Introduction. Plato’s Self-Disclosing Strategies

Why dialogues? Readers of Plato have asked this question again and again over the centuries, and there is no sign of them relenting. [1] Scholars in particular struggle to understand why Plato wrote dialogues as opposed to philosophical treatises, as if he had deviated from the natural course of things in some way. [2] A related question is why did he write at all, given that his master is reported to have written nothing. [3] Yet the question is not so much “why?” as the more radical (and more Socratic) “what?” [4]

There is a growing consensus that Plato’s ambition was not only to put forward his ideas, but also to provoke and persuade. [5] This viewpoint has important implications that have rarely been explored. If the ultimate goal is to persuade or convert people, it follows that a literary/rhetorical dimension must be crucial to Plato’s dialogues, the study of which cannot be reduced to a subordinate activity—to be pursued only insofar as it allows us to extract or reconstruct Plato’s doctrines. [6] Secondly, the very question of “why Plato wrote dialogues” is somehow misplaced, and should be preceded by a bolder one: “what is a Platonic dialogue?”

Surprisingly few ancient writers discussed dialogue as a genre. [7] Yet in his short second-century CE introduction to Plato, Albinus formulated the problem clearly (τί ποτ᾿ ἔστιν ὁ διάλογος), and provided a straightforward answer to what he sees as the very first question any Platonist should ask. [8] For Albinus, Plato’s dialogues were a form of philosophical drama, which could be described by way of an analogy with, and difference from, comedy and tragedy. [9] Characterization and style are key features of his definition, which, by modern standards, clearly privileges form over content. But can we be satisfied with such a definition? Some modern readers will be irritated by the parallel with tragedy and poetry, but our perspective is very remote from that of the ancient Greeks. We tend to assume that poetry and knowledge are two different, even opposite, phenomena. The Greeks, however, thought otherwise.

Plato’s efforts to deny or qualify the poets’ claims to knowledge countered the general view of his time. That is to say that poetry was, in fact, a form of knowledge whereby the poets, to quote from Simonides’ Plataea elegy written in the aftermath of the Persian wars, gained access to “the whole truth.” [10] The poets’ hegemony was, of course, declining by the time Plato began to write. Simonides himself, who composed his Plataea elegy a century or so before, contrasts Homer’s omniscience with his own craft, of which he seems to have a much more mundane view. In the course of time, sophistic and rhetorical discourse largely displaced poetry. Many authors, such as Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Thucydides, for example, had long been writing prose works in which they fiercely attacked poetic myth, [11] and the fourth century is by and large dominated by prose writing. So why did not Plato do the same? Why choose a form of writing that incorporates poetic genres, abounds in myths, indulges in seemingly ironic invocations to the Muses and even, at times, plays muthos against logos? [12]

My answer rests on a simple, if somewhat neglected, distinction. Even though their relationship with the inspiring Muses changed over time, the poets did not cease to present themselves as teachers of the polis. This seems to be integral to the defining status of their art, which continued to be seen as a form of mousikê, an “art of the Muses,” an inspired and inspiring educational agency. On the other hand, and herein lies my distinction, questioning the role of poetry was a relatively easy task for the “non-musical” genres such as logography, historiography, rhetoric, and medical prose, which dispense with divine knowledge and, broadly speaking, emphasize human agency. The subjects of these genres or discourses are not heroic or divine realities discernible only to inspired poets: human things and natural phenomena can be observed directly, and it does not take a Muse to reveal them. [13] Strictly speaking, such genres are not a form of mousikê. [14]

