For the Sake of Great Things
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Socrates — μακρὰ ἡ περίοδος μὴ θαυμάσῃς… μεγάλων ἕνεκα… ἐπιχειροῦντί καλοῖς καλὸν.
Socrates ends his speech to Tisias with a defense of everything that has made the true art seem so daunting. 'If the circuit is long,' ei makra hē periodos — if the road they have taken toward a real rhetoric has been a long way around, through the soul and the Forms and the labor of dialectic — 'do not be surprised.' For 'it is for the sake of great things,' megalōn heneka, 'that one must go the long way round, not for the small ends you suppose.' The length of the path is proportional to the greatness of the goal: a real science of the soul is a vast thing, and vast things are not reached by shortcuts. And the argument promises, Socrates says, that these great things really do come about, and 'most finely,' for anyone who is willing. Phaedrus offers the natural human sigh: it is beautifully said — 'if only one could actually do it,' eiper hoios te tis eiē. And Socrates gives the reply that redeems the whole daunting demand: 'but for one who attempts fine things, it is fine' even to try — kalon, a fine and noble thing, to make the attempt, whatever the outcome.
Socrates closes his address to Tisias with a defense of the long road. If the circuit we have taken seems long, he says, do not be surprised: it is for the sake of great things that one must go the long way round, not for the small ends you imagine. And these great things, the argument promises, do come about, most finely, for anyone willing to pursue them. Phaedrus agrees it is beautifully said — if only a person could actually do it. Socrates answers that even the attempt at fine things is itself a fine thing.
This gentle exchange answers the deepest resistance the whole argument provokes, the resistance Phaedrus voices for all of us: the true art of rhetoric, as Socrates has described it, is so demanding — a science of the soul, mastery of dialectic, a lifetime of labor undertaken to please the gods — that it seems humanly impossible. Why set the bar so impossibly high? Socrates's two-part answer is one of the most humane and characteristic things in Plato. The first part is about proportion: the road is long because the goal is great. There is no scandal in a hard path to a high destination; the scandal would be pretending that so great a thing as leading souls toward truth could be got cheaply, by a handbook of tricks. The sophists offered a short road precisely because they were headed somewhere small — winning cases, collecting fees, pleasing the crowd. Plato's road is long because it is headed toward the greatest thing there is, the health of the soul and its alignment with the divine, and 'for the sake of great things one goes the long way round.' The length is not a defect of the path but a measure of the prize. The second part is the more beautiful, and it answers Phaedrus's 'if only one could do it.' Socrates does not promise that anyone will fully achieve this ideal art — the phrase 'as far as is possible for a human' has recurred through the whole passage, a steady acknowledgment that the goal exceeds our grasp. What he says instead is that the attempt itself is noble: 'for one who attempts fine things, it is fine.' The value is not only in the achieving but in the striving. This is a profound reorientation of how to think about an impossibly high ideal. The point of holding up the image of the perfect orator — or the perfect lover, or the perfect philosopher — is not to make us despair at falling short, but to orient our effort toward the highest thing, in the confidence that a life spent reaching toward it is itself a good life, whether or not it arrives. To attempt fine things is already to be doing something fine; the reaching ennobles the reacher. And this quietly recalls the whole ascent of the palinode, where the soul that has seen the Forms spends its earthly life striving to recover them, growing its wings by the very effort of the upward gaze, never fully arriving but made noble by the aspiration. The demand for a perfect rhetoric, like the demand for a perfect love, is not a cruelty but a summons: it calls us to spend ourselves on great things, and assures us that the spending is itself the finest kind of life. So the long argument about rhetoric ends not in a discouraging standard but in an encouraging one — attempt the fine thing, and the attempt is already fine — and on that note Socrates turns, at last, to the final theme of the dialogue: the question of writing, and whether the words we set down on a page can serve, or only counterfeit, this great labor of leading souls toward the truth.
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