A Twist in Your Toga

As they say in the classics, I’m glad I reviewed "The Symposium" before "Phaedrus".

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

Although the two relate to similar subject matter, it’s uncertain in what order they were written.

However, "Phaedrus" isn’t the toga party that "The Symposium" was, primarily because there are less participants. And everybody knows, the bigger the toga party, the better. (Well, it has a potential for more surprises, though apart from the surprise element, I don't think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with a toga party for two.)

Under Plane or Chaste Tree?

Ironically, my assessment of the number of participants might not be strictly correct. It’s a tribute to Plato’s metafictional structure that, in both cases, only two people are speaking in the present. The difference lies in how many people’s views they recount (in significant detail, too).

Here, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss only one other person, Lysias.

In effect, Plato sets up a debate between two rival views of Love held by Lysias (as read from a book by Phaedrus) and Socrates.

Unlike "The Symposium", this dialogue is conducted outdoors by a stream under the shade of two tall trees (one a plane tree, the other a chaste tree). It is also a much more sober affair. Despite all of the flirtation, it swings between plain talking and chasteness.

Lover and Beloved

Plato’s dialogue concerns two options for a [male] youth or "Beloved". Lysias’ tale concerned a "fair youth who was being tempted" by a "Non-lover".

Lysias advocates that a Beloved should prefer a "Non-lover", while Socrates advocates a "Lover".

However, this is not a contrast between a non-sexual relationship and a sexual relationship. They are both forms of homoerotic sexual relationship. The real issue is the extent to which there is a pedagogical or spiritual function in the relationship that would constitute Love or "Eros" in the Greek sense (i.e., the relationship between "Lover" and "Beloved").

Lysias

Lysias advances the case of Non-lovers effectively by attacking Lovers:

1. Lovers attach pedagogical and spiritual duties to their passion or desire for the Beloved. The compulsion of their duties is the cost of their passion. As their passion wanes, they count the cost of their passion and they come to resent their Beloved. They cannot maintain the façade of selflessness once their passion flags.

2. The esteem in which Lovers hold their Beloved will suffer when they find an alternative Beloved.

3. The Lover’s love is madness, and who would be taught by a madman?

4. Because the number of Non-lovers exceeds the number of Lovers, the Beloved has a greater choice of sexual partner from the pool of Non-lovers.

5. Lovers limit the Beloved’s access to society at large.

6. Lovers fall out of love when they discover their Beloved has grown into a lesser adult.

7. Lovers praise the Beloved for ulterior motives.

Phaedrus is convinced.

Socrates’ First Speech (Desire and Reason)

Socrates believes that Phaedrus has simply been enchanted by the rhetoric of Lysias’ arguments.

He sets out to puncture the enchantment by defining the nature and power of Love.

Socrates argues that the above problems result not from the duties of Love, but from Passion or Desire, which is equally found in a Non-lover:

"Every one sees that Love is Desire, and we know also that Non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the Lover to be distinguished from the Non-lover?"

The difference between the types of Lover depends on the ability to manage or master Desire:

"...in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of Pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the Best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers.

"When opinion by the help of Reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called Temperance; but when Desire, which is devoid of Reason, rules in us and drags us to Pleasure, that power of misrule is called Excess."

Socrates elaborates on the cause of this imbalance:

"...the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards Right, and is led away to the enjoyment of Beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the Desires which are her own kindred— that supreme Desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of Passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called Love ('erromenos eros')."

Socrates’ Second Speech (The Madness of Love)

In the first speech, there is a tendency to regard Love as a form of madness or mania that overcomes Reason.

In contrast, in his second speech, he refers to it as "inspired madness":

"...let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let him further show that Love is not sent by the gods for any good to Lover or Beloved...we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of Love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings."

Socrates proceeds to recant the views in the first speech and to reinstate Eros, at the very least, side by side with Reason.