These “human” genres rival and attack poetry and song, and their agonistic stance takes the form of a human discourse that deliberately does without the Muses. Interestingly enough, the Muses are never mentioned in classical Greek literature by either orators or historians, as if Muse were a kind of taboo word. By contrast, several philosophers—if I may oversimplify a little—share the poets’ claim to enjoy access to a superior knowledge veiled from the naked eye. [15] One thinks of Pythagoras, for example, who is traditionally considered to be the inventor of the word “philosopher”: [16] the very birth of Pythagorean philosophy is closely connected with the worship of the Muses. [17] This possibly influenced Empedocles, who seems to summon Calliope as the Muse of philosophical logos. [18] Similarly, it is no coincidence that Parmenides claimed to have received his knowledge from a deity and, accordingly, expressed his thought in epic hexameters. The same is true of Xenophanes, who seems to have been a wandering rhapsode, ready to attack Homer and Hesiod with typically visceral hatred. In criticizing the immoral, anthropomorphic gods of poetry, Xenophanes is no doubt advocating a new Weltanschauung, though he would seem to be equally intent on discrediting epic rhapsodes, his immediate rivals and colleagues. [19] All in all, we can confidently say that rhetoric, history, and scientific prose are not “arts of the Muses” (mousikê), but that this was not necessarily the case with philosophy. [20] So what about Plato, then? Plato’s Sophist refers to pre-Socratic philosophy as undiluted muthos, while Heraclitus and Empedocles, together with their followers, are referred to as “Ionian and Sicilian Muses.” [21] Yet is Albinus justified in construing Plato as a quasi-poet?

An exhaustive answer to such a question would require a very long discussion and would have to take into account a large body of disparate evidence. And it would have to consider, as a minimum requirement, the following points:

1. Plato’s Academy was sacred to Apollo and the Muses, the latter having their own altar (e.g. Pausanias 1.30.2). The tradition was further promoted by Plato’s immediate successors. [22]
2. Not only does Aristotle include Plato’s dialogues in the Poetics, where he defines them in terms of mimêsis and poetry (1447b), but many others, including Platonic philosophers, regarded Plato as a poet, even a new Homer (e.g. Proclus on Plato’s Republic 1.196.9–13 Kroll). [23]
3. Time and again, Plato’s dialogues refer to philosophy as the highest form of mousikê (e.g. in the Phaedo 60e–61a). Needless to say, the dialogues abound in myths and even invocations to the Muses (e.g. in the Phaedrus 237a, and in the Republic 545d). [24]
4. Plato’s dialogues were sometimes recited during symposia along with excerpts from comedy (cf. e.g. Plutarch Table Talks 711b–c). [25]
5. The anecdotal tradition reports that Plato, a former tragic poet (e.g. Dicaearchus fr. 40 Wehrli), was strongly influenced by the mimes of Sophron as well as by the comedies of Epicharmus and Aristophanes. [26]
6. Plato himself, or at least the characters of his dialogues, seem to allude to his output as if it were a kind of song or drama.

Each of these points would require specific discussion, which is of course beyond the scope of the present study. [27] Suffice it to say that, though they raise very different problems, they also share a close affinity in that they all invoke the notion of poetry. It would seem that Plato’s philosophy, or at least his dialogues, are indeed a form of mousikê, and that modern scholars are simply not in a position to minimize or explain away these facts.

In what follows, I shall limit myself to point 6, which cannot be dismissed as a later superimposition. By Plato’s time, as I have already mentioned, poetry’s claims had long been questioned. Nevertheless, the idea that poetry was a form of knowledge, albeit refashioned, was an established belief, and even Aristotle thought that poetry was more philosophical than history and that it could function as a repository of endoxa. [28] To illustrate this point, I draw a comparison between two passages in which the role of poetry is discussed against the background of the crisis of the polis. The first is the famous assessment of poetry in Aristophanes’ Frogs, written on the eve of the fall of Athens in the Peloponnesian war (404 BCE): Needless to say, this passage has its own function within the comedy, and yet, in all probability, it represented widely accepted ideas. [29] The Athenians voted to allow the Frogs to be produced again by anyone who wished to do so, and thus it became the first comic classic in history. [30] In the same comedy, moreover, we hear that the degradation of Euripides’ poetry is tantamount to its losing the status of mousikê, which only confirms the relevance of the distinction I make above between “musical” and “non-musical” arts. [31]

The second passage is found in Lycurgus’ Against Leocrates, a postwar reflection written after the battle of Chaeronaea (338 BCE), which, for most modern readers at least, marks the end of the classical era. After quoting a lengthy passage from the Erectheus in order to remind his fellow Athenians that Euripides “used to educate” their fathers, [32] Lycurgus goes on to say: Interestingly, Lycurgus credits the poets with quintessentially philosophical procedures such as “argument” (λόγος) and “demonstration” (ἀπόδειξις).

