into one. From the philosopher's
point of view the 'bit of philosophy' incorporated into the speech in the middle is
worse than none at all; by refusing to subordinate persuasion to truth, the middle
speaker compromises his philosophy hopelessly. From the point of view of purely
rhetorical effect on the other h a n d - - a point of view Socrates expresses willingness
to take as he reviews Lysias' speech (235A)--again the middle position is inferior.
The charm of wordings and phrasings must not be compromised just to save the
truth or to satisfy the demand for method, says the mere rhetorician.

II

We proceed to support the first of our theses on the basis of a detailed study
of the speech, its method and its thought. The thesis is that the particulars of the
speech fit together into a pattern congruent to the mind of Isocrates, even if not to
the exclusion of all others. The speech begins with what may be called a theoretical
preamble (237C-238C). Now the idea of having such a preamble, in which a defini-
tion is offered, either of the topic to be discussed or of the method, is surely a
worthy idea in Plato's eyes. In Phaedrus itself Socrates asks if he had (in his
raving) remembered to define love first (263C). Many of the other dialogues attest,
albeit indirectly, to this. For want of a leading definition, discussions of rhetoric or
virtue or love are seen to go astray. The speaker here in Phaedrus puts the point so
forcefully, in fact, that Sextus Empiricus picks it up, with only a slight change, as
a formula for clarifying one of Democritus' three "criteria of genuine knowledge."
"Concerning everything, son," Sextus has Democritus say, "the one principal
thing is to know what the inquiry is about" (Adv. Math. V I I , 140). A recent critic
has emphasized the principle of definition for a different reason. K. Ries 5 takes the

Rosamond Sprague (Euthydemus [Library of Liberal Arts, 1965], p. 63) notes but does
not concur in Bluck's skepticism about identifying the anonymous target here with Isocrates.
We concur in the principle that one ought not find Isocrates (or Antisthenes) under every
Platonic stone. But this does not prevent their being found under some. There are definite
and further reasons, adduced by Coulter ("Phaedrus 279A: The Praise of Isocrates," Greek,
Roman and Byzantine Studies, 8 [1967], pp. 230-232) for discovering Isocrates in the
Euthydemus passage, and these are not unconnected with the Phaedrus.
Klaus Ries, lsokrates und Platon im Ringen um die Philosophie (Diss., Munich, 1959),
p. 114.
408 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

speaker's rule as an expression of Plato's own fundamental requirement for rhetoric

to become philosophical.
But not just any theory can be advanced in this lead position. To satisfy the
full-fledged Platonic requirement, it has to be the true theory. Thus it is perfectly
possible for someone Plato represents to be half-right in this matter: rightly seeing
the need for a definition, but failing to see the right definition. Indeed there is an
important example of just such a success in principle which turns into a failure in
execution. Plato represents Agathon in such a "middle" position between mere
rhetoric and ultimate philosophical truth in his speech in the Symposium. Not
surprisingly in the case of a fellow descendant of Gorgias, many congruences in
points of detail can be listed between Agathon's speech and the one we judge to
be Isocratean. In the first place the topic of both is Eros. Secondly, each speaker
attends first to the matter of defining his topic. 6 Thirdly, the speaker calls atten-
tion to the special value of such preambles, and claims superiority over rival
speakers on this point of method. Fourthly, the speech itself, while it exhibits
much refinement of diction (including a play on eros-rhome), treats its subject
shallowly, being restricted by the shallow theory of love which it is premised on.
Fifthly, Plato treats the achievement of the speech ironically. He has Socrates
praise the worthy aim of putting theory first, but then condemn the faulty execu-
tion: the theory is false. Sixthly, Plato then proceeds to exhibit the (Platonic) truth
of the matter, to complete the refutation of the speech.
Now in Isocrates' own speeches one frequently finds him driving home this
very point of method. He boasts at the beginning of the Helen that his speech
will be superior to that of his rival (presumably Gorgias) in that he will define
correctly the natures of encomia and apologiai, and avoid confusing the genres. He
uses this requirement as a weapon of sarcasm when he makes the same point at the
beginning of the Busiris. In the To Nicocles the parallel to the middle speech of
Phaedrus is still closer: 7 Isocrates tells his young (royal) disciple that before dis-
coursing on how to rule, he must first define 'kingcraft'.
What details of the Phaedrus speech show that its effort at definition is an
unsuccessful one? Love is defined as that sort of irrational desire for enjoyment of
beauty which characterizes a soul newly taken over by desire. The usurper is
reinforced and made wanton by other comparable physical appetites. Hackforth
has noted that the definition leaves an ambiguity about the s u m m u m genus: is the
genus of love desire or wantonness? If it is desire, then the speaker mislocates love
when he finds it within wantonness, which is not part of desire, but rather a special
state resulting from its rule. If it is wantonness, then the speaker has taken for

Buchheit (Untersuchungen zur Theorie des Gents Epideiktikon [Munich, 1960],

pp. 54-64; 38-40) shows that theoretical preambles were important in Gorgias himself; thus
the trait is present in the Father. Gorgias defines his genre, however, not his subject of praise.
Isocrates does the same in his early speeches (Helen, Busiris), but in a probably later one
(To Nicocles) he is Socratic in that he defines the topic instead.
r R. L. Howland, "The Attack on Isocrates in the Phaedrus," CQ, XXI (1937), pp. 151-
159, finds two references to the To Nicocles in the Phaedrus. We will have reason to return
to this "handbook for rulers," to show the importance of its political content as well as its
rhetorical form in relation to Phaedrus.
 P L A T O ' S PHAEDRUS 409

summum genus what is plainly only an inferior one. From Plato's criticisms later
in the dialogue one can draw other objections to the definition. What of the
speaker's assumption that beauty provokes only wantonness and unrestraint? On
the contrary, in the Great Speech, when the soul's charioteer is reminded of
to kalon, he is restrained from bodily excesses (254B). Nor is beauty exclusively,
or even primarily, bodily, as the speaker assumes. In sum, the speaker takes left-
handed love for the whole, failing as he does to discriminate love's two sides, s
It has already been pointed out that the technique of theoretical preambles
exhibited here has parallels in Isocrates' speechwriting. The parallel between the
middle speech and the To Nicocles extends further, however, than just to this
formal similarity. The subject Isocrates is defining there is kingcraft, and the con-
tent of his definition would be bound to have struck Plato as perverse. /socrates
defines it as "on the one hand minimizing public misfortunes, on the other hand
maximizing public fortunes, and in general making a lot out of a little" (To
Nicocles, 9). In the companion piece composed some few years later, Isocrates
represents his young king boasting of his own kingly justice in that he avoided
exiling or killing anyone, but nonetheless built up the royal treasury (Nicocles, 32).
One is reminded of the defense Isocrates offers, out of the mouth of this same king,
of the concept of "pleonexia with virtue" (Nicocles, 2); Isocrates is defending this
against those who attack rhetoric for its service of pleonexia and who assume that
there could be no such thing as combining it with virtue. This concept of kingly
virtue, in other words, is squarely opposed to Plato's depreciation of pleonexia, in
Gorgias as a vice of individuals, in Republic (423) as a vice of states.
Thus the doctrinal faults in the speaker's definition, from Plato's point of view,
add to the errors of technique. But they also lead into doctrinal defects at a deeper
level. The definition is supported with an argument, which is built on the premise
that the human soul has two parts and two only: epithymia and doxa. Thus what
the speaker represents as the ruling element in the soul is on a level with what,
on Plato's account (Rep. 439E ff.), can at best follow reason's rule. The rational
element, Plato's logistikon, is conspicuously absent here. From a Platonic point
of view, then, this must count as a truncated psychology. But it is precisely the
one to be found in Isocrates everywhere. It is expressed and applied to the question
here at issue, namely the 'rule' of one or another element within the soul, at
To Nicocles, 29, when Isocrates advises his prince that the "most kingly" value
is that sort of control over appetites which will make him "seem to others to be
better." As against the value of storing up a material estate, such a "fair reputa-

