They Secretly Love It
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Socrates — οἱ μέγιστον φρονοῦντες τῶν πολιτικῶν μάλιστα ἐρῶσι λογογραφίας… οὕτως ἀγαπῶσι τοὺς ἐπαινέτας.
Socrates flips Phaedrus's observation into a comedy of vanity. Far from shunning the pen, he says, the politicians 'who think themselves greatest' — hoi megiston phronountes, the ones with the highest self-regard — 'most of all love,' malista erōsi, the very things they pretend to despise: speechwriting and leaving behind written works. Notice the verb: erōsi, they are in love with it, the same word the whole first half used for erotic passion, now aimed at their own compositions. And Socrates adds a perfect detail. They so 'cherish' — agapōsi — their praisers, their epainetai, that whenever they compose a speech they write the names of their admirers in at the very top. The public disdain for writing is a pose; underneath, these men are besotted with their own words and starved for applause.
Socrates turns Phaedrus's point on its head. It is not true, he says, that the powerful shun writing. On the contrary — the politicians who think most highly of themselves most of all love composing speeches and leaving behind written works. And they are so hungry for praise that, whenever they write a speech, they inscribe the names of their admirers right at the top, like a proud dedication.
There is a fine joke here, and like most of Plato's jokes it carries the argument. Phaedrus had solemnly reported that great men are ashamed to write for fear of being called sophists; Socrates replies that this is exactly backwards — the vainest and most powerful men love writing more than anyone, and only affect to look down on it. The proof is a wonderfully petty observation from Athenian public life: a proud statesman, having composed a decree or a speech, inscribes at the head of it the names of the distinguished people who approved it, so that the document doubles as an advertisement of his own admirers. It is the ancient equivalent of a politician who cannot resist quoting his own good reviews. But watch what Plato is doing beneath the comedy. He has Socrates describe this craving for praise with two of the dialogue's most loaded words, side by side. The politicians erōsi — are erotically in love with — speechwriting, and they agapōsi — fondly cherish — their praisers. Erōs and agapē are the two great Greek words for love, and the whole first half of the Phaedrus was an argument about erōs rightly and wrongly directed: love that reaches through beauty toward the divine, or love that stays trapped in appetite and appearance. Here, at the opening of the second half, Plato quietly shows the same erōs gone small and vain — passion not for beauty or truth but for one's own words and one's own reputation. This is the thread that stitches the two halves of the dialogue together. The bad lover and the vain writer suffer from the same disease: a desire that has fixed on how one appears to others rather than on what is real. And it sets up the challenge Socrates is about to pose. The question will not be whether to write, since everyone writes and secretly loves to; it is whether one can write, and speak, and love, out of a genuine reach for truth rather than a hunger to be praised. Rhetoric and eros are, in the end, the same problem.
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