Beyond the City I

The following are notes on John Sallis’ interpretation of the Phaedrus in Being and Logos. My friend and I discussed this section of Sallis' interpretation in May 2009.



Sallis’ methodological approach to the Platonic dialogues, which he outlines in the introduction to Being and Logos, bears some comment before proceeding to his interpretation of the Phaedrus. According to Sallis, when reading a Platonic dialogue one must pay attention simultaneously to three dimensions:

• Logos (speeches, what is said) – e.g., in the Phaedrus, certain assertions about the nature of love or of the soul

• Ergon (action, what happens) – e.g., in the Phaedrus, Socrates is lured outside the city by a speech; he and Phaedrus then discuss under a plane tree

• Mythos (mythic images, the sway of the divine) – e.g., in the Phaedrus, the myths of Boreas, the charioteer, the cicadas, Theuth

We will note, at this point, that in terms of the mythos of the dialogue, Sallis points out at the very beginning of his reading that the god that has the principal role is Zeus, as opposed to the Apology where Apollo had the principal role:

[A]nd in this speech [on perfected speech], which takes the form of dialogue with Phaedrus, he insists that the toil required for such perfection is one ‘which a wise man ought not to undergo for the sake of speaking [legein] and acting [prattein] before men, but that he may be able to speak and to do everything, so far as possible, in a manner pleasing to the gods’ (273e - 274a). But in the Phaedrus the god who has the principal role is no longer Apollo, who gives Socrates to the city but rather Zeus, who leads whoever can follow up to that height most distant from the cities of men (104).

Inasmuch as he tries to concern himself with various dimensions within the Platonic text, Sallis seems to combine the approaches of Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss, or at least find a via media between their extremes.

Heidegger’s interpretations of Plato concentrate on ontological questions; in doing so, he focuses solely on logos, as the house of Being. He pays no attention to the drama of the dialogue. For Heidegger's key interpretations of Plato, see: Nietzsche, Volume 1, which examines the relation of art and truth in the Republic and in the Phaedrus; "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" in Pathmarks, which exposes the underlying centrality of aletheia within the allegory of the cave in the Republic; The Essence of Truth, which is an extended reading of the Thaetetus; and Plato's Sophist, which consists of lecture notes from a course given on the dialogue of the same name.

Strauss demonstrates the opposite extreme. His interpretations of Plato concentrate on ontic or political questions; in doing so, he focuses largely on the ergon – dramatic action is often used to trump what is actually said. For Strauss's key interpretations of Plato, see: The City and Man, which includes an extended interpretation of the Republic; The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws; Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, which contains essays on Plato's Apology of Socrates, Crito and Euthydemus; and Plato's Symposium.


Sallis' interpretation of the Phaedrus is divided into three sections, which accord with natural divisions within the dialogue itself:

1. The Setting (227a - 230e)
2. The Three Speeches (230e - 257b)
3. The Perfection of Speech (257b - 279c)

Section I: The Setting 227a – 230e)
Sallis points out that the description of the setting at the beginning of the dialogue is crucial to the actual matter to be discussed in the dialogue proper – they mirror one another. We will learn later that the significance of the setting is that it is mythically charged, and in this way informs the discussion of eros, the soul and logos to follow.

The opening question of the dialogue is: “My friend Phaedrus, where are you going and where do you come from?” (227a-b).

Who is Phaedrus? We must ask ourselves to begin with. From other dialogues, we know that he associates with physicians and sophists (Symposium, Protagoras); we know that he is interested in investigations of nature, as well as the mythical things. His name means “radiant” or “shining”.

Phaedrus is addressed as “friend” (phile), which is the vocative of philos = love/friendship. If the dialogue as a whole deals with eros, what is the relationship between eros and philia?

In Laws VIII.837a, philia that becomes intense (sphodros) is called eros. (See also "Plato on Friendship and Eros" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

This raises certain questions about the proper nature of love practiced by the philosopher -- i.e., is the philosopher a lover of wisdom in an intense way, as per the divine madness of Socrates' second speech, in which case the philosopher's disposition is best described as an eros? Or, is the philosopher, as per his name, a friend (phile) of wisdom who exercises moderation in his pursuit of wisdom. (On this question, see Stanley Rosen’s essay on “Socrates as Concealed Lover” in The Quarrel of Philosophy and Poetry: Studies in Ancient Thought (91-101), which posits the following thesis: "regardless of the difference between Plato and Socrates, there can be no doubt, when all the evidence is considered carefully, that the philosophical nature must combine the natures of the lover and the nonlover" (91). Another way of phrasing this might be, following Pascal, that the philosopher must combine the esprit de finesse and the esprit geometrique (see Oeuvres completes (Paris: Pleiades, 2000), 2.743.