s As confirmation, we may note that the style mirrors these faults of theory. Plato
expresses scorn for the resulting definition by the disparity he contrives between the earnest-
ness of the method itself and the frivolous net result of it. It all ends up in an etymology of
a most fanciful sort: eros is derived from rhome (cf. Helen, 55). The defining formula is also
introduced by a banal remark. The speaker contrives a balanced antithesis for his sentence,
but only at the cost of having to compare, in point of clarity, what is said with what is not
said. Hackforth follows Burner's text here, which rejects the readings of B and T, and thus
removes the foolishness of the antithesis. On our interpretation, the foolishness present in
the best MSS has its point. Our speaker has put in some "padding" to fill out his antithesis.
Isocrates' habit of doing this was noted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De Dernosthene
[Usener-Radermacher, I.], p. 168).
410 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

tion" (doxa kale) is immortal (32). Nor was Isocrates unaware of the anti-Platonic
tendency of this exaltation of doxa: in Against the Sophists 2-8 he rejects
episteme in favor of doxa in a passage quite clearly aimed, if not aimed solely, at
Plato. 9 Isocrates never tired of pressing the anti-Platonic consequences for m o r a l - -
or as he preferred to call it, "philosophical"---education. If accurate knowledge of
a Platonic sort were at all possible, it would still be irrelevant to the matter of
training the young for public life.
A strictly correlated and equally radical philosophical disagreement between
Isocrates and Plato comes now to the surface: correlated to "accurate knowledge"
in Plato is the grade of "real Being" (to on ont6s). On this too Isocrates takes a
position; in Antidosis 268 he reviews a series of speculations on the number and
nature of real Beings. He runs the gamut from Anaxagoras' infinite multiplicity
down through pluralist doctrines of different types, terminating in the Parmenidean
One and Gorgianic None. Isocrates' view is that there may be as many as infinitely
many, or as few as none, without the "philosophical" educator's having to make
any allowances whatever. He shrugs off such "dialectical" questions as nonchalant-
ly as Protagoras did before him. H. I. Marrou captures the anti-Platonic spirit in
this philosophy accurately in his paraphrase of To Nicocles 41:

There is no point in attempting to mount into the heaven of Ideas or in playing about
with paradoxes: for the purpose of living properly what we need is not new and
surprising ideas but established good sense, traditional wisdom. (A History o/ Educa-
tion in Antiquity, p. 133.)

Let us return to the middle speech, beating in mind this deeper level of
philosophical doctrine, the ontology underlying the psychology. Are there any
signs of the speaker's position? Indeed there are: the speaker uses the word ousia
and another word precious to Plato, philosophia, in such a way as to reflect a
similar "philodoxy" in matters ontological. The words have unmistakable Platonic
overtones, but Plato has his speaker use them to quite unPlatonic purposes. Most
notably this is the case with the term ousia, which is used in two quite disjoint
senses. At first the being in question is quite Platonic: one must define the ousia
of his topic first, the speaker says. But the congruence with Plato is only
momentary. The speaker's critique of love includes the point that it jeopardizes the
beloved's ousia, i.e. his material possessions! (240A) He drums on this point,
always using the favorite Platonic word to refer perversely to the unPlatonic
substance (240A2, 240A5, 241C3). Now this speaker is not the first to mention
ousia. Lysias' speech uses it (232C7), but in such a way as to refer to worldly
substance only: lovers will be jealous of and vicious toward 'men of substance',
since these can trade on it to buy the affections of the beloved. But both of the
earlier speeches of the dialogue are dealing in relatively insubstantial substances,
as the platonizing Socrates is soon to reveal. The term ousia echoes again xo

9 Howland has made this point, op. cit., as has Jaeger, in Paideia, Highet trans. (Oxford,
1961), III, pp. 56-59.
lo R. G. Bury makes a similar point about the "responsions" of earlier speeches in
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 411

in the Great Speech, but this time stripped of every trace of worldliness. It stands
now for those singularly Platonic entities from the hyperheavenly region, the color-
less, intangible, figureless ousia ontOs, as he puts it in his ecstatic formula (247C).
The ousia which is nothing more than material possessions is simply scorned in
this speech; such substance is set at naught by the true and inspired lover, along
with such not ordinarily naughty things as mothers, brothers and sisters, and
friends (252A). So we see that the Middle Speaker comes out precisely in a middle
position also on matters ontological: neither does he remain on the gross sensual
level of Lysias, recognizing only the kind of substance one can fill one's purse or
lure a boy with, nor does he rise to the bait of the otherworldly substance which
the winged soul of the Platonic lover is to feed on. The Middle Speaker recognizes
both the grossly material ousia and an immaterial one, but can achieve no
enthusiasm for the immaterial, la
The other favorite term used, and from Plato's point of view abused, by the
speaker is philosophia (239B4). No doubt the speaker's use of this term fits well
enough with one generally accepted use: the one exemplified in Pericles' Funeral
Oration in Thucydides (II, 40). But this is only a sign of how poorly it must fit
with Plato's quite special meaning, his light that never was, on sea or land. In Plato
philosophia is unthinkable without accurate knowledge of the really real. The
Republic defines the philosopher in terms of the reality of his objects of knowl-
edge (479f) and longing (490AB). In the hedonistic, utilitarian, "philodoxical"
world of the Middle Speech, such philosophical visions and longings and such
"real realities" obviously have no place.
Now even when Plato is not putting such ambiguous terms into the mouth
of some "crafty fellow," he is quite capable of calling attention to their ambiguity.
In the Cratylus he analyses the word 'episteme' two ways, once getting etymological
components which imply a moving knower (412A), once a knower at rest (437A).
The doubleness of meaning in this most important term is acknowledged in the
second passage: it is 'amphibolous' (ibid.) Thus R. Robinson, although he is
generally disposed to deny that Plato ever became conscious of fallacies of
ambiguity, concedes that there Plato "almost gives a name" to them. 12 And here
in Phaedrus, when Socrates finishes his two speeches on Eros, he calls attention to
the fact that they only appear to contradict one another since the Eros in the one
is only a 'homonym' of the Eros in the other (266A). In other words, Plato is

