P L A TONE F E D RO

1. P L A TONE F E D RO INCONTRO TRA SOCRATE E FEDRO L’AMBIENTAZIONE DEL DIALOGO IL TESTO DI LISIA PRIMO DISCORSO DI SOCRATE SECONDO DISCORSO O PALINODIA ORALITA’ E SCRITTURA MEETING BETWEEN Socrates and PhaedrusDIALOGUE OF THE ENVIRONMENTTHE TEXT OF LysiasFIRST SPEECH OF SOCRATESSECOND ADDRESS OR palinodeORALITE 'AND WRITING

2. F E D R O Why did Plato choose to write philosophical texts, while criticizing written communication? Such a question has received two different answers: some scholars believe that the "true" philosophy of Plato was unwritten and esoteric, while some others are convinced that in Plato's view knowledge is not a collection of information, but an endless critical process. In both cases, we have to deal with a deeper question: if knowledge is either esoteric or unspeakable, how is it possible to produce a meaningful philosophical speech?

3. F E D R O Socrates meets the young rhetorician Phaedrus outside the walls of Athens. Phaedrus tells him about a speech of the speechmaker Lysias, which demonstrated that it is wiser to begin a relationship with a person who does not love us, than with a person who does. Socrates chooses to read aloud Lysias'speech: he seems to believe that a written speech is not a separate thing, but, as it were, its author himself.

4. F E D R O The Sophists attempted to deal with a major feature of the oral culture, myth, by explaining it in a rationalistic way. Socrates dismisses their attempts as a waste of time, because he prefers to scrutinize himself. Such an attitude requires a reasoning consciousness that is able to abstract itself from its cultural environment

5. F E D R O Lysias speech asserts that it is more rewarding for a boy to start a relationship with a man who does not love him, rather than with a person who is in love, because the latter cannot control himself and does not deserve trust. In such a speech, Lysias exhibits his rhetorical skill: the written form makes it possible to divide knowledge from living persons and communities, and to sell it like a commodity.

6. F E D R O Socrates' first speech on love contains some important theoretical features of Platonism: the dialectical method, dichotomy as a definition procedure, a "political" depiction of soul as the risult of the interaction of inner powers. Eros is represented, just like in the Republic, as am inner tyrant that determinates also despotic relationships with others. Why then does Socrates feel remorse for his speech?

7. F E D R O Socrates interrupts his speech against Eros and tries to go away. But he feels, in his consciousness, the voice of something godlike (to daimonion) that prevents him from parting and compels him to lay out another speech, a recantation, to rectify the mistakes he made in the first one. Eros is not an illness, but a god.

8. F E D R O First of all, in Socrates' view, we have to analyze the nature of the soul. The soul is ungenerated and immortal, because it is a principle that moves itself and is not moved by other. Such a metaphysical thesis is used to get people familiar with the idea that something can be for the sake of itself. For, if we do accept such an idea, we might learn to appreciate selfless and sharing behaviors, even if they produce no individual utility.

9. F E D R O Socrates asserts that telling what is the idea of the soul would require a great and divine speech; human beings can use only a lesser speech that gives only a likely figure of it. He likens the soul to the composite nature of a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. One of the horses is bad: but if the soul succeeds in soaring upwards, it partakes the nature of gods, and contemplates the ideas. However, if Socrates' lesser discourse represents only the likely, we have to ask whether there is an actual difference between rhetoric and philosophy.

10. F E D R O The conceptual paradigms of reality dwell in a “region above the heaven”, which only the divine souls are able to contemplate fully. The souls whose pair contains a bad horse can see them only partially, if they are lucky. For this reason, their subjective knowledge is affected by chance and history, although the object for which they long has to be thought as eternal.

11. F E D R O The philosopher recollects those things which our soul once beheld, when it was free from a mortal body. Plato's theory of recollection (anamnesis) explains philosophy by using some features of the oral culture: philosophers propose a knowledge that surpasses the limits of individuals' perspectives and are affected by a kind of alienation, just like the poets. Unlike poets, however, they try to unify the many perceptions of the senses into conceptual patterns or forms, by means of reasoning

12. F E D R O Socrates' purpose is to show that a philosophical eros is a fourth kind of divine madness, to be added to the three already known in the Greek culture. He adopts a rhetorical strategy to lead his reader from something familiar to the new and unfamiliar idea of philosophical life.

13. F E D R O It is high noon. Cicadas are singing. Socrates tells Phaedrus they used to be men who were so fond of singing that they forgot everything else, until death. Therefore, the gods granted them the gift of singing all the time, as cicadas, and to report the Muses, after their death, who honors each of them on earth. Cicadas sing always the same humdrum verses and give people a good or a bad reputation: in a sense, they are very similar to the oral culture poets.

14. F E D R O Socrates contrives an "Egyptian tale" to explain Phaedrus the usefulness and harmfulness of writing. In such a tale, the Pharaoh Thamus tells to the god Thoth, who is showing him his brand new invention, the letters (grammata), that their usefulness should be evaluated from the perspective of the users. Letters can save and communicate a lot of information, but they do not make us wiser, because they cannot teach us, by themselves, how to assess and discuss the notions they provide.

15. F E D R O Socrates proposes a final prayer: “O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure”. Phaedrus shares in this prayer “for friends have all things in common”. The latter saying is an obvious allusion to a political doctrine of Plato's main political work, the Republic; it suggests the reader that only an interactive, shared knowledge can be the basis of a common, shared political project.