Plato and literacy

So the only other post I think I'll find time for this evening has to do with Plato, a dear friend of yours. For a reading group, I read the Phaedrus last week, and intended to read Derrida's essay on the Phaedrus as well but then ran out of time. What I read of it made it seem to me more accessible than anything else of Derrida's I've read. I think I'll give it another go in the spring when I try to write a thesis chapter on Derrida.

So instead of having lots of deep thoughts about speech and writing from my new reading of Derrida, I wound up being reminded of other thoughts I'd come across a few years ago, in Eric A. Havelock's Preface to Plato. Do you know it? Essentially, it's a book-length argument to the effect that Plato's banishment of the poets from his Republic is the response of a literate culture trying to move beyond the confines of orality. Let me explain.

Literacy only became widespread in the Greek world toward the end of the 5th century (says Havelock--I certainly don't have the historical knowledge to question this claim), so that, even though there were written texts long before then, they played only a marginal role in what was still a predominantly oral culture. An oral culture can only preserve of itself what its members can memorize. As a result, memorization was a crucial skill in the transmission of culture (Havelock argues that the muses are better understood as spirits of memorization than of inspiration), and what was to be transmitted needed to be easily memorized. Two tricks that make for easy memorization are rhythm and emotional salience. Thus, a great deal of culture is preserved orally in the form of epic poems. Havelock calls the Homeric epics an "encyclopedia" of Greek knowledge, remarking on how Homer slips in tips about how to steer a ship, how to govern a state, how to ride a horse, and everything in between, all in the form of an engaging narrative told rhythmically, so that people would remember it easily. He also notes that it's easiest to memorize something when you don't distance yourself from it but engage with it emotionally. The mimesis of the poets that Plato disparages is their way of fully becoming the narrative that they recount in order not to forget it.

Along with widespread literacy comes a number of changes in the very nature of thought. No longer relying on emotional identification in order to memorize texts, people can step back from them and think about them, analyze them. Socrates' dialectic consists heavily of him asking his interlocutors to think about what they've just said, interrupting the flow that would be necessary for the repetition of familiar truisms. A number of other consequences follow from literacy's freeing of the mind from the act of memorization. One is that it makes possible a great deal more abstract and systematic thinking. Another is that it separates the subject from the things it thinks about, creating a notion of a self distinct from the world that it perceives.

In essence, Havelock argues, Plato's major cultural contribution is that he was the first to come squarely to grips with the fact that literacy had ushered in a new way of thinking, and that, for it to flourish, it would have to vanquish the old way. Read from our modern perspective, Plato's banishment of the poets can seem bizarre, but in the context of 4th century Athens, Havelock claims, we should see it as an attempt to establish philosophy and rational thought as the only game in town.

I don't have enough background in classical scholarship to find Havelock's argument unconvincing. For my own part, I find it fascinating. Though it does raise a couple of questions about the relationship between orality and literacy in Plato. In the context of the Phaedrus, the obvious one is how we explain the valuation of speech over writing. My best guess is that Plato's interested in establishing individual rational reflection as superior to a mythical group-think based on passing on established truths, and he thinks that kind of rational engagement requires active interlocutors. His criticism of writing is that it can't speak up for itself and defend itself: it can't engage in the dialectic necessary for rational thought. For this point to stand, it's important to note that the importance of literacy for Plato isn't based on the material importance of written texts, but rather the kind of thinking that written texts make available to us. That kind of thinking can be exhibited in oral discussion, as long as that discussion takes place between literate men.

I believe there's also some stuff in Havelock's work that I've not read about Plato's concern regarding the undifferentiated diffusion of writing and its attendant dangers, so maybe I shouldn't speculate what Havelock would say about the writing/speech thing in Phaedrus since I've not read what Havelock has said on the topic.

This, though, raised another question for me: what if Socrates never wrote anything because he himself was illiterate? Unlike Plato, he didn't come from aristocratic stock, so it seems entirely plausible that he couldn't read or write. And speaking of literacy, I wonder if calling the legendary poet Homer blind was a way of signifying his illiteracy? A blind man can't read or write, after all.