The initial question has a number of senses:

• There is the literal sense: Where is Phaedrus coming from and where is he going?
• There is a sense in which Phaedrus is man in general: where are men formed (i.e., in the city, by speeches)? This raises the additional question of whether or not men can go outside the city truly, or do they always carry those speeches with them (as does Phaedrus). We should note, in this context, that Socrates is one who goes beyond the city in a certain way: by being within the city in a certain way.
• There is a sense in which Phaedrus stands for human destiny: that is, the first question concerns the ultimate fate (moira) of the human soul.

Phaedrus replies to the initial question by saying that he has come from listening to a speech of Lysias. The Republic begins with a reference to Socrates' going down to the Piraeus. The Phaedrus begins with a reference to Lysias (son of Cephalus, who lived in the Piraeus) going up from the Piraeus to the Olympieum (the temple of Zeus). The abode of Zeus, freed of its link to the city, will be spoken of in the myth of the soul.

Lysias' speech defends the position of the non-lover; it is an attempt to persuade potential love-objects of the wisdom of granting favours to a non-lover, who is moderate, rather than to a lover, who is mad with his erotic passion. Socrates' immediate response to Phaedrus' presentation of the topic to be discussed is to highlight that Lysias' speech is on the side of the many, as opposed to the few who may actually be in love. He also points out that it's point of departure is that love is about serving one's self interests.

Socrates says he wants to hear the speech, despite already maligning its thesis. Phaedrus pretends not to remember it. Socrates then sees through this Phaedran pretense. He is sure that Phaedrus has memorized it and that he was going to the countryside to rehearse it. Socrates then spots the actual written speech hidden under Phaedrus' cloak. The following points should be noted in relation to this episode:

• Phaedrus enacts what the first two speeches will then describe; that is, he is concealing the fact that he is a lover, in this case, of speeches.
• Socrates sees through the pretense. Socrates knows Phaedrus and it is through knowing Phaedrus that he knows himself. This is an example of Socrates' knowledge consisting of knowing souls and the moving force of those souls -- "I know my Phaedrus as well as I know my own name" (228). As Sallis points out, "the reference is to the connection between the erotic engagement with another and knowledge of oneself, a connection that will finally be thematized when at the end of his second speech Socrates says that one 'sees himself in his lover as in a mirror' (255d)" (112-13).
  
• Socrates knows Phaedrus in the broader sense highlighted by the first question of the dialogue: that is, Socrates knows the nature (the where from) of the soul and the future destiny (the whither) of the soul.
• The movement of the soul, we shall see, is eros. The proof of the eternity of the soul is centred on its movement -- i.e., it is self-moved, as opposed to those that have their source of movement in another (compare Aristotle, Physics B1; see also, Heidegger's reading of this key Aristotelian text: "On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotle's Physics B, 1" in Pathmarks). So, knowing the soul and its movements entails knowing eros.

Phaedrus says that the speech is appropriate for Socrates, because it deals with love -- somehow Socrates is accutely concerned with love, which is to say that Socrates is not aloof from erotic concerns; he does, however, set out to transform our understanding of what is erotic in the highest sense:

• Socrates says he can spot a lover and a beloved (Lysis 204b-c)
• Socrates understands nothing, but erotic matters (ta erotika) (Symposium 177d-e; 198d)
• Events in the Symposium show how he makes young men love him -- he poses as the beloved (Symposium 222b)
• Compare: Symposium 213c-d, 214c-d, 216d; Charmides 154b, 155d; Lovers 133a
• Nietzsche saw this aspect of Socrates' character clearly: see his discussion of Socrates' agonistic dialectical wrestling and his discussion of Plato's philosophy as an "erotic contest", with beautiful youths spurring the contest (Twilight of the Idols, "Problem of Socrates" 8; "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man" 23; cf. my essay, "Nietzsche's Early Political Thinking: 'Homer on Competition'").

The following problem also arises as a result of these considerations: Socrates is famous for professing that he knows that he knows nothing; however, he also says that he know eros and, in deed, knows the soul. How can we reconcile these two claims? One approach has been to take Socrates' profession of ignorance as ironic, as an attempt to speak humbly to the many who fear his strange and clever speeches. This is an easy way out of the contradiction; however, it does not seem to mesh well with Socrates' own practice of continual questioning; that is, Socrates' way of life is not that of one who seems to know things and arts as such; rather, his way of life is interrogative. He lives his life in a questioning mode. We can take both his profession of ignorance and his profession to know eros seriously if we consider the following:

• Eros is a fundamental lack, an awareness of not being whole; thus, to know ta erotika is to know that one does not possess being as a whole.
• The soul is a sited disclosure of Being, within certain limits. Knowing oneself, knowing the soul is about knowing the limits of this partial disclosure -- for instance, one's mortality, the conventions that filter nature imposed by one's community. Not knowing these limits is to not know oneself.
• One comes to know oneself through erotic engagement with another (see above). But what is the type of erotic engagement that is crucial for Socrates?
  