Socrates' speech of Symposium (The Symposium of Plato, pp. lvii-lxiv). Terms of earlier
speakers are picked up by Socrates, but used to different ends. Thus he concedes some
nominal rightness to the earlier speakers, even while arguing their real error.
1~ Jaeger finds an altogether similar echoing of the language of Platonism in Isocrates'
Against the Sophists 4, especially in phrases like sympasa he arete or 'total virtue': "Ob-
viously Isocrates is aiming some of his sharpest shafts at the terminological peculiarities of
the new philosophical method: he tracks them down with the subtle instinct of the stylist
for everything which seems odd or ludicrous to the average educated man . . ?' (Op. cit., III,
p. 57).
x2 R. Robinson, "Plato's Consciousness of Fallacy," now reprinted in Essays in Greek
Philosophy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 27, 38. Robinson laments Plato's lack of "some such word as
amphibolia to provide a spark" (38), but has earlier conceded the importance of his calling
episteme 'amphibolous' (27).
412 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

producing a specimen of the sort of sophistic homonymy at which Aristotle aims

the proviso about contradiction in On Interpretation 6: "I speak of statements as
contradictory when they affirm and deny the same thing of the same thing--not
homonymously, together with all other such conditions that we add to counter the
troublesome objections of sophists." 13
What is Plato getting at, then, by representing this lover of opinion using
Plato's own favorite ontological language in such an ambiguous way? It is worth
noticing that Isocrates sponsors, in theory and in his own practice, what he calls
amphiboloi logoi. The theory is stated in a late work, the Panathenaicus, where he
presents the principle through the person of one of his disciples. He has a student
catching him in a doctrinal inconsistency, but then extracting from this a principle
of deliberate double meanings. Amphibolous talk is "disgraceful and a sign of an
unusual perversity" when used in speeches designed for court cases. But when one
is writing on "human nature and the nature of things," it becomes "beautiful and
philosophical" (240). Amphiboly of this recommended sort works through
describing things of a controversial sort--about which there is as much to blame
as to praise--and seeming at the same time to praise them to their partisans, and
blame them to their detractors (240f). The express aim is to create the effect of
simplicity and easy access for those who read the speech without care, while con-
cealing from such readers what will be revealed to those in on the secret:
"freighted with allusions to history and philosophy," the message will now be
seen to be difficult and original, and of course quite opposed to the surface
message (246). The immediate purpose in view in the Panathenaicus is to make
sense of a speech by Isocrates in which Sparta is glorified and yet his fellow
Athenians can find a fundamental note of praise for themselves. The uncommonly
loud applause which greets the disciple's discovery of amphiboly, and the fact
that the students are represented as then urging it on Isocrates, tend to confirm
the point that Isocrates is himself (with due indirection) sponsoring the principle.
Isocrates' practice of amphiboly is well illustrated by the passage of Nicocles
referred to above, where he has his young king boast about his own justice and
temperance. The amphiboly is the more relevant to our argument in that it trades
on Platonized language. The king has measured his justice by the rapid improve-
ment he produced in the royal treasury without violence (31). The measure of his
temperance is his refusal to cohabit with anyone but his own wife (36). To
indulge, he comments, only makes for enemies within the palace (41). But when he
first presents these quite unPlatonic ideas of justice and temperance, Isocrates has
his ruler indulge in phrasing that is perfectly Platonic: justice and temperance are
useful "in themselves" (kath'haut&'), and further we can see "from examining
their natures, powers and uses" that "those things which do not participate in these
ideas" (trs men m~ metechous~s toutOn ton ideOn) are causes of great harm (30).
The method of "examining the natures, powers and uses" recalls Plato's
Hippocratic prescription for an intellectualist rhetoric in Phaedrus: it will proceed
from a knowledge of the natures and powers of various souls and the uses of

13 Categories and De lnterpretatione, J. L. Ackrill trans, (Oxford, 1963), p. 47. Cf. fn. 38.
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 413

various sorts of speech in moving this or that sort of soul (271AB). But the striking
amphiboly occurs of course in the talk about "participation" and "ideas." Obvious-
ly the king's temperance is nothing more than prudent calculation; yet he invites
us to construe it as implying a Platonic other world, an intellectualist "idea"
in which his actions "participate." 14 Thus the very worldly point about not
fouling one's own nest can be made to the gratification of the worldly wise, while
at the same time the Platonist is disarmed by the amphibolous concession to the
eternal.
Now doubles entendres can cut more ways than one, and he who amphibolizes
must be agile as well as ambidextrous. Plato, if he is parodying such an
amphibolous "juggling act," could very appropriately picture his rhetorician out-
smarting himself, getting his doubleness only at the cost of misunderstanding on
his own part. No doubt the best parody of a juggler is the maladroit fellow who
drops a piece on his own foot--preferably a heavy one, like ousia.
The speaker's attack on love is premised on a conception of the soul's good,
that is the virtues, which is debased in a characteristic way. The speaker catalogues
four virtues in the beloved which he claims will be damaged by the lover: the
beloved will no longer be wise, courageous, rhetorical or shrewd (sophos, andreios,
rh~torikos, anchinous: 239A). We propose to show that this list is a variation of
a distinctive sort on the standard four virtues, which also underpin Plato's
Republic. The variation consists in the two notable substitutions. In the position of
Justice, we find its eidrlon and counterfeit, Rhetoric: exactly the counterfeit which
Plato charges practitioners of rhetorical culture with passing off for the real thing
in Gorgias (465C). Moreover Plato finds the rhetorical account of the virtues
corrupted at exactly the two points where the Middle Speaker's account is cor-
rupted. In the Gorgias he has Callicles recognize the worth of wisdom and courage
as he is about to reject scornfully justice and temperance (491Dr). Callicles permits
himself some amphibolous talk too: if we can take 'justice' to mean 'getting the
better of' others, or, within one's own soul, using sagacity and courage to secure
the gratification of every appetite--if we call that justice, then Callicles is all for
it. Being smart and courageous, in other words, fits in with a "pleonektic" morality
of self-assertion, whereas justice and temperance, because they imply self-denial,
must be rejected (or amphibolously endorsed).
Is the speaker's anchinous a variant form (corrupt from Plato's point of view)
of the fourth of the standard set, temperance? Plato's account in Phaedo of the
popular form of sOphrosyne, although it does not use the exact term, does bring it
close to anchinoia in the sense of that mental quickness appropriate to shrewd
calculations of pleasures and pains. The sfiphr~n in this sense does not achieve
Platonic indifference to bodily pleasures, but rather develops skill at trading one
for another, like a man good at trading a less for a more valuable coin (69A). In
the Charrnides Socrates refutes the effort at defining temperance as calmness by

x4 In the Great Speech, and perhaps as "responsion" to the mistreatment of Justice and
Temperance in the Middle Speech, Plato describes them as the first of the otherworldly
entities espied after absolute beauty (250B).
414 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

showing that quickness (anchinoia) is as much temperance as calmness is (159E).

