I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men?

Delightful rumination on the contrast of rhetoric and philosophy, on the written against the spoken and the madness which is love. I read this as grist for a Derrida project which failed to appear on command. Other tools require being readied.

[HARRY's apartment from When Harry Met Sally. HARRY is asleep on his couch. On the table next to him are a mostly-empty bottle of bourbon and a copy of Phaedrus. Enter SOCRATES.]

SOCRATES: Good evening, Harry.

HARRY: How--

SOCRATES: Don't worry, I'm not real. This is a dream.

HARRY: Uh--

SOCRATES: I see you're reading Phaedrus. Looking for advice, maybe?

HARRY: I-- I just can't understand how I could have done it. Why did I fuck her? I've ruined everything.

SOCRATES: You're sure about that?

HARRY: We had such a great thing going. We weren't, like, dating, so we could hang out and have fun and talk. There wasn't any jealousy or possessiveness or any of that crap. It was perfect.

SOCRATES: Because you weren't lovers, you could enjoy each other's company much more?

HARRY: Exactly. We did so many goofy things. You know, there was this one time we were in a diner together...

SOCRATES: And what happened?

HARRY: It doesn't matter. All over.

SOCRATES: You seem very upset, Harry.

HARRY: Of course I'm upset! It was the best relationship I've ever had. And now I've just flushed it down the can. I must have been crazy.

SOCRATES: Maybe it's not such a bad idea to be crazy sometimes?

HARRY: Oh, puh-lease. Don't give that mad-people-are-the-only-sane-ones bullshit. It's not going to help.

SOCRATES: Come on, think about it Harry. Whenever you've done anything difficult or creative in your life, weren't you a little crazy? People shook their heads. But sometimes it worked and you felt really good about it afterwards.

HARRY: Okay, Socrates, I see where you're going. But this time I just screwed up. That's all there is to it.

SOCRATES: And it's particularly true with romance. Have you ever made an important romantic decision and not wondered at least once if you weren't doing something totally insane that you'd regret later?

HARRY: Well, now you mention it--

SOCRATES: In everyday life, one must of course act sanely. But with religion and art and love, a little insanity is essential.

HARRY: Hm--

SOCRATES: Here, let me give you this picture I sometimes use to help me focus on my own romantic life. When I want to imagine my soul, I see it as this guy driving a chariot with two winged horses. There's one good horse and one bad horse--

HARRY: You know, you were almost talking sense there for a moment, but now you're losing me again. What's My Little Pony got to do with it?

SOCRATES: No, no, Harry! This isn't about children's toys, this is serious. The good horse is noble and obedient, but the bad one is full of base instincts. When it sees the loved one--

HARRY: Say, let me just ask you a direct question. What is your romantic life, exactly?

SOCRATES: Well, mostly oral sex with underage boys. Some anal. But the whole point of the analogy is that I try to keep it under--

HARRY: So I'm taking romantic advice from a pedophile?

SOCRATES: Now Harry, you need to remember that we belong to different cultures. In my society, what you regard as--

HARRY: I'm waking up now.

[SOCRATES disappears. A moment later, HARRY is sitting up on his couch, rubbing his eyes. In the background, the sound of scattered fireworks.]

HARRY: What the--

[He looks at his watch, which shows 18 minutes to midnight. Suddenly, he grabs his coat and opens the door]

HARRY: I might just be in time. If I run.

A very interesting read. With the Symposium, this book is one of Plato's most important books on love. His exploration of the relationship between love and beauty is very interesting.

His treatment of love in a homoerotic relationship (specifically between adult men and boys of between approximately 13 and 18) in both the Symposium and the Phaedrus is sometimes placed center screen, as if Plato was approving of it, when it is only a culturally accepted practice that is used by Plato as a way of talking about love (and, in fact, of pointing away from sensuality towards training in philosophy). Some people try to make a great deal of Plato's treatment of homoerotic love, as if this is what the book is about. This is to misread Plato. For others, his treatment of this subject may keep them from reading this book, but, it is worth noting that though homoerotic relationships between boys and men were often accepted in Ancient Greek culture, Socrates and Plato are actually to be read as dissenting voices. In fact, as the translator and editor of this volume notes, Socrates and Plato would probably have argued that homoerotic behaviour was against the very nature of love, as the purpose of love was reproduction. Physical erotic love was for reproduction (thus between a man and a woman), and so was mental or spiritual love. But mental or spiritual love was for the reproduction of lovers of the divine ideas and beauty--the philosophers.