He starts by asserting that the Soul is immortal, because it is forever in motion. Because it is self-moving, it has no beginning and equally no ending. It cannot be destroyed. A body which is self-moving or moved from within has a Soul. "The Soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere."

He then describes the Soul in terms of a figure of a charioteer with a pair of winged horses. The horses of a human charioteer differ from those of a divine charioteer: one is noble (reason) and the other is ignoble (passion). The pursuit of truth requires both horses to be harnessed. If their wings are damaged and they are unable to stay in flight, they fall to the earth and form mortal creatures composed of both Soul and Body.

The Soul is sustained by the Divine:

"The Divine is Beauty, Wisdom and Goodness...and by these the wing of the Soul is nourished...the reason why the Souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of Truth is that pasturage is to be found there, which is suited to the highest part of the Soul."

In short, Love is a desire of Beauty, Wisdom and Goodness, and therefore the Divine. Love nourishes the Soul, and reunites it with the Divine.

Hence, "he who loves the beautiful is called a Lover, because he partakes of it," the Divine and its "heavenly blessings".

So Socrates concludes, "great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a Lover will confer upon [the Beloved]."

Non-lovers cannot offer a Beloved these heavenly blessings. They work solely within the framework of mortal or earthly Desire.

The Ranks of Beauty and of Love

You could argue that the dialogue is of limited relevance to our contemporary concepts of heterosexual Love, because it operates within the framework of homoeroticism and the pedagogical/spiritual world of Greek polytheism.

However, this is a potentially superficial argument.

Firstly, I think that the mechanism of Love is very similar, regardless of the gender of the participants.

Secondly, it's easy to imagine how the same concepts could be adapted to Monotheism. However, it's also arguable that Beauty might play a similar function within Love, regardless of whether Beauty is associated with Wisdom, Goodness or Divinity. Thus, the relationship of Beauty and Love could apply equally in the case of Atheism.

Remarkably, this latter argument finds some support in "Phaedrus" itself, partly as a consequence of the polytheism of Greek religion.

Socrates believed our views on Beauty depend on the gods we follow. Perhaps there is some subjectivity in our choice of god. This subjectivity might equally affect our perceptions of Beauty and our Love:

"Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship.

"The followers of Zeus desire that their beloved should have a soul like him; and therefore they seek out some one of a philosophical and imperial nature, and when they have found him and loved him, they do all they can to confirm such a nature in him, and if they have no experience of such a disposition hitherto, they learn of any one who can teach them, and themselves follow in the same way.

"And they have the less difficulty in finding the nature of their own god in themselves, because they have been compelled to gaze intensely on him; their recollection clings to him, and they become possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition, so far as man can participate in God.

"The qualities of their god they attribute to the beloved, wherefore they love him all the more..."

It’s almost as if, because the Lover’s sense of Beauty is subjective, there is inevitably an overwhelming desire to both seek it out and project it onto the Beloved of choice.

But that’s a whole other story...it will be told, only elsewhere...



VERSE:

The Form That Love Takes

Like Bob Dylan, I’ve
Tried love fast and slow,
But still sought answers
From those in the know.

So, to enquire,
I searched high and low,
Trying to fathom
Lust and desire.

I even wondered,
Are they part of love?
Do they connect to
Virtue or higher?

Can’t someone tell me?
Does anyone know?
How do we fall and
Cupid deal his blow?

What makes you realise
It’s love at first sight?
What is it that smiles
In a lover’s eyes?

Who chooses the shrine?
Why love one person
And another scorn?
What makes love divine?

What causes these storms
That so lash my heart?
Says what’s good for me
Isn’t always so?

What kind of black coal
Fuels this mad fire?
How do you explain
What controls the soul?

Could the Greeks be right?
Are the answers in
"Phaedrus" and/or
"The Symposium"?

What god’s law is it
That true love informs?
Or is it these god
Damned Platonic Forms?



SOUNDTRACK:

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "The Power of Love" [Extended Version]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLw_K-...

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "The Power of Love" [Official Version]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vpo0p...