Thus while Plato does not simply assert that anchinoia is an ersatz form of
srphrosyne, he identifies the two dialectically, and refuses to credit the identity.
The Middle Speaker's doctrine of the virtues, then, fits in with his other doctrines
and stands squarely opposed to Plato's own. A soul whose highest function is
doxa in a world which excludes real being can aspire to nothing nobler than power
to persuade and shrewdness.
We are not here insisting on finding Isocrates himself behind the middle speech
of the Phaedrus. For the present case it suffices to show that rhetorical culture
generally, with its tendency to reject Platonic intellectualism, tended also to reject
its intellectualist definition of the virtues and education. The rejection need not,
however, be open or direct. It could as well be expressed indirectly, by praise for
virtues defined in non-intellectualist terms, such as pleasure, utility or public
opinion. Especially in the cases of justice and temperance, which in their usual
meanings are inconsistent with an aggressive worldliness bent on self-seeking and
"getting more," there seems to have been a standing, and irritating, disagreement
between Plato and the exponents of rhetorical culture. If the rhetoricians borrow
from intellectualist language in order to debase its intended meaning, this
'amphiboly' only makes their position more irritating because deceptively ex-
pressed. However he may mask it, the position of the middle speaker is whole-
heartedly 'demotic'.1 s
The Middle speech, then, after paying tribute to the importance of definition,
defines love as a disorder of the soul, which soul is capable only of appetite and
opinion. The soul's good is thus reduced to 'demotic' proportions too, to the kind of
honesty and the calculating sort of sobriety which such a conception represents. If
terms like ousia and philosophia are put into the speaker's mouth by Plato, it is
not to reflect any serious respect for, or even genuine comprehension of, their
Platonic referents. At most they stand for the willingness of such rhetorical
educators to indulge in amphibolous talk.
The speaker is thus a self-proclaimed educator, voicing concern with the state
of the boy's soul and with the cultivation of its virtues (239B, 241C). H e is an
educator who can, as we have suggested, be assigned to a recognizable and well-
defined intellectual milieu. This milieu we m a y characterize for convenience as
that of the sophistical-rhetorical culture of fifth and fourth century Athens. 16 The

15 I. M. Crombie (An Examination o] Plato's Doctrines [London, 1962], I, pp. 150 f.)
expresses the Platonic distinction aptly as follows:
There is 'demotic' virtue which is enough to make a man live soberly and honestly [tem-
perately and justly] because he sees that injustice does not pay; but beyond that there
is 'the love of wisdom' which provides an altogether different motivation towards
v i r t u e . . , being the assertion of the soul's true nature as a spiritual being.
is In this paper the terms sophist and rhetor have been used more or less inter-
changeably. Some scholars argue that Plato kept these two activities distinct, e.g.H. Raeder,
"Plato und die Sophistik,'" Danske Vidensk. Selskab. Hist. -filol. Meddelses 26.9 (1939),
pp. 5-12 and Dodds, Gorgias (Oxford, 1959), pp. 6-7. According to Raeder and Dodds we
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 415

s p e a k e r ' s views on e p i s t e m o l o g y a n d ontology, his p s y c h o l o g y a n d his theory of

virtues, and, m o r e p a r t i c u l a r l y suggestive of Isocrates, his claims to expertise
regarding philosophia (239B) all p o i n t to this conclusion. T h e structural relation-
ship, moreover, which obtains between the three speeches of the Phaedrus, b y
which the m i d d l e speech is m a d e to share the premises of L y s i a s ' o r a t i o n a n d is
rejected along with it, also suggest the same intellectual affiliations.
W i t h these general points in m i n d it is possible to clarify several further p r o b -
lems in the interpretation of the m i d d l e speech. First, w h y does Plato, in the brief
p r o o i m i o n , tell us that the speaker, despite w h a t he will say, is a lover of the boy?
N o w , from P l a t o ' s p o i n t of view (and we m u s t k e e p in m i n d that, whoever the
" s u b j e c t " o f the portrait, he is being seen t h r o u g h P l a t o ' s eyes) all intellectual
education can be u n d e r s t o o d as a species of erotic relationship in which the
e d u c a t o r is the lover a n d the disciple the beloved. Socrates' relationship with
y o u n g m e n such as A l c i b i a d e s , A g a t h o n , C h a r m i d e s a n d M e n o are all cases in
point. 17 F r o m all of these it is also clear that a l t h o u g h P l a t o is m o s t explicit a n d
e m p h a t i c on the need for chastity on the p a r t of the p h i l o s o p h e r (Phaedrus 253C-
256E, Symposium 218B-219D), there is no r e a s o n at all to believe that the
m e t a o h o r of the p h i l o s o p h e r as lover rests on a m e r e l y non-essential p o i n t of
comparison. F o r Plato, the activity of thought a n d the arousal of reflection in
others b o t h d r a w on the same deep sources of p a s s i o n which a n i m a t e our sexual
natures. Socrates' relationship with the series of brilliant y o u n g m e n in the dia-
logues is to be sure not physical, b u t it is, at the s a m e time, u n e q u i v o c a l l y erotic.
In this view, as in so m u c h else, Plato is merely rendering m o r e explicit an
a l r e a d y existing cultural pattern. T h e notion of the e d u c a t o r as lover, the fusion
in the attitude of the teacher of an erotic interest in a y o u n g student with a concern
for his intellectual training, are by no means p e c u l i a r to Plato. H. I. M a r r o u ,

