Phaedrus

Socrates brings the conversation back to an earlier question: how does one define good speechwriting? He reiterates the ingredients of an effective speech: one must be knowledgeable about the subject, one must know whether the subject of his speech is a “whole” or a “part,” and one must know what part of the listener’s soul the speechwriter wants to affect, and plan his words to target it.

Their discussion has shown, Socrates declares, that any writer who claims to have written down an enduring truth should not be believed, as a written opinion cannot be sharpened and refined, nor proven or disproven, by the process of dialogue.

Socrates tells Phaedrus to teach these lessons to Lysias when he returns to the city, while Socrates pledges to teach them to his disciple, Isocrates. Isocrates, he describes, is skilled in the kind of rhetoric that the two of them have praised in the dialogue. Socrates offers a prayer to Pan and the other gods of the riverbank where they have been talking, and the two return to the city together.