|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: is derived from Euthyphro, the invention is really due to the imagination
of Plato, and may be compared to the parodies of the Sophists in the
Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this sort occur in the Dialogues, and the
gravity of Plato has sometimes imposed upon his commentators. The
introduction of a considerable writing of another would seem not to be in
keeping with a great work of art, and has no parallel elsewhere.
In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians at
their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the art.'
True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech which he
makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare Symp.)
Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech seems to
|
