Abstract

In the second part of the Phaedrus Plato raises the question how a logos, that is a train of worded thoughts, written or spoken, ought to be composed. "Each logos," Plato here claims, "must be composed like a living being, a ζῷον, with a body of its own, so that it will be neither headless nor footless, but have middle parts and extremities μέσα...καὶ ἔσχατα, which are written in accordance with each other and the whole". In analyzing this "body," we must, he continues, "partition according to the natural articulations," and thus by a constant dichotomizing unfold its two "sides"--its "right" side and its "left" side. In the two "ways" of the simile of the cave--the upward way and the downward way--and in the principle of bisection of the Divided Line, Plato states similar formal rules for all intellectual work and thus for all accomplished logoi included.