MARK MOESWhat impressed me was, fi rst, the pleasant, kindly, appreciative way in
which he received the two boys’ objections, then his quick recognition
of how the turn of the discussion had affected us, and lastly the skill with
which he healed our wounds, rallied our scattered forces, and encour-
aged us to join him in pursuing the inquiry. (89a; trans. Tredennick,
emphases mine)Socrates tells Phaedo that there is no greater evil one can suffer than to
hate lovgo~.^6 A person who hates lovgo~ (oJ misovlogo~) is like a person who
hates other people (oJ misa;nqrwpo~). The misanthrope is someone who
lacks skill (a[neu tevcnh~) in human affairs and so, betrayed by persons he
naively held to be completely truthful, trustworthy, and healthy (uJgih), comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is healthy (uvgie;~) in any way at all. The misovlogo~ is someone who lacks skill in discourses (a[neu th~ peri; tou;~ lovgou~ tevcnh~) and so, disappointed when many
discourses that initially seemed promising and convincing turn out to
be unsatisfactory, comes to believe there is no health (oujde;n uJgie;~) or
reliability in any object or argument. Socrates says it is pitiable when
such a person does not blame himself or his own lack of skill but rather,
because of his distress, shifts the blame away from himself to lovgo~ and
spends the rest of his life deprived of knowledge and truth. The belief
that no logoi are healthy is a dangerous one. More correct is to believe
that we are not healthy (uJgiw~ e[comen) and must take courage and be eager to achieve soundness (uJgiw~ e[cein).
According to this Socratic account, both the hatred of arguments
and the hatred of persons arise from false hopes based on unrealistic
standards of what human nature and human lovgo~ can accomplish. The
best remedy for such hatreds is to gain a more realistic understanding
of the capacities of the human soul and of the functions, strengths, and
weaknesses of various kinds of lovgo~. It is to develop a skill for judging
character so as to withhold complete trust from less than healthy per-
sons, and to develop an ability for conducting discourse with dialectical
skill.^7 We fi nd here clear echoes of Socrates’ account of true “medicinal”
dialectical rhetoric at Phaedrus 268a– 272b and of his introduction of a
medical model for the care of the soul at Gorgias 462b– 465e. In all three
accounts Socrates calls for a skillful understanding of human nature
and a skillful use of lovgo~, and characterizes both persons and lovgoi
as sometimes healthy and sometimes unhealthy.^8 He implies that the
skilled practitioner diagnoses situations very carefully and makes use of
lovgoi accordingly. From the three accounts it is possible to construct a
view that we might call the medical model of Socratic philosophizing.
The following section further explores some potentially illuminating
implications of this view.