ThePhaedrus, like the Symposium,is about love and
rhetoric—and philosophy. In both dialogues, Plato stages his
praise of philosophical desire against sophistic rhetoric. The
sophists of Athens marketed the skills required to seduce an
audience, whether the audience was a beloved or a crowd of
voters. Recent critics wish to bring Socrates close to the
sophists he criticized, the purveyors of low persuasion. But
for Plato’s Socrates philosophy is an erotic art, not a sophistic
one. Plato tells us the difference between sophistic rhetoric
and philosophy. The distinction between speech and writing
that Derrida emphasizes is simply not the focus of the Phae-
drus.Whether speeches are spoken or written, only one thing
matters about them for Plato: are they the instruments of so-
phistic persuasion or of its opponent, philosophy?
Philosophers, unlike sophists, prize the inward agon—
fierce mental debate—and find it intrinsically rewarding, be-
cause it leads to truth. The soul as Plato depicts it in the myth
of the charioteer is all about struggle. As such, it answers the
vision of base calculation that the rhetorician Lysias and his
fan Phaedrus give us at the beginning of Plato’s dialogue, in the
speech of the nonlover who aims to win over an eromenos just
as prudent and self-serving as himself. In the myth of the char-
ioteer, even baseness—the reckless, raging desire centered in
the bad horse—proves spirited rather than calculating. The
masters of rhetoric, simply put, are nonlovers: firmly on the
side of calculation and opposed to the fervent impulses of
thought as well as feeling. Socrates is against sophistic rhetoric
because rhetoricians prize self-possession and manipulation
over the madness that every enthusiast, whether lover or
philosopher, must yield to.
I will offer some thoughts as to why Derrida is so uncon-
cerned with the difference between rhetoric and philosophy,
Plato, Austin, Nietzsche, Freud 147