Almost all of Plato's observations, made in the context of homoerotic love between men and boys, can be removed from that context and placed within the context of any human relationship.

Platonun bu əsərini oxumaq üçün eşqin həyatda tutduğu yeri çürüdən Şölen və natiqlik sənətinə həsr olunmuş Gorgias əsərlərini gözdən keçirmək lazımdır. Phaidros isə həm eşqi, həm natiqliyi yenidən ələ alır, sanki digər əsərlərdən yarımçıq qalan hissələri tamamlayır. Şölen mənə görə digər əsərlərindən daha zəif idi, boşluq var idi, Phaidrosla Platon sanki yarımçıq qalmış işini tamamlayır.

Həmişəki kimi oxumaq çox zövqlü oldu.

Todo mundo cita só o final desse livro (trecho sobre a superioridade do conhecimento oral sobre o escrito), mas a verdade é que esse diálogo tem muitos trechos importantes, inclusive, e na prática, uma antecipação in nuce do que viria a ser a Retórica de Aristóteles. Excelente.

قرأتها في مكتبة الجامعة. محاورة سيئة إلى حد كبير، وإن كنت متفق مع جزئية كون المحب غير مالك زمام عقله، وأن اللا - محب يكون أكثر قبولًا. لكن المشكلة أن اللا- محب يعيش حياته في الغالب مثل جماد. ليس هذا هو الحل بالتأكيد. لم لا يوجد حبًا عقلانيًا؟ كالحب الذي اقترحه فروم مثلًا؟
يصور أفلاطون الحب أنه قوة تتنازعها سلطتين، العقل واللذة، أو حسب مجازه: عربة يجرها حصانين، وإن زادت سلطة أحدهم على الآخر تنقلب العربة، وبأن الحب علاقة يحكمها الكون والفساد أو مبدأ الحب والكره الذي لا أذكر من قال به. عموما هي محاورة سيئة ويغلب عليها التشتت وعدم الوضوح والتطرف الشديد.

مثال حب الغلمان كان مجرد مثل، لا كما فهمت مسبقًا من كتب التاريخ والفلسفة والجمال

Socrates makes Phaedrus read this speech he heard from this guy Lysias about how a non-lover is better than a lover. The argument is basically when you love somebody, it makes you jealous and angry and doesn't last long and it ultimately hurts the lover and the beloved in the end while the non-lover who just makes friends with people doesn't have strong emotions like jealousy has a better relationship since you have all of the benefits of love without the negatives and gives a ton of arguments to support it.
(I dont agree with this idea. I think it's too rational for a normal human being to follow. In my opinion, it's a hyper-utilitarian idea which is justified by being "for the greater good" but completely disregards the beauty of the human spirit. One of those things that is good in theory but never in practice. We'll see what Socrates says.)

Phaedrus says this speech is masterful in arguments but Socrates is like "nah". Phadrus goes "Come on man, at least admit the writing was tight and crisp". Socrates goes "I can't do that or it would be an insult the the ancient sages". Socrates basically said it was mid. Phaedrus goes "Give me a better speech on the topic". Socarates says no and then Pheadrus threatens him and he agrees. I get the feeling this what Socrates wanted. Just to flex buy giving an even better speech impromptu that he didn't even want to give, asserts his dominance, real alpha shit.

Socrates says there are two ways we make decisions, desire and reason. Then he stops his speech cause he's getting too hyped up and even asks Phaedrus "Am I not killing it right now?" Phaedrus agrees that Socrates is killing it. The man's barely said anything yet. Anyway, he goes on saying love does make a man emotional and the beloved weaker. The lover is too protective of the beloved that they will never be able amount to anything because they have lived soft lives.
(At this point I realize when they talk about love, it's between a man and a boy. My previous parentheses was about regular adult love. Can't these guys just fuck women? Or just other men?)

Here Socrates takes sympathy on the boy in the man-boy relationship. Asks doesn't the boy feel trapped and used by an old, ugly man in this type of relationship? And then when it's time for them to grow, their lovers are mean to them and reject them. Let's fucking go Socrates

Then he cuts his speech short and decides to leave for some reason???? But comes back because of some supernatural force telling him to praise the lover instead of just admonishing him. To bring balance to the force or something. Because you can't have an ancient Greek story without talking about all the benefits of fucking boys.

