When Socrates spoke and Plato wrote, they staked out the two main ways we communicate with each other: speech and writing. Moreover, they generated a crucial philosophical debate: Which is superior, the living, spoken word or the unchanging, written text? Which is more authentic? More reliable? Which connects us more directly to truth?
At the heart of this speech/writing debate is a paradox, which continues to preoccupy scholars. Socrates felt that there was no substitute for hearing a message from the horse's mouth. For him, the spoken word that comes from the heart gives us the closest thing to the pure and direct presence of truth. So he never wrote anything down. Fortunately, however, Plato did. He wrote down what Socrates said. So (and here's the paradox), were it not for Plato's trust in the authenticity of writing, we would not know what his teacher, Socrates, thought. Socrates' ideas on a vast range of subjects—including his idea that writing (when we read it) distances us, ever-so slightly, from the original source and presence of truth, that speech is therefore the truest and most reliable form of communication—would be lost.
The fact is that ever since Socrates, speech has been the frontrunner in the closer-to-truth philosophical race. And not just in the modern book-dependent post-Socrates/Plato groves of academe, where live professorial lectures and guest lecture series are central to education at colleges and universities. You don't propose to someone by presenting them with a Hallmark card. You don't take a lie-detector test in writing. Jesus didn't write anything. Jesus spoke. Even though the basis of good business in today's world is to get agreements in writing, even though books and articles have their obvious practical advantages, our basic systems of truth and love are in many ways built on the presumption of the unique power and authority of the spoken word.
