IN SEARCH OF SOCRATES
Spring 1993
WORKSHOP VIII: Teaching Through Writing:
Phaedrus and Lesser Hippias
By Don Finkel
Divide up into groups of four. Select one member of each group to be a scribe and another member to be a clock-watcher. The group's answers to all the questions should be written down by the scribe for use in class discussion during the afternoon.
Part I (45 mins.)
1. (15 mins.) In the Phaedrus (a middle, "Platonic" dialogue), Socrates provides a critique of writing as a tool of inquiry. He says that the technology of writing offers "no true wisdom ... but only its semblance, for by telling [people] of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing..." (275a-b)
Socrates also says: "Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who takes it over from him, on the supposition that such writing will provide something reliable and permanent must be exceedingly simple-minded; he must really be ignorant ... if he imagines that written words can do anything more than remind one who knows that which the writing is concerned with." (275c-d)
He also says: "It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever." (275d)
Finally, he says: "And once a thing is put in writing, the composition, whatever it may be, drifts all over the place, getting into the hands not only of those who understand it, but equally of those who have no business with it; it doesn't know how to address the right people, and not address the wrong. And when it is ill-treated and unfairly abused it always needs its parent to come to its help, being unable to defend or help itself." (275e)
There are several distinct points contained in this critique of writing. Paraphrase them in your own words and summarize Socrates' critique of writing in a paragraph.
2. (10 mins.) It seems strange that Plato would put these words into Socrates' mouth when Plato himself devoted so much time and art to producing written texts. How can you make sense of this seeming contradiction?
3. (10 mins.) Based on your own experience reading written texts in this program, in what ways is this critique of writing correct--or how does this critique capture something important?
4. (10 mins.) Based on your own experience reading written texts in this program, in what ways is this critique of writing incorrect--or how does this critique miss something important?
Part II (2 1/2 hours)
Last quarter I wrote an essay, as part of my work in THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM, trying to defend writing against Plato's critique in the Phaedrus (a critique toward which I am sympathetic) and to make some sense of the seeming contradiction mentioned in question 2 above. [Donald L. Finkel, "You and I, There and Here: A Compass for the Construction of Criticism," unpublished essay, March, 1993.]
The following possibility emerged in the course of this essay:
If Plato wrote his dialogues seated at his desk in the Academy, it is not too great a leap to imagine that perhaps he wrote these dialogues to and for no one else but his students and colleagues in the Academy. I would like to imagine that Plato's [audience] in writing his dialogues were his students and that he never intended or dreamed that anyone but that limited number of people would ever read them. That they became the texts to which two thousand years of Western Philosophy are nothing but a series of footnotes [according to a famous quip by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead], is, from this point of view, nothing but a huge joke, a piece of slapstick intellectual history.
The Lesser Hippias (or Hippias Minor, as it is more commonly called) has puzzled most of its readers. It seems an absurd piece of philosophical writing, since in it Socrates convinces the sophist Hippias, by means of his typical dialectic, of the truth of a proposition that we know Socrates cannot believe to be true, as indeed he admits at the very end.[In "Socrates and the Early Dialogues" (Chap. 4 in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Richard Kraut, editor, Cambridge University Press, 1992), Terry Penner gives the following piece of useful advice: "Never consider any one expression of Socrates' views in isolation from other expressions of Socrates' views" (p. 122, his emphasis)]
After reading it this time, I arrived at the following hypothesis: this dialogue in particular, and maybe even all the dialogues, might have been written specifically as teaching materials for Plato's students. If so, we are mistaken to read them as artful renderings of expository arguments--texts with single theses or messages. They may be intended as material designed to generate discussion, they may have been written to raise questions rather than to answer them. Their purpose may be to reveal problems rather than to present conclusions. It is not inconsistent with this view that theses or conclusions may be implicit in the texts without being directly argued by them.
Viewing the Lesser Hippias in this way, I arrived at three issues, and three implicit theses, any or all of which may be central to the text. I would like to raise them here for your critical consideration.
1. (45 mins.) Is voluntary deception justified in the interest of pedagogy?
At the outset of the dialogue Socrates pounces on the adjective "wily" which was Homer's traditional way of characterizing Odysseus (364e). This might not surprise us we realize that if there is one adjective appropriate to Socrates, it is probably "wily." Odysseus was known for his craftiness and his ability to deceive people, but in the Homeric poems this "virtue" of his indeed appears virtuous, since he always uses it to advance the Greek cause in the Trojan War (in the Iliad) or to help his companions and himself survive the dangers on their long trip home after the war (in the Odyssey). The cases of both Odysseus and Socrates thus raise the question whether deception of a certain kind may be justified, or even considered good. One can argue that the point of this dialogue is to raise this question and to suggest a positive response--that voluntary deception in the interest of pedagogy (i.e., Socrates' own practice) is both justified and good.
