Socrates often speaks in questions, or use hypothetical situations to prompt his listener (Phaedrus in this dialogue and, of course us, his readers). Additionally, his translation--which is among the most clear!--was made in 1925 and so there are some archaic sentence constructions and vocabulary that can also get in our way. When encountering these kinds of difficult to comprehend questions, I make it a habit to try to rephrase them. Sometimes I just do this in my head, but it also helps to jot down your 'retranslation' in the margin. Rephrasing works best when you use the simplest sentence structure Subject-Verb-Object. (You'll hear about this basic sentence structure many times this semester!)
S-V- O
The cat sat on the mat.
So how does this rephrasing work?
Socrates says:
"Now tell me; is there not another kind of speech, or word, which shows itself to be the legitimate brother of this bastard one, both in the manner of its begetting and in its better and more powerful nature?"
I've highlighted the places where this sentence or archaic vocabulary seems to obscure the relationships between the actual ideas. When I rework it into more common and modern structure and make it into two statements instead of a question, I come up with something like this:
There is another kind of speech that is the legitimate brother of this bastard one. It is similar in the way it is born and in its more powerful nature.
This is what we call a close paraphrase and it can be useful both in understanding and in writing about the ideas.
One more time.
Socrates
How about the question whether it is a fine or a disgraceful thing to be a speaker or writer [277d] and under what circumstances the profession might properly be called a disgrace or not? Was that made clear a little while ago when we said—
Phaedrus
What?
Socrates
That if Lysias or anyone else ever wrote or ever shall write, in private, or in public as lawgiver, a political document, and in writing it believes that it possesses great certainty and clearness, then it is a disgrace to the writer, whether anyone says so, or not. For whether one be awake or asleep, ignorance of right and wrong and good and bad is in truth inevitably a disgrace, even if the whole mob applaud it.
The interruption of "What" makes this hard to follow and the hypothetical situation (if Lysias thinks, then . . .) doesn't help us out either. But if we try to create the simplest S-V-O statements or even simpler questions, we might get this paraphrase:
Is it good or bad to be a writer? When are writers disgraceful? If a writer believes that his writing has great certainty and clearness, then it is a disgrace. Even if the whole mob applauds, if one is ignorant of right and wrong, or good and bad, then he is a disgrace.
The issue of why Socrates claims that writing can never be certain and clear is one we'll pick up in class!
Finally, if you were wondering why there are page numbers in brackets and links in our course text, it is because I took this from the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts. It can be found here: Perseus. This digital text has links to maps, translation notes and other kinds of context.
Other links for finding out about Plato:
Voice of the Shuttle (overwhelming number of online resources, many from classics scholars)
http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2708
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/
These are my previous blog pasts about Plato--not as useful if you want to know about his historical context, but could help in writing about the text for this class.
Reading Plato
ReReading Plato
Writing on Plato