Socrates says love is madness but the madness of love is one of heaven's greatest blessings. Okay, I'm on board. But then he gives this long, weird story/analogy about chariots and the soul. I don't know what this was all about, man. The point is is something like if the lover resists sex, they ascend to a higher plane of existence the Gods bless him in the afterlife or something. This is justification why the lover is greater than the non-lover because it leads to something divine where the other cannot. Socrates really grasping at straws here, coming up weird stories to justify his thoughts. If this was a analogy I'm too stupid to get, that's fair. It could be something like the feeling of love is divine where as friendship can never reach that state which I agree with but this whole chariot thing threw me for a loop.

Phaedrus agrees this speech was better than Lysias'. The rest of the book is great. They talk about what makes a good speech, whether its the ability to persaude or knowledge of truth or artistry, etc. What was interesting here is Socrates says you must structure a speech where you define the thesis, then make your points, then have a conclusion summarizing points. I don't know if this was the first instance of this idea but this is legit what every school teaches kids how to write essays. If Socrates came up with that, and it's still being used to day, that's awesome. The story about the Egyptian Gods was great. Basically, says with words being written, it will harm people to a degree because they will not actually have wisdom, just be reminded of someone who did. True today to an extent. Loved this section of the story.

I liked this more than the Symposium. The only miss was that fucking chariot section. No idea what that was all about.

Phaedrus is another Socratic dialogue, but one which actually is a dialogue. Socrates runs into his friend Phaedrus, who tells him of a conversation he just had with Lysias, a mutual acquaintance. As in the Symposium

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

the topic is love, but here, instead of looking at many different aspects of love, the topic is, initially, who is the better object of a man's love? One should keep in mind that one of the positions defended in the Symposium is: the most noble form of love is that of a mature, virtuous man together with a young, inexperienced man, because the latter could learn thereby from the former how to be a man of virtue; moreover, because they could go to war (or to the assemblies of (solely male) citizens) together, the fear of shame in front of the loved one would assure that both would fight (or otherwise comport themselves) bravely and virtuously. After walking into the countryside, Socrates and Phaedrus find a secluded spot and Phaedrus recounts Lysias' view that, on the contrary, better than a love to such a beloved is a love to a non-beloved.

What the devil did Lysias mean by that? I find that when I analyze Lysias' argument with the critical exactitude of a mathematician, it doesn't hold together. If one doesn't look too carefully, here are some of the main points. Strong desire blinds, causing errors and removing one's freedom; strong desire wanes, then obligations once willingly accepted are resented; if one chooses a lover on the basis of his apparent virtue (or potential for virtue), one is too strongly limiting the sample set - perhaps it is among the others you would find your truly deserving friend; if one has a lover, then everyone will think when they see you with him that you are either coming from or going to a sexual encounter (!! - Lysias counters that if you have a relation with a non-lover, then when others see you together, they will not have sex in mind...); if you have a lover, then you are doubly vulnerable to fate, for a blow to the lover is a blow to yourself. You get the idea. What Lysias proposes as better is, roughly speaking, don't get passionately involved with anyone, just have "friends with benefits" (or, using another colloquialism, "fuck buddies"). Note that the position taken has nothing to do with male-male relationships; it may be applied to any person-person relationship.

Having read a fair amount of Plato by now, I recognize that this is the set up of the straw man, whom Socrates/Plato(*) will now demolish. But, first, Plato's sock puppet, I mean, Socrates must go through his "Ah, shucks" routine and pretend not to be up to the challenge. (Big sigh...) After we have been subjected to that charade again, Socrates gets down to it.

I'm sure you noted in the partial list of Lysias' points above that he confused categories and tacitly weighted personal freedom of action and convenience more than other factors. That might go over well among Ayn Rand's flock, but, in light of Socrates'/Plato's defense in the Symposium of the position that the highest form of love is love for the Absolute, Lysias must get ready for a beat down. Duly delivered.

But, dear reader, this first third of the dialogue is just preamble. The reason why Plato wrote this at all is what comes next. He distinguishes between the natural desire for pleasure and the acquired desire, mediated by reason, for what is best. (Ever heard of persuasive definitions?) Guess which one he thinks is better. (Both Socrates and Phaedrus think that Socrates has been inspired by the gods here... sigh...) And then for 40 pages he elaborates in great detail on the position already presented in the Symposium - the highest form of love is divine love of wisdom, of the Absolute.(**) All other forms of love are lower and should best be sublimated into the higher form. But as transparent as Plato's rhetorical ploys have become to me, I must yet acknowledge that the man writes eloquently, if not always persuasively.