should not give the name sophist to figures such as Gorgias (Raeder and Dodds) and
Thrasymachus (Raeder), because Plato nowhere does. Plato did, to be sure, make a sharp
theoretical distinction in the Gorgias between the two activities, but it should not be over-
looked that there are two passages in this same dialogue which show that in practice the
distinction could not be rigidly maintained (465C, 520A). The sophists and rhetors, as Soc-
rates points out, were virtually indistinguishable, and only a theoretical scheme which glossed
over actual contradictions could separate them. Much the same lack of concern about the
two terms is in evidence at Phaedrus 257C-D, where logographer and sophist are clearly the
same.
Plato's difficulty, of course, reflects the historical situation. Even if we accede to Dodds'
skepticism about Gorgias as a serious thinker, it will still be impossible to deny that
Thrasymachus was both a rhetorician and sophist. Perhaps, in theory, this should not be so,
but Thrasymachus, the historical figure, was both. Raeder's attempt to deny Thrasymachus
the title of sophist on the grounds that his opinions would not have met with the approval
of the sophists is preposterous, as a comparison with Antiphon's fragments shows. More-
over, Navarre's Essai sur la rhdtorique grecque (Paris, 1900), pp. 24-78, and Kroll's article
"Rhetorik," RE Supplementbd. 7 (1940), pp. 1043-1048, show that almost all the sophists
were, to some degree, concerned with rhetorical studies. We may also recall that in the
Sophist (268B-C) it is only in the last of a long series of divisions that the sophist and rhetor
are clearly differentiated (cf. Cornford on Sophist 221C-223B [Plato's Theory of Knowledge,
p. 174]).
lr The fusion of the erotic and philosophical, not necessarily in a narrowly educational
context, is a frequent element in Plato's dialogues; cf. Phaedrus 248D, 249A and D. Syrup.
209E-212A, Rep. 475B-C.
416 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

among others, has written illuminatingly on this aspect of Greek education. 18 One
may compare, from among many other examples, Isocrates' account of the leave-
taking of his students (Antidosis 87-88), strangely close to the mood of Sappho's
poem in description of a similar occasion (Fr. 94 L-P).
But these are general considerations. More particularly suggestive of the situa-
tion portrayed in the middle speech is the work considered above, which is
addressed to one of Isocrates' most celebrated pupils, Nicocles, son of the great
Evagoras. In this protreptic discourse Isocrates, casting himself in the role of moral
educator, warns Nicocles that though there are many others who come to him
bearing gifts in search of royal favor and with mercenary intentions, he differently
from the rest has come to advise the young king in a spirit of high-minded dis-
interestedness and with a gift that will not only never lose its value, but will grow
more valuable with time (To Nicocles, 1-2, 54). In the same way the middle
speaker, having to compete with many others for the favor of the young boy,
declares his fundamental non-involvement; he alone among the suitors is a non-
lover, free from the fault of selfishness which figures so prominently in his portrayal
of the lover. The To Nicocles is not only important, however, because it allows us
a glimpse of Isocrates in the role of a rival suitor for the attentions of a wealthy
young monarch. It is also important because it lifts us from the realm of purely
private education to that of society in its larger, political aspect.
In this enlarged context, the metaphor of educator as lover is subjected by
Plato to a complex development. A connection between the world of the rhetor-
ical lover, who lays claim to expertise in philosophical education and endeavors to
win young men over to his point of view, and that of the worldly politician, is in
fact hinted at in the Phaedrus 257E-258B (cf. Pol. 303D). Socrates is making the
paradoxical observation that the politicians, despite their scorn for the speech-
writers, are really such themselves. The politicians are described as enamored
(~ptSot) of writing. The difference is that their compositions are laws not speeches.
Moreover, the politician, in his lawmaking, has such a fondness for those who
praise his compositions that he prefixes their names, demos and boule, to each and
every work. Similarly, when Socrates turns to a wider critique of the two earlier
speeches, the natural contexts to which he directs his considerations are the polit-
ical and dicanic (259E-260C). In Greek terms this double aspect of persuasion,
i.e. the public and the private, is a familiar way of conceiving the matter.
Familiar, and closely connected, is Plato's conviction that both philosophers
and practical men of the world, whether these latter be politicians, sophists, or
rhetoricians, must be thought of not only as the lovers of their disciples, but of
some larger ideal as well. Such lovers, turned in two directions at once, act as inter-
mediaries whose endeavor is to win over their beloved disciples to a cherished
ideal of life. A passage in the Gorgias (481C-482A) is explicit on this point.
Socrates is addressing Callicles about the objects of their respective loves. For
Socrates the beloved are Philosophy and Alcibiades, for Callicles the Athenian

18 H. I. Marrou, History o/ Education in Antiquity, tr. G. Lamb (New York, 1964),

pp. 150-162.
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 4t7

People and Demos, the well-born son of Pyrilampes. 19 Now, it is not stated that
it is an inseparable aspect of Socrates' love for Alcibiades that he should desire to
turn the young m a n to a life of philosophy. But in the light of dialogues such as
the Symposium. which is particularly concerned with Alcibiades, and the Phaedrus
itself, such an inference is irresistible. Less immediately certain, but highly
plausible in the light of social and psychological considerations, is the inference
that when Callicles, and men like him, cultivate their proteges it is at least in part
for the purpose of introducing them to the way of life to which they have given
their own passionate allegiance. 2~ Again one finds a parallel in Isocrates. In the
Antidosis (132) and the To Nicocles (15-16), Isocrates urges u p o n Timotheus and
Nicocles the view (inconsistently, as we shall see later) that in the practical con-
duct of the state it is necessary to be a lover of the polis and solicitous of the
multitude.

HI

Before proceeding to support our stronger thesis, which identifies the middle
speaker with Isocrates, it would not be out of place to discuss briefly the question
of the unity of the Phaedrus. The question in its most basic form is this, "Is there
any intrinsic connection between the two parts of the dialogue, i.e. the first con-
sisting of three discourses on love and the second of a theoretical examination of
rhetoric?" Put in another way, "Is there an intrinsic connection between the themes
of eros and rhetoric?" Jaeger is surely correct when he observes that in fact both
halves of the dialogue are concerned with rhetoric: in the first half the subject is
approached through examples, while the second is devoted to a theoretical
critique. This is true, but this solution ignores the important question why love,
and not some other topic, was chosen as subject. A n u m b e r of answers have been
given, but they are all, it seems to us, lacking in an attainable precision. 21 If our
preceding arguments are sound, the solution to the problem of the unity of the

19 In a more precise sense the object of the philosopher's love is not philosophy, but the
ultimate goal of philosophical endeavor, i.e. being; cL, Rep. 475B-D, 489D and Shorey's
note (b), 490B and Shorey's note (a); Phaedrus 249D-E; Symposium 209C, 210E-212A.
20 Cf. Rep. 495C-496A, where sophists are pseudo-suitors of Philosophy. Socrates'
remarks concerning the object of Callicles' love are reminiscent of Pericles' exhortation to
the Athenians that they become the lovers of their city (II, 43). Close, too, is the central
situation of Aristophanes' Knights, in which the Athenian demos is portrayed as the object
of the fervent attentions of two rival citizens. Similarly, though an explicitly erotic vocabulary
is lacking, the advocates of sophistical-rhetorical culture, committed to a pragmatic point
of view and to the pursuit of immediate political goals, are characterized in the Republic
as suitors of the demos (494A).
21 Paideia, III, pp. 183-184. Jaeger suggests that the choice of subject is largely fortuitous;
but there are surely reasons beyond a presumed popularity of the subject with 5th century
rhetoricians (259). Kennedy, The Art ol Persuasion in Greece (Princeton, 1963), p. 75, sees
the connection in the fact that "love beautifully exemplifies what . . . [Plato] . . . has in
mind about rhetoric: rather than being a purely objective rational or artistic matter it
involves the soul of the disputants." Robin, Phbdre (Paris, 1933), 1, and R. Hackforth, Plato's
Phaedrus, pp. 9-10, among others, see the reason for the choice of love in the basic affinity
of love and philosophy, a position for which the Symposium is, of course, the major item of
proof.
418 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

