Central to the Phaedrus are three speeches on the topic of erotic love (eros) in the context of the erastes-eromenos relationship: the first purportedly by the rhetorician Lysias, delivered here from memory by Phaedrus, and the other two conjured extemporaneously by Socrates. Accordingly, the dialogue is concerned with both the craft of rhetoric and the value of eros, with Lysias’s speech denigrating the latter on account of its irrationality and destructive potential, and Socrates coming to its defense by portraying it as a divine madness, superior to human rationality, which can awaken within the soul of lover and beloved alike a recollection of transcendental truth and beauty, elevating them to philosophic heights unattainable by mere reason. The insistence of Socrates that rhetoric, to be anything more than an “experiential knack” or a conjuring trick, must serve the cause of philosophy, and that the simplest path to moving the souls of an audience with an effective speech is to try to tell the truth, echo the sentiments expressed in the Gorgias.

Phaedrus begins the dialogue by reciting a speech of Lysias, in which the latter argues that a young eromenos should gratify a non-lover rather than a lover on the grounds that a lover is motivated by fickle and irrational passion rather than by reason, and is thus liable to exhibit erratic and controlling behavior that harms both parties and makes a public spectacle of them. Socrates, initially taking issue only with the speech’s lack of rhetorical virtuosity, expands upon the main thrust of Lysias’s arguments with a speech of his own, identifying eros as a vice analogous to gluttony in the sense that both involve the loss of self-control and the captivity of reason to desire: in the case of gluttony, the desire for food, and in that of eros, the desire to take pleasure in beauty. A non-lover is preferable to a lover, says Socrates, because his rationality and self-control will ensure that his actions are motivated by what is best for the moral and intellectual development of the eromenos rather than a selfish desire for pleasure.

It is just as Socrates is finishing this second, supplementary oration that the most memorable portion of the dialogue begins. Suddenly seized by divine inspiration, and regretful of his participation in the denigration of Eros—who is, after all, a god—Socrates launches into a third speech in praise of love. Eros may be irrational, he concedes, but not every form of irrationality is inferior to reason. The Pythia sets aside her own reason when she transmits the oracles of Apollo, but her “madness” proves truer than the wisdom of men. Likewise, a poet who attempts to compose in a purely “logical” manner will never reach the heights of those lifted out of their senses by the muses. Eros is a “divine madness” of this fashion; and to elaborate on this point, Socrates presents his celebrated allegory of the soul as a charioteer.

The soul, he says, is like a winged chariot pulled by two horses. One horse is spiritual in nature, desirous of goodness and truth, amenable to reason, conducive to self-mastery, and obedient to verbal commands without the need of rein or whip. The second is corporeal, violent, passionate, and sensuous, requiring forceful restraint. The spiritual horse would carry us upward, toward the transcendent, following the path of the gods, while the corporeal horse would drag us down from the heavens into the mud of mortal embodiment. The gods ascend in their own chariots to their divine banquet in the realm of “pure being” above heaven itself: first comes Zeus, the king of the gods, followed by eleven “squadrons” of lesser gods; and trailing these lesser gods in turn is a procession of immortal souls. While for the gods this ascent is an easy one, since both of their horses are good and obedient, our own souls have to struggle with the wild horse. Some souls manage to soar above the rim of heaven, enjoying a sustained vision of the ideal unity of all things; others get only a few brief glimpses of pure being, popping their heads intermittently above the clouds; others still swerve about in lower climes, crashing into one another before plummeting to earth. Whatever heights they have reached, souls are inevitably dragged down when the driver loses control of the unruly horse, and this results in mortal life. Every human being embodies a soul that had at least some glimpse of the realm of pure being: this explains our ability to see the ideal unity behind the multiplicity of particular objects. But whatever type of person one becomes is dependent upon how clear and sustained a vision one had of the highest heaven. The highest-reaching souls become philosophers (naturally), followed in descending order by law-abiding kings and commanders, politicians and businessmen, athletes, priests, poets, artisans and farmers, sophists and demagogues, and last—and least—by tyrants. Most souls are embodied once every thousand years for ten cycles, with intermittent periods of reward and punishment; and it is only after ten thousand years that a soul can return to the height from which it fell. Philosophers are an exception: any soul who lives a philosophical life three times in succession will regain its wings and take flight again.

Because the wings of the soul are nourished by the contemplation of ideal being, our hope for redemption depends upon our ability to recall, within mortal life, our soul’s primordial vision of the transcendent. And this recollection is the “madness” of the lover: what the lover sees in the ephemeral beauty of the beloved reminds him of the true beauty from which he has fallen. While a lesser soul is moved only to sate worldly appetites, paying no mind to its true origin and destiny, the soul of the lover, reminded of its heavenly home, longs to take to the air once again. “His wings begin to grow and he wants to take to the air on his new plumage, but he cannot; like a bird he looks upwards, and because he ignores what is down here, he is accused of behaving like a madman.” Far from being subrational, as Lysias suggests, the lover sees what is real, which makes him appear mad to those who do not. Eros is only a supposed liability in earthly life because it presents us with a ladder that would take us out of earthly life altogether, all the way up to the highest heaven.

The erastes then tries to cultivate within the eromenos the qualities of whichever god he followed in the pre-mortal procession, awakening within the latter a reciprocal love that, when channeled towards philosophy, allows both souls to “gain their wings together” in due time.

The dialogue again shifts to the topic of rhetoric, and focuses on the question of whether writing or speech is better for the one who receives it. Socrates, arguing that a living teacher will always be superior to the written word, closes out the Phaedrus by roasting every Goodreads user:

“'Because [students of writing] will be widely read, though without any contact with a teacher, they will seem to be men of wide knowledge, when they will usually be ignorant. And this spurious appearance of intelligence will make them difficult company.’”

At first glance, Pheadrus is a dialogue about homoerotic love. The dialogue takes place between young and attractive Athenian aristocrat, Phaedrus, and the familiar Socrates, as they walk, and then sit under a tree waiting for the heat to pass. Within this outwardly simplistic organisation, however, Plato constructs an intricate layering of forms, topics, and arguments.

The work is composed around three speeches: the first one is given by Phaedrus (actually he is regurgitating a speech written by Lysias); the second and third are composed by Socrates in answer. Socrates' first speech is an improvement of Lysias' speech, correcting its structural and logical deficits, but not changing the thrust of the argument or the conclusion that a cool and calculating lover is superior to one enthralled by his beloved. Socrates second speech is a palinode, or recantation, of the first, and in it he argues that a kind of divine madness or passion is necessary for love to achieve its full (educational) potential.

SOCRATES: But I’m sure you’d agree that every speech should be put together like a living creature, with its own proper body, so that it lacks neither a head nor feet.

As Athenian women of the time were either wives (designated for bearing children) or slaves (designated for mindless sex), the focus on homoerotic love as a means for men to obtain education (from other men) is understandable within context. This topic is also addressed in Plato's  Symposium, but here Plato's concept of a tripartite soul is brought to bear on the problem. The soul is described through an analogy: the rational part of the soul is a charioteer trying to control two horses: the black horse (corresponding to the lustful/appetitive part of the soul) and the white horse (corresponding to the good/spirited part). In the palinode, Socrates explains that the best passionate lover will reign in his black horse (an argument against the physical aspect of a relationship) in favour of helping his beloved on the path to becoming a better man.

The palinode also touches upon other topics, such as the superiority of dialectic over rhetorical speeches and indeed, over the written word. Paradoxically, it seems, Plato argues against writing by writing about it. Nevertheless, as Waterfield points out in the Introduction, Plato chose to present his written argument in the form of a dialogue, which is as close to dialectic conducted in the flesh between two people as one can get on the page.

If you enjoy deep, aesthetically complex literary works, read Pheadrus. You don't have to be a scholar to appreciate it.


Note regarding the Oxford World's Classics edition: most readers, no matter how (in)experienced in philosophy or Plato's works, will greatly benefit from Robin Waterfield's forty-page Introduction. It is divided into sections addressing the relevant topics: Erōs and Homoeroticism, First Speech, Second Speech, Third Speech (the Palinode), Rhetoric, Dialectic and the Weakness of Writing, The Unity of the Dialogue.

Oturduk üstatlarla beraber uzun bir çınar ağacının altında, hani şu Boreas 'ın Orethyia' yı kaçırdığı söylenen yerlerde, destansı bir sempozyum yaptık. Phaidros kuşkulu biraz, sonradan uyum sağladı gerçi bize, ben ağzı açık şarap budalası hem içtim hem dinledim, Platon ;tek kişilik dev kadro, çekirgeleri bile hayran bıraktı kendine.. Netleştirdik bir çok konuyu, ruhlarımızın doğasını kavradık, kanat takıp ruhlarımıza tanrıları hizaya sokup geldik. Deli miyiz neyiz dedik sonra kendi kendimize. Demez olaydık, Platon aldı sazı eline (Sokrates'in ağzından) deliliği iki türe ayırdı ; ilkini biliyorsunuz dedi hastalıklardan kaynaklanan, diğeri ise zamanla davranışlarımızın tanrısal bir biçim almasını sağlayan deliliktir dedi. Dört gruba ayırdı o tür deliliği ;dört tanrıya denk gelmekteydi. Apollon kehanetleri, Dionysos sarhoşluğu, Musalar şairliği ve son olarak da en iyisi olduğunu söylediğimiz Aphrodite ve Eros aşkı.. Daha sonra nasıl oldu bilemiyorum ama aşkın etkisinden söz ederken bazen gerçeklerin peşinden gidip bazen başka yollara girince baştan sona tuhaf bir konuşma yaptık. Gitmeden önce de oranın tanrılarına dua etmeyi ihmal etmedik.