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SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT,
IRONY, AND PERSUASION
IN PLATO'S DIALOGUES
Eros . . . is an awe-inspiring magician, sorcerer, and sophist.
Plato, Symposium203d*
Protagorasdrawsthem from each of the cities throughwhich
he passes, enchantingthem with his voice just like Orpheus,
and they follow after his voice spellbound.
Plato, Protagoras315a
Magic: Metaphor or Irony?
*1 use the Oxford Classical Texts of Plato's works, Platonis Opera (1905-1913), ed.
John Burnet, 5 vols. Translations from Greek are my own.
' For this view of magic, see B. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion and
Other Essays (Boston 1948) 59-65. For recent reassessments of magic in ancient Greece,
see Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. C.A. Faraone and D. Obbink
(New York 1991); and G.E.R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason, and Experience: Studies in the
Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge 1979).
275
276 MICHELLEGELLRICH
7 For discussions of the performative and rhetorical character of the dialogues, see
J.A. Arieti, Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama (Lanham, Md. 1991); G.R.F.
Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge 1987); S.
Rosen, Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image (New Haven 1983) 1-57; and
P. Friedlander, Plato: An Introduction, 2nd ed., tr. H. Meyerhoff (Princeton 1969)
230-35.
Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 1-31.
9 Havelock does not explicitly base his argument on Gorgias' Encomium, but what
he says about the psychology of poetic performance finds strong support in the
Encomium. Also see Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 88-100.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 279
'0 For a fuller discussion of the close bond between peitho and eros, see R.G.A.
Buxton, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: A Study of Peitho (Cambridge 1982) 29-66; and
N. Gross, Amatory Persuasion in Antiquity: Studies in Theory and Practice (Newark,
Del. 1985). Neither, however, does much with magic, though it figures in Gross'
discussion (124-48) of Theocritus' second and eleventh Idylls. For the visual arts, see S.
Reinach, Repertoire des vases peints grecs et 6trusques (Paris 1924), under Peitho.
" For the Greek text of Gorgias' Encomium, see Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin 1951), vol. 2, fr. 11. For the psychosomatic character of
Gorgianic psychology, see C. Segal, "Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos,"
HSCP 66 (1962) 99-155; and D.B. Claus, Toward the Soul: An Inquiry Into the
Meaning of Psyche Before Plato (New Haven 1981) 141-55. On Gorgias and
enchantment, see G.B. Walsh, The Varieties of Enchantment: Early Greek Views of the
280 MICHELLE GELLRICH
Nature and Function of Poetry (Chapel Hill 1984) 80-106; and T.G. Rosenmeyer,
"Gorgias, Aeschylus, and Apate," AJP 76 (1955) 225-60.
12 Strabo 7.18 calls Orpheus a goes and says he celebrated orgies connected with
initiatory rites (teletaO).Diodorus Siculus 5.64.5-7 records the tradition that Orpheus was
a pupil of the Idaean Dactyls of Crete who were goetes. Though evidence about
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 281
Orpheus before Plato is sparse and unclear, Simonides fr. 567 (Page) first mentions the
enchanting power of Orpheus' song; then follow Aeschylus Ag. 1629-1631; and
Euripides Bacch. 650, Cyc. 646-653, and Alc. 359. Alc. 357-362 is the first reference to
the myth about Orpheus' trip to Hades. For Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles as
goetes, see Burkert (above, n.6); Dodds (above, n.3) 135-78; and F. Graf, "Orpheus: A
Poet Among Men," Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. J. Bremmer (London
1987) 80-106. On Orpheus and song-magic, see W.K.C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek
Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (New York 1966) 1-68; and C. Segal,
Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore 1989) 1-35.
