Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros20Dossier : L'Empeiria chez PlatonThe Analogy Between Medicine and ...

Dossier : L'Empeiria chez Platon

The Analogy Between Medicine and Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus

The Theoretical Construction of the Art of Speech
Pedro M. G. Dotto

Résumés

Résumé : Cet article examine l’analogie médecine-rhétorique dans les dialogues de Platon, en se concentrant spécifiquement sur son déploiement dans le Gorgias et le Phèdre. On montre comment Platon utilise cette analogie pour disqualifier la rhétorique conventionnelle comme non technique et construire le modèle théorique d’un art du discours technique et authentique. Alors que les interprétations précédentes ont soutenu que la vraie rhétorique de Platon est impossible, illusoire ou idéalisée, mon analyse révèle que Platon emploie l'analogie avec la médecine pour établir un cadre conceptuel pour une technique rhétorique véritable, c'est-à-dire une construction théorique de l'art du discours, suivant de près le paradigme technique de la médecine. Le Phèdre développe l’idéal d’une rhétorique noble et authentique préfiguré dans le Gorgias et le développe en prenant la médecine comme τέχνη paradigmatique. En outre, l’article établit des liens avec les textes hippocratiques, tels que De l'ancienne médecine, afin d’élucider l’importance de la construction épistémologique platonicienne de la rhétorique en tant qu’art du discours dans le Phèdre. En fin de compte, je montre que l’analogie médecine-rhétorique apparaît comme un élément central du projet épistémologique de Platon de formuler un art du discours fondé sur la méthode dialectique, établissant la rhétorique comme une τέχνη légitime modelée sur l'expertise médicale.

Haut de page

Entrées d’index

Haut de page

Notes de l’auteur

This study was financed, in part, by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brasil. Process Number: 2024/07677-0; and, in part, by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. Process Number 88887.008749/2024-00.

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 Decleva Caizzi 1966 t. 51 = Prince 2015, t. 187.
  • 2 For the historical and conceptual background of the analogy between φάρμακον and λόγος, see M. Serr (...)

1Plato was not the first and would not be the last author to work out an analogy between medicine and rhetoric. Gorgias had done so in his Eulogy of Helene (§14) by equating the power of speech over souls to the power of drugs over bodies. Plato attributes to Protagoras an almost identical analogy in the Theaetetus (167a4-6). In this passage, Socrates attributes to Protagoras the idea that education brings about a transformation from a worse to a better condition and claims that just as doctors effect this change through drugs (φάρμακα), sophists do it through speeches (λόγοι). Isocrates, in turn, claims that doctors have devised numerous treatments for bodily diseases over time. However, to dispel errors from an ignorant mind filled with evil desires, there is only one remedy that can do the trick, namely speech (λόγος) (Orat. 8.39). For Antisthenes, it is a hallmark of wisdom to express the same thought in diverse guises (τὸ αὐτὸ νόημα κατὰ πολλοὺς τρόπους λέγειν) and just as medicine adapts its treatments to the patient’s peculiar condition, it is a sign of wisdom to adjust modes of expression to the responsive capacities of the audience.1 Aristotle, finally, draws both disciplines together by claiming that the function of rhetoric is not, properly speaking, to persuade, but to discover the means of persuasion available in each given case, just as the function of medicine is not, properly speaking, to heal, but to discover the means of healing available (Rh. I.1.1355b8-14; Top. 101b5-11).2

  • 3 See L. Ayache, « L’arme du crime: la référence médicale chez Platon », Noesis, n° 2, 1998, p. 89‑1 (...)
  • 4 See L. Edelstein, « The Rôle of Eryximachus in Plato’s Symposium », Transactions and Proceedings of (...)
  • 5 See W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in (...)
  • 6 See Á.V. Campos, « Socrates as a physician of the soul », in G. Cornelli (ed.), Plato’s Styles and (...)
  • 7 Throughout this paper, I translate τέχνη primarily as “art” and occasionally as “technique” to capt (...)
  • 8 On the medicine-rhetoric analogy in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus see, for instance, T. Irani, Plato (...)

2However, an ambiguity lurks in Plato’s treatment of medicine across the dialogues. If medicine is taken in isolation, it is criticized for its ambition to offer comprehensive knowledge of reality and establish guidelines for the orderly conduct of life, making it an adversary of philosophy.3 This critical approach can be witnessed, for instance, in the dialectical overcoming of Eryximachus’ encomium to ἔρως (Symp. 185e6-188e5) by the subsequent speeches of the drinking-party and in the reproach against Herodicus and contemporary medicine in Rep. III 406a5-40865.4 On the other hand, medicine is applauded as an epistemic paradigm in the domain of the τέχναι and is used as an analogy by Socrates in his arguments and refutations (e.g., Gorg. 464a1-466a3; 479a5-480e4; 504e6-505c9; Symp. 205d10-206a1; Phdr. 270c3-272b6; Rep. II 357b4-d4; III 408d10-410a6; IV 44c1-445a4; Soph. 230b4-230e3);5 additionally, Plato even depicts Socrates at times as a physician of the soul (e.g., Ap. 29c6-30c1; Char. 156d1-157c6; Prot. 313a1-314c2).6 In this second approach, the art7 of medicine assists Plato in both condemning current practices of rhetoric and constructing a theoretical account of rhetoric that is congenial to philosophy.8

  • 9 On the importance of analogical thinking in Plato’s dialogues, accounting for its different usages (...)
  • 10 In the terminology of Renato Matoso, I undertake in this paper a “diachronic analysis” that seeks t (...)
  • 11 E.g., R. Burger, Plato’s Phaedrus: a Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing, University, Universit (...)
  • 12 In a well-argued piece on the theoretical foundations of rhetoric in the Phaedrus, in contradistinc (...)

3In this paper, I concern myself with the deployment of the medicine-rhetoric analogy in Plato,9 with a special focus on the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. My purpose is to understand the assumptions and stakes behind the medicine-rhetoric analogy. I aim to demonstrate the underlying conceptual unity that governs the medicine-rhetoric analogy in Plato’s dialogues, particularly in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus.10 In brief, the art of medicine is used to guide the theorization of a true, technical rhetoric and censure current rhetorical practices. This paper argues that Plato employs the medicine-rhetoric analogy as an epistemological framework to establish the conditions under which rhetoric can achieve the status of a genuine τέχνη. Through a comparative analysis of the Gorgias and Phaedrus, I argue that Plato develops epistemological requirements and a value-orientation for rhetorical expertise. The medicine analogy thus provides Plato with a constructive model for transforming rhetoric from a mere empirical knack into a genuine art grounded in dialectical knowledge. Plato aims to establish rhetoric as a psychagogic art, patterned after medicine’s care for the body, that can promote the health and virtue of the soul through philosophically informed persuasion. In this sense, a true rhetoric is prefigured in the Gorgias and fully developed in the Phaedrus to the extent that it can come close to the epistemological benchmark established by medicine. From this perspective, the analogy with medicine proves that the genuine, psychagogic rhetoric of the Phaedrus is not chimerical, contrary to what some commentators have supposed,11 but is rather theoretically systematized as a τέχνη for the first time in this dialogue.12

  • 13 For an argument that a τέχνη, qua τέχνη, is value-neutral and, as such, need not be good-directed o (...)
  • 14 On the concepts of φύσις and δύναμις in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine in relation to (...)

4The implications of Plato’s analogy between medicine and rhetoric are paramount in establishing his concept of the art of speech. First, it establishes that the psychagogic rhetoric of the Phaedrus is not a value-neutral art, contrary to what some modern commentators on Plato may think, in the sense that it is not indifferent to the overall goodness or badness of the ends it aims at.13 So, against the position of rhetoric’s value-neutrality ascribed by Plato to Gorgias in the homonymous dialogue (Gorg. 456c6-457c3; 460c7-d6), I argue that the genuine rhetoric of the Phaedrus should be directed towards the well-being of the soul to be qualified as a τέχνη, just like medicine has to be oriented towards the health of the body to be counted as a τέχνη. Further, the definition of λόγος in terms of δύναμις in Phdr. 271c10 may be indebted to a Hippocratic source, given the importance of the concept of δύναμις in some Hippocratic treatises for disclosing the φύσις of things (especially the treatise On Ancient Medicine, which I return to in the third section).14

  • 15 For Plato’s indebtedness to the Hippocratic method of dividing natures according to powers, see A. (...)

5In the Phaedrus, Socrates identifies the power of speech as soul-leading (λόγου δύναμιςψυχαγωγία, Phdr. 271c10), and models the theoretical framework for psychagogic rhetoric on the medical τέχνη, with particular concern for the causal power of different species of speeches on different species of souls, and on how they interact with each other (270b1-2).15 Different types of drugs or food are causally effective on specific bodily constitutions, just as different kinds of speech are causally effective on specific forms of soul. This contrast between the corporeal nature of the body and the incorporeal nature of the soul, between medicine’s material interventions and rhetoric’s discursive operations, reveals precisely why Socrates employs this analogy so persistently. The familiar model of medicine, with its organized methods and therapeutic protocols based on the prescription of drugs and diets, provides a conceptual framework through which we can grasp the less apparent procedures that philosophical rhetoric must employ.

  • 16 See G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, op. cit.(...)
  • 17 See S. Marino, Il corpo del dialogo, op. cit., p. 239‑242 ; C. Perelman, « Analogy and Metaphor in (...)
  • 18 Alternatively, I could have cited the ἀναλογία between the sun and the Form of the Good in Rep. VI (...)

6Analogies play a heuristic role. Analogical thinking resorts to more familiar and well-known objects to account for less familiar and obscure objects (a : b :: x : y).16 Often, analogical thinking is interested in explaining the nature of the relationship between objects more than the objects themselves, extending a causal relationship that is better understood to one that is not well understood (aRb xRy).17 For instance, the Republic’s program for investigating what justice in the soul is relies on the determination of what justice in the city is, taking into account “the likeness of the bigger in the form of the smaller” (τὴν τοῦ μείζονος ὁμοιότητα ἐν τῇ τοῦ ἐλάττονος ἰδέᾳ, Rep. II 369a2-3). This methodological approach ensue from Plato's analogy of reading justice first in large letters (the city) before proceeding to read it in smaller letters (the soul) (Rep. II 368c4-369b1; cf. Pol. 277e2-278c1). The city-soul analogy suggests that justice involves the optimal relationship between the elements of a compound entity, a relationship that is constitutive of its well-ordered functioning. Thus, just as Socrates deploys the city-soul analogy in the Republic, through which the more visible structures of political justice illuminate the less apparent configurations of psychic justice, so the medicine-rhetoric comparison employs a familiar, well-reputed, and thriving τέχνη to elucidate the lesser-known activities of rhetoric as a τέχνη.18

  • 19 These passages are also cited and investigated in G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two types of (...)

7As regards the medicine-rhetoric analogy, then, I claim that Plato is concerned with both operations of analogical thinking, that is, both to position the soul as the object of rhetoric, as the body is the object of medicine (medicine : body :: rhetoric : soul), and to model the relationship between rhetorical speeches and souls on that between medical treatments and bodies (medicineRbody rhetoricRsoul). But there is also a limitation to analogical thinking to be taken into consideration, as Socrates argued in Rep. II.368dff.; IV.434eff. (cf. Soph. 230a1-230b1): one must proceed with caution and check the areas of resemblance and discrepancy, areas of overlap and deviation between the two terms of a given analogy.19

8Medicine provides a paradigmatic instance of a firmly established and highly esteemed τέχνη. Doctors identify specific bodily conditions through diagnostic procedures, classify pathologies according to established taxonomies, and prescribe targeted interventions based on understanding the body’s natural constitution and the properties of various remedies. This medical and methodical approach to bodily health serves as the conceptual template through which Socrates articulates what rhetoric requires to become a τέχνη, e.g., equivalent diagnostic capacities for identifying soul-types, systematic classification of psychic structures, and discursive interventions calibrated to the particular nature of each soul. As I aim to demonstrate, the analogy with medicine is a methodological device that generates substantive philosophical results, in that it reveals what it would mean for rhetoric to achieve the status of a genuine τέχνη rather than a mere experience-dependent knack (ἐμπειρία).

1. The Analogy Between Medicine and Rhetoric in the Gorgias

9The first time that the art of medicine comes up in the Gorgias is in Chaerephon’s question to Polus, in a kind of proxy dialogue before the more substantial discussion between Socrates and Gorgias. Chaerephon uses the example of Gorgias’ brother Herodicus, a doctor, to frame his inquiry about Gorgias’ art (Gorg. 448b4-448c3). Polus fails to give an adequate response about the nature of Gorgia’s art since he presents merely an attribute of the art, namely the most noble (τῆς καλλίστης τῶν τεχνῶν, 448c9; καλλίστη, 448e5) instead of answering what it is.

  • 20 This is what S.B. Levin terms “the subject-matter requirement.” To specify what constitutes a prope (...)
  • 21 “Craft” terminology suggests productive knowledge (e.g., shoemaking, woodworking, weaving). However (...)
  • 22 G. Cambiano, « Platon et les rapports entre théorie et praxis dans la médecine hippocratique », Étu (...)

10On the assumption that every τέχνη has to do with a well-established domain of objects20 (περὶ τί τῶν ὄντων, 449d1-2; cf. Rep. IV 438d11-438e8), Socrates refutes Gorgias’ answer that rhetoric has to do with speeches simpliciter, since doctors are also concerned with speeches in the exercise of their art, but specifically with speeches about sickness and curing. Other arts are indeed referred to at this point to extract an unambiguous statement from Gorgias about his trade, in what is well known in the literature as craft-analogy (Irwin/Graham) or, more precisely, as techne-analogy (Roochnik).21 However, medicine has a special status and is often rendered as an exemplary τέχνη or epistemic-technical paradigm in Plato’s dialogues,22 betraying a much deeper affinity with rhetoric in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus.

  • 23 Cf., Gorg. 452e4-5: καίτοι ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ δυνάμει δοῦλον μὲν ἕξεις τὸν ἰατρόν. See also Phil. 58a7-58c (...)

