The Solemn Silence of Writing
Read the full text in our reader
Socrates — δεινὸν γάρ που, ὦ Φαῖδρε, τοῦτʼ ἔχει γραφή, καὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς ὅμοιον ζωγραφίᾳ. καὶ γὰρ τὰ ἐκείνης ἔκγονα ἕστηκε μὲν ὡς ζῶντα, ἐὰν δʼ ἀνέρῃ τι, σεμνῶς πάνυ σιγᾷ. ταὐτὸν δὲ καὶ οἱ λόγοι· δόξαις μὲν ἂν ὥς τι φρονοῦντας αὐτοὺς λέγειν, ἐὰν δέ τι ἔρῃ τῶν λεγομένων βουλόμενος μαθεῖν, ἕν τι σημαίνει μόνον ταὐτὸν ἀεί.
There is a strange thing about writing, Phaedrus, and it truly is like painting. The painter's offspring stand there as if alive, but ask them something and they keep a most solemn silence. Written words are the same: you would think they spoke as if they understood, but ask them, wanting to learn, and they signify one and the same thing, forever.
The heart of the critique of writing. Socrates finds in it a strange defect — one it shares, he says, with painting: both produce lifelike things that cannot answer back.
This is the sharpest blade in the whole critique of writing, and it cuts through an analogy the Greek language hands Socrates for free: <em>graphḗ</em> means both 'writing' and 'drawing,' and <em>zōgraphía</em>, 'painting,' is literally 'life-drawing' (<em>zôion</em> + <em>graphō</em>). So writing IS a kind of painting — a lifelike image of thought. The painter's figures 'stand as if alive' (<em>hōs zônta</em>); the written word looks as though it 'understands' (<em>phronoûntas</em>). But the test of life is whether it can be <em>questioned</em>. Ask a painting anything and it keeps 'a very solemn silence' (<em>semnôs sigâi</em>) — and <em>semnós</em> is exactly the right barb, poised between 'holy' and 'pompous': the text puts on the dignity of an oracle and delivers nothing. Ask a book, and it 'signifies one and the same thing forever' (<em>hèn ti sēmaínei… tautòn aeí</em>). It cannot explain itself, cannot adjust to the questioner, cannot say more. It only repeats.<br><br>This is why, for Plato, the written word is at best a <em>reminder</em> (275a) and never the living thing itself. The living <em>lógos</em> — dialectic, the word spoken into a soul and able to answer, defend itself, and 'know before whom to speak and before whom to be silent' (276a) — is the 'legitimate brother' of which writing is only the image. And the self-implicating irony is total and deliberate: you are reading these words in a book, and they are keeping their solemn silence to your questions right now. Plato writes the definitive case against writing, in writing, so that the contradiction becomes the lesson — the text can point you toward the living inquiry, but cannot be it. You have to close the book and ask a person. Which is what Socrates and Phaedrus have been doing under the plane tree all along: performing the one thing writing cannot do.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Phaedrus 275d 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 275d — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/phaedrus/275d/