282 MICHELLE GELLRICH
avail" (Charmides 155e). The soul, in short, through the epode, must
be properly predisposed if a cure is to be effective. Not only is it
susceptible to material properties of words, but it in turn acts on the
material body. Epitomizing a magical approach to illness, Zalmoxis
treats therapy as a psychosomatic technique whose efficacy is linked to
pleasing speech, logos kalos, which creates a prerequisite order in the
psyche, or what Socrates calls sophrosyne-the subject that the
dialogue proceeds, aporetically, to define.'3
The archaic character of beliefs about logotherapy featured in
Charmides is apparent, and some commentators have accordingly
concluded that the entire work is ironic, that it "craftily abuses" the
views about incantatory speech it sets forth. 14 Though the quasi-
physical nature of psyche in the work does not conform with the
rigorous dualism familiar to us in the middle dialogues, we should be
cautious about interpreting Socrates' attitude as skeptical toward the
cure he ostensibly embraces. Rarely is his irony so cut and dried, and
for that matter rarely, as we will see, does it reveal a simple identity
behind the mask. Socrates typically preserves key elements of the
ironized object in the process of overcoming its deficiencies. The
present dialogue offers a case in point. Pretense is undoubtedly central
to the drama of healing Charmides' headache, as the opening lines of
the dialogue make clear. Socrates follows Critias' advice "to pretend"
(155b) that he has a remedy, and as the handsome young man
approaches there is a scurrying about by those who wish to sit next to
him, during which time Socrates catches fire from seeing the inside of
Charmides' garment and loses his gift of gab. All this is in the ironic
spirit of erotic play for which Socrates is famous. But the doubleness
does not discredit the notion that the "beautiful speech" of the epjde
can order the soul so much as lead the way to the insight at the end of
the dialogue-that the "beautiful speech" capable of charming is
Socratic dialogue. Uncertain after the elenchos of what sophrosyne is,
Charmides is unwilling to pronounce decisively on the question
whether he possesses it, and agrees instead to submit himself to
Socrates: ". . . Socrates, I'm entirely convinced that I need the charm,
and there is nothing to hinder me from being charmed by you until
you say that it's enough" (176b). In the face of an obvious move to
revise the epode by replacing Zalmoxis' words with Socrates', the
interpretive problem becomes one of explaining how Socratic speech
enchants. Charmides does not provide a clear response to this
13 I rely on Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 114-27, though I disagree with his
conclusions about the rationalized epode in Plato. R. Kotansky, "Incantations and
Prayers for Salvation on Inscribed Greek Amulets," Magika Hiera (above, n.l) 107-37,
notes that "the first explicit reference to an amulet applied with an incantation occurs in
Plato's Charmides (155e-156e)" (p. 109).
14 Such an approach to Charmides is exemplified by Claus (above, n.l 1) 169-72.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 283
question, though it does provocatively suggest that the answer lies in
the confluence of eros, enchantment, and psychagogia. Phaedrus will
spell out the ties more clearly.
It is no accident that a dialogue whose chief subject is sophrosyne
should also provide a heavy dose of magical themes. Plato repeatedly
configures these terms together. In the Republic, Books 2 and 3, when
the subject of training the guardians arises, we encounter passages in
which enchantment is to be used to temper and moderate the youthful
soul (41 la-414e). Musical rhythms in conjunction with purified,
canonical texts form a new curriculum whose purpose is to instill
order in the soul and to prepare it for the higher calling of dialectic
and guardianship. A similar attitude toward enchantment and the
epode is found in Laws, which repeatedly treats enchantment as a vital
element of education and civic governance. The centrality of incanta-
tion in this dialogue is partly explained by a passage that regards the
power of the epode as rooted in human biology (Laws 790c-791b).
The subject is training the infant's soul, and the Athenian Stranger
proposes that it would be ideal if babies could spend all their time at
sea, so to speak. Internal distress is remedied not by stillness or silence
but by movement and song, which put a spell on infants and induce
calm. External motion, rhythmic and repetitive, is a homeopathic cure
for internal commotion in a process explicitly likened to the curative
rites of the Corybants and the Dionysiac frenzy of the Bacchae.
Although the previous example points to the automatic character
of the epdde, its persuasive power to mold the soul and predispose it
to proper training is obvious in passages of the Laws concerned, as
the former section of Republic is, with the education of children and
adults. Here is a vivid example: after the Athenian Stranger has set
forth his plan of ordering the state by establishing three choruses,
composed of different age groups and led by different gods, he
summarizes his remarks by proclaiming that "every man and child,
free and slave, female and male-indeed the whole city-must never
stop incanting to itself these things we have described" (Laws 665c).
For incantation, more effectively than any other force except violence,
leads the soul by persuading it. Other passages bear out confidence in
the persuasive power of epodai, which are relied upon to strengthen
political order and to overcome doubt (cf. Laws 726e, 903d-e).
Epo5dai serve a similar function in Phaedo (77e-78a), when
Socrates addresses the fear that Simmias and Cebes feel about the
separation of psyche from soma at death. It is the child in us,
Socrates maintains, who is afraid of death as though it were a
bogeyman. "What is necessary, said Socrates, is to say a magic spell
over [this child] every day until you have charmed away his fears."
Even if one must search all countries and foreign races for such a
magician, the effort would be worth it, "for you could not spend
money more opportunely." The gentle irony of Socrates' advice does
not undermine his suggestion, for he is in effect urging his compan-
284 MICHELLE GELLRICH
ions to find for themselves someone to replace him-the only one they
presently know who could charm away their fear of death. He directs
this remark in particular to Cebes who is more impressed than
Simmias is with Socrates' powers of enchantment and who, perhaps
for that reason, is usually the recipient of Socrates' more argumenta-
tive speeches.'5 That Socratic discourse is itself the epode Simmias and
Cebes would seek is only implicitly advanced in this passage, as it is in
Charmides. But the implication is worth noting, for it will be
developed more explicitly in other dialogues.