11Gorgias speaks about his brother Herodicus, first mentioned by Chaerephon, and how his rhetoric can persuade patients to undertake certain medical treatments when his brother and other doctors are unable to do so. Gorgias even boasts that a rhetorician has the doctor as his slave and that, in the ultimate analysis, if a rhetorician and a doctor were to go before an assembly and submit themselves to deliberation on who is the real doctor, the rhetorician would prevail (456a7-456c6).23 Thus, in Gorgias’ view, a rhetorician not only has the power to subdue a doctor and all other technicians through his mastery of persuasive speeches but can also earn public recognition as a doctor in lieu of the actual doctor.

  • 24 Plato also cites a book containing the eulogy of salt (Symp. 177b4-c1).
  • 25 Jessica Moss « The Doctor and the Pastry Chef », op. cit., offers a superb reading of this contrast (...)

12The tenor of this passage is quite close to the praise of the donkey (λόγον ἔπαινον κατὰ τοῦ ὄνου) from the Phaedrus (260b1-d2). Even if this eulogy of the donkey could be classified under the category of “paradoxical encomia,” together with the eulogy of salt and bumblebees mentioned by Isocrates (Orat. 9. 12),24 this does not hinder Socrates from drawing great philosophical conclusions from it. The eulogy goes like this: a merchant successfully sells a donkey as if it were a battle horse due to the customer’s ignorance concerning what a horse is (ἵππον ἀγνοοῖμεν). Gorgias, likewise, can pass as a doctor before the assembly only because of the ignorance of the multitude, which he concedes at Gorg. 459a6 and 459b6. Thus, what secures the persuasiveness of Gorgias’ rhetoric is the audience’s ignorance of the given subject matter, and this argument paves the way for his refutation and for the imaginary contest between the cook and the doctor in a political trial, anticipating Socrates’ condemnation before the Athenian court.25

  • 26 J. K. Larsen, « Defining Rhetoric Dialectically: Confronting Philosophy with Rhetoric in Plato’s Go (...)

13In the exchange with Polus, medicine is appealed to not as a model art to which rhetoric should measure up for the sake of validating itself as a τεχνή (Chaerephon/Socrates), nor as a foil to exhibit rhetoric’s superiority over all arts (Gorgias), but as part of a comprehensive analogy that maps the structure of genuine arts and their deceptive counterparts. In Socrates’ comparative scheme between forms of art and pseudo-art or flattering, rhetoric appears as the counterfeit of justice in the domain of souls, just as cookery is the counterfeit of medicine in the domain of bodies.26

  • 27 While the standard view (as presented, e.g., in E. R. Dodds (ed.), Gorgias: A Revised Text, with In (...)

14Socrates’ analogy is unfolded through through the division between genuine arts (τέχναι) and their counterfeits or flatteries (κολακεῖαι). While his complete schema encompasses both regulative arts (gymnastic and legislation) and corrective arts (medicine and justice), along with their respective counterfeits, my analysis here concentrates on the corrective dimension of this analogy, that is to say, the relationship between medicine and cookery in the bodily sphere, and justice and rhetoric in the psychic sphere. In Socrates’ “geometrical” ratio (ὥσπερ οἱ γεωμέτραι, 465b7), then, the formulation appears as follows: medicine : cookery :: justice : rhetoric (Gorg. 464b2-466a3). This proportion provides Socrates with some telling parallels. Medicine and justice are corrective arts that restore their respective objects (body and soul, respectively) to their good condition (εὐεξίαν, 464a2). Second, both cookery and rhetoric act as counterfeits by dissimulating the appearance of their corresponding arts without possessing their essential features. The forms of flattery slip under (ὑποδῦσα) the authentic arts and pretend to be that which they have slipped in under (προσποιεῖται εἶναι τοῦτο ὅπερ ὑπέδυ, 464c7-d1). While the arts always attend to the best condition of the body and of the soul (ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον θεραπευουσῶν τῶν μὲν τὸ σῶμα, τῶν δὲ τὴν ψυχήν, 464c4-5), their counterfeit are not at all concerned with the best (τοῦ μὲν βελτίστου οὐδὲν φροντίζει, 464d1). The pseudo-arts chases after ignorance utilizing momentary pleasures and deception (τῷ δὲ ἀεὶ ἡδίστῳ θηρεύεται τὴν ἄνοιαν καὶ ἐξαπατᾷ, 464d2), so that they appear to be highly valuable (ὥστε δοκεῖ πλείστου ἀξία εἶναι, 464d2-3).27

15This contradistinction between art and pseudo-art is the backbone of Socrates’ charges that rhetoric is a knack or routine (ἐμπειρία καὶ τριβή, 463b4; ἐμπειρίαν, 465a3) rather than an art, for it is ignorant of the proper object of its activity (namely, the soul), and cannot give a rational account of its procedures (ἄλογον πρᾶγμα, 465a6). On the other hand, the authentic arts possess the qualities that their counterfeits lack: they are knowledgeable and aim at the good condition of their objects (body or soul), and they can provide rational explanations for why they act as they do and how their operations produce beneficial results.

  • 28 For the centrality of the concept of health in Plato’s thinking, see J. Moravcsik, « Ancient and Mo (...)
  • 29 Against the rhetoric vilified in the Gorgias, the Phaedrus works with a value-laden, normative conc (...)
  • 30 See J. Beversluis, Cross-examining Socrates: A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato’s Early Dialog (...)

16Furthermore, the analogy between medicine and justice (464b2-466a3; 468e6-481b5) is employed by Socrates to support his unconventional thesis that inflicting unjust harm without penalty is a great evil for an agent. This analogy supports the view that rhetoric is not an art because it induces harm rather than good in the soul, which should be the proper goal of a τεχνή. Indeed, at Gorg. 503e1-504a5 Socrates indicates that τέχναι operate by imposing form, harmony, and arrangement upon their objects. All craftsmen, according to Socrates, endeavor to confer a specific order to each element and to fit them all in a well-ordered and well-integrated whole (ἕως ἂν τὸ ἅπαν συστήσηται τεταγμένον τε καὶ κεκοσμημένον πρᾶγμα, 503e8-504a1). To pick on the examples singled out by Socrates, physicians and physical trainers arrange and order the body (κοσμοῦσί που τὸ σῶμα καὶ συντάττουσιν, 504a3-5). In connection with this, in Rep. I 341c4ff. Socrates argues that every art must be committed to the good of its proper object, rather than the advantage of its practitioners. Unsurprisingly, medicine is his first example here. In the Gorgias, just as well as in the Republic (IV 444c1-e2), Socrates conceptualizes injustice as a disease of the soul, and punishment becomes the cure for such a disease.28 Hence, what conventional rhetoric promotes in law courts is perpetuating the disease of injustice by attempting in every possible way to avoid the condemnation of its clients rather than delivering them to justice (Gorg. 477a5-479e9). In doing so, rhetoric is an anti-medicine, for instead of healing the soul through rightful chastisement, it allows the vicious tendencies to grow without control.29 Conventional rhetoric disregards that some unpleasant things are nonetheless beneficial, just like the amputation of a rotten member by a doctor (Gorg. 467c5-468c8; 478b7ff.; cf. Symp. 205d10-206a1; Prot. 353c1ff.).30

  • 31 The next two sections of this analysis examine how the Phaedrus advances beyond the Gorgias to prov (...)

17In my reading, this attack on current rhetoric, in the form of a comparison between medicine and justice, can demonstrate by way of contrast what rhetoric would have to achieve to be considered a genuine art by Platonic-Socratic standards.31 For one thing, instead of concealing an unjust act, it would make it manifest and bring the agent to justice in order to make his soul healthy (καὶ μὴ ἀποκρύπτεσθαι ἀλλεἰς τὸ φανερὸν ἄγειν τὸ ἀδίκημα, ἵνα δῷ δίκην καὶ ὑγιὴς γένηται, 480c3-5). The conceptual possibility of a technical rhetoric that would free a soul from false beliefs and vices and instill care for truth and virtue in it, according to the framework of the medicine-justice ratio worked out with Polus, is more eloquently spelled out in the confrontation with Callicles.

  • 32 See D. Roochnik, « Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric », in F.J. Gonzalez (ed.), The Third Way (...)
  • 33 Among scholars who maintain that Plato’s treatment of rhetoric differs significantly between the Go (...)

18To recapitulate: predicated on the medicine-rhetoric analogy, Socrates can refute the sophist of Leontini by reasoning under the assumption that rhetoric is an art (akin to medicine) directed toward a specific set of objects over which the τεχνικός has mastery (449e6ff.; 460b3ff.). Yet, in his dialogue with Polus, Socrates denies that rhetoric is an art (akin to medicine) and considers it to be a mere knack or routine, like cookery, grounded on experience rather than knowledge and geared towards pleasure rather than the good (464b2-466a3; 467c5ff.).32 Nonetheless, what seems to escape scholars who argue for the discontinuity in Plato’s treatment of rhetoric between the Gorgias and the Phaedrus is that the analogy with medicine shows up one last time in Socrates’ discussion with Callicles.33

  • 34 Although I find D. Roochnik, « Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric », op. cit., incomplete for (...)
  • 35 See, inter alia, T. Irani, Plato on the value of philosophy, op. cit., p. 62‑66 ; J. Moss, « The Do (...)

19In the confrontation with Callicles34, Socrates makes room for the conceptual possibility of a technical rhetoric and mentions it on three occasions. Socrates speaks of a noble (καλόν, 503a7) and true rhetoric (τῇ ἀληθινῇ ῥητορικῇ, 517a5; cf. 517b5-7), and even postulates the existence of an expert and good orator ( ῥήτωρ ἐκεῖνος, τεχνικός τε καὶ ἀγαθός (504d5-6), even if none can be identified in the current conditions of Athens, nor even in its recent and glorious past.35 We could term these three interrelated passages concerning the conceptual possibility of a good rhetoric in the Gorgias the “True Art of Rhetoric Claim” (TARC).

20The distinction that Socrates draws between the “flattering rhetoric” (502d5-8; 517a5-6; 522d7) that caters to the appetites of an audience and the true rhetoric that strives to exhort the interlocutors to achieve excellency of their souls, even at the risk of frustrating the satisfaction of their appetite, recovers and elaborates on, in my view, the earlier division between two forms of persuasion. In a previous passage, Socrates induces Gorgias to recognize two forms of persuasion (δύο εἴδηπειθοῦ, 454e3), one that gives conviction without knowledge and the other that provides it with knowledge. Gorgias has acknowledged that his persuasive activity belongs to the former kind, which Socrates defines as the craftsmanship of persuasion (πειθοῦς δημιουργός), which creates beliefs without instruction concerning what is just and what is unjust. In short, it is πιστευτικῆς and not διδασκαλικῆς about the just and the unjust (454e9-a2). Just as Socrates distinguishes two forms of persuasion in the debate with Gorgias, so too with Callicles, he states that rhetoric is twofold (διπλοῦν, 503a5): the flattering and the noble. This noble rhetoric would arrange the souls of the citizens as best it possibly can (τὸ παρασκευάζειν ὅπως ὡς βέλτισται ἔσονται τῶν πολιτῶν αἱ ψυχαί) and strive to speak the best things (καὶ διαμάχεσθαι λέγοντα τὰ βέλτιστα), whether pleasing to the listeners or not (εἴτε ἡδίω εἴτε ἀηδέστερα ἔσται τοῖς ἀκούουσιν, 503a7-9). Yet despite this lofty description of noble, true, and technical rhetoric, the Gorgias leaves it as an unrealized ideal (503aff.; 516e9ff.), without articulating the epistemological conditions that would license one to be a τεχνικός in the domain of speeches.

  • 36 It is strange that Socrates permits the uninhibited satisfaction of appetite by a healthy person, a (...)
  • 37 This same expression ( αὐτὸς τρόπος) is used in Phdr. 270b3-7 to develop the analogy between medic (...)
  • 38 On Callicles’ strong version of hedonism at this point of the dialogue, see E. R. Dodds (ed.), Gorg (...)

21In general, one could infer that the putative expert orator is concerned with the overall health of the soul and with the wholesome pursuit of pleasures, just like doctors are concerned with the health of the body and only allow for a beneficial satisfaction of appetites (this is what is implied in Gorg. 504e6-505b12). Healthy bodies can satisfy their appetites at will, but sick bodies have to comply with medical restrictions and conform to a dietary regimen for the fulfillment of their appetites, given that the uninhibited satisfaction of appetites can do more harm than good to a sick body.36 The same procedure ( αὐτὸς τρόπος) applies to the soul, so Socrates maintains at Gorg. 505b1.37 A vicious soul must do without the unbridled gratification of its appetites since this causes more harm than good. This is a direct objection to Callicles’ strong hedonist thesis, which maintains that the good life is one of unrestrained gratification of one’s appetites (τὰς μὲν ἐπιθυμίας τὰς ἑαυτοῦ), and which identifies virtue (ἀρετή ) and happiness (εὐδαιμονία) with wantonness (τρυφή), intemperance (ἀκολασία), and freedom (ἐλευθερία, 491e5-492c8).38 The analogy with medicine, specifically the comparison between a healthy body and a virtuous soul, and a sick body and a vicious soul, is used in the final portion of the dialogue as part of Socrates’ refutation of Callicles, and this is conveyed through Socrates’ plea for a noble rhetoric.

  • 39 In an argumentative pattern that was competently examined by D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. ci (...)

22Simply put, the medicine-rhetoric analogy is explored in the Gorgias to refute Socrates’ adversaries, who proclaim to possess the art of speech, and to encourage his interlocutors to pursue virtue and truth.39 Through the medicine-rhetoric analogy, Socrates can criticize current teachers and practitioners of rhetoric by demonstrating to what extent they fall short of the standards of a true art, such as medicine, and also recommend the theoretical model of medicine as the foundation for rhetoric as a true art. In this sense, it is not inconsequential that Socrates develops the medicine-rhetoric analogy, as it is grounded in a more robust, conceptual, and methodological affinity between the two disciplines, as I explain more fully in the following sections of this paper.