The two passages frame the adult life of Plato, whose own work would confirm the crucial role of the poets. The tragedians figure importantly among the supposedly wise people questioned by Socrates in the Apology, and in the Laws Plato goes so far as to define Athens as a “theatrocracy.” [33] One may add that the sophists were ready to present themselves as the direct heirs of the archaic poets in educating the citizens, [34] and it is interesting to note that the Republic’s full-scale attack on poetry takes place in the house of Cephalus, a man whose vision of life, and of the afterlife in particular, is clearly shaped by traditional poetry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, poetry is duly superseded by the eschatological myth at the end of the dialogue. [35]

These and other facts can be used to argue that, as Danielle Allen puts it, “Plato wrote … all his dialogues to displace the poets.” [36] In my view, this is far too radical. At the risk of stating the obvious, it must be added that Plato was not satisfied with either rhetoric or sophistry, the very forms of thought and expression that had partly displaced/replaced the poets, and which were so prominent in the fourth century BCE. [37] Plato surely felt “the need for a shibboleth separating Socratic from dubious sophistic logoi,” as Andrew Ford puts it. [38] And this, I believe, is precisely where poetry comes in. As we shall see in the course of this book, the Phaedrus can be read as a partial defense of poetry against the attacks of rhetorical and eristic discourse; it is as if Plato were looking for an appropriate compromise—which squares well with Plato’s own choices as an author and (potential) legislator. For not only did he opt for a form of prose that has much in common with poetry, but he clearly envisages an ideal city, both in the Republic and in the Laws, where a (reformed) mousikê will continue to be the predominant medium in the education of the citizenry, even if literacy and speech are also given their fair share. [39] As Myles Burnyeat so aptly puts it: “the cave is not abolished in the ideal city, only purified.” [40]

In emphasizing the poetic quality of Plato’s dialogues, Albinus was simply following in the footsteps of Aristotle. In discussing the Republic and, surprisingly, the Laws, Aristotle claims in the Politics that “all the discourses of Socrates possess brilliance, cleverness, originality, and keenness of inquiry.” [41] Even more famously, in the Poetics he associates Socratic logoi with the mimes of Xenarchus and Sophron. [42] The latter were probably a mixture of prose and verse, which complements another statement by Aristotle, to the effect that Plato’s dialogues stand somewhere between (μεταξύ) poetry and prose. [43] Aristotle’s view that Plato’s dialogues are meant as a kind of poetry provides us with a useful working hypothesis, and it neatly rounds off my argument that the function of poetry, as discussed in Plato’s Republic and Laws, is to influence people and shape their beliefs. It follows logically that Plato’s dialogues themselves should be read as poetry, which gives us a provisional definition of the dialogues. And yet, how sufficient and warranted a definition is this? What would Plato himself have said if, in mockingly Socratic style, we had knocked at his door and asked, “For the dog’s sake, Plato: what is a Platonic dialogue? Is your pupil Aristotle right when he says that your own writings are some kind of fancy poetic stuff?” It is a pity we cannot ask him directly; yet we can probe his dialogues for clues. What I shall be looking for in particular is a Platonic answer to this question.