We may not be surprised that Plato found incantation helpful in
averting fear and controlling a civic population. But this valuation can
appear in works, such as Republic and Laws, that are famous for
their searing condemnation of goeteia as charlatanry: "those who
have become like beasts and think that the gods are either careless or
bribeable, who feeling contempt for humans lead the souls of many,
and who undertaking to persuade the gods, by enchanting them with
sacrifices and prayers, try to bring down private citizens and whole
houses and cities for the sake of money"-such are sentenced to
confinement in the central prison (Laws 909b). "And if it seems that a
person is like an injurer by the use of spells or charms or incantations
. . .he will be put to death" (Laws 933d). The problem with goeteia
is that it appeals by promising "quick fixes" for illness, automatic
profits for the disadvantaged, or certain success for those who seek to
harm others (Laws 909, 932e-933e). It is the short and expedient route
to an end which should be approached by a longer way.
The coexistence of such condemnatory attitudes with favorable
assessments of enchantment characterizes Plato's work throughout his
career. Lain Entralgo and de Romilly have seen in the paradoxical
uses of goeteia in the Platonic corpus a dilemma that may be resolved
by construing the positive senses as metaphorical and transformed by
the workings of dialectic: the revised goeteia, according to this view, is
a figurative way of explaining the capacity of a purified, philosophical
language to lead the soul, and it is quite distinct from primitive magic.
In this view we can therefore trace a development from archaic uses of
the concept to later, rationalized ones; and in this history Plato's
achievement is to have made the epode and the goes into able tools
for articulating his dialectical project. 16 It will take a reading of
Phaedrus to demonstrate why such an approach is unsatisfactory; but
let me say at the outset that its pitfall lies in assuming that Socratic
strategies of language borrowed from magic can be fundamentally
differentiated from magic, and that the epode in the texts of Plato has
been thoroughly overhauled by reason. It is questionable how "ra-
'I See R. Burger, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven 1984) 85-87 for a
fuller discussion of the difference between Simmias as a lover of Socrates' argumenta-
tive powers and Cebes as a lover of Socrates' enchanting powers.
6 This is the argument of Lain Entralgo 114-26; see also de Romilly 32-37 (both
above, n.2).
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 285
'9 On the logos and seduction, see J. Derrida, "La pharmacie de Platon," La
Dissemination (Paris 1972) 74-84. Ferrari (above, n.7) has a full reading of the
relationship between background and foreground in Phaedrus.
20 On this subject see P. duBois, "Phallocentrism and Its Subversion in Plato's
Phaedrus," Arethusa 18 (1985) 91-103.
21 See F. Zeitlin, "Configurations of Rape in Greek Myth," in Rape, ed. S.
by Lysias and by Socrates in his first speech has it. But the two
models of eros become a pretext for the development of a different
exercise in love.
Plato seems to plant these models of sexual intercourse early in
the dialogue in order to depict Socrates not as a stable character in
one of the scenarios but as a moveable identity who passes from one
configuration of desire to another, and within each from aggressor to
passive receptacle.23 His metamorphic powers and his escape from a
binary logic are characteristic of him. This will seem an improbable
claim in view of the assaults that Socrates frequently makes upon the
sophists for their manipulation of mimesis and multiple identity. But
to conclude from these assaults that Socrates himself does not engage
in such manipulations is to overlook a good deal of evidence in
Plato's dialogues to the contrary. Thus, when he embarks upon his
first speech in Phaedrus, he claims he is filled with an influx of
inspiration and mastered by a higher force: he feels something welling
up in his breast ("it must be that I have been filled to the brim
through my ears from external sources, like a water pitcher," 235d),
and under compulsion from Phaedrus he proceeds with his head
covered in an embarrassed fashion suggesting female modesty but also
sexual allure. By contrast, at the end of the dialogue we find him
articulating the project of dialectic in the metaphor of masculine
insemination of a partner's soul. Between these bracketing moments,
we find other variations in Socrates' erotic persona. The instability of
his identity, obvious in the play with gendering to which we will
return, is a miniature of a broader dynamic at work in Phaedrus: to
lead the soul of the young man with whom he has taken up, Socrates
dons a number of masks. His irony is implicated in his disguise, and
both are integral to the psychagogic journey toward truth. But we
should be cautious about assuming the usual understanding of this
irony. For in a traditional sense of the term closely linked with
Socrates-a sense that has recently been reassessed by Gregory
Vlastos-it always involves a reality behind the pretense: it is a
structure of doubleness in which appearance is belied by a second,
true meaning opposed to the first.24 The difficulty with this view is
that Socrates' performances often involve a series of tranformations
23
For this point see duBois (above, n.20).
24 G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca 1991) 21-44. His
argument departs from earlier treatments such as that of Werner Boder, Die sokratische
Ironie in den platonischen Fruhdialogen (Amsterdam 1973), who maintains that the
literal uses of eironeia in Plato retain the old derogatory sense of deception and
duplicity. Vlastos shows that, contrary to this now common view, eir6neia undergoes
revision in the dialogues, for Plato sometimes uses it to mean transparent dissembling,
which eventually becomes the normative view of Socratic irony. My own view of
Socratic irony as regressive in structure has been shaped by Paul de Man, "The
Rhetoric of Temporality," in Interpretation: Theory and Practice, ed. C.S. Singleton
(Baltimore 1969) 173-209, whose theory is influenced by Friedrich Schlegel. On these
uses of "irony," see E. Behler, Irony and the Discourse of Modernity (Seattle 1990).
