There are three main reasons why people read Plato’s Phaedrus: love, rhetoric, and metempsychosis.

Most, I’d say, read it as an endeavor to uncover the meaning of love, to study the differences between the lover and the beloved, and to compare the non-lover to the lover. Then, there are the literature and philosophy students who are often required to read it while studying rhetoric. And, finally, there are those —like an old Druze friend of mine — who go to it to learn more about Plato’s idea of metempsychosis.

I was a curious (bored) student once, so I’ve naturally read Phaedrus multiple times for the above reasons. But today, as I find myself suffering from a mild hangover, I’m reading Phaedrus for entirely different reasons.

My Notes:
https://boredabsurdist.com/2024/01/03...

Platón, y dos bellos "diálogos" sobre el amor y la belleza. Plásticamente preciosos, hay que profundizar en su lectura...

ah, the populated and one-sided dialogues of plato .... wanted to read again of the ladder of love: you start off being physically attracted to one other beautiful body .. but then, you think why just be attracted to one body? why not be attracted to them all? ... but then, you will come to see that beauty is even more perfectly situated in the soul rather than the body. once you have become attracted to physical beauty, next you will be attracted to beautiful souls and will fall in love with beautiful souls, perhaps neglecting to see the physical. gradually you ascend this ladder which will lead you ever further and further away from particular humans in their bodies towards ever more abstract objects of desire. you start to fall in love with the arts, sciences, laws, cultures, ideas .. and finally, revealed to you at the top of the ladder is this transcendent vision of the form of beauty itself .. and there, with that vision, life will be truly livable, if life is livable anywhere... to clarify, if you are in love with one beautiful person or soul, you are enslaved to them, you're trapped. they could die, they could leave you, they could stop loving you .. it's a painful, transitory, vulnerable existence... but, the form of beauty is always going to be there for you ... and yet, interestingly enough, it's never going to love you back. the form of beauty is perfect and has no need of your love, it's a one way experience. so we have to ask ourselves then, is this still a state of being in love?

To be clear, I'm giving The Symposium 5 stars, not Phaedrus. The Symposium was a delight to read! I absolutely loved it. Phaedrus was okay, but I think Plato has much better dialogues, honestly.

El banquete es enriquecedor. Fedro medio pesado.

Intéressant, je sais pas quoi dire de plus aha.

I have only read "Symposium", but I enjoyed some of the more narrative parts, and understood most of it at a young age. He was the "original" plagiarist (all writers are, really - some are just better at slight-of-hand and hiding it). You can quote me on that last bit.

What is love? Well, it usually doesn't involve women, that's for sure.

The Platonic dialogue "Symposium" starts out sounding like a manifesto for NAMBLA then becomes a foofaraw in which the literal and the metaphorical are purposely conflated for rhetorical advantage before finally getting to a half-dozen pages of fairly interesting philosophizing and then degrading into a stroke fest extolling the virtues of Socrates.

possibly my favourite pair of dialogues! they synergise so well with each other. uchicago core memory would be when prof jochim brought us out into the quad to talk about socrates’s speech in the symposium

Mình thấy hợp với taste về sách của mình

I read this purely for Alcibiades waxing (gay) poetry at Socrates. 10/10 no regrets