Plato’s dialogues never mention Plato’s dialogues, and with good reason: they are all set in a relatively distant past (second half of the fifth century), and their characters, Socrates and others, are in no position to comment on a set of works that were yet to be born. [44] From this point of view, Plato’s dialogues resemble tragedies. No overt reference to the tragic genre can be found in a tragedy, for the simple reason that tragedies are set in a pre-theatrical past. However, one might expect references to the dialogues in the Letters, where, exceptionally, Plato speaks in his own voice. [45] Yet what we find is a notorious and astonishingly negative statement. In the Seventh Letter, Plato famously declares that philosophy is a lifelong process involving a number of stages, none of which takes a written form, and it is for this reason that he, Plato, has not confided his philosophy to writing. [46] This is indirect confirmation that Plato’s dialogues are not primarily an exposition of doctrine and that they must have had a different aim. So once more we find ourselves asking, what are Plato’s dialogues?

Clearly, the answer cannot simply be that they are (a new kind of) tragedy or drama. [47] The parallel I have put forward is only valid insofar as Plato’s characters, like tragic heroes, “predate” the genre they belong to. Just as Medea, for example, cannot possibly mention Euripides’ tragedies or discuss what’s on at the Dionysus theatre, so Socrates cannot possibly name or discuss Plato’s dialogues. [48] In both cases, direct comment is not possible, but allusive references most certainly are. We know very well that the tragedians had ways of discussing their own work (and their colleagues’) through allusion. Euripides’s Electra, for example, famously “criticizes” Aeschylus for his implausible handling of the relevant recognition scene, and a similar attitude can be found in the Phoenician Women, where Euripides implicitly compares his own version to Aeschylus’. [49] The same can be expected of Plato, who could rely on a shared code that he only needed to adapt to his own purposes. Thus, far from being an overly subtle or anachronistic exercise, searching for such allusions is a perfectly plausible agenda: the technique was already well known as early as the fifth century BCE. But how does it work in the case of Plato? A quotation from a recent article by Stephen Halliwell makes the point clearer: Halliwell emphasizes the relative novelty of such an approach, especially as regards scholarship in English, and he shows how effective it can be by very successfully highlighting the subtle (and no doubt self-conscious) ambiguity of Plato’s attitude towards poetry in the Republic. In fact, Halliwell’s “explicit moments of self-consciousness” had long been studied by one of the most important Platonists of the 20th century, namely Konrad Gaiser.

Gaiser has devoted an entire book (and an impressive array of profound scholarship) to this fascinating subject: [51] I am referring to his Platone come scrittore filosofico, which in turn builds upon his previous work Protreptik und Paränese bei Platon. [52] Unfortunately, Gaiser, as an exponent of the so-called “Tübingen school,” is commonly associated with the declining querelle that revolves around Plato’s “unwritten doctrines” [53] (largely a “continental” affair [54] ), even though the book’s main arguments are not committed to the “unwritten doctrines” hypothesis (which, incidentally, I wholly disagree with). [55] One can only conclude that its virtual absence from the landscape of scholarship in English is yet another example of what Francisco Gonzalez refers to as “a growing insularity in Platonic studies, especially among English-speaking scholars: extremely helpful and worthy work is ignored simply because it is not in the right language or school.” [56] What follows is a summary of Gaiser’s conclusions, which, at the same time, are integrated with new insights within a broader perspective.

Gaiser’s starting point derives from reception theory: what was the intended readership of Plato’s dialogues? By piecing together the little specific evidence we have, [57] he reminds us that, contrary to the assumptions of most modern readers, Plato’s dialogues were written for the general public and had a protreptic and/or “hypomnematic” function, [58] whereas “real” philosophy was a personal affair, taking place in Plato’s Academy for the benefit of both pupils and “casual hearers.” [59] Gaiser made a crucial breakthrough when he analyzed, and definitively clarified, an important passage from Philodemus’ Index Academicorum. [60] It is worthwhile quoting it in full:

A few lines later, we learn that Philodemus is quoting Dicaearchus, who goes on to declare that the misleading aspect of Plato’s philosophy lies in his emphasis on eros. We also learn important details of the Academy’s way of life, to which Dicaearchus devotes much attention, possibly to conclude that Plato’s dialogues motivated many other people who did not directly attend. The importance of such an early authoritative source as Dicaearchus cannot be overstated: [61] Plato’s dialogues, it would seem, aimed at stimulating and possibly encouraging people. [62]