A. (20 mins.) Go back over the text of the Lesser Hippias and examine it with this thesis in mind. Discuss whether or not the text supports this interpretation, that is, whether the dialogue is about this issue.
B. (10 mins.) Does Socrates' argument in the text justify voluntary deception in the interest of pedagogy?
C. (10 mins.) What is your considered opinion on this question: Is voluntary deception justified in the interest of pedagogy?
2. (45 mins.) Are there two radically distinct types of knowledge?
In first making his argument, Socrates draws on calculation, geometry, and astronomy, and then generalizes to all sciences. Later he examines physical exercise, bodily posture (gracefulness), singing ability, and then goes on to examine instruments, archery, medicine, music, and generalizes to "all arts and sciences." (375c)
Hippias, though he cannot refute Socrates at any point, always tries to resist the general proposition by saying such things as "Yes, certainly, in cases such as you mention." (374d, my emphasis)
Perhaps Hippias is on to something. Perhaps Socrates' argument depends on the kinds of knowledge he is using to support his case. We know (or think we know) from elsewhere that Socrates believes that if you have the knowledge of what virtue is, or if you have virtue in its form as knowledge, you are literally unable to do evil or behave unvirtuously. Thus, the whole question of performing injustice voluntarily (based on knowledge) should not be able even to arise. One hypothesis is that there are two kinds of knowledge. Let us call them instrumental knowledges (the technes, athletic skills, the arts and sciences, etc.) and moral knowledge (the knowledge Socrates is always searching for in the dialogues). If the argument based on examining instrumental knowledges shows that it is better to perform injustice voluntarily than involuntarily, this only goes to show that that is the wrong kind of knowledge to be pursuing (and those are precisely the kind of knowledges that Hippias prides himself on possessing and makes his living conveying--see 368b-d). Rather one should be pursuing a totally distinct kind of knowledge, one that does not permit this paradoxical conclusion.
A. (20 mins.) Go back over the text of the Lesser Hippias and examine it with this thesis in mind. Discuss whether or not the text supports this interpretation, that is, whether the dialogue is about this issue.
B. (10 mins.) Does Socrates' argument in the text justify the conclusion that there are two radically distinct types of knowledge?
C. (10 mins.) What is your considered opinion on this question: Are there two radically distinct types of knowledge--instrumental and moral?
LUNCH BREAK: It should now be about 12:30. Take an hour for lunch and return to your small group and 1:30 to continue the workshop. We will reconvene in Lib. 2116 at 2:30.
3. (45 mins.) Is the Socratic dialectic a faulty or dangerous tool?
In his final lines, Socrates says, "Nor can I agree with myself, Hippias, and yet that seems to be the conclusion which, as far as we can see at present, must follow from our argument." (376c) At an earlier point (372d-e), he says, "Sometimes, however, I am of the opposite opinion ... And just now I happen to be in a crisis of my disorder at which those who err voluntarily appear to me better than those who err involuntarily. My present state of mind is due to our previous argument ..." And in The Trial of Socrates, I.F. Stone quotes a scholar who says, "The whole [of the Lesser Hippias] seems almost a reductio ad absurdum [reduction to the absurd] of the Socratic method." (p. 57)
Perhaps that is exactly the point. Perhaps Plato wrote this dialogue to question the surety of the Socratic dialectic, to critique it, to show Socrates' own dawning awareness of its limitations. Perhaps the dialogue is a warning of how easily abused Socratic dialectic is. Perhaps it is a call to explore the limits within which this method of arguing is useful.
A. (15 mins.) Go back over the text of the Lesser Hippias and examine it with this issue in mind. Discuss whether or not the text supports this interpretation, that is, whether the dialogue is about this issue.
B. (10 mins.) Does Socrates' argument demonstrate that the dialectical method used to generate it is faulty or dangerous?
C. (15 mins.) What is your considered opinion on this question: Is Socrates' dialectical method of arguing a faulty or dangerous tool?
Part III (15 mins.)
1. (5 mins.) Which one or ones, if any, of the three issues and related implicit theses explored in Part II do you think the dialogue is really about?
2. (5 mins.) Based on your experiences in exploring the questions in Part II, evaluate my specific hypothesis that this dialogue may have been written for Plato's students as a teaching material to be interacted with rather than as a means to present a philosophical argument to a wider audience.
3. (5 mins.) Taking into account the critique of writing in the Phaedrus, and your work in Part II, what do you think of my more general hypothesis that Plato's dialogues were written "to and for no one else but his students and colleagues in the Academy"?
RETURN TO LIB. 2116 AT 2:30 for a discussion of the results.