On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 09:35 AM, Ed Lamoureux wrote:
This is not too different from what Plato said/wrote in the PHAEDRUS concerning what would happen to the Greeks due to the full establishment of writing (away from oral). "It [writing] will cause us to forget" (roughly) . . .
and in a way, it did. In the oral age, "literate" Greeks had encyclopedic memories. Within 250 years after Plato, teachers of rhetoric had to teach memory systems.
I've thrilled to the running discussion of Plato's _Phaedrus_ on this list. Rhetoricians claim the _Phaedrus_ as a foundational text (as do those in a lot of other disciplines) and I've always seen Socrates' inveighing against writing as presenting a wonderful paradox, given that we have it only because Plato wrote it down (Derrida makes this point, among others, in the remarkable and intense "Plato's Pharmacy"). I often assign the dialogue in classes addressing technology and literacy, and in addition to Socrates' complain about writing's effect on the Greek art of memory, I also am fond of a passage in which Socrates' complains about writing's ability to distance words from their inventors. In the terrific Nehamas and Woodruff translation, the passage reads:
Socrates: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if they were alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they are solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it gives just the same message over and over. Once it has been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching just as much those with understanding as those who have no business with it, and it does not know to whom it should speak and to whom not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it cannot defend itself or come to its own support.
I always follow this passage by asking students whether they believe Internet texts are more or less distant from their "parents" than print texts. In the early days of hypertext hype, most students were initially persuaded that hypertexts, especially link-rich web texts, were far more responsive than print texts. Today they are more wary. acknowledging that the "rolling around" has reached high speeds, but uncertain as to whether web texts are significantly better at defending themselves when interrogated. My hope is that collective interest in the _Phaedrus_ will prompt Penguin to again print its pocket-sized version of the (perfectly serviceable) Hamilton translation, which was available in the 1990s for the exceedingly fair price of $1.49. Alternatively, a scanned version of the Jowett translation hovers at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/phaedrus.html Enjoy! Best, John Logie Rhetoric University of Minnesota