If the dialogues were indeed meant for the general public, then it follows that Plato did not assume any systematic reading of his works on the part of his readers and would have allowed for the possibility that they would have only a limited knowledge of them; [63] as Diskin Clay remarks, “disconcertingly, in the Platonic dialogues, ‘the sun is new every day.’ ” [64] This raises crucial hermeneutic issues. We may, for example, presume to reconstruct Platonic doctrine(s) by means of a thorough, comparative reading of all his dialogues, and there is no doubt that the history of philosophy, by evolving as a “series of footnotes to Plato,” has benefited from such efforts. [65] Nevertheless, such a bookish enterprise was not what Plato would have expected from his original public, and it is no coincidence that his exoteric dialogues, unlike Aristotle’s esoteric writings, do not contain cross-references. [66]

A related point is the effect of philosophical discourse as described in the dialogues. Gaiser reminds us, as a number of other scholars have also noted, that Plato often compares such discourse to a kind of therapy produced through katharsis (purification) and epôidê (incantation), i.e. two fundamental aspects of ancient medicine. [67] These two aspects were meant to counterbalance the spell of other forms of “magic” discourse such as the poetic, the rhetorical, and the sophistic. As Elizabeth Belfiore observes, they corresponded to two distinct stages (or “weapons”) in the philosophical process: namely, “one that purifies the rational element, driving out false belief (the elenchos or a process similar to it that will ‘turn around’ reason to its proper objects, as the Republic 518e describes it) and another procedure that will actively train and strengthen the emotions so that they will be in harmony with reason (the epôidê, the myth, musical education).” [68]

These two phases represent the “critical”/“dialectical” and the “constructive”/“dogmatic” modes of Plato’s philosophy respectively, and are most famously contrasted in Gregory Vlastos’s theory of the two distinct (and opposed) Socrateses within Plato’s dialogues. [69] The antinomy katharsis/epôidê can be (and has been) interpreted in many different ways, [70] and one can always engage in a favorite exercise of Platonists—that is, project the distinction on to the tripartite division of the soul as outlined in the Republic and elsewhere. [71] However, such qualifications, along with their possible evolution over time, are of limited relevance to my present argument, which is based on a rather simple premise: Plato’s philosophical discourse can be described as a form of purification followed, either logically or chronologically, by a form of incantation. [72]

The twofold “therapeutic” characterization discussed by Gaiser and Belfiore squares well with an aspect of Plato’s writings that no reader can fail to notice: the dialogues abound in myths, metaphors, similes, ethopoeias, and so on; i.e. quintessentially poetic devices aimed, one might say, at influencing people’s minds and emotions. [73] Against this general background, Gaiser explores a number of passages that can be construed as “moments of self-consciousness,” which I prefer to call “self-disclosures.” [74] It would be long to discuss them here, so I refer the reader to the Appendix. Suffice it to say that a reappraisal of Plato’s self-disclosures as discussed by Gaiser results in a rich (and ultimately consistent) picture. Philosophical discourse has a twofold nature: “comic” purification and “serious” enchantment. The first may take the form of comedy (Symposium), playfulness (Phaedrus), or popular tale (Phaedo), while the latter is called hymn (Phaedo) or tragedy (Symposium and Laws).