  • 40 G. Cambiano « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel ‘Fedro’ platónico », op. cit., p. 296‑297, contras (...)
  • 41 Against Polus, Socrates argues that rhetoricians, as well as tyrants, have the least amount of powe (...)

23To summarize this section, the analogy between medicine and rhetoric appears in different guises in the Gorgias. Chaerephon mentions it first, and Socrates adopts the analogy to specify the content of Gorgias’ profession. Gorgias also avails himself of the analogy to glorify the power of speeches and the superiority of rhetoric over all other arts (cf. Phil. 58a7-58c6).40 But this claim, if not refuted by Socrates, is at least qualified. It is a matter of fact that rhetoricians have an enormous amount of power and prestige in the cities, as these goods are conventionally understood.41 However, Socrates compels Gorgias to acknowledge that this situation results from the widespread state of ignorance among the masses, who hold political authority in the city. Against experts, such as real doctors, the words of Gorgias are void, for his persuasive capacity is ineffective when faced with individuals who are knowledgeable about the subject matter under discussion. Against Polus, Socrates denies the technical status of rhetoric and puts it in association with cookery as a species of flattery, i.e., irrational expedients that promote pleasure rather than what is best for the soul. Nevertheless, in the final polemic against Callicles, Socrates recognizes that such a thing as true rhetoric could exist provided that it structures itself as a medicine of the soul, i.e., justice, as briefly alluded to in some remarks against Polus by way of contrast. By “medicine of the soul,” I mean justice understood as the τέχνη that produces the soul’s good condition (εὐεξίαν, 464a2), psychic health, as it were. This is the art that Socrates identifies as the psychic counterpart to bodily medicine in the analogy between medicine and justice at Gorg. 464b2-466a3 and 468e6-481b5. True rhetoric would thus serve this art of justice, employing persuasion to restore the soul’s genuine good rather than promote mere gratification.

  • 42 On the consistency of Plato’s approach to rhetoric across the dialogues, see P.M.G. Dotto, « The Co (...)

24The analogy between medicine and rhetoric that emerges in the final discussion with Callicles, and also indirectly in the contradistinction between rhetoric and justice with Polus, corroborates the position that there is a continuity between the Gorgias and the Phaedrus.42 As I shall demonstrate next, the advancement of technical rhetoric in the Phaedrus largely depends on the medicine-rhetoric analogy put to work in the Gorgias for both refutative and regulative purposes. In the Phaedrus, the epistemic-technical paradigm of medicine, as the art of curing the body, serves to establish rhetoric as the art that cares for the soul, and by the same token, to disqualify all other types of rhetoric that disregard the conceptual framework of medicine.

2. The Analogy Between Medicine and Rhetoric in the Phaedrus

25The model of medicine is also applied as an analogue in the Phaedrus. Socrates relies on an elaborate analogy between medicine and rhetoric to both criticize current handbooks on the art of speech (Phaedr. 268a8-c4; 269a1-3) and to construct a rigorous account of what true rhetoric ought to be (270b1-e4), redefining it as psychagogy, i.e., the leading of souls through speeches (261a7-262b2; 271c10-272b4).

  • 43 Cf. Symp. 176d; 223b; and Prot. 315c for Phaedrus’ reliance on the authority of medicine.

26One could imagine that this exploration of the medicine-rhetoric analogy is merely grounded in Socrates’ responsiveness to Phaedrus’ confidence regarding the epistemic authority of medicine. After all, Phaedrus is convinced by the physician Acumenus to take a walk along the more refreshing paths (227a4-7), and he holds Hippocrates and the medical tradition of Asclepius in high esteem (270c3-5).43 However, even if this line of interpretation were partially true, it is certainly not the whole truth.

27As I have already shown in Gorgias, Socrates develops the medicine-rhetoric analogy to argue for a deep conceptual affinity between these two domains. Through this analogy, Socrates demonstrates that rhetoric, when properly conceived, shares fundamental structural features with medicine. Moreover, as I alluded to in the introduction, Plato was not alone in recognizing the parallel between the power of speeches over souls and the power of drugs over bodies, even if his philosophical deployment of this analogy serves a constructive theoretical purpose. Overall, Plato employs the medicine-rhetoric analogy to critique contemporary rhetorical practices and construct a theoretical, normative standard for rhetoric. The Phaedrus, in my reading, elaborates on the claim in favor of technical rhetoric that was briefly mentioned in the Gorgias (the three aforementioned passages that comprise the TARC), and the analogy with medicine plays a decisive role in this epistemological enterprise.

  • 44 A non-exhaustive list would include: τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην (260d4); πείθειν τέχνῃ (260d9) αὐτῇ λόγοι(...)
  • 45 D. Roochnik, « Socrates’s Use of the Techne-Analogy », op. cit., p. 309.

28Given this, I propose that the analogy with medicine can help clarify the status of rhetoric as a genuine τέχνη. That Socrates is interested in outlining rhetoric as a τέχνη in the so-called second part of the dialogue should be evident by the series of technical formulations explored by him.44 Roochnik, for one, notes that “τέχνη” is used 48 times between Stephanus pages 260 and 274, which yields a rate of 3.4 times per page. He glosses over this data by stating that “[t]his section is devoted to refuting Lysias’s claim to having a genuine technē tōn logōn45. Contrary to Roochnik, I argue that this is not Socrates’ sole purpose in this section. Over and above the refutation of Lysias as a τεχνικός in rhetoric, which follows closely the refutation of Gorgias in the homonymous dialogue, this section of the Phaedrus is also interested in laying out the epistemological foundations of a genuine art of speech, which resonates with Socrates’ adumbration in Gorgias of what authentic rhetoric would look like.

  • 46 See note 14.

29In his effort to construct such a standard of technical rhetoric, Socrates resorts to an analogy with medicine, spelled out most eloquently at 270b3-7: “I suppose that the same procedure holds for the medical art just as for the rhetorical art” ( αὐτός που τρόπος τέχνης ἰατρικῆς ὅσπερ καὶ ῥητορικῆς). The analogy is then developed in terms of the objects, means, and ends of both arts. Hippocrates’ method is invoked to think through and determine the nature (φύσις) of things in terms of the power/capacity (δύναμις) of their constitutive elements to act and to be acted upon (270c9-d7; cf. Crat. 394a1b6; Soph. 247d8-e4).46

  • 47 On the relationship between rhetoric and dialectics, which I cannot thoroughly address in this pape (...)
  • 48 For the conventional character of these requirements, with variations appearing in Isocrates and Al (...)

30Developing this analogy with medicine, Socrates explains the skills that an aspiring rhetorician must possess to exercise rhetoric with art through the backing of dialectics.47 While the art of medicine has to determine the nature of the body, the art of rhetoric has to determine the nature of the soul; while the former, with the aid of “drugs” (φάρμακα) and “food” (τροφή), produces “health” (ὑγίεια) and “physical vigor,” (ῥώμην) the latter, with the aid of “speech” (λόγους) and “practices in conformance to law and custom” (ἐπιτηδεύσεις νομίμους), produces “persuasion of whatever one wishes” (πειθὼ ἣν ἂν βούλῃ) and “excellence (ἀρετὴν, 270b4-9). Furthermore, and not unlike what is required of a doctor, an authentic rhetorician must possess “natural talent” (φύσις), “knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη), and “practice” (μελέτη, 269d2-8).48 Even if the medical art is not mentioned in this passage, it is clear that Socrates is referring to what is required of an expert in any τέχνη, including medicine, as he extends the three requirements to all other cases (ἔχειν ὥσπερ τἆλλα, 269d3-4).

31In Socrates’ presentation, therefore, medicine and rhetoric must attain theoretical and practical knowledge to be counted as τέχναι. This is Plato’s point in differentiating between ἐπιστήμη and μελέτη. When Socrates denounces current handbooks on rhetoric (266d5-269d1), he separates the prerequisite theoretical knowledge of the art (τὰ πρὸ τῆς τέχνης ἀναγκαῖα μαθήματα, 269b7-8; e.g., the prerequisite knowledge of medicine, τὰ πρὸ ἰατρικῆς 269a3) from the mastery of the art itself. In my reading, this latter distinction aligns with the former difference between ἐπιστήμη, which encompasses the theoretical understanding that must be grasped before one can properly practice an art, and μελέτη, which denotes the practical training and habitual exercise through which one achieves actual mastery. This reading finds support in Socrates’ threefold requirements for a true τεχνικός at Phdr. 269d2-8: “natural talent” (φύσις), “knowledge” (ἐπιστήμη), and “practice” (μελέτη). As Socrates argues, mastery of an art such as medicine or rhetoric involves not only this prerequisite, theoretical knowledge, but also the practical proficiency to apply such knowledge in the right measure, to a suitable recipient, and in an adequate context (271d5-272a8). The medical analogy functions as the epistemological foundation for Socrates’ development of a true rhetorical τέχνη, one that addresses precisely those theoretical and methodological deficiencies of conventional rhetoric that the Gorgias critically diagnosed.

  • 49 For Irani, the nature of a true rhetoric in the Gorgias remains incomplete mainly because it lacks (...)
  • 50 In agreement with E. Jelinek and N. Pappas, « Hippocrates at Phaedrus 270c », Pacific Philosophical (...)

32Medicine furnishes the theoretical framework for Plato to lay the foundations for the art of speech. In opposition to present-day rhetorical teachings, then, Socrates adds that a teacher of genuine rhetoric has to know and reveal the nature (φύσις) of the soul as the object to which his students apply speeches (270e1-5).49 Concerning the nature of the soul, in addition, Socrates implies that it is not possible to conceive it without the nature of the whole (ἄνευ τῆς τοῦ ὅλου φύσεως, cf. Ch. 156d7-e6; Theat. 74a1; Leg. IV.720b2-6 plus X. 902d2ff.). Phaedrus notes that, in consonance with Hippocrates, this method also holds good for knowledge of the body (Phdr. 270c1-5). I take this controversial passage on “the nature of the whole” as the whole genus or kind of soul, that is to say, as a comprehensive understanding that encompasses knowledge of the species of human souls that fall under the broader genus of soul and knowledge on how to handle each species on its own.50

33In this light, Socrates posits what one could call “Epistemic Requirements” (ER) for the technical exercise of rhetoric. In outline, these requirements are:

1) Knowledge of the whole soul genus (270c1-5);

2) Knowledge of the nature of the soul (if simple and homogenous or multiform, 270c10-d2; cf. 271a4-8; 271d1-3; 273d8-e1);

3) Knowledge of the power of each constituent component of the soul (power to act and to be acted on, 270d1-7; 271a10-1; 271c10-d3);

4) Knowledge of the subject matter of a speech. i.e., the truth of what the speech is about (260d3-9; 260e5-7; 273d2-6; 273e1-4);

5) Knowledge of the forms of speeches (271b1-5; 272a3-6);

6) Knowledge of which discursive styles are suited to which types of souls, enabling the philosopher to adapt specific forms of speech to the psychological constitution of the interlocutor (271d1-7; 271e3-272b2).

  • 51 Emily Hulme Kozey does not take this passage of the Phaedrus (273e5-274a5) into consideration in he (...)

34Without meeting these conditions, Socrates claims, no one can ever speak or write technically about any topic whatsoever (271b7-271c1; 271c10-272b4). Moreover, the genuine art of rhetoric not only has a set of epistemic requirements to meet but must also comply with the “Ethical Orientation” (EO) of pleasing gods instead of human beings (273e5-274a5; 274b9-10; cf. Leg. IV.716c4-5, on the gods as the measure of all things). This divine orientation must be understood within the metaphysics of the Palinode, in which the gods function as paradigmatic souls who govern and care for the cosmos through their perfect contemplation of the Forms (245c5-246a2; 246d6-247c2; 247c4-e6; 248b4-d3). To “please the gods”, in this reading, is to align oneself with the metaphysical order of reality the gods embody and uphold. Since the gods care for all that is soulless (245c5-246a2) and guide souls toward truth, perfection, and virtue (i.e., toward the Forms) through their cosmic governance, a rhetoric that pleases them must necessarily promote the soul’s natural propensity toward wisdom and excellence. Just like medicine has to be geared towards the good of its object and not the advantage of the practitioner to be counted as a genuine τέχνη, as Socrates puts it in Rep. I 341c4ff., so genuine rhetoric for Plato is intrinsically value-governed: it is not a value-neutral art since it must be directed toward the true good of its object, namely the soul. Otherwise, it fails to qualify as a real τέχνη.51 To put it more schematically, one would have to meet both ER and EO to qualify as an expert in the domain of rhetoric and achieve mastery in the art of rhetoric.

  • 52 Pace C.J. Rowe, « The Argument and Structure of Plato’s Phaedrus », Proceedings of the Cambridge Ph (...)
  • 53 In agreement with H. Yunis, « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit.(...)
  • 54 This interpretation diverges, for instance, from G. Cambiano, « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel (...)

35Since the soul is the object of rhetoric, it is unlikely that rhetorical speeches can be applied with artistry and technique to large groups, as is conventionally supposed.52 Via the analogy with medicine, Socrates is reshaping the conventional meaning of rhetoric and bringing it closer to the living practice of philosophy with its one-to-one dialectical examination and refutation. What is at stake in the deployment of the medicine-rhetoric analogy in the Phaedrus is a radical reconfiguration of rhetoric that subordinates it to dialectics, but not to the point of identifying one with the other.53 In my reading, genuine rhetoric in Plato requires dialectical knowledge as its foundation without being reducible to dialectic itself. Dialectic provides the epistemic content for rhetoric: knowledge of the subject matter, soul-types, and speech-genres. Yet dialectic alone cannot accomplish the contextual and customized application of this knowledge to individual interlocutors. This constitutes rhetoric’s distinctive activity, namely the adaptation and stylization of dialectically-grounded content to achieve persuasion with specific interlocutors.54

3. The Status of the True Art of Rhetoric: A Closer Look at the Medicine-Rhetoric Analogy

  • 55 R. Waterfield, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., p. xxxv.

