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The Attack on Isocrates in the Phaedrus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. L. Howland
R. L. Howland
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The most famous and successful teacher of rhetoric at Athens in the fourth century was Isocrates, and he claimed for rhetoric an educational importance which Plato considered to be unmerited and misleading. He made rhetoric the basis of his whole educational system and claimed to teach his pupils to become not only good rhetoricians but good citizens. Plato attacked both aspects of this theory of education. In the Gorgias he exposed the claim of rhetoric to be considered valuable as an instrument of education by showing that rhetorical excellence had no necessary connection with moral excellence. In the Protagoras he exposed the inconsistency of those who claimed to teach men to be good citizens—to teach πολιτιк⋯ τ⋯?νη—without an absolute standard of moral values. Even if we believe that in the Gorgias and the Protagoras, as in other dialogues, Plato is representing faithfully the constructive views of the historic Socrates, we can hardly believe that he was unaware of the contemporary relevance of those views, and it is significant that he thought fit to publish them in the form of an attack on a teacher of rhetoric and an attack on a teacher of <ολιτικ⋯ τ⋯ϰνη At any rate it is reasonable to suppose that the Athenian reading public would expect to find such a contemporary relevance and that they would interpret these attacks as being, in some measure at least, directed against Isocrates.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 3-4 , July 1937 , pp. 151 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1937

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References

page 152 note 1 Especially Robin, L. in his introduction to this dialogue in the Budé collection (Paris 1933)Google Scholar (vide particularly pp. clx–clxxv). Cf. , Raeder, Platons philosophische Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 265–279Google Scholar .

page 153 note 1 It is perhaps worth pointing out that Plato had already done something of the kind before (though the imitation is not there so obvious or specific) in the Symposium, where the interrogation of Agathon is in fact a criticism of his encomium of ”Epws and leads up to the discourse of Diotima, which is the ‘fair copy’.

page 154 note 1 Isocrates did not apparently always insist the on this condition, and he does not do so in the Busiris, so that perhaps the reference here to the Helen may be considered to be the more explicit.

page 155 note 1 About this discourse of Socrates there is one small point which is of interest if not of great significance. The comparison of the soul with a chariot had already been made by Isocrates. It may be a case of unconscious plagiarism and Plato has certainly made the simile his own, but the following passage does occur in the Ad Dmonicum (9 A3), where Isocrates is talking of the evil effects of wine: ὃτɑν γ⋯ρ ⋯ νο⋯ς ὺο⋯ς ⋯ο⋯ς ὺπ' οῳἴν διαɸθαρ⋯, ταὐτ⋯ <⋯σ?ɛι τθῖς τοὐς τοῖς ⋯νι⋯ονς ⋯<οβα⋯σιν. ⋯ψεῖν⋯ γ⋯ρ ⋯τ⋯ως ɸ⋯ρɛται ɸ⋯ρɛται διαμαρτ⋯νοντα τῷν ɛὐθν⋯ντων, ἤ τɛ ψν?⋯ <οο⋯ σɸ⋯οοɛται διιɸθαρɛ⋯σης τ⋯ς διανοδας.

page 155 note 2 Alternatively, the τ⋯ν <ολιτικ⋯ν who insulted Lysias by calling him a λογογρ⋯ɸος may represent Isocrates. The effect is the same, namely that Isocrates is not entitled to distinguish himself from λογογρ⋯ɸοι.

page 155 note 3 276 E.

page 156 note 1 Cf. Evagoras 191 A-B.

page 157 note 1 The relevance of the discourse of Socrates, and of its myth, to the rest of the dialogue now becomes more evident. It is an outstanding example of Plato's thesis that knowledge of the subject and a strict regard for essential truth result in a fine discourse.

page 159 note 1 The Phaedrus is certainly not an early work. It must have been published after the Ad Nicoclem of Isocrates, to which it refers (v. supra), and the Ad Nicoclem cannot have been published before 374, the year in which Nicocles succeeded his father Evagoras, and probably appeared about 372. The Nicocles, published a few years later, opens with a long attack on those who decry oratory, and this may be Isocrates' attempt to reply to the Phaedrus. The date of the Phaedrus would then fall between the dates of these two works of Isocrates, that is approximately between 372 and 368.