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OP quotes Socrates in Phaedrus talking about the evils of writing. But in Phaedo (yes, a totally different dialog with almost the exact same name), we hear quit
by xamuel 7y ago
OP quotes Socrates in Phaedrus talking about the evils of writing. But in Phaedo (yes, a totally different dialog with almost the exact same name), we hear quite the opposite. Phaedo takes place on Socrates' deathbed so might be considered more representative of the philosopher's final opinions.
"'Tell him the truth, then, Cebes,' he [Socrates] said: 'I made them [poems and a hymn], not because I wanted to compete with him [Aesop] or his verses! I knew that wouldn't be easy-but because I was trying to find out the meaning of certain dreams and fulfil a sacred duty, in case perhaps it was that kind of art they were ordering me to make. They were like this, you see: often in my past life the same dream had visited me, now in one guise, now in another, but always saying the same thing: "Socrates," it said, "make art and practise it." Now in earlier times I used to assume that the dream was urging and telling me to do exactly what I was doing: as people shout encouragement to runners, so the dream was telling me to do the very thing that I was doing, to make art, since philosophy is a very high art form, and that was what I was making. But now that the trial was over and the festival of the god was preventing my death, I thought that in case it was art in the popular sense that the dream was commanding me to make, I ought not to disobey it, but should make it; as it was safer not to go off before I'd fulfilled a sacred duty, by making verses and thus obeying the dream.'"
- sdrothrock 7y ago> Phaedo takes place on Socrates' deathbed so might be considered more representative of the philosopher's final opinions. One distinction that I do want to make (that was made to me as an undergrad studying both Classics and Philosophy) is that we do want to remember that Phaedo is essentially third-hand information. It is written by Plato based on his understanding and editing of conversations he had with students of Socrates. My professors always made this very clear and stressed that while it is common to consider things in the Platonic dialogues as Socratic canon, they were not, in fact, written by Socrates at all or in his immediate time period; as I recall, they were written a few decades after his death.
- coldtea 7y agoIt's not really relevant what Socrate's actual cannon was. The philosophic Socrates is what Plato made. A few others (Xenophon etc) also wrote of Socrates, but the philosopher Socrates is 99% Plato's writings. It's like the question of whether X or Y was the real Shakespeare. Even if so, the only thing we care about Shakespeare is his plays, and those don't change if the real name of the person who wrote them was another (Borges makes that point somewhere, iirc -- actually Shakespeare himself makes it too: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"). "Socrates" people read / care about for 2 millennia -> what Plato wrote. "Shakespeare" people read / watch / care about for several centuries -> the plays and poems themselves