36At a certain point in the Phaedrus, Socrates raises doubts about the existence of such an art of speech by introducing it in a conditional clause (Phdr. 261e1-2), and Phaedrus has legitimate worries about its attainability (272b5-6; 274a6-7). On the whole, however, I believe that it is fairly unproblematic to say that Socrates is committed in the Phaedrus to the thesis that, at least in principle, an authentic rhetoric can exist, provided that one fulfills the extremely exacting criteria laid out for it (ER + EO), which are modeled on an analogy with medicine. But would it be possible to meet such highly unrealistic criteria? Has Socrates not raised the standard too high for rhetoric to become operational at all? Is it even possible for rhetoric’s high-order criteria to be reached? Or is the attainment of true rhetoric, as Robin Waterfield55 has claimed, simply “impossible—or possible only for an ideal Platonic philosopher”?

  • 56 Even if the distinction between laymen and professional doctors was still ill-defined, and in the p (...)

37The analogy with medicine initially suggests only a conditional claim: if rhetoric were a real τέχνη, then we could distinguish real practitioners from charlatans, just as we distinguish real doctors from impostors.56 However, Socrates’ argument goes further. By establishing epistemological criteria for what constitutes rhetorical expertise (i.e., the ER outlined above), he advocates that rhetoric can theoretically meet the formal requirements of a τέχνη. The theoretical work of articulating these precise conditions, parallel to medicine’s knowledge of bodies and remedies, shows that rhetoric is not inherently impervious to technical systematization, but merely lacks actual practitioners who fulfill such demanding epistemic requirements.

  • 57 R. Waterfield, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., p. xxxv.. For variations of this view, see R. Burger, Pla (...)
  • 58 “Rhetoric is allowed to go to the ball, but only after it has completed such tasks as would necessa (...)
  • 59 “The ‘true rhetoric’ to which the Phaedrus refers is (I will argue) something akin to a heuristic o (...)

38In contrast to my interpretation, commentators have argued that the attainment of the technical rhetoric of the Phaedrus is impossible (Waterfield57), that it is an illusion in the shape of a “Cinderella Rhetorica” (Reames58), or that it functions instead as a heuristic or regulative ideal (Werner59). But how can this impossible, illusory, or idealized rhetoric square with the analogy with medicine? Put differently, what kind of τέχνη is the λόγων τέχνη of the Phaedrus? The apparent unfeasibility of achieving the ER outlined above raises a tension in Socrates’ exposition. To clarify, Socrates employs the medical model to demonstrate that rhetoric can be a genuine τέχνη, with rigorous theoretical foundations, yet the technical requirements this analogy establishes (e.g., comprehensive knowledge of soul-types, systematic classification of speeches, and precise matching of souls to speeches) seem to place rhetorical expertise beyond practical reach. One could understand it as the problem arising from a putative gap between theoretical postulations and practical implementations.

  • 60 I was inspired by J. Moravcsik, « Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Health and Medicine », op. cit.(...)

39As I see it, what is at stake in the Phaedrus at this moment is Plato laying the epistemological groundwork for a genuine art of speech, which has both theoretical and normative grounds.60 It has theoretical grounds, as it abstracts from existing, empirical rhetorical practices and teachings to build a model for artistic and technical rhetoric. It has normative grounds, for this theoretical model ought to guide the training and exercise of aspiring rhetoricians. In short, the analogy with medicine is set in place for the theoretical foundation of rhetoric as a τέχνη. In this sense, the distance between theoretical postulations and practical implementations, which many commentators have emphasized, as cited above, does not compromise the stability, systematicity, and validity of the theoretical and normative model.

  • 61 “Science must therefore be causal or it is not science. In these earliest epistemological texts of (...)
  • 62 J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, op. cit., p. 256.

40Besides, this distance between theory and praxis can also be noted in texts from the Corpus Hippocraticum, such as On Ancient Medicine. Despite this distance or even gap between theoretical postulations and practical implementations, the Hippocratic author maintains that this does not compromise the foundations of medical science. What matters the most is that a “conceptual architecture,” in Jacques Jouanna’s precise words, was erected for the art of medicine in such a Hippocratic treatise.61 In my view, this is also the case for the art of rhetoric in the Phaedrus: one notices that a certain “conceptual architecture”, to borrow Jouanna’s formulation, was set in place. Medicine establishes the theoretical and normative benchmark for rhetoric to be raised to the status of a τέχνη. Put differently, Plato adopts “the epistemological model of medicine, the science of the body, and applies it to rhetoric, the science of the soul”.62

  • 63 Such as in Franco Trabattoni’s example of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. See F. Trabattoni, « On the Di (...)
  • 64 See C.L. Griswold, « Self-knowledge and the ‘ἰδἐα’ of the soul in Plato’s Phaedrus », Revue de Méta (...)

41Even so, one cannot avoid asking to what extent the medicine-rhetoric analogy holds and at what point it breaks down. As stressed by Socrates in the Republic, one should be on guard and verify the points of resemblance and discrepancy in the two terms of a given analogy, as when Socrates speaks about the need to go back and forth from the source domain (city) and the target domain (soul) (ἐπαναφέρωμεν εἰς τὸν ἕνα, IV434e3; πάλιν ἐπανιόντες ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν βασανιοῦμεν, 434e5), examining and testing them against each other (παρἄλληλα σκοποῦντες καὶ τρίβοντες, 435a1) as to produce a spark of light from firesticks (ὥσπερ ἐκ πυρείων ἐκλάμψαι ποιήσαιμεν, 435a1-2). In the medicine-rhetoric analogy, Socrates does not directly tackle a critical dissimilarity. The soul, i.e., the proper object of rhetoric, is immaterial. As such, the soul cannot be grasped via sensory perception and is not analyzable and describable in the manner of a body or any other physical object.63 Since grasping the soul’s exact ἰδέα, what kind of thing it is (οἷον μέν ἐστι), exceeds human powers, Socrates settles for describing what it resembles ( δὲ ἔοικεν, 246a3-6).64

  • 65 See, for instance, F. Trabattoni, Scrivere nell’anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone, (...)

42In this manner, it might be harder for the aspiring rhetorician to demonstrate precisely what the nature of the soul is (τὴν οὐσίαν δείξει ἀκριβῶς, 271e2-5) and gaze with absolute precision at the soul (πάσῃ ἀκριβείᾳψυχὴν ἰδεῖν, 271a5-6), contrary to what Socrates requires of him in the discussion about the reformed rhetoric (e.g., ER 1 to 3). As I see it, this discrepancy between the body as a physical entity and the soul as an immaterial entity is the most acute break in the medicine-rhetoric analogy, which is precisely what makes the analogy all the more relevant and critical. By proposing this analogy, Socrates can address the immaterial and unfamiliar nature of the soul by drawing on the more familiar and graspable nature of the body. Correspondingly, Socrates can tackle the more unclear activity of conferring virtue and knowledge on the soul through speeches, with the definite, discernible activity of producing health in the body through drugs and diets. One could consider, even if I cannot further substantiate this claim at this point, that the metaphor of the philosopher as a farmer who “writes in the soul” of his students with knowledge (276a5ff.) could further illuminate this relationship between speech and soul, even if not through a deductive argument, but by means of a new analogy.65

43Overall, the Phaedrus gives a fuller picture of the true rhetorician of the Gorgias (i.e., the TARC), who imparts virtue to souls and strives for their moral improvement (Gorg. 503a5-9; 504d5-504e4). It does so by giving an account of the soul in its complex structure, even if through an image and not by apprehending the essence of the soul with exactitude. The soul stands as the proper object of rhetoric in precise analogy to the body’s relationship with medicine. This parallel, explicitly drawn in the Phaedr. 270b1-9, establishes that just as medicine requires a systematic knowledge of bodily nature to achieve health, rhetoric demands a corresponding understanding of the soul’s nature to produce persuasion with art (πείθειν τέχνῃ, 260d9). Thus, while perfect epistemic access to the soul’s essence may remain beyond human reach, as Socrates himself acknowledges when he opts to describe what the soul resembles ( δὲ ἔοικεν) rather than what it is (οἷον μέν ἐστι, 246a3-6) in the Palinode, rhetoric’s upgrade to the status of a genuine τέχνη nonetheless requires at least a provisional framework for understanding psychic structure and function. The Palinode provides such a framework through its tripartite model of the soul, which presents the soul as a charioteer and two horses, offering a psychological model that, albeit mythical in presentation, yields theoretical insights for rhetorical practice. Equipped with this psychological schema, the philosopher-rhetorician can guide the adaptation of speech to different soul-types, identify which patterns of speech naturally suit which soul-types, and recognize the καιρός for applying specific rhetorical strategies to persuade the interlocutor skillfully. Without such robust, even if provisional and imperfect, psychological knowledge, rhetoric would remain a mere a knack acquired through habitual practice, experience, and routine instead of achieving the well-structured, methodical, and teachable status of a true art comparable to medicine.

  • 66 See S. Noriega-Olmos, « The Epistemological Status of Medicine in the ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΗΣ ΙΗΤΡΙΚΗΣ », Dois (...)

44By comparison, the author of On Ancient Medicine also admits that it is difficult for medical art to attain perfect accuracy (τὸ δὲ ἀτρεκές ὀλιγάκις ἐστὶ κατιδεῖν, V.M. IX.4; χαλεπὸν δὲ τοιαύτης ἀκριβείης ἐούσης περὶ τὴν τέχνην τυγχάνειν αἰεὶ τοῦ ἀτρεκεστάτου, V.M. XII.2), but argues that this does not disqualify it as a real τέχνη.66 Just like medicine, the philosophical rhetoric of the Phaedrus misses the mark of the normative ideal of perfect precision, reliability, and accuracy of a τέχνη such as mathematics, due to the complexity of its object, the φύσις to which it applies. Nonetheless, this does not invalidate it as a τέχνη.

  • 67 See F. Dunn, « On Ancient Medicine and its intellectual context », in P.J. van der Eijk (ed.), Hipp (...)
  • 68 See G.E.R. Lloyd, In the grip of disease, op. cit., p. 149‑150; D. S. Hutchinson, « Doctrines of th (...)
  • 69 J. Pigeaud, « Qu’est-ce qu’être malade ? Quelques réflexions sur le sens de la maladie dans Ancienn (...)

45As evidenced by the Corpus Hippocraticum, there was ambiguity and controversy around the status of medicine, the role of theory, and the adequate methods for medical practice.67 To be sure, as G. E. R. Lloyd remarked, Plato was conscious of the fact that ordinary doctors fell short of the objective knowledge concerning the causes of and cures for diseases and so of a foolproof exercise of their art.68 Nevertheless, medicine was still reasonably successful, reliable, and cohesive as a τέχνη to enable Plato to make use of medicine’s theoretical framework for setting up a technical rhetoric. In this light, the Phaedrus art of rhetoric is not utopian, as some scholars have contended, but rather theoretical, to appropriate a comment offered by Jackie Pigeaud on the status of medical science in On Ancient Medicine.69

  • 70 As the Loeb translator of the Corpus Hippocraticum, W. H. S. Jones, sustains: “a working hypothesis (...)
  • 71 See J. Moss, « Soul-Leading: The Unity of the Phaedrus, Again », in B. Inwood (ed.), Oxford Studies (...)

46In brief, the soul is the proper object of rhetoric, just as the body is of medicine. Thus, an adequate understanding of the soul, even if not a precise and perfect knowledge of it, or else a “working hypothesis,” 70is essential for rhetoric to be raised to the status of a τεχνή like medicine. The unusual noun ψυχαγωγία that Socrates uses twice in the Phaedrus to define rhetoric (261a8, 271c10) already signals the ψυχή as the proper object of the rhetorical art. In this manner, the Phaedrus develops the true rhetoric discussed in the Gorgias with a tentative inquiry about the soul and with a set of epistemic requirements and ethical orientation that the aspiring philosopher-rhetorician ought to meet. The verb ἐπιχειρέω, which Socrates puts forward in the Gorgias to specify his approach to the true political art (521d6-8), could be rehabilitated to characterize his approach to the true rhetorical art of the Phaedrus, as Jessica Moss has correctly noted, in my view.71

47Concerning the status of rhetoric as a τεχνή, furthermore, one could expand the medicine-rhetoric analogy and peruse the Philebus. Following the categorization of the τέχναι worked out in Philebus, rhetoric, which is not mentioned, would have to be grouped with medicine as the branch of arts that has less precision. Socrates begins the categorization by dividing the arts into two categories:

  • 72 Θῶμεν τοίνυν διχῇ τὰς λεγομένας τέχνας, τὰς μὲν μουσικῇ συνεπομένας ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις ἐλάττονος ἀκριβε (...)

Let us divide, therefore, what is called arts into two: the ones that go along with music and partake of a lesser degree of precision in their works, and the others that have more precision, like the art of construction (Phil. 56c4-6; my translation).72

  • 73 See D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., p. 53‑57. My point is that the genuine rhetoric of th (...)
  • 74 See D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., p. 52‑57..
  • 75 Another way to think about is with Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between “achievement verbs” and “task (...)

48Mathematics is ranked as the art endowed with the most precision. The art of construction (of ships, houses, and carpentry) is precise because it uses numbers, measures, and instruments borrowed from mathematics. In the group with less precision, Socrates lumps together medicine, agriculture, navigation, and the art of war. Rhetoric, which is not mentioned in this passage but shortly after with reference to Gorgias and his art of persuasion (Phil. 58a7-8, again at 58c5 and 59b10), would fit nicely in this second group of “stochastic” arts (ταῖς τῆς στοχαστικῆς προσχρωμένους δυνάμεσιν, Phil. 55e6-7).73 In this manner, Plato would not fall far from Aristotle’s judgment that for each discipline, there is a corresponding level of precision (E.N. I.3 1094b12-14; I.8 1098a26-33; cf. Metaph. II 3 995a14–16), with both medicine and rhetoric sharing a close vicinity concerning the level of precision required. By incorporating rhetoric alongside medicine in the categorization of the Philebus, and in keeping with the medicine-rhetoric analogy developed by Plato, one can recognize that their end is not identical to their function.74 This is to say that the end of rhetoric has to be something other than “persuasion,” just as the end of medicine has to be different from “cure,” for otherwise when there is a failure to reach such ends, one could not affirm that the technical activity is rightfully undertaken and correctly performed. 75

  • 76 Compare it with the uses of ὑπόμνημα, ὑπόμνησις, and ὑπομιμνήσκω in the Phaedrus’ criticism of writ (...)