288 MICHELLEGELLRICH
that never come to rest in a simple truth about his identity. A study of
erotic force and submission in the dialogue will elucidate these points.
The attraction exerted by Lysias' speech is inseparable from a
total performance of which Phaedrus was not merely a spectator but
an imitator:
Oh Phaedrus, if I don't know my Phaedrus, I've forgotten
myself. . . . I know very well that when listening to Lysias,
he listened not once, but often urged him to repeat, and
Lysiaseagerlyobeyed. Yet not even this was enough for him,
but finally taking up the book, he examined what he most
desired. And doing this, sitting from early morning,he went
for a walk when he got tired, having learnedthe speech, by
god, all the way through. . . . He was going outside the wall
in order to practiceit. (Phaedrus 228a-b)
Socrates' description of his friend is marked by humorous dissonance.
Lysias, a master of the plain style and a speaker known for his lack of
interest in pathos, has worked his listener up to a high pitch-the kind
of pitch associated with the grand style, which is typically replete with
passion. Moreover, he has done so with a speech that debunks passion
and praises cool, rational control. Although the characterization of
Phaedrus is ironic, Phaedrus himself never regards it as hyperbolic or
in need of correction. Thus, the dialogue sets in place a response to
sophistic oratory that is disturbing partly because the speech itself isn't
worth much. Whether or not one thinks that the spontaneous, loose
arrangement of the points is artful in its apparent artlessness, the
speech gets a thumbs down on moral grounds.25 Behind the trappings
of his novel, paradoxical thesis that one ought to choose the non-lover
over the lover, Lysias' speaker has taken the conventional social
expectation of rational control in male sexual activity and played it
out along the lines of a self-serving hedonism aimed at decorous
self-gratification without concern for the good. It will take Socrates'
revision of this speech to uncover the unwitting truth about Lysias'
aloof lover. Phaedrus' logomania, which is above all a craving for
performance, blinds him to the ethical limitations of the sophist, who
emphasizes the dazzling surface qualities of his thesis and its copious
arguments for all they are worth. Lysias has drawn the young man
into a state of fascination-of obsessive erotic desire-which obliter-
ates ordinary awareness and suspends routine activity. Morever, he
has contaminated Phaedrus, in a sense which I will explain, with his
performance, with the result that the acolyte yearns for the idol,
imitating his voice and gesture and seeking occasions to indulge
himself with more speech of the same kind.
In emphasizing the performative character of Lysias' speech, I do
not mean to overlook its status as a product of writing-a status of
which we are reminded not only by the biblion which Phaedrus hides
under his clothes, but by Lysias' reputation as one of the foremost
25
See Ferrari (above, n.7) 45-59, 88-95; and also Nussbaum (above, n.18) 200-33.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 289
See I.M. Linforth, "The Corybantic Rites in Plato," UCPCPh 13 (1946) 121-62.
28
Diodorus Siculus 5.64.4 says of Orpheus that he was the first to bring teletai and
29
mysteria to the Greeks. For discussions of Orpheus and teletai, see Guthrie (above,
n.12) 17, 201-04 and Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 43-107.
SOCRATICMAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 291
32 For discussions of this passage in Sophist see F.M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of
Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato (London 1935) 177-87, and Rosen
(above, n.7) 115-31.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 293
strange turn of conversation seem intent upon preserving the canonical
dichotomy of philosopher and sophist rather than exploring possible
reasons for the unexpected continuity between the two. I suggest that
the linkage is facilitated by terms that are literally absent but
conceptually present throughout this discussion of catharsis, although
they are very much a part of the later discussion of mimesis: I mean
goeteia and goes. As we have seen, Plato inherited a tradition in
which the purificatory activity was identified with magic and with the
magician's capacity to effect a reversal in the souls of things. This
psychagogy had already, historically, been grafted onto the persua-
sive power of the sophist-a point affirmed almost incidentally
by a passage in Cratylus, which declares priests and sophists to
be experts in purificatory operations (396e). What Plato is imagin-
ing in Sophist is a revision of this psychagogic function in such a
way as to produce a sophistry "of noble lineage." But Phaedrus
allows us to appreciate how much this new sophistry remains indebted
to tactics of ironic concealment, despite the teaching of Sophist, which
would seek to distance the dialectical psychopomp from the mimesis
of the traditional rhetor. The goal of dialectic is not the goal of
sophistry, but its methods in many cases overlap. Let us now return to
Phaedrus to conclude our study of how the cathartic process is
enacted.
Ostensibly seduced by the logos that Phaedrus recites, Socrates
places himself in a position from which he can seduce: he seeks to
displace the rival leader by imitating the effect he has had on the
follower. In this way the vicious circle of narcissism is broken. Why?