Phaedrus is perhaps a rather straightforward one. The affmity of eros and

rhetoric, and therefore the singular fitness of love as a subject for rhetoric, rests
above all on the fact which we examined earlier that in Plato's view the
rhetorician, like the philosopher, is also a lover. A discourse on love will therefore
not only point up the skill of the rhetorician; it is also an appropriate means for
revealing the very essence of his activity. But if philosopher and rhetorician are
both lovers, their loves nonetheless differ profoundly, And the nature of this
difference, we submit, is one important unifying principle of the Phaedrus.
That the speakers have been given the task of delivering erotic discourses is,
as we hope we have shown, no real cause for puzzlement. But a particular problem
still remains with respect to the middle speaker. Why does Plato make a special
point of the fact that the lover is dissembling? We are given no reasons. We are
merely told that that lover is 'crafty' (~[~t~o~ 237B). There are, it seems, two
possible lines of interpretation. Either the speaker, who is as we must keep in mind
in love with the boy, is describing a kind of erotic relationship which, although
many recognize it as a kind of love, he nonetheless finds repellent. Or, he is describ-
ing the course of an affair from the point of view of just such a lover. If this latter
alternative is true, the dissembling lover will be describing precisely the kind of
love in the grip of which he knows himself to be.
Along the first line of interpretation a natural assumption is that the crafty
lover of the prologue is somehow to be connected with Socrates himself. 22
Socrates can be thought of as in love with Phaedrus, and in order to prevail over
rhetorical competitors like Lysias he does consent to portray love in a way which
he knows to be deeply untrue. Just so, it is argued, the crafty lover, finding him-
self in heavy competition, can be imagined as choosing a curious and paradoxical
tack in order to impress the young man.
The parallels are striking. Yet considerable obstacles bar acceptance of this
view. In the first place, although there is not much uncertainty about Socrates'
motives in accepting, for the occasion, the thesis that one ought to gratify the non-
lover rather than the lover, there is not the smallest indication that this is the
motive of the middle speaker.
Secondly, and far more weighty, is the necessity this view would impose of
attributing to Socrates characteristics which are associated with the word cti~t6~.o~
and, on Hackforth's view, of imputing to a man so described "a real concern for
the welfare, especially the moral welfare, of the boy." 23 Philological evidence,
even if we allow for its limitations, overwhelmingly suggests that the wordct[Ix6)~o~,
with its basic connotation of self-seeking duplicity, is simply unreconcilable either
with Plato's conception of Socrates or with any normal notion of good will. 24
In this matter it is appropriate to recall Friedlander's interpretation of Socrates'
first speech. The thesis is that Plato intends this speech to be not only a technical

22 Hackforth, loc. cir.

23 Ibid.
24 The word is fairly Common in early Greek poetry, but its occurrence in the Phaedrus
is apparently its first in prose, unless we are to read the word in a corrupt passage un-
certainly assigned to Democritus (Diels-Kranz, FVS BI04). It is used of tricksters such as
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 419

improvement over Lysias', but also a clarification of human realities only hinted
at in the earlier speech and a revelation of a level of self-awareness of which
Lysias' speaker is simply not capable. On this interpretation, Socrates will be
portraying a man with the same aims as Lysias' suitor, but possessed, at the same
time, of greater acuity of mind; rather sinister, and less naive, he knows that he
lusts after the boy (237B), and is willing, in order to win him over, to employ
deceit and slander the god of love. 25

In the speech of Lysias, the basic disposition of the speaker was left indefinite, and
Lysias might well have counted this indefiniteness an advantage. Socrates, however,
clearly defines the situation in an opening summary such as was retained for these
fictitious speeches in later rhetoric. The admirer (a "wily flatterer") of a handsome
young man who is much loved has falsely persuaded the youth that he does not love
him. Thus, the theme taken over from Lysias is not posed paradoxically, for the more
clearly delineated description serves a psychologically determined strategy. (222-223)

and

Here in the Phaedrus, the wily friend (239B) asserts that the lover keeps the beloved
away from "divine philosophy." He must know, for he himself is caught up in this
kind of love, after all, as much as he conceals it. Thus, it should not be said that a
specific mode of life determined by false love is refuted here. What happens, rather,
is that this specific mode of life is led to reveal itself in its true nature. This is the
substance and meaning of the first speech of Socrates. (225-226)

We suggest that this portrait fits Isocrates closely. Before we bring forward
our evidence, however, it is necessary to clarify one point. In the prologue of the
middle speech Plato explicitly apprises the reader of the fact, however it is to be
interpreted, that the speaker consciously keeps his true feelings concealed. Can the
same be demonstrated of Isocrates' behavior toward his own pupils or toward the
wider audience to which his works are directed? Most likely not, at least not with
any certainty. The case we made out for Isocrates' 'amphiboly' at most opens up
the possibility. We are, after all, dealing with psychological and moral nuances
of a most fugitive nature. Nonetheless, there still unmistakably remains, as we
hope to show, an aura of slyness and hypocrisy in the character of this, at first
glance, flat and tedious man. 26
The situation of the middle speech can be thought of otherwise than as
representing a consciously assumed pose covering over real intentions clearly
perceived by the actor. If we allow Friedl~inder's interpretation, we may also think
of it as Plato's device for bringing into clearer view the true motives which animate