49On a different note, The Statesman has a telling remark on the medical art in connection with writing that may shed light on Phaedrus’ priority of oral communication over written communication. The doctor, equipped with active expertise and a sharp eye, is qualified to adjust a medical treatment in step with the fluctuations of the patient’s condition. On the other hand, a written medical prescription cannot do this. Analogously, the general and abstract normative commandments of written laws are only the second-best in the impossibility of tailoring rules for each and every concrete case. Thus, written medical treatment has value only as a reminder (ὑπομνήματα, Pol. 295c.4)76 for the patients in the absence of the actual doctor. However, when the doctor returns from a trip to reexamine the patient, he can propose an altogether different treatment, even contradicting what had been written down, if he considers, based on his knowledge, that this specific situation demands modifications for the case did not evolve as expected (294a10ff., esp. 295b10-296a1).

50The Phaedrus also has a remarkably similar contrast between the lively speech of the one who knows (the Platonic dialectician) and the stiffness and stability of a written text. For much the same reasons, the dynamism and flexibility of oral communication are privileged over the rigidity and silence of written communications (275d4-277b4). Hence, in an expansion of the medicine-rhetoric analogy, the superiority of oral communication in the Phaedrus becomes more evident.

51Moreover, I find that the medicine-rhetoric analogy can be extended to make the role of deception in psychagogic rhetoric more comprehensible. The true rhetorician of the Phaedrus must have knowledge of the subject matter of his speeches to artfully persuade his audience, without being misled along the way. For as the Spartan dictum has it: without the touch of truth, no genuine art of speaking can ever exist or has ever existed (ἔτυμος τέχνη ἄνευ τοῦ ἀληθείας ἧφθαι οὔτἔστιν οὔτε μή ποτε ὕστερον γένηται, 260e5-7; cf. 262.c1-3).

52Subsequently, however, different uses of deception pop up (ἀπάτη, 261e6; ἀπατήσεινμὴ ἀπατήσεσθαι 262a5-6; εὐαπατητότεροί, 263b3) in the characterization of psychagogic rhetoric and in conjunction with its truth-requirement (ER 4). The knowledge of the subject matter is required for it permits the true rhetorician to trick the interlocutor gradually into holding the belief that the rhetorician wishes them to hold by carefully manipulating the similitude and dissimilitude between things. Dialectics, the method of acquiring knowledge about being and, consequently, about the similarities and dissimilarities between beings, is necessary so that rhetoric can more skillfully persuade and guide the interlocutor.

  • 77 H. Yunis, « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit., p. 239.
  • 78 Whether the perfect political science of the Statesman is available or not in our current, post-Cro (...)

53Considering that verisimilitude is an effect of its likeness to truth (273d3-4; cf. 273b1), the one who masters the truth on a given topic can more competently work with verisimilitudes to change the beliefs of an audience. This means that the arguments employed by the rhetorician do not have to be logically valid and can carry on “without the auditor’s understanding what is happening to him”77. Even if this thought might be drastically foreign and even offensive to us, it is compatible with what the Stranger of the Statesman argues about medical practice. The bottom line is that, as long as expert knowledge is present, the patient’s consent is a relatively unimportant issue.78 So the Stranger maintains that:

  • 79 τοὺς ἰατροὺς δὲ οὐχ ἥκιστα νενομίκαμεν, ἐάντε ἑκόντας ἐάντε ἄκοντας ἡμᾶς ἰῶνται, τέμνοντες κάοντε (...)

Doctors provide the clearest parallel. We believe in them whether they cure us with our consent or without it, by cutting or burning or applying some other painful treatment, and whether they do so according to written rules or apart from written rules, and whether as poor men or rich. In all these cases we are no less inclined at all to say they are doctors, so long as they are in charge of us on the basis of expertise, purging or otherwise reducing us, or else building us up—it is no matter, if only each and every one of those who care for our bodies acts for our bodies’ good, making them better than they were, and so preserves what is in their care. It’s in this way, as I think, and in no other that we’ll lay down the criterion of medicine and of any other sort of rule whatsoever; it is the only correct criterion79 (Pol. 293a9-c3; trans. Rowe).

  • 80 As J.S. Murray, « Disputation, Deception, and Dialectic: Plato on the True Rhetoric (Phaedrus 261-2 (...)

54Likewise, the technical rhetoric of the Phaedrus is authorized to use deception in its dealings. Deception may be put to good use at the hands of the true rhetorician, who can manipulate words to dispel interlocutors from false beliefs and guide them in the direction of truth.80 However, taking note of this passage, and working out the medicine-rhetoric analogy, rhetoric could do this only if it knowingly acted for the sake of the good of the soul, just like the ruler of the Republic can resort to falsity (τῷ ψεύδει) and deception (τῇ ἀπάτῃ) for the benefit of the ruled (ἐπὠφελίᾳ τῶν ἀρχομένων), since such expedients are helpful in the form of a drug (ἐν φαρμάκου εἴδει, Rep. V 459c8-d2)

  • 81 This distinction between two forms of medical practice could perhaps dispel Irani’s worry that phil (...)
  • 82 Earlier in the Laws (IV.722d3ff.), the Athenian had requested a prelude to the laws to ensure the w (...)

55Finally, the Laws frame a double method for patient care. The slave doctor, who attends mostly to slaves, only haltingly cares for his patient and doesn’t bother to give or receive an account (τινὰ λόγονδίδωσινἀποδέχεται, Leg. IV.720c3-5) about his disease. He treats his patients based on experience, from what seems best to him (τὰ δόξαντα ἐξ ἐμπειρίας), rather than with precise knowledge, and handles his patients as a despot. On the other hand, the free doctor, who attends free people, carefully examines the symptoms of his patients from the source and according to nature (ἀπἀρχῆς καὶ κατὰ φύσιν) by consulting his friends and relatives, to learn as much as possible from the disease, while he also strives to explain it as much as he can to the patient. Moreover, the free doctor only prescribes a treatment after convincing the patient of it (συμπείσῃ), and it is with persuasion (μετὰ πειθοῦς) rather than force that he operates towards health (Leg. IV.720a2-720e5).81 Because of this, the slave doctor would deride the method of the free doctor, contending that by acting in this way, the free doctor is teaching the patient instead of curing him, converting him into a doctor instead of making him healthy again (Leg. IX.857b9-e1). This is not denied by the Athenian. In fact, the Athenian draws near the free doctor to the philosopher in their shared reliance on arguments to persuade and teach (τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ἐγγὺς χρώμενον μὲν τοῖς λόγοις, Leg. IX.857d2), just like the laws of the envisioned Cretan city would first and foremost instruct the citizens instead of ordaining by norms (Leg. IX.857e2-6).82

56Thus, the speech of the free doctor, just as that of the philosopher-rhetorician, would be committed to a form of persuasion that instructs the interlocutor with knowledge, rather than with blind conviction, following the division between the two forms of persuasion from Gorg. 454e3-455a6. Likewise, based on the medicine-rhetoric analogy, the genuine rhetoric of the philosopher presents a sound argument and explains the progression of his argumentative steps, without rushing through them and refraining from deception. My proposal, then, is that the true rhetorician of the Phaedrus stands close to the medical approach of the free doctor of the Laws, who attends to the nature of his interlocutor, attentively leads them through the argument, is available to answer questions, and further explains his reasoning, whenever needed.

Conclusion

57As demonstrated, Socrates’ deployment of the medicine-rhetoric analogy in both the Gorgias and the Phaedrus is not only consistent but also remarkably similar, serving both refutative and constructive purposes. Furthermore, the application of this analogy reveals a strong continuity in the treatment of rhetoric across these dialogues. The TARC introduced in the Gorgias is further developed in the Phaedrus through a more sophisticated comparison between medicine and rhetoric. Medicine serves as a conceptual model to frame the art of speech and to construct a theoretical and normative framework for it. ER and EO are introduced, following the model of medicine, as necessary conditions for rhetoric to become a true τέχνη rather than a mere experience-dependent knack (ἐμπειρία). Ultimately, this paper has shown that the Hippocratic epistemological theory of the art of medicine, particularly as articulated in On Ancient Medicine, provides a standard for Plato’s epistemological theory of the art of speech.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Ayache, L., « L’arme du crime : la référence médicale chez Platon », Noesis, n° 2, 1998, p. 89‑102.

Beversluis, J., Cross-examining Socrates: A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato’s Early Dialogues, Cambridge, U.K.; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Brownstein, O.L., « Plato’s Phaedrus: Dialectic as the Genuine Art of Speaking », Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 51, n° 4, 1965, p. 392‑398.

Burger, R., Plato’s Phaedrus: a Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing, University, University of Alabama Press, 1980.

Cambiano, G., « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel ‘Fedro’ platónico », Rivista di Filosofia, vol. 57, n° 3, 1966, p. 284‑305.

Cambiano, G., Platone e le tecniche, Torino, Einaudi, 1971.

Cambiano, G., « Platon et les rapports entre théorie et praxis dans la médecine hippocratique », Études platoniciennes, n° 10, 2013.

Campos, Á.V., « Socrates as a physician of the soul », in G. Cornelli (ed.) Plato’s Styles and Characters, Berlin, Munich, Boston, De Gruyter, 2015, p. 227‑240.

Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots, Paris, Klincksieck, 1999.

Cooper, J.M., « Plato, Isocrates and Cicero on the Independence of Oratory from Philosophy », in Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 65‑80.

Dean-Jones, L., « Literacy and the Charlatan in Ancient Greek Medicine », in H. Yunis (ed.) Written texts and the rise of literate culture in ancient Greece, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 97‑121.

Decleva Caizzi, F. (ed.), Antisthenis Fragmenta, Milan, Istituto editoriale Cisalpino, 1966.

Dodds, E. R. (ed.), Gorgias: A Revised Text, with Introduction and Commentary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959.

Dotto, P.M.G., « The Consistency of Plato’s Treatment of Rhetoric », DoisPontos, vol. 21, n° 2, 2024.

Dunn, F., « On Ancient Medicine and its intellectual context », in P.J. van der Eijk (ed.) Hippocrates in Context, BRILL, 2005, p. 49‑67.

Edelstein, L., « The Rôle of Eryximachus in Plato’s Symposium », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 76, 1945, p. 85‑103.

Ferguson, A. S., « Plato’s Simile of Light Again », The Classical Quarterly, vol. 28, n° 3-4, 1934, p. 190-210.

Ferrari, G.R.F., Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Graham, D.W., « Socrates, the Craft Analogy, and Science », Apeiron, vol. 24, n° 1, 1991, p. 1‑24.

Griswold, C.L., « Style and Philosophy: The case of Plato’s dialogues », The Monist, vol. 63, n° 4, 1980, p. 530‑546.

Griswold, C.L., « Self-knowledge and the ‘ἰδἐα’ of the soul in Plato’s Phaedrus », Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 86, n° 4, 1981, p. 477‑494.

Griswold, C.L., « Politikē Epistēmē in Plato’s Statesman », in J. Anton and A. Preus (eds.) Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy III: Plato, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989, p. 141-167.

Hayase, A., « Dialectic in the Phaedrus », Phronesis, vol. 61, n° 2, 2016, p. 111‑141.

Heath, M., « The Unity of Plato’s Phaedrus », Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1989, p. 151-173.

Hulme Kozey, E., « The Good-Directedness of Τέχνη and the Status of Rhetoric in the Platonic Dialogues », Apeiron, vol. 52, n° 3, 2019, p. 223‑244.

Hunt, E.L., « Plato and Aristotle on Rhetoric and Rhetoricians », in A.M. Drummond (ed.) Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking: In Honor of James Albert Winans, Whitefish, Montana, Literary Licensing, 2013.

Hutchinson, D. S., « Doctrines of the Mean and the Debate Concerning Skills in Fourth-Century Medicine, Rhetoric and Ethics », Apeiron, vol. 21, n° 2, 1988, p. 17-52.

Irani, T., Plato on the Value of Philosophy: The Art of Argument in the Gorgias and Phaedrus, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Irwin, T., Plato: Gorgias, Oxford: New York, Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1979.

Jaeger, W., Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971, trad. G. Highet.

Jelinek, E. and Pappas, N., « Hippocrates at Phaedrus 270c », Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 101, n° 3, 2020, p. 409‑430.

Jones, W.H.S., Hippocrates, Vol. 2. with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univ. Press, Reprinted, 1923.

Jouanna, J., « La Collection Hippocratique et Platon (Phèdre 269c-272a) », Revue des Études Grecques, vol. 90, n° 428, 1977, p. 15‑28.

Jouanna, J., Hippocrates, Baltimore, Md, John Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Kahn, C.H., Plato and the post-Socratic dialogue: the return to the philosophy of nature, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Kierkegaard, S., « The Point of View of My Work as an Author: A Direct Communication, Report to History », in H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (eds.) The Essential Kierkegaard, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 455-481.

Koritansky, J., « Socratic Rhetoric and Socratic Wisdom in Plato’s Phaedrus », Interpretation, vol. 15, n° 1, 1987, p. 29‑53.

Larsen, J. K., « Defining Rhetoric Dialectically: Confronting Philosophy with Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias », Ancient Philosophy, vol. 45, n° 1, 2025, p. 53-81.

Leven, K.-H., « Ethics and Deontology », in P.E. Pormann (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates, Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 152‑179.

Levin, S. B., Plato’s Rivalry with Medicine: A Struggle and Its Dissolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Lidz, J.W., « Medicine as Metaphor in Plato », Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 20, n° 5, 1995, p. 527‑541.

Lier, T., Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato’s Phaedrus, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2019.

Lloyd, G.E.R., Polarity and Analogy: Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Lloyd, G.E.R., « Aspects of the Interrelations of Medicine, Magic and Philosophy in Ancient Greece », Apeiron, vol. 9, n° 1, 1975, p. 1‑16.

