First, Show the Soul
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Socrates — Θρασύμαχός τέχνην ῥητορικὴν… ἀκριβείᾳ ψυχὴν… ἓν ὅμοιον ἢ πολυειδές… φύσιν.
Now the abstract method is turned into a concrete curriculum for the would-be teacher of rhetoric. Since the orator's 'whole effort is stretched' toward one goal — 'to produce persuasion,' peithō, 'in the soul' — the first task of anyone who would 'seriously teach a rhetorical art,' Socrates says (naming Thrasymachus, the celebrity teacher, as the test case), is to 'make us see the soul with all precision,' pasēi akribeiāi psychēn idein. Specifically: is the soul 'one and uniform in nature,' hen kai homoion, or is it, 'like the shape of the body,' multiform, polyeides — made of many distinct kinds? 'This,' Socrates says, 'is what we mean by showing a nature.' And that is only the first step; second comes the analysis of the soul's powers — 'by what it acts and is acted on.' The demand is exact and, aimed at Thrasymachus, pointedly ironic: the man famous for teaching rhetoric is being told that before he may teach a single device, he owes us a precise scientific account of the soul — its kinds and its causal powers — which he has plainly never attempted.
Socrates makes the program concrete. Since the orator's whole effort is bent on producing persuasion in the soul, then Thrasymachus — or anyone who would seriously teach a true art of rhetoric — must first, with all precision, make us see the soul: whether it is one and uniform in nature, or, like the body, multiform. That, Socrates says, is what 'showing a nature' means. And second, one must show by what the soul acts, and what it is acted on by.
This passage sets the true rhetoric its foundational task, and the task is nothing less than a scientific psychology. Before any technique, the teacher must answer the question 'what is the soul?' — and specifically whether it is one uniform thing or many kinds. Plato's own answer, given in this very dialogue and in the Republic, is emphatically that the soul is multiform: the palinode's image of the charioteer and two horses is precisely a picture of the soul as polyeides, a composite of reason, spirit, and appetite, each with its own nature and its own susceptibilities. And that answer is exactly what makes a real art of rhetoric both possible and necessary. If the soul were simple, one uniform thing, then one kind of speech would move all souls alike, and rhetoric would need no science — a single technique would do. It is because the soul is multiform, because there are different kinds of soul (and different parts within each) moved by different kinds of speech, that the orator needs a science: he must know the kinds, as the doctor knows the kinds and states of bodies, in order to bring the right speech to the right soul. So the seemingly abstract question 'simple or multiform?' is the hinge of the entire program. The rest of the dialogue's account of rhetoric follows from answering it 'multiform': the orator must classify the types of soul, learn which type is persuaded by which type of speech, and then, recognizing the soul before him, apply the fitting speech at the fitting moment — the full analogy with the doctor who diagnoses the patient and prescribes accordingly. There is a deep irony in addressing this to Thrasymachus, and Plato surely intends it. Thrasymachus, in the Republic, is the fierce champion of the view that justice is merely the interest of the stronger — a man who thinks rhetoric is raw power over others. Here he is told that to teach rhetoric truly he would have to become a psychologist and, behind that, a philosopher of the soul, grasping its kinds and powers with scientific precision. The transformation demanded is total: from a peddler of domineering technique into a scientist of the soul. And the demand exposes, one last time, the gulf between what the sophists sell and what a real art of rhetoric would require. They sell devices for pushing souls around; Plato demands a precise knowledge of what souls are. The whole of the remaining discussion — the classification of souls and speeches, and finally the turn to writing — unfolds from this single foundational requirement: first, show the soul.
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