Odysseus (e.g., Pindar, Nem 8.33), Sisyphus (Theognis, 704), Prometheus (Aeschylus,
Prometheus Bound 206) and Hermes (Hymn to Hermes 13, 317). It is also used with refer-
ence to wiles employed for the purpose of sexual seduction (Homer, Odyssey 1.56; Hesiod,
Works and Days 78, 374).
~ P. Friedl~inder, op. cit., pp. 222-226.
2~ It is therefore not, on the face of it, absurd to reject the suggested identification of
Callicles with Isocrates, as Dodds does, op. cir., p. 12.
420 H I S T O R Y OF P H I L O S O P H Y

such men, motives about which, we can be sure, they are most often themselves
far from clear. After all, few men are so honest or shameless as to admit, as does
the middle speaker, to such total selfishness. Most, like the speaker in Lysias'
discourse, tend, rather, to conceive of themselves as realistic, enlightened, and
sophisticated, z7 The contrast, from the perspective of Friedl~inder's interpreta-
tion, would be that between a self-deluded certainty about the reasons for one's
actions, as is the case with Lysias' speaker, and objectively perceived, far less
flattering motives for these same actions. We will have moved from the mind of the
actor to the mind of the observer. And this should not be a surprising ambiguity
of perspective. In common usage, after all, the reproach of hypocrisy just as often
refers to contradictions of which the "hypocrite" is unaware, but which others
perceive, as to conscious disparity between word and deed.
Isocrates's self-proclaimed view is that he is the "teacher and counsellor" of the
people (Antidosis, 102), a cut, we may presume, above the normal run of politician.
In the same spirit, he advises Nicocles to set himself up as a moral paradigm for
the edification of his subjects and to see to it that their lives are conducted with
justice and moderation (To Nicocles, 31, cf. 11, 16-19). And yet it is also clear
that from Plato's point of view Isocrates' position is flawed with an irredeemable
contradiction. For in the very same works in which Isocrates smugly presents him-
self as educator and uplifter of the multitude he also propounds the view (Anti-
dosis, 132-133), commending it to Nicocles as well (To Nicoctes, 15-16), that to be
a successful ruler one must govern in such a way as to gratify the masses! Now one
may consider this a defensible political position involving no real contradiction.
But surely Plato did not. He may have attributed the contradictions in Isocrates'
view to muddleheadedness rather than to deliberate hypocrisy, but the line taken by
Isocrates, i.e. that a genuine ruler should seek to gratify the desires of the
governed, is, of course, rejected outright by Plato. It would have seemed to Plato
a case of someone eager to achieve popular success masking his ambition with
high-sounding pretensions about virtue and philosophy.
The To Nicocles also evidences the same moral ambiguity. This discourse,
conceived in a high moral tone, is particularly aimed at devaluing, to the gain of
Isocrates' priceless advice, the material gifts with which his rivals seek to gain
Nicocles' favor and to be rewarded (1-2, 54). A commendable view, to be sure.
Who would dispute the superiority of wisdom over material wealth? Yet, in this
same work, Isocrates takes pains at several points to impress upon his
young disciple the need for generosity. He does not, to be sure, explicitly
ask repayment for his wise counsels, but it is extremely difficult to suppose that
this is not hinted at in the several passages in which he urges Nicocles to reward
friends (19) and view talented advisors with special favor (53, cf. 20, 22, 28). There
is evidence for believing, moreover, that /socrates was not above this kind of
mercenary relationship with his most intimate students, especially men of wealth
and power, since he seems to have charged both Timotheus and Nicocles sizable
sums of money for compositions which he wrote for them. 2s

9r Cf. the remarks of Josef Pieper, Euthusiasrn and Divine Madness. tr. Richard and
Clara Winston (New York, 1964), pp. 6-12.
38 Vid. pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators, 837A, 838A.
 PLATO'S P H A E D R U S 421

Deviousness of this sort is not restricted to Isocrates' political activities, as

Buchheit has convincingly shown in his study of Isocrates' Helen. 29 It is Buchheit's
view that Isocrates is guilty of having attempted, in an underhanded and un-
conscionable way, to misrepresent the intentions of Gorgias, his older rival and,
perhaps, teacher, whom vanity impelled him to attack, but whom he lacked the
courage to confront in an open way.
This view of the matter presents us with two Isocrates: the one tediously
familiar to all readers--preachy, high-minded, rather pompous; the other peering
out from between the lines--a figure of slyness, greed, vanity, and ambition.
Ancient tradition, in fact, knew of this less attractive Isocrates, and there is reason
to think that his contemporaries found his vanity and pomposity overwhelmingly
attractive targets, a~ More directly relevant to the matter at hand, Klaus Ries has
shown in a recent study of Plato and Isocrates that a figure very like the duplicitous
Isocrates we have been describing is present in Plato's account, in Books 5 and 6
of the Republic, of the corrupting influence of society on the gifted young and,
more particularly, in his exposition of the view that the sophists, though professed
teachers of the multitude, are in reality its willing slaves, al It is most likely that
in Plato's view, Isocrates was preeminent among such men; and, as Ries argues, he
is clearly alluded to at several crucial points in this section of the Republic. This
contradiction (some might call it hypocrisy) between professed aims and actual
conduct is, it should be noted, precisely the one to which we pointed in our
earlier discussion of The Antidosis and To Nicocles. There is thus, to revert to
the chief subject of our discussion, some plausibility in the view that the middle
speaker, who is in other respects so exactly reminiscent of Isocrates, is also, in the
matter of his slyness and dishonesty, not very far from the mark.

IV

In conclusion, we return to our less ambitious thesis, which attempts only to

locate the character of the middle speaker in a generic way. That thesis is con-
siderably confirmed by a passage in the Sophist (221C-223B), a work probably
written not very far in time from the Phaedrus. The subject immediately under
discussion is the definition of the sophist as hunter: the sophist is a hunter of young
men of rank and distinction; he works not by violence, but by persuasion; he
practices his craft among private individuals; unlike the lover, who gives gifts, he
takes a fee; a2 lastly, he affects a concern for the education of his charge to virtue.
In Plato's eyes he is, of course, a proponent of a spurious form of education
(doxopaideutike). Now this sketch corresponds with remarkable closeness to the
figure which has emerged from our interpretation of the middle speech. The
speaker of the Phaedrus is, to be sure, a lover, whereas the subject of Plato's
sketch in the Sophist is, by his own account, an educator. But in the light of our

~Q V. Buchheit, op. cit., pp. 54-64.

30 Vid. pseudo-Plutarch, op. cit., 839A; for contemporaries, vid. J. Coulter, op. cit.,
pp. 225-236.
31 K. Ries, op. cit.
32 Vid. Cornford, op. cit. (above, note 17), pp. 174, 182.
422 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

