These I Call Dialecticians
Read the full text in our reader
Socrates — διαλεκτικούς… ἡ λόγων τέχνη Θρασύμαχός σοφοὶ λέγειν…
Phaedrus — βασιλικοὶ οὐ ἐπιστήμονές… διαλεκτικὸν καλῶν… τὸ ῥητορικὸν διαφεύγειν.
Socrates now bestows the name. Those who can do what the two speeches did — collect and divide, gather the many into one form and cut the form at its joints — 'these,' he says, 'I have been calling dialektikous,' dialecticians. It is a word of great weight in Plato: it comes from dialegesthai, 'to converse,' and it names the philosopher precisely as the master of reasoned discussion, the one who can carve reality truly. Then Socrates asks, with an edge, what to call the other sort — the men who learn from teachers like Thrasymachus, the celebrated rhetoricians, and 'become clever at speaking,' sophoi legein, and make others clever, and are rewarded 'as though they were kings.' Phaedrus's answer draws the line exactly where Plato wants it: such men are basilikoi, 'kingly,' grand and richly paid — 'but not epistēmones,' not knowers, 'of what you ask.' They have the royal manner and the fat fees, but not knowledge. The name 'dialectic,' Phaedrus agrees, is rightly given to the method of collection and division. What still eludes them, he adds, is the other thing — 'the rhetorical' art. And that admission sets the agenda for the rest of the dialogue.
Socrates gives the method's masters their name. Those who can perform collection and division — gathering the many into one form and cutting it at its joints — he calls dialecticians. Then he asks what to call the fee-taking teachers of rhetoric like Thrasymachus, who make themselves and others clever at speaking and are paid like kings. Phaedrus grants they are impressive — 'kingly' even — but not knowers; the name 'dialectic' is right, he agrees, though the 'rhetorical' art still eludes them.
This is the passage where Plato plants his flag and names the victor. The whole second half has been sorting two things that look alike — the philosopher and the sophist, the knower and the mere performer — and here at last the philosopher gets his proper title: dialektikos, the dialectician, the one who can collect and divide. The choice of that word over any other is deeply significant. Plato could have called his ideal thinker a 'wise man' or a 'knower' or a 'philosopher'; the word he reaches for is built on conversation, dialegesthai, talking-a-thing-through. The dialectician is defined not by eloquence, not by the power to hold a crowd, not by anything he can do to an audience, but by his capacity to reason through a question with another mind, back and forth, dividing and gathering until the truth of the matter stands clear. This quietly prepares the dialogue's famous ending, where Socrates will argue that living speech — dialogue, the exchange between present minds — is superior to the dead, one-way word on the page. The dialectician's art is the art of the living conversation, which is why it cannot be reduced to a written technique or a set of tricks. And the contrast with the fee-taking rhetoricians is drawn with real bite. Thrasymachus and his kind are 'kingly,' basilikoi — a wonderfully double-edged word. They are paid like kings and carry themselves like kings, impressive and powerful; but the deeper irony is that a true king, in Plato's thought, is precisely one who rules by knowledge, and these men have the trappings of royalty without the knowledge that would make the title real. They are, Phaedrus says with unexpected precision, not epistēmones — not possessors of epistēmē, knowledge, the thing that separates a real art from a knack. They can produce clever speakers the way a cook produces pleasant dishes, by a routine got from practice; but they cannot give what they do not have, knowledge of the realities their speeches are about. So the map is now complete and labeled. On one side: the dialektikos, master of collection and division, a knower, working by carving reality at its joints in living conversation. On the other: the rhetorician, clever, kingly, paid, but not a knower — skilled at appearances, ignorant of forms. Yet Plato does not simply exalt the first and dismiss the second, and Phaedrus's closing remark shows why. 'The rhetorical still escapes us,' he says. There is something more to be understood — for dialectic alone, knowledge of the forms, does not yet tell you how to move a particular soul in a particular assembly toward the truth you know. That remaining thing, the genuine art of rhetoric built on dialectic but adding a knowledge of souls, is what the rest of the dialogue will pursue. The dialectician has been named; now Plato must show how the dialectician can also become the only kind of orator worth being.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Phaedrus 266c in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Phaedrus — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Phaedrus 266c — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/phaedrus/266c/