However broad, Gaiser’s discussion by no means exhausts the number of Plato’s self-disclosures. There is Halliwell’s discussion of Republic 10 for example, where Socrates seems reluctant to banish poetry and advocates a form of “counter-enchantment,” plausibly interpreted as a reference to the dialogues themselves. [75] The Gorgias, where Plato appropriates structurally the subtext provided by Euripides’ Antiope, is also part of the picture. As Andrea Nightingale has argued, Plato “invites his readers to juxtapose his dialogue to its tragic model, and he reinforces this message by persistently probing at the nature of the tragic and the comic. At the heart of Plato’s critique of tragic wisdom, finally, is a detailed and complex portrait of its newly invented adversary: philosophy.” [76] The lyre of Amphion-Socrates, too, can be construed as the symbol of philosophy’s musical nature, as Mauro Tulli has suggested. [77] The epic story of the Critias, embedded as it is in rhapsodic language while at the same time incorporating other poetic genres, [78] can be shown to be in line with Plato’s criticism of poetry as expressed in the Republic, of which the Timaeus-Critias is a sequel. [79] Finally, in the Lysis, a young sophist attacks old-fashioned poetry, but Socrates ends up comparing philosophical discourse to a form of old-fashioned poetry designed to correct the excesses of eristics. [80] Yet the most “disclosing” dialogue is certainly the Phaedrus, which in the current book’s four chapters will reveal a new set of powerful “self-disclosures.” It is about time to say a few introductory words on the Phaedrus itself.

The core of this book is devoted to the Phaedrus and its fascinating cultural background, with particular regard for archaic poetry in its performative and biographical dimensions. These are important and surprisingly neglected issues, which, if correctly understood, can shed fresh light on how Plato positioned himself in the context of Athenian society, both as writer and thinker. Yet this is not the place to anticipate the more general import of my arguments. Rather, my immediate concern is to provide some general background for the interpretation of this dialogue. There are two things, in particular, to be borne in mind: firstly, that in the Phaedrus Plato is arguably at his most self-referential; and, secondly, that the dialogue is unique in presenting a sustained case for a positive form of inspiration. Both aspects are connected with another remarkable feature: the unparalleled importance of the natural landscape.

The landscape of the Phaedrus is not so much a gentle, out-of-town glade as a jungle of symbols, often deeply ambiguous, and designed to trigger all kinds of associations in the minds of Plato’s contemporaries. [81] Take the chaste-tree, for example (230b). Scholars have patiently prized out its meaning, which conveys the idea of both chastity and lust, [82] thus playing subtly with the erotic potential of the scene: Socrates and a young man are lying alone in a very sensual ambient at a time of the day (noon in midsummer) that the Greeks associated with Pan’s sexual exuberance. [83] The importance of the landscape can hardly be overestimated, and it is important to note that ancient readers, much more so than ourselves, would have felt its spell throughout the dialogue. Not only were there innumerable imitations of it, to the point that Plutarch felt the need to distance himself from the “commonplaces” of its imitators, [84] but it seemed to acquire a kind of metonymic status. [85]

In a letter addressed to the Imperator, Themistius argues for the philosophical character of the kingdom, and he does so by pointing to Plato’s “famous Republic, divine Laws, and the whole discussion by the thick and tall plane-tree.” [86] It is fascinating, therefore, to find the plane-tree used as a title almost. Even more interesting is the following passage from Timon of Phlius:

Despite some textual complications, [87] these lines, as elsewhere in Timon’s verse, make a pun out of Plato’s name, given that the word platista(k/t)tos calls to mind the name Plato. [88] The pun, moreover, is extended well into the third line. The mention of the cicadas is no doubt an allusion to the Phaedrus (and to Iliad 3.150–152). [89] At a key point in the dialogue, the cicadas singing from the plane-tree become the very subject of Plato’s myth, which equates their beautiful song with the voice of philosophy. [90] At the same time, Plato’s Academy was famous for its trees, and planes were a celebrated feature of its landscape. [91] We have, therefore, an implicit joke revolving around the word platanos, plane-tree, with its pun on Platon and platista(k/t)tos. Thus, the plane-tree stands for the Phaedrus and, more generally, for Plato’s writings. This is confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt by other authors, such as Philitas, Cicero, Petronius, and Aristaenetus, who unhesitatingly associate Plato with the plane-tree of the Phaedrus. [92]