Because Socrates' mask (his duplication of Phaedrus' response) elicits
a recognition of the split between self and other. Phaedrus reads the
irony, and thus sees Socrates as different from the manic individual he
is pretending to be. This illumination makes way for others. The
doubleness of Socrates, which announces itself as such, enables an
appreciation of the difference between subject and object, precisely
what the narcissist does not understand. Knowledge, in short, arises
from ironic self-differentiation. Socrates' elaboration of the dialectical
method later in the dialogue clarifies this. But the whole process
depends upon his first giving way-or appearing to give way-to the
seductive logos that has entrapped his young friend.
At work in Socrates' cathartic, homeopathic irony is the principle
of sympathetic response: one cannot lead the soul unless he imitates or
identifies with the one to be led. In the words of one of Erasmus'
characters in Ciceronianus who looks to cure someone suffering in
just the way Phaedrus does, "there is no better way to heal them than
to pretend that you have the same trouble."33 The key concept is
34 For the definition of charisma that I rely upon here and that has been most
influential in modern times, see M.Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of
Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, 3 vols. (New York 1968) 1:242-54,
3:1111-56. For another reading of Plato indebted to Weber on charisma, see H. Berger,
Jr., "Facing Sophists: Socrates' Charismatic Bondage in Protagoras," Representations 5
(1984) 66-91.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 295
sure he knew what arete is, has unwittingly assisted Socrates in the
refutation of his third attempt at definition. Bothered and bewildered,
he laments:
Socrates, I heard before I met you that it was nothing else
but a case of you yourself being in doubt and makingothers
doubt, too. But now, it seems to me, you are bewitchingme
and druggingme and simply putting me underyour spells so
that I have become full of perplexity. If I may joke, you
appear to me to be entirely like the flat stingrayin appear-
ance and in other respects. For it makes numb the one who
approachesand touches it. And you seem to have done some
such thing to me right now. (Meno 80a)
Socrates responds to the charge of goeteia by noting: "As for me, if
the stingray paralyzes others only through being paralyzed itself, then
I am like it. But not otherwise. It isn't that, knowing my way, I
perplex other people; rather, being at a loss myself, I make others feel
at a loss, too" (Meno 80c-d). The state of being perplexed, called
aporia and linked with the "narcotic" power of the narke, or
stingray, describes the leader and the follower.
In a way that parallels Phaedrus, Socratic perplexity is manipu-
lated as a tactic: it is part of a larger drama involving irony, mimesis,
and teaching. To move the stung soul of Meno, Socrates features
himself as stung, too. The coalescence seems crucial to the psychago-
gic odyssey. The fact of the matter is that Socrates is very much
motivated to continue the inquiry, and urges Meno to examine and
seek with him what arete is. And the elenchos lumbers on, swallowing
up Meno's paradox that if you don't know what something is, how
can you search for it or know it when you find it, and if you do know
it, why look for it at all. The conclusion, in which Socrates advances
the un-Platonic claim that virtue is right opinion and given to us by
the gods, leaves us wondering whether the break in the apory is to be
taken seriously; and as often happens Socrates recedes into an enigma.
For our purposes, the importance of Meno is twofold: it invites
us to see the narcotic state in which Socrates finds himself in the
middle of the dialogue as a mimetic mask donned to serve the needs
of another, and it affirms the value of irony as the producer of
psychagogic mysteries. Socrates is a goes partly because of this
ever-shifting doubleness in his sympathetic activity, for he is able to
fall under the influence of an emotional stimulus, while at the same
time controlling it to effect an end. Magic is ironic homeopathy. Its
aim is cathartic, for it aspires to remove the contaminants that
obstruct the path of philosophical inquiry; and it uses the body, the
charismatic presence of Socrates, to effect the cleansing. In the
process it calls into doubt the viability of a doctrine that would
classify the body as dirt. To repeat, dialogical performance compli-
cates programmatic teaching and prevents the explicit level of argu-
ment from claiming a monopoly on the truth about the human quest
for knowledge.
296 MICHELLEGELLRICH
36
See Burkert (above, n.6). Benardete (above, n.18) 170-71 touches briefly on
psychagogia as necromancy in Phaedrus.
37 On the etymological relations between terms related to goes, see P. Chantraine,
Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque (Paris 1968-1980).
298 MICHELLEGELLRICH
Greece.38 Whatever the evolution from male goes to female goos, the
significant fact is that the complex of goeteia when we encounter it in
Plato bears traces of a process in which the masculinity of the goes
has been interwoven with feminine imagery. This imagery in turn is
associated with other predominantly female forms of religious experi-
ence involving incantation, such as the Corybantic rites. The result is a
performance by Socrates densely layered with magical terms that have
a complex history we only imperfectly understand.