ABC - "All of My Heart" [From the album "The Lexicon of Love"]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfph30...

ABC - "The Look of Love" [From "The Lexicon of Love"]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMbNYj...

Nick Cave - "Babe, You Turn Me On" [Live at the Brixton Academy London, 2004]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXk6PF...

Nick Cave - "Nobody's Baby Now"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNsSS...

"...these are my many letters
Torn to pieces by her long-fingered hands."

I read PHAEDRUS for a specific purpose.

Since the mid-20th century, there has been an ongoing effort to re-interpret Plato. Those pursuing this effort, not surprisingly, see it as the pursuit of a deeper truth. I assume that they are sincere in this belief.

Critics of the reinterpretation see many reasons to be skeptical. One reason is that the reinterpretation would make Plato relevant to our world today in a way that under the formerly prevailing interpretation was not the case. Another reason for skepticism is that the reinterpretation would immunize Plato from the charge that he favors authoritarian over more liberal governments. Skeptics suspect that the reinterpretation is driven, at least in part, by a 20th century agenda to defend western-style liberalism by portraying Plato as a fan of early governments that featured some characteristics of modern liberalism.

The reinterpretation of Plato relies heavily on something called ‘esoteric writing’. For those not familiar with the term, esoteric writing refers to writing that disguises the author’s true intention in such a way as to make it indiscernible to those who might persecute the author while, at the same time, communicating that intention to other readers who can be trusted to understand the intention and benefit from it. The best book about esoteric writing that I have read is Arthur Melzer’s PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE LINES. Melzer convincingly demonstrates that esoteric writing was common among philosophical writers until the 19th century.

In my own GR review of Plato’s THE REPUBLIC, I gave credence to one of the arguments that is important to the reinterpretation of Plato. Namely, the new argument that Plato did not intend for Socrates to be understood as anti-democratic by philosophically minded readers. Thus, when Plato has Socrates advocate censorship, the suppression of poetry, the removal of children from their families to be educated in state-run institutions of propaganda, etc., Plato intended for his readers to recoil at these extremist ideas. Our recoil is the message that Plato intended or so the reinterpretation wants to argue.

I gave this argument credence because it describes my own experience in reading The Republic. I did not like what Socrates had to say. That caused me to look more deeply to see if there was a subtle hidden esoteric message that I might detect and thereby understand the text more accurately.

A GR friend took me to task for this in the comments to my review. He rightly points out to me that there are many reasons to take Plato at his word and it makes sense that Plato’s philosopher king would run things as Socrates describes in the city in speech. One important reason why this is true, my GR friend argues, is that Plato believes that the organization of the city in speech should resemble the organization of a well-ordered soul, a subject also discussed in PHAEDRUS. Like THE REPUBLIC, PHAEDRUS is one of Plato’s middle dialogues. My friend argues that PHAEDRUS is solid evidence that the parts of The REPUBLIC that I do not like represent what Plato truly thought – and what most western philosophers have always understood him to have thought.

So that’s why I read PHAEDRUS. I wanted to see if it tends to confirm the old view of Plato. The short answer is that it does tend to confirm the old view. But it’s really a strange dialogue. Allow me to explain.

Phaedrus and Socrates are friends. Phaedrus has a copy of a speech written by a third friend, who enjoys a reputation as a good speaker. Socrates professes to be interested in speeches. He and Phaedrus leave the city for the countryside to find a place for Phaedrus to read the speech to Socrates. (Most of this can be argued to be very uncharacteristic of Socrates. He did not like to leave the city. And he did not like speeches, according to the explanatory essay included in this edition.)

Whatever. They find a suitable place. Phaedrus reads the speech. It is about eros, which in this context refers to the love shared by a youth and a mature man. The speech recommends that given a choice, the youth would be wise to choose someone who is a friend first rather than a love struck, impassioned lover.

