ABSTRACT
The Platonic conception of logos acknowledges and then incorporates within itself the voice of its accuser. In an important sense, Cleitophon’s accusation is similar to that leveled by Descartes: traditional philosophy, logos, is nothing but protreptic. Logos must presume that it is good in order to argue that it is good. Socrates’ silence testifies to the precariousness of logos for it forces us to ask, Is it really true that logos is unconditionally good? Logos, which is produced by human erotic energy, provides a means for having a “realization”. The discrepancy between the object of eros and the logos about it drives us forward, toward the city, toward science, finally into philosophy. The standard reconstruction of the Thalenic logos finds him writing in prose, in words that were “psiloi”, “bare” of poetic embellishment. As a result, both the Hesiodic muthos and the Thalenic logos are adequate to express, they make good sense given, their respective beginnings.