The important point for us is that Socratic goeteia, which arises
in response to the ushering in of a new method, is illuminated by the
ancient function of the goes. The krisis, or activity of discriminating,
for which Socrates is famous is also a krisis in a second sense of the
term, a turning point or crisis. Moreover, as Sophist amply demon-
strates, the crisis initiated by criticism is cathartic. Plato's dialogues
offer ample proof that the separation from tradition initiated by
Socrates' questioning is traumatic. Socrates both makes a break with
the past and heals the loss: he is the goes presiding over a rupture that
he himself has initiated. Moreover, his enchantment moves hand in
hand with his irony-with his manipulation of homeopathy and
sympathetic response. On these counts, too, Socrates is a master of
techniques often disparaged in the dialogues. Admittedly, the tech-
niques and the labelling function as metaphors, but that does not
attenuate their close family resemblance with the primitive context in
which they originally develop. Despite his overtly caustic attacks on
magic, some of Plato's portrayals of Socrates tacitly remind us that
the goes once filled a vital social role and, far from being an imposter
or charlatan, commanded a respect he deserved.
38
On the goos and its magical properties, with special attention to the dirges in
Homer, see E. Reiner, Die rituelle Totenklage der Griechen (Stuttgart 1938), and A.
Schnaufer, Fruhgriechischer Totenglaube: Untersuchungen zum Totenglauben der myke-
nischen und homerische Zeit (Hildesheim 1970). On the difference between the highly
emotional goos and the more restrained threnos, see M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in
Greek Tradition (New York 1974) 4-14.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 299
and dialectic as antithetical modes of striving toward the forms.39 For
although eroticism is undoubtedly a technique of the body, so too is
dialectic, despite its apparent ensconcement in reason. But let me put
this point more carefully, since Plato offers notoriously different
accounts of dialectic. More than any other dialogue, Phaedrus allows
us to understand how magic and persuasion are embedded in the
philosophical logos, which is an art of rhetoric even though some
works declare it to be opposed to such an art. We must examine more
carefully the implications of Plato's unveiling the dialectical method
of collection and division in the context of a techne that is explicitly
rhetorical.
Richard Robinson has sorted out the various uses of the term
"dialectic" in the Platonic corpus and concluded that the designation
has a strong tendency to mean "the ideal method, whatever that may
be."40 Still, despite the diversity of accounts, this ideal method is
marked by a number of recurring characteristics. It is the search for
what a thing is in itself (Republic 533b), that is, the essence or formal
and abiding element in the thing. It sets its sight on "what neither
comes into being nor passes away, but is always identically the same"
(Philebus 61e). Before the composition of Phaedrus and Sophist,
dialectic is associated chiefly with elenchos, but with these works it
becomes identified with the joint procedure of collection and division,
though question-and-answer remains central to both methods. In fact,
throughout the Platonic corpus, dialectic is above all a social activity
and cannnot be conducted by the individual alone. As a kind of koine
skepsis, or communal inquiry, it is perhaps inevitable that Plato would
come to treat it in the way he eventually does in Phaedrus-as
psychologically conditioned by the circumstances of performance and
the nature of the interlocutors engaged. Faithfulness to the nature of
the subject matter is therefore only one aspect of the dialectical
enterprise, for the unfolding of this subject matter must be adapted to
the soul of the one to be guided-a criterion discussed in some depth
in Phaedrus (270e-272b). As early as Gorgias (454-455), Plato ex-
pressed appreciation for two forms of persuasion: 1) that from which
we get belief without knowledge, and 2) that which eventuates in
knowledge. Although this dialogue does not pursue the second
category, Phaedrus does, and the result is a conception of dialectical
activity that is thoroughgoingly rhetorical.
In Euthydemus, too, this conception is innate in Plato's notion of
knowledge and method. For here the question arises what the best
kind of knowledge is, and Socrates leads his interlocutor to see that
what they are looking for must combine knowing how to make or do
39 This tendency is apparent in Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 108-38. Recent readings
that argue against this polarization are Nussbaum 200-33 and Benardete 103-93 (both
above, n.18).
48 R. Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1953) 61-92. See also J.
Stenzel, Plato's Method of Dialectic, tr. D.J. Allan (New York 1964).
300 MICHELLE GELLRICH
something with knowing how to use it. After discarding some possible
examples, Socrates asks if the art of speechmaking is the best knowl-
edge: "For indeed the speechmakers, whenever I meet them, seem to
be super-wise, Clinias, and their art itself something divine and lofty.
This, however, is nothing to wonder at; for it is a portion of the art
of enchanters, and falls short of it only little. For the enchanter's art
is the charming of snakes and tarantulas and scorpions and other
beasts and pests, but the other is the charming and persuading of
juries and assemblies and other crowds" (289e-290a). The convergence
of magic and persuasion is not the only notable feature of this
passage. For though Socrates dismisses the rhetorical art as the object
of the search, he nonetheless suspects that "somewhere about here
would appear the knowledge we have so long been seeking." Dialectic
is not advanced in this aporetic dialogue as the answer to the question
posed. But the fact that Phaedrus shows it to be a techne involving
words, persuasion, and enchantment illustrates how earlier dialogues
anticipate issues more fully developed in later ones.