Lloyd, G.E.R., In the Grip of Disease: Studies in the Greek Imagination, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Lopes, D.R.N., « Retórica », in G. Cornelli and R. Lopes (eds.) Platão, Coimbra companions, Coimbra, Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra = Coimbra University Press, 2018, p. 383‑400.

Macé, A., « Plato and ‘Hippocrates’ on Nature and Power: Reading Phaedrus 269d–272b in the Light of the Hippocratic Treatise On Ancient Medicine », in C. Araújo (ed.) Plato’s Power, Leiden, Brill, 2025, p. 1-41.

Marino, S., Il corpo del dialogo: una teoria della comunicazione a partire dal Protagora di Platone e dal Corpus Hippocraticum, Napoli, Paolo Loffredo, 2019.

Marino, S., « Socrates Medicus: Una Rappresentazione Platonica », in C. Marsico (ed.) Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from Socratica IV, International Socrates studies volume 2, , Baden-Baden, Academia, 2022.

Mársico, C.T., « Modelos de medicina en el Banquete y la República de Platón », Revista Hypnos, n° 4, 1998, p. 168‑180.

Matoso, R., « Perspectivism and Conciliation in the Reading of Plato’s Dialogues », O que nos faz pensar, vol. 27, n° 43, 2018, p. 87.

Moravcsik, J., « Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Health and Medicine », Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 1, n° 4, 1976, p. 337‑348.

Moss, J., « The Doctor and the Pastry Chef: Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias », Ancient Philosophy, vol. 27, n° 2, 2007, p. 229‑249.

Moss, J., « Soul-Leading: The Unity of the Phaedrus, Again », in B. Inwood (ed.) Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 43, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 1‑23.

Murray, J.S., « Disputation, Deception, and Dialectic: Plato on the True Rhetoric (Phaedrus 261-266) », Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 21, n° 4, 1988, p. 279‑289.

Nicholson, G., Plato’s Phaedrus: The Philosophy of Love, West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 1999.

Noriega-Olmos, S., « The Epistemological Status of Medicine in the ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΗΣ ΙΗΤΡΙΚΗΣ », DoisPontos, vol. 10, n° 2, 2013.

North, H.F., «Swimming Upside Down in the Wrong Direction’ Plato’s Criticism of Sophistic Rhetoric on Technical and Stylistic Grounds », Traditio, vol. 32, n° S1, 1976, p. 11‑29.

Nussbaum, M. C., « ‘This Story Isn’t True’: Madness, Reason, and Recantation in the Phaedrus », in The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 200-233.

Perelman, C., « Analogy and Metaphor in Science, Poetry and Philosophy », in C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, 1979, p. 91‑100.

Pigeaud, J., « Qu’est-ce qu’être malade ? Quelques réflexions sur le sens de la maladie dans Ancienne médecine », in Poétiques du corps: aux origines de la médecine, L’âne d’or 28, , Paris, Les Belles lettres, 2008, p. 105‑130.

Prince, S.H., Antisthenes of Athens: texts, translations, and commentary, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2015.

Quimby, R. W., « The Growth of Plato’s Perception of Rhetoric », Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 7, n° 2, 1974, p. 71-79.

Reames, R., « The Μῦθος of Pernicious Rhetoric: The Platonic Possibilities of Λογός in Aristotle’s Rhetoric », Rhetorica, vol. 30, n° 2, 2012, p. 134‑152.

Reames, R., Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory, Chicago; London, The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Robinson, D.B., « Review of Polarity and Analogy, Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought, by G. E. R. Lloyd », Philosophy, vol. 43, n° 165, 1968, p. 288‑290.

Robinson, R., Plato’s Earlier Dialectic, Ithaca, N.Y, Cornell University Press, 1941.

Roochnik, D., « Socrates’s Use of the Techne-Analogy », Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 24, n° 3, 1986, p. 295‑310.

Roochnik, D., « Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric », in F.J. Gonzalez (ed.) The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies, Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995, p. 81‑94.

Roochnik, D., Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s Understanding of Techne, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Rowe, C.J., « The Argument and Structure of Plato’s Phaedrus », Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, vol. 32, 1986, p. 106‑125.

Rowe, C. J., « The Unity of Plato’s Phaedrus: A Reply to Heath », Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1989, p. 175-188.

Rowe, C.J., « Public and Private Speaking in Plato’s Later Dialogues », in C. Eggers (ed.) Platón: los diálogos tardíos (Actas del Symposium Platonicum 1986), Sankt Augustin, Academia-Verlag, 1994, p. 125‑137.

Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, London; New York, Routledge, 2009.

Schiefsky, M.J., Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine, Leiden; Boston, Brill, 2005.

Serra, M., « Alle origini di un’analogia: la parola come pharmakon », Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, vol. 15, n° 1, 2021, p. 4‑17.

Sheffield, F., « The Role of the Earlier Speeches in the « Symposium »: Plato’s Endoxic Method? », in J.H. Lesher, D. Nails, and F. Sheffield (eds.) Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 23‑46.

Shorey, P., « Φύσις Μελέτη Επιστήμη », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 40, 1909, p. 185‑201.

Trabattoni, F., Scrivere nell’anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone, Firenze, Nuova Italia, 1. ed, 1994.

Trabattoni, F., « On the Distinguishing Features of Plato’s “Metaphysics” (Starting from the Parmenides) », in Essays on Plato’s Epistemology, Ancient and medieval philosophy / De Wulf-Mansion Centre. Series 1 LIII, Leuven (Belgium), Leuven University Press, 2016, p. 199‑218.

Trivigno, F., « A Doctor’s Folly: Diagnosing the Speech of Eryximachus », in P. Destrée and Z. Giannopoulou (eds.) Plato’s Symposium: a critical guide, Cambridge critical guides, Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 48‑69.

Vegetti, M., « La Medicina in Platone », Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 21, n° 1, 1966, p. 3‑39.

Waterfield, R., Plato: Phaedrus, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Werner, D.S., « Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus », Greece and Rome, vol. 57, n° 1, 2010, p. 21‑46.

Wiggins, D., « Knowing How To and Knowing That », in P.M.S. Hacker, H.-J. Glock, and J. Hyman (eds.) Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays for P.M.S. Hacker, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 263‑277.

Yunis, H., Taming Democracy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996.

Yunis, H., « Eros in Plato’s Phaedrus and the Shape of Greek Rhetoric », Arion, vol. 13, n° 1, 2005, p. 101-126.

Yunis, H., « Plato’s Rhetoric », in I. Worthington (ed.) A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007, p. 75‑89.

Yunis, H., « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 24, n° 1, 2009, p. 229‑259.

Yunis, H. (ed.), Plato: Phaedrus, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Zingano, M.A. de Á., « Intorno all’anima: megalôn gar heneka periiteon (274a3) », in G. Casertano (ed.) Il Fedro di Platone: struttura e problematiche, Skepsis23, Napoli, Loffredo, 2011, p. 375‑393.

Haut de page

Notes

1 Decleva Caizzi 1966 t. 51 = Prince 2015, t. 187.

2 For the historical and conceptual background of the analogy between φάρμακον and λόγος, see M. Serra, « Alle origini di un’analogia: la parola come pharmakon », Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, vol. 15, n° 1, 2021, p. 4‑17.

3 See L. Ayache, « L’arme du crime: la référence médicale chez Platon », Noesis, n° 2, 1998, p. 89‑102; S. B. Levin, Plato’s Rivalry with Medicine: A Struggle and Its Dissolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.

4 See L. Edelstein, « The Rôle of Eryximachus in Plato’s Symposium », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 76, 1945, p. 85‑103 ; C.T. Mársico, « Modelos de medicina en el Banquete y la República de Platón », Revista Hypnos, n° 4, 1998, p. 168‑180 ; F. Sheffield, « The Role of the Earlier Speeches in the “Symposium”: Plato’s Endoxic Method? », in J.H. Lesher, D. Nails, and F. Sheffield (eds.), Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 23‑46, esp. 37-8 ; F. Trivigno, « A Doctor’s Folly: Diagnosing the Speech of Eryximachus », in P. Destrée and Z. Giannopoulou (eds.), Plato’s Symposium: a critical guide, Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 48‑69.

5 See W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato, Oxford [England]; New York, Oxford University Press, 1971, trad. G. Highet, p. 3 ; J.W. Lidz, « Medicine as Metaphor in Plato », Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 20, n° 5 (1), 1995, p. 527‑541, esp. p. 534 ; G.E.R. Lloyd, In the Grip of Disease: Studies in the Greek Imagination, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2003, p.142–175; S. Marino, « Medicina », in G. Cornelli and R. Lopes (eds.), Platão, Coimbra companions, Coimbra, Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra = Coimbra University Press, 2018, p. 349‑360 ; M. Vegetti, « La Medicina in Platone », Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 21, n° 1, 1966, p. 3‑39.

6 See Á.V. Campos, « Socrates as a physician of the soul », in G. Cornelli (ed.), Plato’s Styles and Characters, De Gruyter, 2015, p. 227‑240 ; S. Marino, « Socrates Medicus: Una Rappresentazione Platonica », in C. Marsico (ed.), Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from Socratica IV, International Socrates studies volume 2, Baden-Baden, Academia, 2022 ; J. Moss, « The Doctor and the Pastry Chef: Pleasure and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias », Ancient Philosophy, vol. 27, n° 2, 2007, p. 229‑249.

7 Throughout this paper, I translate τέχνη primarily as “art” and occasionally as “technique” to capture the semantic range of the Greek term. “Art” better preserves the notion of systematic knowledge and skilled practice that characterizes τέχνη in Plato’s dialogues, encompassing both theoretical understanding and practical application. While “technique” may sometimes be employed to emphasize the methodological or procedural aspects of certain arts, “art” remains the preferred translation as it avoids the merely mechanical connotations of modern “technique” and maintains the connection between knowledge, skill, and purposeful activity central to the Platonic conception. This translation choice allows the term to accommodate the full range of systematic, rule-governed practices that τέχνη denotes in Plato’s dialogues, from medicine and navigation to rhetoric and dialectic. For the etymology of the term, see P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots, Paris, Klincksieck, 1999, p. 1112. For its meaning from Homer up to Plato, see D. Roochnik, Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s Understanding of Techne, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, p. 17‑88. For a comprehensive study of τέχνη in Plato, see G. Cambiano, Platone e le tecniche, Torino, Einaudi, 1971.

8 On the medicine-rhetoric analogy in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus see, for instance, T. Irani, Plato on the Value of Philosophy: The Art of Argument in the Gorgias and Phaedrus, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 170‑171 ; W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Volume III: The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato, op. cit., p. 192‑193 ; T. Lier, Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato’s Phaedrus, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2019, p. 130 ; H.F. North, «Swimming Upside Down in the Wrong Direction’ Plato’s Criticism of Sophistic Rhetoric on Technical and Stylistic Grounds », Traditio, vol. 32, n° S1, 1976, p. 11‑29, p. 25. On the paradigm of medicine as foundational for the Platonic διαλέγεσθαι through a close study of the Protagoras, see S. Marino, Il corpo del dialogo: una teoria della comunicazione a partire dal Protagora di Platone e dal Corpus Hippocraticum, Napoli, Paolo Loffredo, 2019.

9 On the importance of analogical thinking in Plato’s dialogues, accounting for its different usages and shortcomings, see G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1966, p. 389‑403 ; R. Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectic, Ithaca, N.Y, Cornell University Press, 1941, p. 214‑234.

10 In the terminology of Renato Matoso, I undertake in this paper a “diachronic analysis” that seeks to detect the “underlying unity” or “deep philosophical structure” of the medicine-rhetoric analogy. While the “diachronic analysis” puts in comparison and shows the connections between different dialogues, a “synchronic analysis” deals with a single dialogue and tackles an argument, theory, or doctrine in isolation from other dialogues. See R. Matoso, « Perspectivism and Conciliation in the Reading of Plato’s Dialogues », O que nos faz pensar, vol. 27, n.° 43, 2018, p. 287-301.

11 E.g., R. Burger, Plato’s Phaedrus: a Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing, University, University of Alabama Press, 1980, p. 6 ; E.L. Hunt, « Plato and Aristotle on Rhetoric and Rhetoricians », in A.M. Drummond (ed.), Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking: In Honor of James Albert Winans, Whitefish, Montana, Literary Licensing, 2013, p. 42 ; J. Koritansky, « Socratic Rhetoric and Socratic Wisdom in Plato’s Phaedrus », Interpretation, vol. 15, n° 1, 1987, p. 29‑53, p. 46‑47 ; R. Reames, « The Μῦθος of Pernicious Rhetoric: The Platonic Possibilities of Λογός in Aristotle’s Rhetoric », Rhetorica, vol. 30, n° 2, 2012, p. 134‑152, p. 138 ; Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory, Chicago; London, The University of Chicago Press, 2018, p. 51 ; R. Waterfield, Plato: Phaedrus, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. xxxv. I shall return to this discussion in the following sections of this paper.

12 In a well-argued piece on the theoretical foundations of rhetoric in the Phaedrus, in contradistinction to both Isocrates and Cicero, John Cooper fails to notice the importance of medicine for raising rhetoric to the status of a true τέχνη in Plato. See J.M. Cooper, «Plato, Isocrates and Cicero on the Independence of Oratory from Philosophy », in Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on Ancient Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 65‑80.

13 For an argument that a τέχνη, qua τέχνη, is value-neutral and, as such, need not be good-directed or is good-directed only in the weaker sense of being goal-directed, see E. Hulme Kozey, « The Good-Directedness of Τέχνη and the Status of Rhetoric in the Platonic Dialogues », Apeiron, vol. 52, n° 3, 2019, p. 223‑244. I address this reading in my second section, specifically in footnote 51.

14 On the concepts of φύσις and δύναμις in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine in relation to Platonic philosophy, see S. Marino, Il corpo del dialogo, op. cit., p. 68‑83 ; M.J. Schiefsky, Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine, Leiden; Boston, Brill, 2005, p. 68‑71.