Plato makes an interesting digression in his paean to the Absolute - in the midst of an analysis of good versus bad speech (surprise: "good" speech reveals/serves the Absolute), he has Socrates expand upon the usefulness of written knowledge/wisdom. Although Plato's primary efforts were made in person in his school, he did, after all, write quite a bit. What did Plato think about such writings?

He begins the digression with an Egyptian (!) myth about the god Theuth, who offers written language to the king of upper Egypt, who politely declines, saying that the invention will ruin the memory of his people, for they will rely on the written page instead of internalizing the content. Having read such books, instead of being instructed by the wise, they will believe themselves to be knowledgeable, whereas they are actually ignorant. Socrates agrees with the king. The written word gives only the illusion of life, but it answers to no questions, cannot accommodate itself to different audiences, cannot defend itself against counterargument. This all is negatively contrasted with the living speech of the wise employing the "dialectical art" before his students. The only positive quality of writing books he mentions is if the writing is made "for one's self, to collect a supply of memories for one's own forgetful old age." (My translation from the German.(***)) He adds, rather inconsistently, the clause "and for every person who follows the same path" to this sentence.


(*) Once again, one should remember that Plato put these words into the mouths of all participants.

(**) Of course, I am oversimplifying here, as my next paragraphs already indicate.

(***) Read in a modern revision of Friedrich Schleiermacher's classic German translation.

Plato is RIDICULOUS. In all the best ways. I'm sort of inclined to agree with a friend who said that if you're trying to sort out the Socrates from the Plato, a pretty good indicator for the Socrates is the concentration of dirty jokes. The Phaedrus is rife with them. It actually opens with Lysias arguing for hookup culture. That makes the subtle little ways that Socrates pulls out the rug from under you all the more delicious.e

Socrates be like "Bros b4 hoes(who are dudes)...wait, but what if hoes...could be your bros...and lead your soul to remember its contemplation of True Beauty in the realm of The Forms? That'd be tight."

Then Phaedrus is like "Hell yeah it'd be."

n  

n    “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

~ Platon  

n

n  THE SCHOOL OF LOVEn

Phaedrus is commonly paired on the one hand with Gorgias and on the other with Symposium - with all three combining and leading towards Republic. It is compared with Gorgias in sharing its principal theme, the nature and limitations of rhetoric, and with Symposium in being devoted to the nature and value of erotic love. The connection with Republic is more tenuous, though it contributes to the criticism of the arts of Rhetoric. Also, the psychology illustrated here by the image of the charioteer and the two horses is fully compatible with the tripartite psychology of Republic and even clarifies an important ambiguity in it.

The Setting

Socrates and Phaedrus walks out from Athens along the river Ilisus. The conversation that takes place between Phaedrus and Socrates is both interrupted and motivated by three speeches - one by Lysias, and then two extemporized by Socrates himself in response, inspired to employ his knowledge of philosophy in crafting two speeches on the subject of erotic love, to show how paltry is the best effort on the same subject of the best orator in Athens, Lysias, who knows no philosophy.

n  The Three Speechesn

The First Speech:

The first speech (purportedly by Lysias), is a shallow, badly constructed piece–a ‘clever’ piece of sophistry designed to establish the implausible thesis that the pursued (loved) should gratify someone who is not feeling love ("non-lover") rather than a true erastēs (lover).

The Second Speech:

Not surprisingly, since in this speech Socrates undertakes to improve on the form at least as much as the content of Lysias’ speech, there is considerable overlap of theme. Ethically, however, Socrates appears to have more genuine concern for the good of the ‘loved’ than Lysias did.