Such a rhetorical orientation to dialectic is hard to square with
Philebus, which explicitly differentiates dialectic from the art of
persuasion (57d-59d). In fact, the emphasis in this dialogue on the
value of the techne that offers the greatest accuracy or precision seems
to preclude any possibility of embracing within its parameters atten-
tion to the individual souls of those engaged in inquiry. Here the
attitude toward dialectic is reminiscent of the doctrines of catharsis in
Phaedo and of the divided line in Republic. We are asked to imagine
pure reason or intelligence (noesis) operating on true being defined in
these terms: "Concerning the things that are, we find stability, purity,
truth, and what we call clarity either in those things that are always
the same in themselves and most unmixed, or in things most akin to
them; everything else must be called secondary and inferior" (59c).
Philosophical transcendence involves the most precise, non-physical of
our faculties directing itself to the most pure, non-physical forms of
being. But the efficacy and human value of such an activity are called
into question by the very terms with which Socrates introduces it. For
Protarchus remarks at the beginning of the discussion that Gorgias
regularly said the art of persuasion was greatly superior to all others.
Socrates' response is telling: "The thing I've been seeking, my dear
Protarchus, is not what art or knowledge differs from all others in
being the greatest, the best, and the most helpful, but which sets its
sight on precision, exactness, and the fullest truth, though it may be
small and of small profit-that is what we now seek" (58c).
Commentators read irony in this statement, and thus discount the
implicit concession made to the art of persuasion.4' But much in the
Platonic corpus discourages such a reading. In light of the position
advanced in Phaedrus and anticipated in earlier dialogues, we should
4' See Plato's Philebus, tr. and comm. J.C.B. Gosling (Oxford 1975) 222-23.
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 301
42
It is worth recalling in this connection a comment made about magic formulas by
Combarieu (1909) and quoted by Lain Entralgo (above, n.2) 45: "Magical formulas
have passed through the following phases: at first they were sung; then they were
recited; finally they were written upon a material object worn in some cases as an
amulet."
302 MICHELLE GELLRICH
4 See Cushman (above, n.31) 161-205 and Friedlander (above, n.7) 154-70.
45 Ferrari (above, n.7) argues that the foreground/background dynamic in Phaedrus
is a metaphor for the dynamic movement in the dialogue between what is told
(rationally, dialectically, argumentatively) versus what is shown (by example, perfor-
mance, drama).
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 303
At this point, I need to consider a matter that has undoubtedly
been on the minds of some readers. The spellbinding qualities of
speech in Plato's dialogues are commonly associated with extended
monologic discourse-with the harangues of public address (cf.
Protagoras 336b, Sophist 268b-c). Since the figure of Socrates as a
goes appears most fully developed in works such as Phaedrus and
Symposium where he delivers long speeches, should we not consider
Socratic magic related to a type of logos that is actually uncharacteris-
tic of Socrates? Should we not distinguish between the hard-headed
sobriety of his short question-and-answer format and the inspired
rhetorical performance of the megaspeeches? Clearly there is an
important difference between these uses of the logos, and it is likely
that the latter type is more Platonic than Socratic. But two important
qualifications of this difference should be considered. First of all, in
both Phaedrus and Symposium the enchanting effects of Socrates are
not restricted to his long speeches but extend to his general conduct as
a leader of the dialogue who seeks to convert the soul and who uses
ironic strategies, such as sympathetic response and homeopathic
catharsis, to bring about the necessary turn. These strategies are
distributed broadly throughout the works. Moreover, as we have seen
in Phaedo, Charmides, and Meno, Socrates' goeteia is associated with
elenchos and with its ability by turns to tranquillize, to stun, or to
bind the subject in a kind of hypnotic spell. Secondly, the occurrence
of long speeches by Socrates within a Platonic work does not negate
their dialectical status. Within themselves, these logoi typically contain
dialectical structures, as does the myth of the soul in Phaedrus with its
uses of collection and division. But more importantly, the logoi are
framed within the works in which they appear as parts of a larger
dialectical design, intended either to clear the path of obstacles that
cloud the vision of truth or to culminate an earlier path of inquiry
that has already been cleared. We find examples of both kinds of
speeches in the first and second accounts of eros, respectively, in
Phaedrus. The point is that although extended monologic discourse
may not be exemplarily or even historically Socratic, when used it is
very much in the spirit of dialectic, for it functions elenchically or in
accordance with the method of collection and division. I am not
concluding that every instance of dialectic encountered in the Platonic
corpus brings us face to face with Socratic magic, but rather that
Socratic magic sometimes inhabits the activity of dialectic and is,
moreover, compatible with its psychagogic aims, which are featured
with great vitality and deliberation in dialogues such as Phaedrus and
Symposium.
suppose that they speak as if they have sense, but if you ask them
anything, wanting to learn from what's said, they always say one and
the same thing" (275d). Without their parents, written characters are
dead. "Living and soulful speech," logos zon kai empsychos, goes
with knowledge and truly deserves to be characterized as epistemic
discourse. Such discourse is the property of dialectic whose leader may
become a genetic father, sowing his seed in an irresistible commingling
which ensures his continuity, that is, his immortality:
Seriousdiscourse[about worthy subjects]is nobler when one
using the dialecticalmethod and taking a fitting soul plants
and sows words with knowledge, which can assist the one
plantingthem and be not sterilebut productiveof seed, from
whereother wordsgrowingin yet other charactersare capable
of makingthis seed immortaland its possessorhappy, to the
extent that is possible for a human. (Phaedrus 276e-277a)
This metaphor describing the reproductive capacity of "speech with
knowledge" is made possible by a literal configuration of bodies in
the space of dialogue. Writing does not permit such intercourse.
Or does it? Ronna Burger has argued convincingly that despite
the explicit Socratic condemnation of writing in Phaedrus, the
dialogue, through its own status as writing as well as its programmatic
remarks, affirms a Platonic position different from the one argued via
the myth of Theuth and Thamus.46 This position is that any use of
language, oral or written, informed by the method of dialectic may lay
claim to philosophical integrity. Moreover, the overarching require-
ment that all good speech be constructed like a living thing, with parts
organically related, is actually presented as a principle of writing
(264c). Now the implication of the organic metaphor in writing applies
most obviously to structure, and that is how Socrates treats it in his
analysis of the deficiencies of Lysias' speech. But the metaphor has
broader connotations. For a piece of writing to exhibit somatic totality
it must be ensouled, informed by a principle of order that directs the
logic of the parts. Such animated writing is in fact represented by the
dialogue itself, which activates the process of interpretation and
engages the reader in question-and-answer aimed at understanding the
whole and closing the circle of inquiry. Specifically, the dialogue
initiates the search for the relationship between eros and peitho, the
apparently disparate terms that guide the two halves of the work and
that make it seem at first glance a monstrous hybrid rather than an
organic form. Because interpretation begins by assuming a distance
between text and reader that strives for closure or union, its structure
is erotic, as is the structure of peithJ. The goal of reading is
communion, the overcoming of the estrangement between interpreter
and author in a moment of consummated meaning. The charismatic
drawing power of the text lies in the mysteries or hermeneutic secrets
46 Burger (above, n.17) 90-109. For other discussions of writing and speech in
Phaedrus, see Benardete (above, n. 18) 155-74 and Derrida (above, n. 19).
SOCRATIC MAGIC: ENCHANTMENT, IRONY, AND PERSUASION 305
that we seek to comprehend-the mysteries that drive the erotic
pursuit of reading much as the mysteries of Socrates' living presence
drive the erotic pursuit of spoken dialectic. Thus writing of a certain
kind overcomes the charge of rigor mortis that Socrates makes in
Phaedrus, and preserves the dynamics of talk that are so much a part
of the psychagogic journeys through which he leads his companions.
In this way readers of the dialogue recapitulate the process enacted in
the drama of Socrates and Phaedrus, and experience in their own
activity the erotic character of writing. Phaedrus had fallen prey to a
diseased version of such love in his passion for Lysias' speech, and it
takes the whole dialogue to set right his deranged condition and to set
up a model of writing that purifies the contaminated nature of his
first love.
But whether speech or writing can ever ultimately enjoy erotic
fulfillment is a question that forces itself upon us at every turn in the
Platonic dialogues. The aporetic style tells against it, and so do the
constant disclaimers in the nonaporetic works that the understanding
the interlocutors reach about a particular subject is adequate or
complete. We hear much about likely stories that represent the best
one can do in language to articulate the truth of things. We are often
asked to settle for accounts that stand as the limit of what can be
said. Moreover, the distance separating knower and known structures
recollection itself as an activity that assumes the mental image of the
original vision of forms.47 The metaphor of vision that predominates
in such passages as the myth of the soul in Phaedrus also assumes a
necessary gap between the subject and object of sight. In short, we
find abundant evidence in the dialogues that eros is a longing for
transcendence, for the overcoming of difference. But transcendence as
ultimate union is deferred in Plato's writings, a point which illumi-
nates more than any other the character of Platonic love as eternal,
unrequited desire.
Socratic irony participates crucially in this deferral. As I have
argued, it often evades binary oppositions and unfolds a regressive
play of identity whose main psychagogic function is to feed the
mysteries of courtship that are at the heart of philosophy in the
dialogues. Irony is erotic. In Phaedrus this regressive play is affiliated
with the imagery of monsters and hybrids unamenable to the laws of
dialectic. The end of the dialogue provides us with a vivid example of
such hybrids in the imagery of Socrates as part inseminator and part
midwife of a pregnancy in another man. Here, the maieutic trope of
Theaetetus (150b-151d) is cross-bred with the trope of masculine
fertilization.48 Socrates retains the generative function thought to
reside in the male, but he is also a feminized deliverer of life gestated
by the subject. The figure of the androgyne brings us back to the
4' See C. Griswold, "Style and Philosophy: The Case of Plato's Dialogues," The
Monist 63.4 (1980) 530-46.
48
On maieutic imagery in Plato's dialogues, see Halperin (above, n.22).
306 MICHELLE GELLRICH