earlier discussion of the close affinity between these two figures, of the self-
p r o c l a i m e d e d u c a t i o n a l role of the m i d d l e speaker, a n d of the clear conceptual
connection that P l a t o forms here in the Sophist passage, exhibiting the logical
k i n s h i p between the two, this is a difference w i t h o u t a n y i m p o r t a n c e . 33
T h e conception of love a r g u e d by this " l e f t - h a n d e d " lover is, as is the entire
c o m p l e x of rhetorical-sophistical culture of which it is the heart, totally a n d
p a s s i o n a t e l y r e p u d i a t e d by Socrates in the final speech. Such a lover only knows
liaisons of brief duration. H e is destructively possessive, lacking in trust, jealous
of any i n d e p e n d e n c e or m a t u r i t y on the p a r t of his beloved. H e is a "realist,"
whose decisions concerning h u m a n a t t a c h m e n t s are c a l c u l a t e d on the basis only of
p l e a s u r e a n d utility. H e is, lastly, a m a n obsessed with necessity. 34
A s often, A r i s t o t l e p r o v i d e s us with a discursive t r e a t m e n t of a m a t t e r which
serves as a k i n d of guide to Plato's d r a m a t i c t r e a t m e n t of it. I n his discussion of
the three types of friendship at the beginning of B o o k V I I I of the Nichomachean
Ethics (l155b10-1157b6), A r i s t o t l e defines the two inferior grades of f r i e n d s h i p - -
in fact, they are n o t really friendship at all except thanks to an a m b i g u i t y 3 5 - - a s
b a s e d either on p l e a s u r e or utility. These, as we saw earlier, are central notions in
the m i d d l e speech. These false forms of friendship he rejects in favor of an endur-
ing friendship which rests on a reciprocal love of virtue. O n e of the just causes for
b r e a k i n g off a friendship which A r i s t o t l e cites in B o o k I X is precisely the sort
of d e c e p t i o n which characterizes the p e r s o n of the m i d d l e speech: the deliberate
pretense of a concern for the b o y ' s c h a r a c t e r in o r d e r to conceal the b a s e r causes
of the attachment, p l e a s u r e o r utility. Such a p r e t e n d e r is worse t h a n a counter-
feiter, A r i s t o t l e c o m m e n t s , in p r o p o r t i o n as the thing he debases (friendship) is
m o r e v a l u a b l e (l165b4ff). A r i s t o t l e is also a w a r e (1157a27-28) of the political
analogues to the forms of p e r s o n a l friendship under discussion: "we speak of
'friendly' states, t h o u g h we all k n o w that political alliances are f o r m e d on calcula-
tions of e x p e d i e n c y . " This p o i n t is extremely useful in reinforcing o u r earlier

a3 There is an extraordinarily precise clue which links the two passages. We saw earlier
that the epithet which Plato applies to the middle speaker is ct[la6~.og. The ancient etymologists
understood the word to be a diminutive of the Homeric word n~pcov, which occurs uniquely
at Iliad V, 49 with a sense that is quite uncertain. (For a collection of ancient etymologies
see Lexikon des #iihgr&chischen Epos, ed. B. Snell et al. [GOttingen, 1955], s.v.). It occurs
in the phrase ttT~tovct O~pctg generally understood in antiquity to mean "skilled at the hunt."
Now it is arguable that Plato did not himself think of ct[ta6~.og as the diminutive of {~i~ttov,
or that, if he had, he would not inevitably have recalled this passage in the Iliad. But it is
a most suggestive fact that the only other passage in Plato where the word occurs is in a
discussion of hunting (Laws 7. 832D). In the light of this consideration, one is tempted
to say that in order to bring out all the nuances of the word in this passage one must
paraphrase U[la6~.og as a "stealthy hunter of young men."
~4 238E, 239A (twice), 239B, 239C, 240A, 240C, 240D, 240E, 241B (twice), 240C. Is this
the same necessity some mistake for the Good at Rep. 493C?
s5 In the Eudemian Ethics, probably written when Plato was still alive (cf. Diiring,
"Aristoteles," RE Supplementband XI 11968], p. 333), Aristotle discusses the same topic
of friends, putting emphasis on the logical point about plurality of meanings. Also close to
the Phaedrus in time is the Categories, in which Aristotle seems to be codifying results of
explorations of homonymy in Topics. In any case, when one adds Aristotle's pleasure-based
to his utility-based friendship, he gets the "left-handed" eros of the Phaedrus, and especially
of the Middle Speech. But this is the eros which Plato calls a "homonym" (266A) of the
Platonic eros of the Great Speech. These matters bear on the studies G. E. L. Owen had done
on the developments of Plato and Aristotle.
 PLATO'S PHAEDRUS 423

observations about the wider political dimensions implicit in what seemed an

exclusively private and personal situation. Indeed Plato must have heard m a n y
men in Greek political life who operated on the same premises and talked the same
language as the left-handed lover of the middle speech. They too were "realists,"
looking at the world in a clear-eyed and disabused way, weighing dispassionately
what was profitable and expedient, free from "foolish" and "useless" illusions.
Although most were surely without the self-awareness with which Plato credits the
speaker in the prologue. Thucydides is, of course, full of speeches by such men. 36
The only difference is that they are wooing not a young boy but the Athenian
people or a potentially valuable ally.
We earlier examined the philosophical position of the middle speaker. It is
important to note that for Plato it is no accident that a man who thinks the way the
left-handed lover does should also conceive of love the way he does. There
is a kind of logical necessity which operates to bring this about. For Plato the
saying in the gospel holds true. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also." There is also a factual necessity which holds such a m a n in its grip. It is,
in fact, a point that Plato makes several times that the politician must, if he is to
survive, be assimilated to the object of his love (Gorgias 512E-513C, Rep. 493D,
494E). 37
In this paper we do not mean to imply any "reduction" of the Phaedrus to a
mere rhetorical polemic. A m o n g the reasons against any such reduction is the
violence it would do to important, and in Phaedrus importantly new, matters of logic
such as the nature of paradox, ambiguity and definition. Although we make no
effort to go into these complicated questions here, it appears that the ambiguity
discovered in Phaedrus in the case of the two or more meanings of "eros" has
important continuities with some of the theorizing about meaning in the A c a d e m y
during Plato's later years. This would give still other basis for unifying the
Phaedrus internally, and then for unifying it with what is gradually getting
clarified about Plato and the A c a d e m y in the mid-fourth century. 38

Brooklyn College; Columbia University

3~ See especially the speeches of the Corcyrean ambassador (I. 32-36), Diodotus (Ill,
43-48), and Euphemus (VI, 76-80). Although a detailed comparative study is out of place
here, it can be shown through an examination of specific argumentative terms and con-
cepts that there exists a very close affinity between the minds of these speakers and that of
the middle speaker of the Phaedrus. Especially important are notions such as ophelia, blabe
and sophrosyne. Compare also Creon's argument in the Antigone for preferring 'friends' in
the political sense to personal friends: only thus does one expand one's country (11. 182-190).
The friendship which Ismene pledges to Antigone (i1. 98 f.) is not in the same family, except~
logically.
3r This should be contrasted with the philosopher's voluntary striving to assimilate
himself to the God within (Phaedrus 252C-E); cf. Theaet. 176A, Rep. 500C.
3s The article by Jonathan Barnes ("Homonymy in Aristotle and Speusippus," CQ,
n.s. XXI [1971], 65-80) carries out a thorough new research on some of the issues touched on
here. It appeared too late to be given more than a brief mention. It may be noted, however,
that, although it is a general thesis of Barnes' article that "homonymy" is not said, by either
Speusippus or Aristotle, to lodge in linguistic items, but rather in their denotata, the article
does concede exceptions, such as this one from De Int. 6 and a similar one from Rhet. Iii,
2 (p. 79). These passages in Aristotle are pointed at sophistical rhetoricians.