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Phaedrus, by Plato
Showing of reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. One would get mesmerized by the different opinions about love by some of the greatest Greek minds.
Phaedrus, by Plato : introduction
The discussion and debate proceeds one after the other with each of the great persons like Agathon, Aristodemus, Eryximachus, Pausanias, Aristophanes and finally Socrates describe love in all possible permutations and combinations. Each of them have their own versions which might appear true to every reader in some context or the other. But the one given by Socrates was of course the best!
His version of love is that of immortality through beauty. According to him every living thing loves to be immortal and eternal and hence it re-creates itself through an emotion called love. At one point in the book, the reader gets an impression about the speakers favoring homosexuality as some of them argue about the purity of love more in the same sex rather than opposite sexes.
One gets a feeling that even Socrates favored this in his opinion. But we are not sure of how it got contemplated later. One can get the best of philosophical definitions and derivations about love in this book right through some of the greatest minds of Greek philosophy. While I felt I should find great inspiration in this classic work, I found it rather tedious.
For the most part both the introduction and the translation utilized somewhat archaic language, making sentence structure very difficult to follow. The part I enjoyed was the description of the three genders: It is my understanding that it is from this explanation of the origin of humans that the belief in soul mates comes. However, most descriptions of soul mates do not mention that the concept is only for the split souls, not for the average male and female who were never merged in the first place.
Like any philosophy, his ideas are subject to interpretation and commentary, losing the purity of the original thought and infusing it with the personal perspective of each interpreter. Upon reading the quotation, I immediately acquired Symposium to read the context of the quote for myself. One person found this helpful. Ignore the title and please do not judge me poorly because of it.
I had unintentionally devalued its worth. I am happy to say that I have gained a lot of insightful knowledge from this book. The dialogue with the drunken character and Socrates was hilarious. Exactly what was pictured. Was scheduled to arrive on Monday, but got here Friday afternoon. A must-buy for any philosophical bookworm. It is a classic oldie.
I got it because Persig identified his alter ego as Phaedrus. And I was curious. I still do not know why the Zen motorcyclist identified with Phaedrus. I do know that Socrates talks about love here and he specifically addresses the question of how one should treat a young boy that one loves. Things were different then, huh. Take out the man-boy relationship used as an example, and there's a lot there about the right way to love someone.
Still, I understand why it is not on the Great Books reading list. This is by far my favorite translation of Phaedrus. The other versions I've read have been to antiquated to give me a good sense of what Plato was writing, but this one was great. On top of that, the introduction made some great arguments about Phaedrus that helped me see its important place in the contemporary rhetorical conversation.
This is a great buy! I read this all in one sitting the first time. I have re-read it 3 times since! Definitely worth the read!! Awful, cheap printing job on this edition! When they have seen all things and feasted on them, coming all the way around, they sink back down inside heaven. The immortal souls that follow the gods most closely are able to just barely raise their chariots up to the rim and look out on reality.
They see some things and miss others, having to deal with their horses; they rise and fall at varying times. Other souls, while straining to keep up, are unable to rise, and in noisy, sweaty discord they leave uninitiated, not having seen reality. Where they go after is then dependent on their own opinions, rather than the truth. Any soul that catches sight of any true thing is granted another circuit where it can see more; eventually, all souls fall back to earth.
Those that have been initiated are put into varying human incarnations, depending on how much they have seen; those made into philosophers have seen the most, while kings, statesmen, doctors, prophets, poets, manual laborers, sophists , and tyrants follow respectively. Souls then begin cycles of reincarnation. It generally takes 10, years for a soul to grow its wings and return to where it came, but philosophers, after having chosen such a life three times in a row, grow their wings and return after only 3, years. This is because they have seen the most and always keep its memory as close as possible, and philosophers maintain the highest level of initiation.
They ignore human concerns and are drawn towards the divine. While ordinary people rebuke them for this, they are unaware that the lover of wisdom is possessed by a god.
Phaedrus Introduction & Analysis
This is the fourth sort of madness, that of love. One comes to manifest this sort of love after seeing beauty here on earth and being reminded of true beauty as it was seen beyond heaven. When reminded, the wings begin to grow back, but as they are not yet able to rise, the afflicted gaze aloft and pay no attention to what goes on below, bringing on the charge of madness. This is the best form that possession by a god can take, for all those connected to it. When one is reminded of true beauty by the sight of a beautiful boy, he is called a lover.
