 If the audience is philosophical, or includes philosophers, how would the true, artful, philosophical dialectician address it? This question is not faced head-on in the Phaedrus, but we are given a number of clues. They are introduced by means of a myth—by a kind of “poetry,” if you will—and they help us understand the sort of discourse a philosopher will on the whole wish to avoid, namely that which is written. According to reflections inaugurated by the Theuth and Thamus myth, the written word is not the most suitable vehicle for communicating truth, because it cannot answer questions put to it; it simply repeats itself when queried; it tends to substitute the authority of the author for the reader’s open minded inquiry into the truth; and it circulates everywhere indiscriminately, falling into the hands of people who cannot understand it. Very importantly, it interferes with true “recollection” (anamnesis, 249c2), that process described at length and (for the most part) poetically in the dialogue’s “palinode,” by which the knowledge latent in the soul is brought out through question and answer (274d-275b). Writing is a clumsy medium, and thus would not match the potential effectiveness of philosophical give and take, the “Socratic dialogue” which best leads the philosophical mind to truth. This desirable rhetoric is “a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent” (276a5–7). Dialectical speech is accompanied by knowledge, can defend itself when questioned, and is productive of knowledge in its audience (276e4–277a4). Of course, all this raises the question as to the status of Plato’s dialogues, since they are themselves writings; we will return to it briefly below.