But most interestingly, Socrates takes the dichotomy of Lysias’ speech - of Non-Lover Vs Lover - and inverts the whole argument by subsuming both categories into Lust. It is left unsaid till the Third Speech, but Socrates has now effectively made the argument into Lust Vs Love (Non-Lover also included into Lust). Ever heard of the expression “Platonic Love”? It is far more interesting than its popular meaning!


n  

“These are the points you should bear in mind, my boy. You should know that the friendship of a lover arises without any good will at all. No, like food, its purpose is to sate hunger. ‘Do wolves love lambs? That’s how lovers befriend the loved!’”

n
n  The Third Speech (The Palinode):n

Lysias’ speech had argued that a lover is to be avoided in favor of a non-lover, and in Socrates’ first speech he seeks merely to improve upon this thesis of Lysias, but in the second he entirely repudiates the content of the first, and he calls this second speech a recantation, or palinode.

The straight-forward opposition of pleasure and the good in the Second Speech, though reminiscent of early dialogues such as Gorgias, is thus undermined in the palinode, where we see that the impulse towards pleasure is an essential part of a person’s motivation, and that if his/her rational part is in control, this impulse can be channelled towards the good.

The Palinode thus gives a less one-sided view of love - a view in which love and reason can go hand in hand, in which love is not entirely selfish but can be associated with educational and moral values, and in which, at the same time, passion and desire find their proper place. In order fully to praise love, Plato felt that he had to explain its place in the metaphysical life of a human being - through a myth, as usual.

The overall movement of the central part of the palinode is that it begins with a vision of the soul’s purpose and ends with an analysis of the human condition of love.

The suggestion is that we won’t understand human experience unless it is put into a much larger context, and that the experience of love is essential for a human being to fulfill his/her highest potential.

After these three speeches, the conversation turns to the value of rhetoric in general, and what could be done to make it a true branch of expertise or knowledge.

On Rhetoric: An Aside

A dialogue earlier than Phaedrus, Gorgias, is devoted to rhetoric and to the contrast between the rival ways of life philosophy and rhetoric promote. In Phaedrus, the question of the value of rhetoric is raised immediately after the palinode, and signals an abrupt change of direction for the dialogue: as to what constitutes good and bad rhetoric, and Socrates suggests that knowledge of truth is the criterion: persuasion without knowledge is denigrated: without a grasp of truth, rhetoric will remain ‘an unsystematic knack’.

Now, this too is a reference to Gorgias, where rhetoric was defined in just these terms. Plato does not really seem have changed his mind about it since Gorgias.

There are two main overt topics in the dialogue––rhetoric and love. Rhetoric is meant to persuade, and a lover will try to persuade his/her beloved to gratify their desires (the Greek word for ‘persuade’ also means ‘seduce’). The lover’s search for the right kind of beloved to persuade is a specific case of the general principle that the true rhetorician must choose a suitable kind of soul with the help of dialectical insight. The lovers are said to try to persuade their beloveds to follow a divine pattern - this is the highest educational aspect of love.

Thus the dialogue is about love and rhetoric, as it seems to be, but they are connected because both are forms of "soul-leading" - both are educational.

So for this reviewer, the question of which to focus on - of Rhetoric n  orn Love - is redundant. A focus on either should serve the purpose, and the focus for the rest of this review will be on Love. Rhetoric got its space n  in the Gorgias review.n

n  Love: The Guiding Light of Philosophersn

The first two speeches raise the question whether or not love is a good thing, and the rest of the dialogue answers the question in the affirmative. Love is good because it enables one to draw near to another person whose soul is of the same type as one’s own, but is capable of becoming more perfectly so. This educational potential will be fulfilled provided the pair channel their energies into mutual education; this is the proper context of the praise lavished on the combination of philosophy and love.

Platonic Love: A Clarification

Before we go further, we need to address the standard criticism on “Platonic Love”: that it is about non-sexual love. More importantly, the even more educated criticism has to be addressed: that it is about Homoerotic love.

For this, we need to take a look at the Athenian society of the time:

First, the Athenians rarely married for love: a wife was for bearing children, while slave-girls were used for extra sex. Love, then, was more likely to be met outside marriage––and it might be a younger man who aroused it. And this goes not just for love, but even for the shared interests that underpin love: the educational potential of a love-affair, always one of the main things that interested Plato, was unlikely to be fulfilled in one’s marriage, since an Athenian male had few shared interests with his wife and would not expect her to be interested in education. Second, with women being seen more or less entirely as sex-objects, Plato clearly felt that it was all too easy to get caught by the physical side of a heterosexual relationship. However, since Athenian society did place a slight stigma on the sexual side of a homoerotic relationship, a lover might well hesitate before consummating the relationship in this way––and such hesitation, vividly portrayed in Phaedrus, meant that there was at least the opportunity for the sexual energy to be channelled towards higher, spiritual or educational purposes.