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While all have seen reality, as they must have to be human, not all are so easily reminded of it. Those that can remember are startled when they see a reminder, and are overcome with the memory of beauty. Beauty, he states, was among the most radiant things to see beyond heaven, and on earth it sparkles through vision, the clearest of our senses. Some have not been recently initiated, and mistake this reminder for beauty itself and only pursue desires of the flesh.
This pursuit of pleasure, then, even when manifested in the love of beautiful bodies, is not "divine" madness, but rather just having lost one's head. The recent initiates, on the other hand, are overcome when they see a bodily form that has captured true beauty well, and their wings begin to grow. When this soul looks upon the beautiful boy it experiences the utmost joy; when separated from the boy, intense pain and longing occur, and the wings begin to harden. Caught between these two feelings, the lover is in utmost anguish, with the boy the only doctor for the pain.
Socrates then returns to the myth of the chariot. The charioteer is filled with warmth and desire as he gazes into the eyes of the one he loves. The good horse is controlled by its sense of shame, but the bad horse, overcome with desire, does everything it can to go up to the boy and suggest to it the pleasures of sex. The bad horse eventually wears out its charioteer and partner, and drags them towards the boy; yet when the charioteer looks into the boy's face, his memory is carried back to the sight of the forms of beauty and self-control he had with the gods, and pulls back violently on the reins.
As this occurs over and over, the bad horse eventually becomes obedient and finally dies of fright when seeing the boy's face, allowing the lover's soul to follow the boy in reverence and awe.
The lover now pursues the boy. As he gets closer to his quarry, and the love is reciprocated, the opportunity for sexual contact again presents itself. If the lover and beloved surpass this desire they have won the "true Olympic Contests "; it is the perfect combination of human self-control and divine madness, and after death, their souls return to heaven.
A lover's friendship is divine, Socrates concludes, while that of a non-lover offers only cheap, human dividends, and tosses the soul about on earth for 9, years. He apologizes to the gods for the previous speeches, and Phaedrus joins him in the prayer. After Phaedrus concedes that this speech was certainly better than any Lysias could compose, they begin a discussion of the nature and uses of rhetoric itself.
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After showing that speech making itself isn't something reproachful, and that what is truly shameful is to engage in speaking or writing shamefully or badly, Socrates asks what distinguishes good from bad writing, and they take this up. Phaedrus claims that to be a good speechmaker, one does not need to know the truth of what he is speaking on, but rather how to properly persuade, [Note 38] persuasion being the purpose of speechmaking and oration.
Socrates first objects that an orator who does not know bad from good will, in Phaedrus's words, harvest "a crop of really poor quality". Yet Socrates does not dismiss the art of speechmaking. Rather, he says, it may be that even one who knew the truth could not produce conviction without knowing the art of persuasion; [Note 39] on the other hand, "As the Spartan said, there is no genuine art of speaking without a grasp of the truth, and there never will be". To acquire the art of rhetoric, then, one must make systematic divisions between two different kinds of things: Socrates's speech, on the other hand, starts with a thesis and proceeds to make divisions accordingly, finding divine love, and setting it out as the greatest of goods.
And yet, they agree, the art of making these divisions is dialectic , not rhetoric, and it must be seen what part of rhetoric may have been left out.
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When Socrates and Phaedrus proceed to recount the various tools of speechmaking as written down by the great orators of the past, starting with the "Preamble" and the "Statement Facts" and concluding with the "Recapitulation", Socrates states that the fabric seems a little threadbare. They go on to discuss what is good or bad in writing. Socrates tells a brief legend, critically commenting on the gift of writing from the Egyptian god Theuth to King Thamus , who was to disperse Theuth's gifts to the people of Egypt. After Theuth remarks on his discovery of writing as a remedy for the memory, Thamus responds that its true effects are likely to be the opposite; it is a remedy for reminding, not remembering, he says, with the appearance but not the reality of wisdom.
Future generations will hear much without being properly taught, and will appear wise but not be so, making them difficult to get along with. No written instructions for an art can yield results clear or certain, Socrates states, but rather can only remind those that already know what writing is about. Accordingly, the legitimate sister of this is, in fact, dialectic; it is the living, breathing discourse of one who knows, of which the written word can only be called an image.
In the Phaedrus , Socrates makes the rather bold claim that some of life's greatest blessings flow from madness; and he clarifies this later by noting that he is referring specifically to madness inspired by the gods. It should be noted that Phaedrus is Plato's only dialogue that shows Socrates outside the city of Athens, out in the country. It was believed that spirits and nymphs inhabited the country, and Socrates specifically points this out after the long palinode with his comment about listening to the cicadas.