Socrates does not like the speech. So he gives his own speech. Oddly, in my view, he makes the same argument as the speech written by the missing friend. That is, Socrates argues that the youth should choose someone who is a friend, not an impassioned lover. Though he argues for the same conclusion as the absent friend, he does so much more thoughtfully and persuasively than does the speech of the friend.

Then, after some discussion of rhetoric generally, Socrates gives a third speech. This one is much longer than the others. In this third speech, Socrates argues that the youth should choose the man who loves the youth with passion and not the lover who will be a friend. This is so, argues Socrates, because this kind of erotic love allows the youth to experience genuine beauty – beauty as it is understood in Plato’s theory of the forms. Such beauty allows the youth to experience the extraordinary, indeed, something divine.

It seemed to me that the dialogue is only a bit more than half completed when this third speech is concluded. The rest of the dialogue is devoted to more discussion of rhetoric, including written advocacy versus oral advocacy and so on. Socrates argues that to be persuasive the speaker/writer must know the truth about his subject. One who does not know the truth about his subject will not be persuasive, even if he knows what his audience wants to hear about the subject. This line of argument suggests that the philosopher has an advantage over the sophist when it comes to speeches.

Thus, it is not crystal clear what this dialogue is about. The candidates are numerous: speeches, erotic love, the forms, the benefits and drawbacks of oral versus written advocacy, philosophy, philosophy vs rhetoric or the well-ordered human soul.

Wait. What? Why are Socrates and Phaedrus discussing the human soul?

Good question. It did not seem a necessary topic to me, given the rest of the dialogue. But it is in PHAEDRUS that Plato first introduces his famous metaphor of the chariot: a driver and two horses, one bad and the other good. A human soul is like such a chariot. The driver must control the horses, especially the badly behaving horse. In the well-ordered soul, the driver is firmly in control of both horses and manages them in such a way as to keep them working together as a team toward a goal.

In THE REPUBLIC, this metaphor makes another appearance. There, Plato tells us that the city in speech should resemble a well-ordered soul. That is, the driver (philosopher king) should control the populace and steer it toward the goal that the philosopher king dictates to the citizens of the polis. That is how to best govern a city.

And there it is. PHAEDRUS confirms this vision. It is an authoritarian notion. The philosopher king knows best (and may not be questioned) and he manages the public toward his vision of what is best. This is the old understanding of where Plato’s head was at when he was writing his middle dialogues. The reimagining of Plato is less plausible to me after rereading PHAEDRUS than it was before.

The sad thing is that the old view of Plato makes Plato less relevant and less interesting today than the new view of Plato would make him. So be it. Let’s agree to reject the implausible in the name of sanity even if it means that Plato has less to say about our current liberalism vs anti-liberalism struggle in the West.

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.

ik moet een situationship beginnen

Am rămas uimit câtă elocință cuprind dialogurile acestui volum. Sînt la prima lectură a unui volum atribuit lui Platon și mă așteptam să-mi fie mult mai greu să-l asimilez, dar surpriza a fost de proporții. Simplitatea nu are nevoie de cuvinte pompoase, iar frumusețea ei e nemărginită. Nu îndrăznesc să-i dau rating lui Platon, cum nu am făcut-o nici cu alți „grei” și înțelepți, ci rămân cu încântarea lăuntrică de după parcurgerea volumului, pe care l-am savurat extrem de lent. Abia aștept să-l citesc pe următorul.

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.
n  

“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.”

n

Ono bezbojno i bezoblično biće, koje stvarno postoji, može da ugleda samo kormilar duše, a to je um.