15 For Plato’s indebtedness to the Hippocratic method of dividing natures according to powers, see A. Macé, « Plato and ‘Hippocrates’ on Nature and Power: Reading Phaedrus 269d–272b in the Light of the Hippocratic Treatise On Ancient Medicine », in C. Araújo (ed.) Plato’s Power, Leiden, Brill, 2025, p. 1-41.

16 See G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, op. cit., p. 172‑176.

17 See S. Marino, Il corpo del dialogo, op. cit., p. 239‑242 ; C. Perelman, « Analogy and Metaphor in Science, Poetry and Philosophy », in C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, 1979, p. 91‑100 ; D.B. Robinson, « Review of Polarity and Analogy, Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought, by G. E. R. Lloyd », Philosophy, vol. 43, n° 165, 1968, p. 289.

18 Alternatively, I could have cited the ἀναλογία between the sun and the Form of the Good in Rep. VI 506d6-511e5. For a careful exposition of the analogical relations between the sun and the Form of the Good, see A. S. Ferguson, « Plato’s Simile of Light Again », The Classical Quarterly, vol. 28, n° 3-4, 1934, p. 190-210. At Rep. VI 508b13, the term “ἀνάλογος” is explicitly used to refer to the sun as the offspring of the good (τὸν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἔκγονον), which the good engendered as its analogue (ὃν τἀγαθὸν ἐγέννησεν ἀνάλογον ἑαυτῷ).

19 These passages are also cited and investigated in G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, op. cit., p. 396‑403.

20 This is what S.B. Levin terms “the subject-matter requirement.” To specify what constitutes a proper τέχνη, Levin argues that three conditions must be satisfied: (i) the practice must possess a determinate subject matter (the subject-matter requirement); (ii) it must provide a rational account of the relevant causal principles governing that subject matter (the knowledge or understanding requirement); and (iii) it must pursue what is objectively beneficial for its recipient (the goodness requirement). According to Levin, a practice qualifies as a genuine τέχνη only when it fulfills all three requirements. See S. B. Levin, Plato’s Rivalry with Medicine, op. cit., chapt. I.2. This understanding of a τέχνη qua τέχνη, particularly requirement (iii), diverges from the view broached in footnote 13. My own position attempts to work out a middle ground. While I agree with E. Hulme Kozey that good-directedness is subordinate to goal-directedness in the definition of a τέχνη qua τέχνη, for otherwise one could not account for the various instances of τέχναι recorded by Plato in the dialogues, I dispute the claim that rhetoric is a value-neutral art. Just as medicine, as a form of θεραπεία, is a τέχνη that cares for the body, rhetoric is a τέχνη that cares for the soul. See also footnote 51.

21 “Craft” terminology suggests productive knowledge (e.g., shoemaking, woodworking, weaving). However, as David Roochnik has demonstrated, Plato’s concept of τέχνη is much broader, encompassing purely theoretical forms of knowledge like mathematics. See D. Roochnik, « Socrates’s Use of the Techne-Analogy », Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 24, n° 3, 1986, p. 295‑310 ; Of art and wisdom, op. cit.

22 G. Cambiano, « Platon et les rapports entre théorie et praxis dans la médecine hippocratique », Études platoniciennes, n° 10, 2013 ; L. Dean-Jones, « Literacy and the Charlatan in Ancient Greek Medicine », in H. Yunis (ed.), Written texts and the rise of literate culture in ancient Greece, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 97‑121, p. 104 ; D.R.N. Lopes, « Retórica », op. cit., p. 351‑353 ; M. Vegetti, « La Medicina in Platone », op. cit., p. 11ff.

23 Cf., Gorg. 452e4-5: καίτοι ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ δυνάμει δοῦλον μὲν ἕξεις τὸν ἰατρόν. See also Phil. 58a7-58c6.

24 Plato also cites a book containing the eulogy of salt (Symp. 177b4-c1).

25 Jessica Moss « The Doctor and the Pastry Chef », op. cit., offers a superb reading of this contrast between the doctor and the cook in the dialogue, hinting at the apologetic tone behind it, with Socrates assuming the position of a doctor who is beneficial to the city, but incapable of persuading the citizens because of their appetitive attachment to bodily pleasure.

26 J. K. Larsen, « Defining Rhetoric Dialectically: Confronting Philosophy with Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias », Ancient Philosophy, vol. 45, n. 1, 2025, p. 53-81, argues that the procedures of collection and division are central to the Socratic task of defining rhetoric in the Gorgias, as they reveal the proportions or analogies between forms of genuine caretaking and their corresponding forms of flattery. These methodological procedures at issue in the Gorgias, according to the author, bear significant resemblance to passages in the Sophist and Statesman (Soph. 226b1-230d4; Pol. 279a7-283a9), where Plato similarly employs proportions among various types of expertise to illuminate the nature of specific kinds of expertise.

27 While the standard view (as presented, e.g., in E. R. Dodds (ed.), Gorgias: A Revised Text, with Introduction and Commentary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, p. 228; H. Yunis, Taming Democracy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 125) holds that rhetoric is condemned for aiming at pleasure, J. K. Larsen, «Defining Rhetoric Dialectically: Confronting Philosophy with Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias», op. cit., with which I am in agreement, argues that the real issue is rhetoric’s pretense to be a genuine art of soul-care despite lacking true expertise. On his reading, pleasure functions not as rhetoric’s end but as its means of deception.

28 For the centrality of the concept of health in Plato’s thinking, see J. Moravcsik, « Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Health and Medicine », Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, vol. 1, n° 4, 1976, p. 337‑348.

29 Against the rhetoric vilified in the Gorgias, the Phaedrus works with a value-laden, normative conception of rhetoric, which has the ethical goal of gratifying gods instead of human beings (273e5-8-274a2). More on this issue in the next two sections.

30 See J. Beversluis, Cross-examining Socrates: A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato’s Early Dialogues, Cambridge, U.K.; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 324‑325.

31 The next two sections of this analysis examine how the Phaedrus advances beyond the Gorgias to provide a constructive account of philosophical rhetoric as a legitimate τέχνη, developing a comprehensive analogy between medicine and rhetoric that specifies the knowledge required and the methods necessary for rhetoric to achieve genuine technical status. As the Phaedrus makes manifest, rhetoric’s proper object is the soul, and it must meet certain epistemic requirements to count as a τέχνη, such as possessing a rational account (λόγος) of its object, understanding the causal mechanisms involved in its operations, and producing beneficial outcomes to its recipient.

32 See D. Roochnik, « Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric », in F.J. Gonzalez (ed.), The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies, Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995, p. 81‑94, who argues that Socrates employs the techne-analogy, with medicine at the forefront, as a “rhetorical device.” In my view, the medicine-rhetoric analogy is not simply a “rhetorical device,” for there is a more substantial and methodological reason for Plato to develop the analogy between medicine and rhetoric. See, in this respect, G. Cambiano, « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel Fedro platónico », Rivista di Filosofia, vol. 57, n° 3, 1966, p. 284‑305 ; « Platon et les rapports entre théorie et praxis dans la médecine hippocratique », op. cit.. I develop this thought in the next couple of sections.

33 Among scholars who maintain that Plato’s treatment of rhetoric differs significantly between the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, see J. Koritansky, « Socratic Rhetoric and Socratic Wisdom in Plato’s Phaedrus », Interpretation, op. cit., p. 30-31; C. J. Rowe, « The Unity of Plato’s Phaedrus: A Reply to Heath », Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1989, p. 180-181; C. J. Rowe, « Public and Private Speaking in Plato’s Later Dialogues », in C. Eggers (ed.), Platón: los diálogos tardíos (Actas del Symposium Platonicum 1986), Sankt Augustin, Academia-Verlag, 1994, p. 127-129; G. Nicholson, Plato’s Phaedrus: The Philosophy of Love, West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 1999, p. 45-53; M. C. Nussbaum, « ‘This Story Isn’t True’: Madness, Reason, and Recantation in the Phaedrus », in The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 227. Conversely, scholars who defend the continuity of Plato’s treatment of rhetoric across both dialogues include R. W. Quimby, « The Growth of Plato’s Perception of Rhetoric », Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 7, n° 2, 1974, p. 71-79; M. Heath, « The Unity of Plato’s Phaedrus », Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1989, p. 156, 169-170; D. S. Werner, « Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus », Greece and Rome, vol. 57, n° 1, 2010, p. 46, n. 55; H. Yunis, « Eros in Plato’s Phaedrus and the Shape of Greek Rhetoric », Arion, vol. 13, n° 1, 2005, p. 102-103; T. Irani, Plato on the Value of Philosophy, op. cit., p. 107.

34 Although I find D. Roochnik, « Socrates’ Rhetorical Attack on Rhetoric », op. cit., incomplete for it does not address the techne-analogy in the debate with Callicles, D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., devotes a whole section to the Socrates vs. Callicles debate on the question of techne.

35 See, inter alia, T. Irani, Plato on the value of philosophy, op. cit., p. 62‑66 ; J. Moss, « The Doctor and the Pastry Chef », op. cit. ; D.S. Werner, « Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit., p. 46, n. 55 ; H. Yunis, « Plato’s Rhetoric », in I. Worthington (ed.), A Companion to Greek Rhetoric, Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007, p. 75‑89, p. 78‑79. for the recognition that a good and genuine rhetoric is already found latent in the Gorgias.

36 It is strange that Socrates permits the uninhibited satisfaction of appetite by a healthy person, allowing them to eat and drink as much as they wish (ὅσον βούλεται, 505a7). I think the underlying assumption is that this healthy body is combined with a temperate soul, which would imply that the individual only wishes for (βούλεται) a moderate amount of food and drink to satisfy their appetite.

37 This same expression ( αὐτὸς τρόπος) is used in Phdr. 270b3-7 to develop the analogy between medicine and rhetoric, as I shall point out in the following section.

38 On Callicles’ strong version of hedonism at this point of the dialogue, see E. R. Dodds (ed.), Gorgias: A Revised Text, with Introduction and Commentary, op. cit., p. 304-305. By Gorg. 500a6, Callicles espouses a milder version of the hedonist position. See E. R. Dodds (ed.), Gorgias: A Revised Text, with Introduction and Commentary, op. cit., p. 316.

39 In an argumentative pattern that was competently examined by D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., p. 192‑193. See also D.W. Graham, « Socrates, the Craft Analogy, and Science », Apeiron, vol. 24, n° 1, 1991, p. 14.

40 G. Cambiano « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel ‘Fedro’ platónico », op. cit., p. 296‑297, contrasts Gorgias, for whom rhetoric is the foundation of medicine and every other art, with Plato, for whom, based on his reading of the Phaedrus, dialectics is the foundation of medicine, rhetoric, and every other art.

41 Against Polus, Socrates argues that rhetoricians, as well as tyrants, have the least amount of power (σμικρότατον) in the cities. He supports this claim based on a distinction between doing what one wishes (ποιεῖν ὧν βούλοντα) and doing what would seem to be best (ποιεῖνὅτι ἂν αὐτοῖς δόξῃ βέλτιστον εἶναι, 466d5ff.). See J. Beversluis, Cross-examining Socrates, op. cit., p. 321‑338 ; T. Irwin, Plato: Gorgias, Oxford: New York, Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 139ff. for a reconstruction of this argument.

42 On the consistency of Plato’s approach to rhetoric across the dialogues, see P.M.G. Dotto, « The Consistency of Plato’s Treatment of Rhetoric », DoisPontos, vol. 21, n° 2, 2024. Further, on the continuity between the Gorgias and Phaedrus regarding Plato’s treatment of rhetoric, see the authors cited in n. 30.

43 Cf. Symp. 176d; 223b; and Prot. 315c for Phaedrus’ reliance on the authority of medicine.

44 A non-exhaustive list would include: τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην (260d4); πείθειν τέχνῃ (260d9) αὐτῇ λόγοι...τέχνῃ (260e3-4) οὐκ ἔστι τέχνη ἀλλἄτεχνος τριβή (260e4); τοῦ δὲ λέγειν...ἔτυμος τέχνη (260e5); ῥητορικὴ ἂν εἴη τέχνη ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων (261a7-8); Λόγων... τέχνην (262c1); τέχνης τινὸς τοῦ λέγειν (262d5); τέχνην ῥητορικὴν (263b6); λόγων τέχνη (266c3); ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις τοῖς περὶ λόγων τέχνης γεγραμμένοις (266d6); λόγων τέχνην (267b4); λόγων τέχνης πέρι (267d8); τὴν τῆς τέχνης δύναμιν (268a2); ῥητορικὴν τέχνην (269b3); τὸ τῆς τέχνης ἣν... ὡς ῥητορικὴν (269c7); τὴν τοῦ τῷ ὄντι ῥητορικοῦ τε καὶ πιθανοῦ τέχνην (269c7); τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην (270a7); ἄν τῴ τις τέχνῃ λόγους διδῷ (270e1); τέχνην ῥητορικὴν (271a5); τέχνας λόγων (271c3); λόγων τέχνης (272b4); τὰ τέχνῃ λεγόμενα (273c5); περὶ τέχνης λόγων (273d7); τὸ μὲν τέχνης τε καὶ ἀτεχνίας λόγων πέρι (274b3).

45 D. Roochnik, « Socrates’s Use of the Techne-Analogy », op. cit., p. 309.

46 See note 14.

47 On the relationship between rhetoric and dialectics, which I cannot thoroughly address in this paper, see O.L. Brownstein, « Plato’s Phaedrus: Dialectic as the Genuine Art of Speaking », Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 51, n° 4, 1965, p. 392‑398 ; A. Hayase, « Dialectic in the Phaedrus », Phronesis, vol. 61, n° 2, 2016, p. 111‑141 ; J.S. Murray, « Disputation, Deception, and Dialectic: Plato on the True Rhetoric (Phaedrus 261-266) », Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 21, n° 4, 1988, p. 279‑289 ; H. Yunis, « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit.. For Cambiano « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel ‘Fedro’ platónico », op. cit., medicine and rhetoric have in common the analysis of τὸ ὅλον since both of them presuppose the dialectical method. Thus, what brings them together is only the dialectical method, but nothing in terms of content.

48 For the conventional character of these requirements, with variations appearing in Isocrates and Alcidamas, see P. Shorey, « Φύσις Μελέτη Επιστήμη », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 40, 1909, p. 185‑201 ; H. Yunis, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., ad loc.

49 For Irani, the nature of a true rhetoric in the Gorgias remains incomplete mainly because it lacks an understanding of the soul qua proper object of rhetoric, while the Phaedrus affords a moral psychology and, thus, brings to completion the promissory note for a true rhetoric foreshadowed in the Gorgias. I agree with him on this point. See T. Irani, Plato on the value of philosophy, op. cit.

50 In agreement with E. Jelinek and N. Pappas, « Hippocrates at Phaedrus 270c », Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 101, n° 3, 2020, p. 409‑430. G. Cambiano, « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel Fedro platónico », op. cit. ; J. Jouanna, « La Collection Hippocratique et Platon (Phèdre 269c-272a) », Revue des Études Grecques, vol. 90, n° 428, 1977, p. 15‑28, also insist on the methodological and dialectical input of the concept of τὸ ὅλον in connection to Hippocrates.

51 Emily Hulme Kozey does not take this passage of the Phaedrus (273e5-274a5) into consideration in her analysis of the grounds and scope of rhetoric as a τέχνη. I agree with her general point that good-directedness is subordinate to goal-directedness when it comes to τέχνη qua τέχνη. However, just as medicine as a τέχνη is a form of caring technique (θεραπεία) for the body, rhetoric would be a form of caring technique (θεραπεία) for the soul. See E. Hulme Kozey, « The Good-Directedness of Τέχνη and the Status of Rhetoric in the Platonic Dialogues », op. cit.

52 Pace C.J. Rowe, « The Argument and Structure of Plato’s Phaedrus », Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, vol. 32, 1986, p. 106‑125; « Public and Private Speaking in Plato’s Later Dialogues », op. cit., and in agreement with M. Heath, « The Unity of the Phaedrus: A Postscript », Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1989, p. 189‑191, the technical rhetoric of the Phaedrus has much more in common with the Gorgias than the Statesman, and it is highly unlikely that there can be a public/political rhetoric, in the strictest sense of the term rhetoric, according to the theoretical perspective of the Phaedrus and the Gorgias at least. By “the strictest sense of the term rhetoric” I mean a practice of rhetoric that remains as close as possible to the theoretical model outlined in the Phaedrus, and which is patterned after the medical epistemology of Hippocrates. I disagree with T. Lier, Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato’s Phaedrus, op. cit., p. 95‑154. too, who structures an entire chapter in a contrast between public and private rhetoric in the Phaedrus. The public, democratic rhetoric condemned in the Gorgias is not an art of speech, but a rule-of-thumb procedure for manipulating words to approve certain resolutions. But the true rhetoric that arises in the dialogue is a medicine of the soul (Gorg. 504d5ff.), which pays heed to the features of singular souls and makes use of suitable speeches to lead it towards knowledge and virtue.

53 In agreement with H. Yunis, « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit. ; H. Yunis, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., p.10‑14., and against, inter alia, O.L. Brownstein, « Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit. ; C.H. Kahn, Plato and the post-Socratic dialogue: the return to the philosophy of nature, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 136 ; D.S. Werner, « Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit.. My point of disagreement with Yunis is that I take the genuine rhetoric of the Phaedrus to be, by definition, value-governed. I believe that Yunis misses this insight because he does not take into proper consideration the medicine-rhetoric analogy that is fundamental for the structuring of rhetoric as a τέχνη in Plato.

54 This interpretation diverges, for instance, from G. Cambiano, « Dialettica, medicina, retorica nel Fedro platónico », op. cit., who argues that medicine and rhetoric share only their common dependence on the dialectical analysis of the whole (τὸ ὅλον), with no substantive connection beyond the method. I contend, however, that Plato’s conception of philosophical rhetoric incorporates medicine’s teleological orientation toward the good. Just as medicine aims at health, genuine rhetoric must be directed toward the benefit of souls, and this normative dimension transcends a mere methodological correspondence between medicine and rhetoric.

55 R. Waterfield, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., p. xxxv.

56 Even if the distinction between laymen and professional doctors was still ill-defined, and in the process of acquiring clearer contours. See L. Dean-Jones, « Literacy and the Charlatan in Ancient Greek Medicine », op. cit. ; W.H.S. Jones, Hippocrates, Vol. 2. with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univ. Press, 1923, p. xli‑xliv ; J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, Baltimore, Md, John Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 184‑185 ; K.-H. Leven, « Ethics and Deontology », in P.E. Pormann (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Hippocrates, Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 152‑179, p. 165‑166.. Cf. V.M. I.8-15; IX.16-29; Acut. VI; Arte V, on the difference between layman and expert in medicine.

57 R. Waterfield, Plato: Phaedrus, op. cit., p. xxxv.. For variations of this view, see R. Burger, Plato’s Phaedrus, op. cit., p. 6 ; E.L. Hunt, « Plato and Aristotle on rhetoric and rhetoricians », op. cit., p. 42 ; J. Koritansky, « Socratic Rhetoric and Socratic Wisdom in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit., p. 46‑47.

58 “Rhetoric is allowed to go to the ball, but only after it has completed such tasks as would necessarily preclude it from ever shedding its base rags.” R. Reames, « The μῦθος of Pernicious Rhetoric », op. cit., p. 138. This view is reaffirmed in a later work of his: “By such an interpretation, there is not necessarily any conflict between the views on rhetoric presented here and those presented in the Gorgias. In both cases, we might conclude that Plato’s opinion (articulated in the voice of Socrates) was intractable. In the Gorgias he demeans it as a civic canker, and in the Phaedrus he presents an unrealizable cure. According to such a reading, his apparent acceptance of rhetoric is merely a display of Socratic irony” R. Reames, Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory, op. cit., p. 51.

59 “The ‘true rhetoric’ to which the Phaedrus refers is (I will argue) something akin to a heuristic or regulative ideal: that is, a form of discourse whose main features can be indicated or pointed to, but which can never be fully instantiated in practice” D.S. Werner, « Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit., p. 22.

60 I was inspired by J. Moravcsik, « Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Health and Medicine », op. cit., p. 339, on the idea of health in Plato possessing a theoretical and a normative aspect.

61 “Science must therefore be causal or it is not science. In these earliest epistemological texts of ancient Greece, some of the leading concepts that were to guide the development of science for centuries afterwards can be seen to emerge with quite stunning clarity from reflection upon the art of medicine. There remains, of course, a gap between theoretical assertion and practical application. The author of On Ancient Medicine, for example, despite his fine statements about the need for causal knowledge, does not proceed to try to carry out his program through experimental investigation. But a certain conceptual architecture was nonetheless now in place” J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, op. cit., p. 255.

62 J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, op. cit., p. 256.

63 Such as in Franco Trabattoni’s example of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. See F. Trabattoni, « On the Distinguishing Features of Plato’s “Metaphysics” (Starting from the Parmenides) », in Essays on Plato’s Epistemology, Leuven (Belgium), Leuven University Press, 2016, p. 199‑218.

64 See C.L. Griswold, « Self-knowledge and the ‘ἰδἐα’ of the soul in Plato’s Phaedrus », Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, vol. 86, n° 4, 1981, p. 477‑494.

65 See, for instance, F. Trabattoni, Scrivere nell’anima: verità, dialettica e persuasione in Platone, Firenze, Nuova Italia, 1. ed, 1994.

66 See S. Noriega-Olmos, « The Epistemological Status of Medicine in the ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΗΣ ΙΗΤΡΙΚΗΣ », DoisPontos, vol. 10, n° 2, 2013; M.J. Schiefsky, Hippocrates: On ancient medicine, op. cit., p. 13‑18;185‑207; 217‑222; D. S. Hutchinson, « Doctrines of the Mean and the Debate Concerning Skills in Fourth-Century Medicine, Rhetoric and Ethics », Apeiron, vol. 21, no 2, 1988, p. 42-43.

67 See F. Dunn, « On Ancient Medicine and its intellectual context », in P.J. van der Eijk (ed.), Hippocrates in Context, BRILL, 2005, p. 49‑67 ; L. Edelstein, « The Rôle of Eryximachus in Plato’s Symposium », op. cit., p. 90‑91 ; G.E.R. Lloyd, « Aspects of the Interrelations of Medicine, Magic and Philosophy in Ancient Greece », Apeiron, vol. 9, n° 1, 1975, p. 1‑16 ; S. Noriega-Olmos, « The Epistemological Status of Medicine in the ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΗΣ ΙΗΤΡΙΚΗΣ », op. cit.. Cf. V.M. IV, and XX; Nat.Hom. I-II; Acut. VII-VIII; Arte as a whole.

68 See G.E.R. Lloyd, In the grip of disease, op. cit., p. 149‑150; D. S. Hutchinson, « Doctrines of the Mean and the Debate Concerning Skills in Fourth-Century Medicine, Rhetoric and Ethics », op. cit., p. 34-35.

69 J. Pigeaud, « Qu’est-ce qu’être malade ? Quelques réflexions sur le sens de la maladie dans Ancienne médecine », in Poétiques du corps: aux origines de la médecine, Paris, Les Belles lettres, 2008, p. 105‑130, p. 210.

70 As the Loeb translator of the Corpus Hippocraticum, W. H. S. Jones, sustains: “a working hypothesis, although wrong, is better than no hypothesis at all.” W.H.S. Jones, Hippocrates, Vol. 2. with an English translation by W. H. S. Jones, op. cit., p. iv.

71 See J. Moss, « Soul-Leading: The Unity of the Phaedrus, Again », in B. Inwood (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 43, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 1‑23.

72 Θῶμεν τοίνυν διχῇ τὰς λεγομένας τέχνας, τὰς μὲν μουσικῇ συνεπομένας ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις ἐλάττονος ἀκριβείας μετισχούσας, τὰς δὲ τεκτονικῇ πλείονος.

73 See D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., p. 53‑57. My point is that the genuine rhetoric of the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, which Roochnik does not tackle, would fall under the category of fallibilistic or “stochastic” arts (techne2 in his terminology) rather than the rigorous, determinate, and accurate kind of art (techne1), following his classification.

74 See D. Roochnik, Of art and wisdom, op. cit., p. 52‑57..

75 Another way to think about is with Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between “achievement verbs” and “task verbs.” Both “cure” and “persuade” are achievement verbs, and, as such, they imply success in the activity. If medicine was to be reduced to curing, and rhetoric to persuading, whenever there were failure in their accomplishment, one could raise doubts whether the activity peculiar to each art was realized or not. See G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, London; New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 131‑135.

76 Compare it with the uses of ὑπόμνημα, ὑπόμνησις, and ὑπομιμνήσκω in the Phaedrus’ criticism of writing: 276d3 ὑπομνήματα; 275a5 ὑπομνήσεως; 275d1 ὑπομνῆσαι; 278a1 ὑπομνήσεως.

77 H. Yunis, « Dialectic and the Purpose of Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus », op. cit., p. 239.

78 Whether the perfect political science of the Statesman is available or not in our current, post-Cronos age, see C. L. Griswold, « Politikē Epistēmē in Plato’s Statesman », in J. Anton and A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy III: Plato, New York, State University of New York Press, 1989, p. 141-167.

79 τοὺς ἰατροὺς δὲ οὐχ ἥκιστα νενομίκαμεν, ἐάντε ἑκόντας ἐάντε ἄκοντας ἡμᾶς ἰῶνται, τέμνοντες κάοντες τινα ἄλλην ἀλγηδόνα προσάπτοντες, καὶ ἐὰν κατὰ γράμματα χωρὶς γραμμάτων, καὶ ἐὰν πένητες ὄντες πλούσιοι, πάντως οὐδὲν ἧττον ἰατρούς φαμεν, ἕωσπερ ἂν ἐπιστατοῦντες τέχνῃ, καθαίροντες εἴτε ἄλλως ἰσχναίνοντες εἴτε καὶ αὐξάνοντες, ἂν μόνον ἐπἀγαθῷ τῷ τῶν σωμάτων, βελτίω ποιοῦντες ἐκ χειρόνων, σῴζωσιν οἱ θεραπεύοντες ἕκαστοι τὰ θεραπευόμενα· ταύτῃ θήσομεν, ὡς οἶμαι, καὶ οὐκ ἄλλῃ, τοῦτον ὅρον ὀρθὸν εἶναι μόνον ἰατρικῆς καὶ ἄλλης ἡστινοσοῦν ἀρχῆς.

80 As J.S. Murray, « Disputation, Deception, and Dialectic: Plato on the True Rhetoric (Phaedrus 261-266) », op. cit., p. 284 correctly suggests: “The technical, or rhetorical,’ notion of ἀπάτη, as leading one away from current opinions, may well find a place as part of Plato’s true rhetoric.” Perhaps Kierkegaard was right when he declared: “One can deceive a person out of what is true, and—to recall old Socrates—one can deceive a person into what is true. Yes, in only this way can a deluded person actually be brought into what is true—by deceiving him.” S. Kierkegaard, « The Point of View of My Work as an Author: A Direct Communication, Report to History », in H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (eds.) The Essential Kierkegaard, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 467.

81 This distinction between two forms of medical practice could perhaps dispel Irani’s worry that philosophical argument, following the analogy with medical treatment, would entail a relationship of dominance. See T. Irani, Plato on the value of philosophy, op. cit., p. 164–65.

82 Earlier in the Laws (IV.722d3ff.), the Athenian had requested a prelude to the laws to ensure the willingly compliance of the citizens with the norms of the city. He uses a medical analogy to drive home his point. The prelude is to be a persuasive and make use of exhortation to balance the normative commandment of the laws, as it also happens with the mixture of smooth persuasiveness and despotic prescriptions by doctors.

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Pedro M. G. Dotto, « The Analogy Between Medicine and Rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus »Études platoniciennes [En ligne], 20 | 2025, mis en ligne le 20 janvier 2026, consulté le 13 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesplatoniciennes/3436 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15lfu

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search