After originally remarking that "landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me, only people do", [Note 54] Socrates goes on to make constant remarks concerning the presence and action of the gods in general, nature gods such as Pan and the nymphs, and the Muses, in addition to the unusually explicit characterization of his own daemon.
The importance of divine inspiration is demonstrated in its connection with and the importance of religion, poetry and art, and above all else, love. Eros, much like in the Symposium , is contrasted from mere desire of the pleasurable and given a higher, heavenly function. Unlike in the Ion , a dialogue dealing with madness and divine inspiration in poetry and literary criticism , madness here must go firmly hand in hand with reason, learning, and self-control in both love and art.
This rather bold claim has puzzled readers and scholars of Plato's work for centuries because it clearly shows that Socrates saw genuine value in the irrational elements of human life, despite many other dialogues that show him arguing that one should pursue beauty and that wisdom is the most beautiful thing of all. Jacques Derrida makes an extensive study on the untranslatable concept of what is at once a "'remedy, 'recipe,' 'drug,' 'philter,' etc. It is a very great safeguard to learn by heart instead of writing.
It is impossible for what is written not to be disclosed to me graphein all' ekmanthanein. That is the reason why I have never written anything about these things, and why there is not and will not be any written work of Plato's own oud' estin sungramma Platonos ouden oud' estai. What are now called his are the work of a Socrates embellished and modernized Sokratous estin kalou kai neou gegonotos.
Read this letter now at once many times and burn it. The pederastic relationships common to ancient Greek life are also at the fore of this dialogue. In addition to theme of love discussed in the speeches, seeming double entendres and sexual innuendo is abundant; we see the flirtation between Phaedrus and Socrates as Phaedrus encourages Socrates to make his first speech, Phaedrus makes a remark at noon-time that Socrates should not leave as the heat has not passed and it is "straight-up, as they say," Socrates wishes to know what Phaedrus is holding under his cloak, and so on.
The relationships discussed in the speeches are explicitly pederastic. And yet, this is tempered in various ways; role reversals between lover and beloved are constant, as they are in the Symposium. In the beginning, they sit themselves under a chaste tree , which is precisely what its name suggests—often known as "monk's pepper", it was used by monks to decrease sexual urges and is believed to be an antaphrodisiac.
Notably, Socrates sees the pederastic relationship as ideally devoid of sexual consummation; rather than being used for sexual pleasure, the relationship is a form of divine madness, helping both lover and beloved to grow and reach the divine. The Phaedrus also gives us much in the way of explaining how art should be practiced. The discussion of rhetoric, the proper practice of which is found to actually be philosophy, has many similarities with Socrates's role as a " midwife of the soul" in the Theaetetus ; the dialectician, as described, is particularly resonant.
To practice the art, one must have a grasp of the truth and a detailed understanding of the soul in order to properly persuade. Moreover, one must have an idea of what is good or bad for the soul and, as a result, know what the soul should be persuaded towards. To have mastered the tools of an art is not to have mastered the art itself, but only its preliminaries. This is much like the person who claims to have mastered harmony after learning the highest and lowest notes of the lyre. To practice an art, one must know what that art is for and what it can help one achieve.
The role of divine inspiration in philosophy must also be considered; the philosopher is struck with the fourth kind of madness, that of love, and it is this divine inspiration that leads him and his beloved towards the good—but only when tempered with self-control. Writing, examined separately but ultimately equated with philosophy and rhetoric, is somewhat deprecated; it is stated that writing can do little but remind those who already know.
Unlike dialectic and rhetoric, writing cannot be tailored to specific situations or students; the writer does not have the luxury of examining his reader's soul in order to determine the proper way to persuade. When attacked it cannot defend itself, and is unable to answer questions or refute criticism. As such, the philosopher uses writing "for the sake of amusing himself" and other similar things rather than for teaching others.
A writer, then, is only a philosopher when he can himself argue that his writing is of little worth, among other requirements. This final critique of writing with which the dialogue concludes seems to be one of the more interesting facets of the conversation for those who seek to interpret Plato in general; Plato, of course, comes down to us through his numerous written works, and philosophy today is concerned almost purely with the reading and writing of written texts. It seems proper to recall that Plato's ever-present protagonist and ideal man, Socrates, fits Plato's description of the dialectician perfectly, and never wrote a thing.
There is an echo of this point of view in Plato's Seventh Epistle Letter , wherein Plato says not to write down things of importance. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Divine madness in turn takes different forms: