Call No Man Wise
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Socrates — τὸ μὲν σοφόν, ὦ Φαῖδρε, καλεῖν ἔμοιγε μέγα εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ θεῷ μόνῳ πρέπειν· τὸ δὲ ἢ φιλόσοφον ἢ τοιοῦτόν τι μᾶλλόν τε ἂν αὐτῷ καὶ ἁρμόττοι καὶ ἐμμελεστέρως ἔχοι.
To call him 'wise,' Phaedrus, seems to me too great a thing, and to befit a god alone; but 'lover of wisdom' — philosopher — or something of that kind would both suit him better and ring more in tune.
As the dialogue winds toward its close, Phaedrus asks what name a true speaker deserves. Socrates's answer defines the word that names his whole calling — and reserves a greater word for the gods.
Near the very end, the dialogue defines the word it has been enacting all along, and the definition is an act of humility with an edge. Asked what to call a man who truly knows how to speak and write, Socrates refuses the title <em>sophós</em>, 'wise.' That word, he says, is 'too great' (<em>méga</em>) for any mortal — it 'befits a god alone.' What a human being can be is <em>philósophos</em>: not wise, but a <em>lover</em> of wisdom, forever courting what only a god possesses. The whole ethos of Socratic philosophy is compressed here — the man famous for knowing that he knows nothing will not let even the ideal speaker be called wise. Wisdom is the horizon you walk toward, never the ground you stand on. This is the counterpart to the palinode's theology, where the gods feel no envy (247a) precisely because they lack nothing; the philosopher, by contrast, is defined by a lack — the wisdom he loves and does not have — which is exactly what keeps him in motion.<br><br>And the word Socrates uses for why 'philosopher' is the <em>right</em> name is quietly perfect: it would be more <em>emmelḗs</em> — 'in tune.' The metaphor is musical (from <em>mélos</em>, a tune): to name a thing rightly is to be in harmony with what it is, the way a well-tuned string is in harmony with the scale. Its opposite, <em>plēmmelḗs</em>, 'out of tune,' was Plato's word a few pages earlier (275e) for the written text that is 'struck a wrong note' and cannot defend itself. So the choice of names is not pedantry but attunement: calling the philosopher 'wise' would be a false note, a discord with reality; calling him 'wisdom's lover' rings true. The dialogue that began by teaching that a speech must be a living, well-joined body ends by insisting that even our titles must <em>fit</em> — and reserves the one word no mortal fits, <em>sophós</em>, for the gods. There is a jab hidden in it, too: the 'sophists' (<em>sophistaí</em>) claimed the very wisdom Socrates says belongs to god alone. To call yourself a lover of wisdom rather than a wise man is, quietly, to accuse everyone who does otherwise.
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