Socrates' Argument for Madness over Sanity

Isabella Castrodale

GSI: Kuan Hwa

8 October 2016

This paper will cover the beginning of Socrates’ second speech to the end of its discussion of the third type of madness, excluding discussion of love.

Socrates' Argument for Madness over Sanity

In Socrates’ second speech in Plato’s Phaedrus, he recants the proposition made in his first speech which was that the sane non-lover should be preferred to the besotted, mad lover. In this speech, he argues the opposite on the premise that there is a kind of madness which is not an evil, but a “divine gift and chiefest blessing” and that in any instance this particular kind of madness is preferable to a lack thereof.

Socrates’ first argumentative move is to assert that prophecy is a specific kind of madness which he calls an inspired madness.  He claims that the prophetess at Delphi and priestesses of Dodona undergo a kind of madness when they tell the future in order to help Greece, because they are “out of their senses.” In this instance, a distinction is being drawn between regular or human and inspired madness because of the unstated premise that the prophetess and priestesses in particular would be “out of their senses” due to divine influence, particularly that of Apollo. In other words, Socrates uses “inspired madness” synonymously with divine inspiration. In this moment, Socrates not only asserts that prophecy is an act of inspired madness, but also that it as a noble act because when the prophetess and priestesses are without this divine gift, or sane, they cannot foretell the future and therefore cannot help Greece to the same extent. The equation that Socrates seems to set up is that the input of  madness is required to produce nobility. This exemplifies the noble value that the divine gift of prophecy extends and lays the groundwork for later argumentation of the superiority of the mad over the sane. Rather than provide further anecdotal evidence of this point, Socrates simply states that “it would be tedious to speak of what everyone knows.” Socrates is simply afforded credibility because of the plausibility of his statement, plausibility which is emphasized by the fact that everyone knows not only that prophecy is an act of divine inspiration, but also a noble one due to the great benefits it reaps.
To strengthen his argument, Socrates makes a logical appeal to the spelling of the words for madness (manike) and prophecy (mantike). The obvious inconsistency is the tau, “t”, in mantike but Socrates condemns it as not only a modern insertion, but also a tasteless one. In calling the addition modern, Socrates refers back to the authority of the ancient inventor of names, Cratylus, and this juxtaposition suggests that in the past, both things were called “manike.” By asserting that prophecy and madness are called by the same name, Socrates argues again that some kind of noble madness must exist because the the word for madness would not have been connected to the word for the noble act of prophecy if madness was simply an evil. This relies on the previously established idea that prophecy is a noble act. In short, his argument is that a purely disgraceful thing would not have shared a name with a pure and noble action. 
Next, Socrates continues his argument by describing the different kinds of inspired madness and arguing that they are superior to sanity. He begins by drawing a comparison between prophecy and its sane counterpart which is rational prophecy through birds or signs. Once again, Socrates uses etymology to draw conclusions. The rational kind of prophecy was given the name “oionoistike.” Socrates emphasizes that “oionoistike” derives from several words including “oisesis” which has to do with human thought.  Because of the construction of the word, Socrates argues that this type of future-telling, such as augury, is purely human in contrast to the established divine characteristics of prophecy. Having outlined this important juxtaposition, Socrates argues that inspired madness is superior to sanity in the exact same way that prophecy is a superior form of future-telling than augury. This refers to the superiority of mad future-telling to sane future-telling hinted at in the anecdote of the prophetess at Delphi who cannot help Greece as much in a state of sanity. Socrates contention appears to be that if the divine trumps the purely human in one instance, then it must also in other instances.
Socrates further promotes madness over sanity with brief examples of inspired madness in ritual and poetry. In ritual practice, he explains, madness overcomes the participant and once possessed they speak “inspired utterances” that purify them of evil or disease. Although unstated, the argumentative weight of such an example is that ritual inspired madness can purify the kinds of disease that human, sane, or rational practices would find impossible, such as those that plague an entire family due “to some ancient blood-guiltiness.” In this moment, Socrates once again demonstrates the domination of madness over sanity. The last kind of madness that Socrates tackles is the divine inspiration of the Muses. He claims that when the Muses inspire a soul, they allow for the creation of incredible epic poetry that is far superior to that which follows the rules of art, which, like the augury, is created by the rational human mind. Once again, the act of the mad is shown to be preferable to the act of the sane.
Having argued that the mad prophetess is superior to the sane prophetess, the ritual healing superior to the practical and the inspired poet superior to the schooled, Socrates has the foundation that he will use to later argue that the lover mad with passion is a superior companion to that who lacks it.