Moreover, the older man was expected to cultivate the boy’s mind – to be an intellectual companion. It was, in effect, a form of education. Greek education was pitiful: restricted to upper-class boys, and taught no more than the three Rs, sport, Homer and the lyric poets, and the ability to play a musical instrument. In a peculiar way, the Athenian institution of homoerotic affairs filled a gap by providing a boy with a more realistic grasp of local culture and worldly wisdom.

Thus, we can see why homoeroticism is the context - only because it was normal then and not because it was regarded as worthy of special attention against a standard of heterosexuality as ‘normal’.

Transposed on to present society, we can see that the whole enterprise should logically apply now to ‘normal’ or heterosexual relations as well - and is quite in character for the modern times - some would even say that it is the ideal!

Thus, glossing over homoeroticism as a relic of the Athenian society, we need to read instead from our own society’s standpoint. Hence, in this review you will find that the ‘love’ spoken of is directed not at a ‘boy’ as in the Platonic dialogue/society but at the ‘loved’ (as substituted by the reviewer), without discrimination. This is also the most useful (and logical) POV for this reviewer to adopt to understand the dialogue best. Also, please assume the he/she or his/her connotation if the reviewer has omitted it at places.

n  The Myth: Love as The Window to the Universen

It is often said that Symposium, Republic and Phaedrus should be read together. This is particularly true when it comes to the interconnected Myths that populate these three dialogues.

Poetic and inspiring myths portray the soul’s vision of reality and love in The Symposium as well as in Phaedrus:

In his myth in The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes present the famous story about soul mates:



The myth in Phaedrus, altering this, is a description of the entire cycle of what can happen to a soul: we hear of the tripartite nature of souls and how it is essential to a winged soul to rise up attempt to see the plain of truth which lies beyond. In the Myth, we are incarnated as humans if the attempt was not fully successful, doomed for thousands of years.

A philosophically-inclined-lover, however, can use his/her memory of Forms, to regrow their wings and ascend again. This Memory is triggered by the glimpse of Beauty in his/her beloved - if his love of truth is enough to leave him with a lingering dissatisfaction with every day life. Beauty alone has this privilege, to be the most clearly visible and the most loved - and thus the trigger for the Quest for meaning.

Love & Memory: Mutual Assistants

Readers and admirers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance would find this section particularly identifiable. Love as remembrance should also find ready acceptance among Proust readers. In fact, the image of the loved triggering a vision of beauty that unlocks the memory of life’s true purpose is just about as Proustian as it gets. ‘Loved’ then need not be a person at all - it just needs to be a store of memory, personally beautiful enough to trigger the vision of the ‘beyond’ of everyday life, but this is a digression.

In the palinode, love and memory are critically connected: love is our reaction to the half-remembered Form of Beauty (and of Truth). The starting-point is the perception of beauty on earth, and the consequent recollection of Beauty seen before. The beloved’s face acts, as it were, as a window on to the Form.

In short, love prompts recollection, recollection is the precondition for knowledge, and knowledge is the precondition for the right handling of words. In this way, all the major themes of the dialogue tie together.

n  The Chariot of Life: The Rider & The Horsesn

The Soul is divided in three at the beginning of the Myth - two parts in the form of horses and the third in that of a charioteer. One of the horses is good, the other not; one white, noble and the aide of Reason, the other unruly, Black and crazed with desire. The difference between the two is that the bad horse’s reasoning is limited to short-term goals (just as Lysias’ non-lover was too), whereas the charioteer aims for and considers the overall goodness of a person’s life as a whole.



This is, in fact, very reminiscent of n  The Bhagavad Gitan with the Senses as the Horses and Reason as the Charioteer.



n  n    Philosophy, Love & Lust - An Inventory of Usefulnessn  n

Plato chose the term erōs from the range of possibilities because of its frankly passionate connotations. In Phaedrus he gives an astonishing analysis of what, in his view, is really happening beneath the surface of a love-affair, and focuses particularly on its ecstatic aspects - the ability of love to get us to transcend our normal bounds. Notice, then, how far removed this conception of love is from what we generally understand by the phrase ‘platonic love’, which is defined by my dictionary as ‘love between soul and soul, without sensual desire’. On the contrary, ‘sensual desire’ has to be present, because it is the energizing force.

