Here one should remember t hat in t he Phaedrus dialectical rhetor ic is con-
nected with Hippocratic medicine. Charles Kahn discusses the meaning of “dialec-
tic” in “The Emergence of Dialectic,” chap. 10 of Plato and the Socratic Dialogue
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). An interesting suggestion on
this can be found in Mitchell Miller, The Philosopher in Plato’s Statesman (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), ix– xix. Socrates often criticizes a thesis in such
a way as to preserve its partial truth while at the same time showing how and in
what respects it is erroneous.
In its application to persons “health” denotes good order in body
and soul. In its application to lovgoi it is used analogously or paronymously
to mean “causing or inducing health in a soul,” or “produced or caused by a
healthy soul.”
I have discussed many of the points made in this section in more detail
in “Plato’s Conception of the Relations Between Moral Philosophy and Medi-
cine.” Joel Lidz’s discussion of what he calls “medical metaphors in Plato’s eth-
ics” in his “Medicine as Metaphor in Plato” treats from a different perspective
some of the issues I am concerned with in this section.
See Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor,” 531.
Lidz writes: “A successful moral upbringing produces a character which
is resistant to bad infl uences (Rep 367a), just as ‘a man in health and strength
can drink any water that is at hand without distinction’ (Airs, Waters, and Places,
ch. 7). In short, our moral sense... requires constant attention from child-
hood. No moral theory offered to adults can substitute for that ongoing atten-
tion.” See Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor,” 530.
See R. B. Rutherford, The Art of Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995), 11– 12. Rutherford says that a Platonic portrayal of an exchange
between Socrates and an interlocutor captures “both the delicacy of tactful
exploration of another’s painful thoughts or experiences, and the rapidity of an
interrogator’s reactions when seeking out weakness, pursuing guilt, or hunting
down error.” It would be interesting to explore the relation between Socrates’
conversational strategies, on the one hand, and the theories concerning conver-
sational implicature explored by Paul Grice and his students. See Kenneth Taylor,
“Language and Action,” chap. 6 of Truth and Meaning: An Introduction to the Phi-
losophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
Lidz discusses how diffi cult it may be to call a corrupt person toward
moral change. He writes: “Such a state of corruption is produced by training
and practice which result in an inferior character and is diffi cult to correct,
since it is a corruption of the very faculties which would be needed to correct it”
(Lidz, “Medicine as Metaphor,” 535).
From our twentieth-century perspective, it seems as if Socrates fore-
shadows the practice of psychoanalysts such as Heinz Kohut, who purposely
cultivated transference relationships with interlocutors in such a way as to mir-
ror back to them, and so give them an opportunity for recognizing, their own
psychological conditions. Another perspective on the theme of helping an audi-
tor achieve self-recognition is offered by H. W. Rankin in “A Modest Proposal
About the Republic,” Apeiron 2, no. 1 (No vem ber 1967): 20– 22. Rankin defends