What Socrates loves is logoi: His love of speeches is what lures him beyond the city. We have here an enactment of what is discussed in the myth of the cave. In the erotic engagement by means of logoi, Socrates undertakes his quest of knowing himself and his limits by means of the arguments and partial disclosures offered by other beautiful souls.

Socrates is a lover of logoi, but he is also a lover of Phaedrus. How do these two facts fit together? If we recall that "Phaedrus" means radiant or shining forth, we can surmise that in some ways Phaedrus is meant to represent the shining forth of Being in the Beautiful. As we shall see in the second half of the Phaedrus, beautiful logoi (perfected speech) are the most conspicuous way in which Being shines forth as the beautiful.

The next salient aspect of the setting is the river by which the two stop to discuss love. Sallis makes much of this and the connection to the "good crossing of the river" one needs to make in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic (621c).

Phaedrus asks whether this is the spot where Boreas is said to have carried off Oreithyia. Socrates says that the spot is actually further down. This raises the following question: How is Socrates acquainted with the countryside and its locales when it has been asserted that he almost never leaves the city?:

PHAEDRUS: What a very strange person you are, Socrates. So far from being like a native, you resemble, in your won phrase, a visitor being show the sights by a guide. This comes of your never going abroud beyond the frontiers of Attica or even, as far as I can see, outside the actual walls of the city.
SOCRATES: Forgive me, my dear friend. I am, you see, a lover of learning [philomathes]. Now the people in the city have something to teach me, but the fields and trees won't teach me anything (230c-d; cf. Crito 52b)

Socrates does not know the countryside, but he does know how the countryside is given human meaning by the members of the city in their accounts and stories. Socrates seems to know things as they relate to myth.

Phaedrus asks if Socrates believes this myth. Socrates replies that ther are many wise men (sophoi) who do not believe in the myth. They contrive (sophizomenos) explanations -- for e.g., that the wind pushed her off the rocks as she played with Pharmaceia, and that now as a result we say that she was carried off by Boreas (229c-d).

• Sophizomai = 1) to devise, as in an explanation; 2) to deceive, play subtle tricks

In some ways, the rationalist explanation of myth deceives or conceals certain aspects of the phenomena in question. In this case the contrived account conceals the role love may have had in the fate of Oreithyia -- i.e., the love of a god for her and the resulting ascent to the company of the gods. The contrivers do not see love and the divine ascent it offers; they only see the descent into the rocks and to one's death.

Socrates says he avoids this type of rational explanation of phenomena. He says the wise would then be called upon to provide explanations of centaurs, chimaera, gorgons etc. Socrates sticks with trying to know himself -- and to know oneself, as we have said, requires the esprit de finesse as well as the esprit geometrique. Socrates wants to know if he is "a more complicated and puffed-up sort of animal than Typho or whether [he is] a gentler and simpler creature, endowed by heaven with a nature altogether less typhonic" (230d). He wants to know himself in relation to the limits set out in myth. The mythic creature he sets out as one pole of his possibilities is one who battled against Zeus' rule of the cosmos; he is a monster with a hundred hands who came to connote vanity or arrogance. This monster with a hundred hands does not conform to the proper organic unity of left- and right-hands or sides that marks the perfected speech. Having a complicated, Typhonic nature would mean that man is not a beautiful, organic whole and that he is not knowable as a whole

Finally, after commenting on the fact that he rarely leaves the city because the trees cannot teach him (quoted above), Socrates states that Phaedrus has found a "charm" (pharmakon; literally "drug") for getting him out. The charm in question is a speech (logos). His attachment to logoi is stronger than his attachment to the city -- in the first place, because he is only interested in the city inasmuch as its logoi can teach him about himself. The speech in question is referred to as a drug (pharmakon). As Derrida has shown, the ambiguity of this term permeates the dialogue -- that is, the written speech is referred to as a drug, which can be a remedy or a poison. As a provisional response to this Derridean aporia, we can say that speeches will be poisonous for man as man inasmuch as they conceal the view of Being; whereas speeches will be remedies for man inasmuch as they open man to the view of Being.