How to Use (Survive) Plato’s Phaedrus

This dialogue is widely regarded as the most important treatise on communication to come out of ancient Greece. The Phaedrus has influenced thinking about communication for nearly 2400 years. Many things in it, however, are puzzling, and part of your job in studying it is to practice the art of communication with

difficult messages. Here are some of the barriers that prevent beginning students from discovering its treasures immediately:

1. The dialogue format. It is not a treatise, textbook, or article for People magazine. It provides no definite information or conclusion you are supposed to draw.

Leaves you free; is meant to puzzle; tries to tease you into thinking for yourself. Suggestion: read aloud as if it were a play.

2. The theme is love, and rhetoric, rather than communication explicitly. Part of your job is to learn to apply ideas from one domain to another: the Phaedrus

invites you to take ideas about love or oratory or writing and use them for thinking about communication more generally.

3. It comes from a different culture and a different time. Among the ruling classes of ancient Athens, love between men was considered the highest form

(see Introduction to the Phaedrus, pp. xv-xvii). It also makes use extensive use of ancient Greek myth and poetry. You are responsible for the text

of the dialogue, not the introduction or footnotes or its history; nonetheless, these are recommended as helps for you to make sense of the text.

Why the Phaedrus was chosen for this class:

1. To illustrate the long and distinguished legacy of communication theory (à rhetoric).

2. To showcase the serious level of this major and this class.

3. To give students practice the art of both making sense of difficult texts and going to the source instead of taking knowledge at second-hand. Count

on being confused. No one knows exactly what the dialogue means in every detail, but you can learn some great themes and questions.

Some study questions that will be useful in preparing for assignment #1 and discussion:

1. What is Socrates’s attitude to myths? Does he think they should be taken seriously? What does he think is the most important subject to inquire

about? (pp. 4-6, 13).

2. What is the argument of Lysias’s speech? (pp. 7-12).

3. What is Socrates’s reaction to Lysias’s speech? (pp. 12-16).

4. What is the argument of Socrates’s first speech; how is it similar or different from Lysias’s? (pp. 16-23).

5. Socrates’s second speech (pp. 27-49) is one of the most important works in the history of human thought. It deserves careful study. Do not expect to

get an exact picture of everything Socrates discusses (e.g. how the heavens are put together!)--remember it is a work of “inspired madness” or

poetry. What is meant by the story of the charioteer? What is the vision of love? What is beauty? Explain the visions of the soul or madness.

6. What distinguishes good from bad speeches? What is the art of rhetoric? (pp. 49-71).

7. Why are communication and medicine so frequently compared? (e.g., pp. 71-77). Notice the key principle here: “Know thy audience.”

8. What is Socrates’s criticism of writing? (pp. 78-86). In what ways do his worries about the cultural effects of writing and written instead of oral language

parallel later worries about such media of communication as printing, telegraphy, television, or computers?