The Dialectician and Cross-Examiner is the only man who can really teach. If the writer can do this, he is more than a writer.
This is the true philosopher (continues Sokrates) — the man who alone is competent to teach truth about the just, good, and honourable.[94] He who merely writes, must not delude himself with the belief that upon these important topics his composition can impart any clear or lasting instruction. To mistake fancy for reality hereupon, is equally disgraceful, whether the mistake be made by few or by many persons. If indeed the writer can explain to others orally the matters written — if he can answer all questions, solve difficulties, and supply the deficiencies, of each several reader — in that case he is something far more and better than a writer, and ought to be called a philosopher. But if he can do no more than write, he is no philosopher: he is only a poet, or nomographer, or logographer.[95]
[94] Plato, Phædrus, p. 277 D-E.
[95] Plato, Phædrus, pp. 278-279.
Lysias is only a logographer: Isokrates promises to become a philosopher.
In this latter class stands Lysias. I expect (concludes Sokrates) something better from Isokrates, who gives promise of aspiring one day to genuine philosophy.[96]
[96] Respecting the manner in which Plato speaks of Isokrates in the Phædrus, see what I have already observed upon the Euthydêmus, [vol. ii. ch. xxi. pp. 227-229].
Date of the Phædrus — not an early dialogue.
I have already observed that I dissent from the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, Ast, and others, who regard the Phædrus either as positively the earliest, or at least among the earliest, of the Platonic dialogues, composed several years before the death of Sokrates. I agree with Hermann, Stallbaum, and those other critics, who refer it to a much later period of Plato’s life: though I see no sufficient evidence to determine more exactly either its date or its place in the chronological series of dialogues. The views opened in the second half of the dialogue, on the theory of rhetoric and on the efficacy of written compositions as a means of instruction, are very interesting and remarkable.