Luke Jennings (Balliol): 'Plato on the Possibility of a Rhetorical Art in the Phaedrus'
Abstract: Late into the Phaedrus, Socrates and the dialogue's namesake turn their attention to determining whether there is an art of rhetoric and, if so, what its characteristic features might be. Socrates defends the compound view that there is such an art and one of its necessary conditions is dialectic, or true collection and division. This claim is surprising for two reasons. For one, in earlier dialogues such as the Gorgias Socrates denies that rhetoric is an art. For another, the Socrates of the Phaedrus attributes to rhetoric the method characteristic of philosophical inquiry, i.e. dialectic. Is the rhetoric of Plato's Phaedrus philosophy in a thin guise, or is it a reformed rhetoric? I argue that Socrates’ position in the Phaedrus is that one cannot have the art of rhetoric without engaging in dialectic and being a philosopher; however, engaging in philosophy is not sufficient for one to have the rhetorical art.