Was Plato himself punning on his own name? This is certainly possible, since “Plato” was soon interpreted as a nickname related to the adjective platys, from which the word platanos, plane-tree, was also derived. [93] Some scholars have put forward convincing arguments to this effect, not only in relation to the Phaedrus, but also to other dialogues. [94] Whatever the case may be, if this had been the perception of ancient readers, many of whom were persuaded that the Phaedrus was Plato’s “first” dialogue, it would have been fully justified by a number of details. [95] This is not the place for a full discussion of this fascinating subject, which would have to take into account possible references to other dialogues. [96] It should at least be noted, however, that the Socrates of the Phaedrus is invested, quite unusually, with a kind of “authorial aura,” as if he were Plato himself. At least six points are worth mentioning: first, Socrates compares himself to Plato’s rival Isocrates; [97] second, he worships a mouseion, which calls to mind Plato’s Academy and its mouseion; [98] third, he criticizes writing, as Plato does in his own voice in the Seventh Letter; [99] fourth, he apparently alludes to Plato’s friend and beloved Dion; [100] fifth, he compares the philosopher to a caged bird, which closely recalls an image Plato used of himself; [101] sixth, and possibly most important, he describes philosophy as both an oral and a written enterprise, a description that fits Plato, but is totally inappropriate for someone like Socrates, who never wrote anything. [102] These points, all together, would have given Plato’s readers the impression that Plato was coming very close to breaking the dramatic illusion and revealing his authorial identity.

So much for the Phaedrus’ self-referential quality. I shall now deal with the theme of inspiration, which, given that Plato is after all the author of the Phaedrus, is wholly consistent with its “authorial aura.” In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates deliver his famous palinode, whereby he seems to rehabilitate divine madness over and against mere tekhnê. Madness can take various forms: divination, purification, poetry, love. [103] Although his primary focus is eros, Socrates rehabilitates them all. It should also be noted that the boundaries between the four forms are rather blurred. After all, Socrates’ palinode is an offer to Eros, even though it takes the form of a “hymn” or “myth” ostensibly divining supernatural realities and purifying Socrates of his sins against the Gods. [104] These four instances of madness, moreover, are well conveyed by Socrates’ suggestion that the “divine landscape” (theion topon) is making him equally “divine” (theion) and prone to “nympholepsy,” an idea that is rendered through a strange and rare word (nympholêptos), but which is later expressed in plainer language. Socrates now feels “enthusiastic,” completely at the mercy of the nymphs, and the dialogue concludes with Socrates’ celebrated prayer to “Pan and all you gods of this place.” [105]

The earliest instance we have of someone described as nympholêptos is from a late fifth-century graffito from a cave sacred to Pan and the nymphs on the slopes of mount Hymettos. [106] The present study does not allow for a full discussion of the question, but nympholepsy, in the light of some recent studies, may be seen as both a literal experience (being snatched by the nymphs) and, more frequently, as a particular form of divine possession resulting in a “heightened fluency and awareness, a concentration of faculties, an elevation of expression, and ultimately the reorganization of personality into a new identity and a new social role.” [107] As such, it is explicitly linked with practices of divination and purification, as expressed through the medium of lofty poetry or as in erotically charged contexts. This takes us back to the Phaedrus’ four kinds of madness.

Socrates’ palinode is, then, a multifaceted, multilayered text that reflects the complexity of its cultural background. Unsurprisingly, it is nigh impossible to pin down its topic by way of a straightforward definition, and the same is true of the entire dialogue. More than any other Platonic work, the Phaedrus defies definition, [108] which is why Derrida was so fond of it, since it provided him with such fertile ground for his deconstructive exercises. [109] Crucial questions remain open: What is the Phaedrus about? Is it about love, or rhetoric? Or maybe both? But then what is the relationship between the two? Ever since the scathing remarks of Norden, who found the Phaedrus wholly deficient in clarity and force, [110] the unity of the dialogue has been the subject of endless interest and discussion. This, in turn, has led scholars to compare modern and ancient notions of unity. [111] Here is not the place to resume the debate. [112] Suffice it to say that, once more, the problem would benefit more from a circular than a linear approach. By the end of the dialogue we learn that true love inspires true rhetoric, and that true rhetoric is achieved only when addressed to a beloved soul. Thus, true rhetoric is erotic and true eros is rhetorical, in what would seem to be a full circle. Apparently, the Phaedrus is carefully constructed so as to stimulate lateral thinking by means of an extraordinarily dense textuality, as if its intention were to defy the inevitable linearity of writing and thus provide an internal antidote to Socrates’ devastating critique of written speech within the Phaedrus itself. Few would doubt that such density is the result of a quintessentially poetic technique, which results in hardly any meaning being simple or univocal.