The Two Horses symbolize Love and Lust, in a fashion:



The Black Horse/Lust/Sensual Desire is crucial to the process: It is the one that gets us close enough to the beloved/soulmate in the first place!



Thus, the non-intellectual elements of the soul were necessary sources of motivational energy and that the passions, and the actions inspired by them, are intrinsically valuable components of the best human life. The intensity of the experience of philosophical love, as Plato sees it, is precisely the intensity of the simultaneous presence in the lover of passion.



To return to the course of the myth, we are told in the second part about the development of a human love-affair. The nature of the love-affair depends entirely, we hear, on how removed the philosopher-partner is from the world (how ascetic he is, in a sense): if he is fully mired in his body, all he will want is sex with the beautiful beloved who arouses his love, but if he is a philosopher the vision of worldly beauty will remind him of heavenly Beauty, and his soul will grow wings and aspire to return to the region beyond heaven where he first caught sight of true Beauty. But Plato stresses that the philosophic lover will not want this just for himself: being attracted to someone like himself––that is, to a potential philosopher––he wants to bring out this potential in his partner. Thus, not only does the philosophical lover educate his partner, but he also educates himself: he ascends the ladder only by pulling someone else up on to the rung he has vacated. The educational aspect of philosophy is here properly fulfilled.

The implication is that the kind of lover you are on earth depends, to a large extent, on how philosophic you are, how receptive you are to the vision of Beauty. It depends entirely on you if Love opens the window to Philosophy.


n  The Academy of Life: Loven

Erōs is the Greek word for ‘passionate love’, and in the context of relations between human beings it means primarily ‘sexual desire’, or even ‘lust’. Because erōs in this sense invariably has a sharply delineated object - it is not just a vacuous feeling of warmth or affection - it suits Plato’s purposes, since his major enquiry is to ask what the true object of love is.

Is it no more than it appears to be, or is it something deeper? In Symposium he answers that love is a universal force that energizes and motivates us in whatever we do, because its object is something we perceive as good for ourselves. Its object, self-evidently (at least, for Plato and his fellow Greeks), is beauty.

The ultimate, deepest aim of Love, Plato says, is immortality - self-procreation in a beautiful environment. The highest manifestation of this is not the physical procreation of offspring, but the perpetuation of ideas in an educational environment in which the lover takes on the education of the beloved. This is the position taken for granted in Phaedrus.



There is also a more prosaic and non-mythical way to approach the message in Phaedrus: As Plato makes plain elsewhere, when he says that someone desires something, he means that he lacks something. So when he says that love is lack, we also need to see what it is that a lover’s soul lacks, and it turns out to be the perfection of itself as a human soul - knowledge or self-knowledge. Someone in love has an inkling of his own imperfection, and is impelled to try to remedy the defect.

Though couched in terms of his own metaphysics and psychology, Plato’s description of passionate love will strike an immediate chord with any lover. Love can make philosophers of any of us. Love is important because beauty* is the most accessible Form here on earth and is the primary object of love.

* Note that it is always a very personal conception of ‘Beauty’ being referred to - which only the beloved can see - the whole ‘eye of the beholder thing’, if you please. Everyone chooses their love after their own fashion from among those who are beautiful to them, and then treats the loved like his/her very own god, building him/her up and adorning him/her as an image to honor and worship.

Hence, Love is the best school possible - a place of mutual, continuous, most interested, interesting and truly involved education that one can ever find. There is nowhere else that you can learn more about the human condition. Enroll in the school of love if you would be philosophers, if you would know the meaning of life. Know Thyself, through Love.
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“You may believe this or not as you like. But, seriously, the cause of love is as I have said, and this is how lovers really feel.”

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In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss love and rhetoric. While it is true that a big chunk of the dialog is about love, the love speeches are really a setup for the final conversation on rhetoric. The love speeches become types of rhetoric that Socrates and Phaedrus then discuss to come to some conclusions about rhetoric.

A big takeaway: Rhetoric, to be truly effective and true and beautiful, requires the rhetorician to know his audience and the nature of the individuals that make up his audience. This means love and relationships are essential to rhetoric. This means we cannot assume a robot-like similarity between all humans. The soul, as Socrates concludes, is as complex as the human body and therefore requires complexity in the approach to communicate to it.

Much to contemplate here and reconsider as I re-read this in the future.