Fedar ili o ljepoti je svojevrstan nastavak Gozbe. Ovdje Platon malo diskutabilnije i podrobnije sagledava ljubav. Unosi određene prepreke prisutne kod ljubavnika. Naime, kod Platona ljubavnik nastoji da ima nadmoćnost nad ljubljenikom. Da bi to postigao on najviše želi da mu je ljubljenik lišen najdraže imovine. Pa s toga i da se ljubljenik liši najmilijih, oca, majke i srodnih mu prijatelja. Jer ako ljubljenik ima ovu imovinu, to za ljubavnika predstavlja saobraćajnu smetnju da dopre do njega to jest da ga ima samo za sebe. Ljubavnik nastoji da se što duže sladi požudom, i da on ljubljeniku predstavlja sve, da mu je on ta najdraža imovina. Platon se ovdje dotiče duše i objašnjava njenu pojavu. Kako je duša nerođena i besmrtna te nema početak i kraj, tako ona prebiva u vasioni i teži da se učauri u svemu onome što nema dušu, za neko čvrsto tijelo. I taj spoj tijela i duše mi zovemo živo biće. Sporedno se zove smrtno, a besmrtno se naziva jer time zamišljamo boga, kao besmrtno biće, čije je tijelo i duša zajedno sraslo, za vječna vremena. Sve to zajedno čini ljepotu.

When Phaedrus recites to Socrates a speech by Lysias on the topic of love, the two enter into a dialogue in which Socrates makes a speech of his own on the topic and they expand the conversation to include a discussion of rhetoric and the value of knowing the truth.
Plato, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, enjoys a unique place in literature and philosophy.

ele precisa de fumar uma e chillar

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

J'ai lu "Phèdre" pour une mauvaise raison; c'est-à-dire je voulais mieux comprendre "De la grammatologie" de Jacques Derrida. D'après Derrida, "Phèdre" est le dialogue qui véhicule avec la plus grande clarté les deux grande erreurs de Platon qui sont: (1) la langue parlée est antérieur à la langue écrite; et (2) que la langue parlée possède une valeur morale supérieure aux écrits. Fidèle à lui-même, Derrida représente mal la thèse de Platon. Néanmoins, dans "Phèdre", Socrate dénonce catégoriquement l'écriture si chère à Derrida.
Le dialogue est très littéraire. Le lecteur ne sait pas si Socrate veut corriger une erreur de pensée transmise à Phèdre, un jeune disciple ou s'il veut simplement ramener un jeune personne aimé dans son entourage.
Socrate et Phèdre se rencontrent par hasard. Phèdre lui demande son opinion sur la thèse du rhéteur et sophiste Lysias est qu'un homme mature doit s'éloigner des jeunes garçon qu'il veut comme amants et fréquenter seulement ceux dont il veut seulement avoir comme amis. Socrate la réfute. Le but est toujours l'amour platonique. Pourtant, dans le cas où on passe par une période érotique on peut toujours se racheter en se renonçant aux relations sexuelles. Pourtant le plus grand péché de Lysias n'est pas de proposer une thèse erronée mais de la présenter par écrit.
Le devoir de l'enseignant est de dialoguer avec ses étudiants pour s'assurer qu'ils comprennent et sont capables de défendre les idées enseignées. Les textes écrits se trouvent rapidement dur des tablettes. Leur contenus sont oubliés. Ceux qui les lisent ne sont jamais capables de défendre les thèses proposés. Bref les connaissances essentielles sont transmises seulement par la langue parlée. L'écriture sert a des choses moins importantes telles que la poésie ou la rédaction des lois. "Phèdre" explique possiblement pourquoi Socrate ne nous a pas laissé des écrits.
Il y a des problèmes évidents avec "Phèdre". Socrate semble être très tolérant envers la pédérastie et il pose le geste absurde d'attaquer l'écriture avec une pièce écrite.
Cependant Derrida va trop loin dans sa critique de Platon qu'il qualifie de "logocentrique". D'après Derrida, Platon prétend que les mot parlés représentent des vérités absolues qui proviennent du "Logos qui est l'entendement infini de Dieu". Platon veut surtout souligner l'importance du face-à-face dans l'instruction et surtout dans l'éducation des jeunes personnes.

Pese a que la parte relacionada con la verdad y lo bello en el discurso creo que no queda bien hilada con el resto del libro, las partes sobre la reminiscencia del alma son extremadamente bellas. Incluso a mí me han salido alas leyéndolas