Poetic density, then, is a crucial factor in the dialogue. But to what extent is Plato engaging with poetry? Here is a crucial question that can tell us much about how Plato perceived his own work and, ultimately, about his deepest concerns as a writer and philosopher eager to reform society. According to Andrea Nightingale, the Phaedrus is quite exceptional among Plato’s dialogues in that “it abandons the notion that traditional genres of poetry and rhetoric are inherently ‘unphilosophical.’ ” [113] On the one hand, Plato “actively” attacks Lysias: [114] he “imposes his will upon an alien genre,” so that he “is the active party,” the alien text being “the passive victim.” [115] Thus, Lysias’ speech is delivered in full by Phaedrus only to be dismantled by Socrates. [116] On the other hand, however, Nightingale argues that elsewhere in the Phaedrus Plato “assumes a more passive stance, thus allowing the alien genre to play an active and relatively autonomous role in his text.” [117] Nightingale refers to such an attitude as a sort of “alliance” or “conspiracy,” and focuses on two important instances: the tragic story of Palamedes which provides the background to Socrates’ narration of the invention of writing, and lyric poetry as a crucial, positive element in Socrates’ palinode. As for the latter, Socrates is quite literally dealing with sources, since his whole speech is inspired by both the divine landscape and by the “streams” (namata) provided by earlier poets, who, as he says, fill his breast “like a vessel.” [118] Socrates mentions Sappho, Anacreon, Stesichorus, and Ibycus, and quotes them often, more or less explicitly, besides other sources. [119]

Except for the occasional hint of irony, Plato “respects and preserves” the voice of lyric poetry: “it is precisely by leaving the genre of love poetry—with its discourse of madness, invasion, and the destruction of the boundaries of the psyche—more or less intact that Plato is able to create one of the most extraordinary paradoxes in his entire corpus: the notion that reason and madness, at a certain level, converge.” [120] The result is a kind of philosophical discourse, which Nightingale labels as “authentic” since it is both inspired and erotic: it is inspired, though the inspiration is not divorced from rational thought; and it is erotic, but only insofar as it lovingly addresses one particular soul (in this case Phaedrus’) with the aim of triggering from within the recollection of the Forms and the creation of new speeches. [121] This is of course the background for Plato’s celebrated image of “writing in the soul”: [122] authentic logoi “enter into another person’s soul as seeds; the philosopher does not hand over knowledge that is ready-made … since knowledge can only be achieved if the student rears up the seeds himself.” [123] Ultimately, however, Nightingale concludes that “Plato does not offer a definition or even a description of philosophic discourse,” [124] so that the best we can do is single out its ingredients (both “active” and “passive”) and focus on the philosopher instead.

Apart from her skeptical conclusion, I fully endorse Nightingale’s view. Moreover, similar conclusions with regard to Plato’s ultimate endorsement of (some) poetry have been drawn recently by scholars with very different approaches and agendas, ranging from the most theoretical to the most philological. [125] This is an encouraging indication that they are probably right, and my own interpretation will, therefore, take these conclusions as its premise. Some of the issues Nightingale raises will occasionally make their appearance in the four chapters that follow. For the most part, however, we shall be traversing uncharted territory. I shall argue that the Phaedrus, when interpreted against its cultural background, yields precisely what Nightingale found to be lacking in the dialogue: a description of philosophical discourse and its role in society, conveyed through a number of metaliterary hints and undertones that were probably as obvious to Plato’s original public as they are hard to pin down for modern readers. Adjusting our eyes and ears to such tenuous clues will, needless to say, require some walking on the banks of the Ilissus.