Plato: Phaedrus

Socrates meets Phaedrus and asks whence he comes and whither he goes. Phaedrus reports coming from Lysias, son of Cephalus, and heading for a walk outside the wall; Lysias was staying with Epicrates at the house of Morychus near the temple of Olympian Zeus. Phaedrus explains Lysias wrote about a fair youth tempted not by a lover, arguing the non-lover should be accepted rather than the lover. Socrates longs to hear it; Phaedrus doubts his memory, but Socrates observes the roll hidden under Phaedrus's cloak. They walk along the Ilissus to a tall plane-tree. Phaedrus asks about Boreas carrying off Orithyia; Socrates discusses rational explanations and allegories, invokes the Delphian inscription to know himself, and mentions Typho. Reaching the plane-tree, Socrates admires the spot, sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs, and says the men of the city, not the country, are his teachers, drawn out by a book. Phaedrus reads Lysias's speech, arguing at length that the non-lover is preferable to the lover. Socrates praises it ironically, then criticizes Lysias's repetition and claims he could make a different, better speech, saying he heard something from Sappho or Anacreon. Phaedrus presses him, offering golden images at Delphi and Olympia, and finally swears an oath by the plane-tree that unless Socrates speaks, he will never repeat another discourse to him. Socrates yields, declares himself conquered, says he will veil his face and gallop through the speech, and invokes the Muses to help him rehearse the tale Phaedrus desires.

Socrates continues a tale of a fair youth with many lovers, including a cunning one who pretended not to love him and argued the youth should accept the non-lover. The speech defines good counsel as requiring a definition of love, identifies love as desire, distinguishes two ruling principles—desire of pleasure and opinion aspiring to the best—naming temperance and excess, and defines love as irrational desire for beauty. Socrates pauses and asks Phaedrus whether he seems inspired; Phaedrus affirms his flow of words. Socrates, claiming divine fury and dithyrambics, blames Phaedrus and continues: the lover wants his beloved inferior and ignorant, banishes philosophy, keeps him delicate, deprives him of family and property, and becomes a disagreeable, jealous companion who, when love ceases, defaults on his promises. He ends with a verse comparing lovers to wolves loving lambs. Phaedrus asks him to praise the non-lover; Socrates declines and moves to cross the river, but Phaedrus urges him to stay through the noon heat. Socrates praises Phaedrus's love of discourse, excepting Simmias the Theban. Socrates then reports his divine sign forbidding him, recognizes his impiety in reviling Eros, son of Aphrodite and a god, and, invoking Stesichorus who recanted about Helen and regained his sight, resolves to recant. He counsels Lysias to write another discourse; Phaedrus agrees. Addressing the fair youth, Socrates names Phaedrus and Stesichorus, and begins the recantation: madness can be a divine gift. He describes prophetic madness (Delphi, Dodona, Sibyl), etymologies of mantike and oionoistike, purificatory madness, and the Muses' poetic madness. He argues love's madness is heaven's blessing, then proves the soul immortal as self-moving, unbegotten, and indestructible. He introduces the figure of winged horses and a charioteer, describing the soul's wings nourished by beauty, wisdom, and goodness.

Zeus leads a winged chariot in heaven, followed by an array of gods and demigods in eleven bands, while Hestia remains at home. When they go to festival they ascend to the vault's top; well-balanced chariots glide, others labour under a vicious steed. The immortals stand outside heaven and behold true being—the colourless, formless essence, and justice, temperance, and knowledge absolute. The charioteer feeds his horses ambrosia and nectar. Other souls struggle, some lamed or with broken wings, and feed on opinion. By a law of Destiny, souls losing their wings fall to earth and are born as man in nine ranks, from philosopher down to tyrant. After ten thousand years souls return; philosophers may return in three thousand. Souls receive judgment, draw lots for a second life, and may pass into beasts. Recollection of universals belongs to the philosopher, whose madness—the fourth kind—the speaker describes: seeing earthly beauty recalls true beauty. The soul, imprisoned in the body like an oyster, is stirred; beauty is most palpable to sight. The newly initiated lover shudders, grows wings, feels emotion (imeros). The speaker cites two apocryphal lines of Homer naming love. Followers of Zeus, Ares, Here, and Apollo seek beloveds resembling their gods. The speaker recalls dividing the soul into a charioteer and two horses, then describes the good white horse and the crooked dark one. The bad horse drives toward the beloved; the charioteer, recalling beauty with Modesty, pulls back and tames the wild steed. The beloved receives the lover; the stream Zeus named Desire flows, and Anteros lodges in the beloved. If self-control prevails they win a heavenly victory; otherwise they gain a lesser reward.

Socrates concludes his recantation: those who begin the heavenward pilgrimage stay in light and receive matching plumage, and the lover's friendship confers such blessings, whereas the non-lover breeds vulgar qualities and leaves the youth a fool below for nine thousand years. He addresses Eros, begs forgiveness, and asks not to be deprived of the art of love; he blames Lysias for any earlier rudeness and bids him study philosophy like his brother Polemarchus. Phaedrus joins the prayer and asks why the second speech was finer, mentioning that a politician abused Lysias as a "speech-writer." Socrates argues that statesmen in fact prize writing speeches, citing how laws begin with approvers' names, and names Lycurgus, Solon, and Darius as authors thought godlike. He states disgrace lies in writing badly. Socrates tells the tale of the grasshoppers, once humans transformed by the Muses, who report to the Muses—Terpsichore, Erato, Calliope, Urania—those who honor them. They resolve to discuss rules of writing. Phaedrus reports the view that an orator needs opinion, not truth. Socrates gives the example of persuading Phaedrus to buy an ass called a horse, and warns of confusing good with evil. Rhetoric defends herself. A Spartan declares no art of speaking divorced from truth. Socrates calls forth arguments, references Nestor, Odysseus, Palamedes, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Theodorus, and the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno). They discuss deception through small resemblances, requiring knowledge of truth. Socrates proposes examining Lysias's and his own speeches, attributing his inspiration to local deities and the Muses. Phaedrus reads Lysias's opening words. Socrates distinguishes agreed things (iron, silver) from disputed (justice, goodness), and asks to which class love belongs.

Socrates asks whether he defined love at the start of his speech, being in ecstasy; Phaedrus confirms he did. Socrates credits the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan son of Hermes as better rhetoricians than Lysias son of Cephalus. Phaedrus reads Lysias' opening again; Socrates says Lysias began at the end, swimming on his back, and that a discourse should be a living creature with head, body, and feet. He compares Lysias' speech to the epitaph of Midas the Phrygian, whose lines can be reordered. Turning to the other speech, Socrates recalls the two speeches concerned lover and non-lover, and that love is a madness. He divides madness into human and divine, the divine into four kinds—prophetic (Apollo), initiatory (Dionysus), poetic (Muses), erotic (Aphrodite and Eros). He identifies two principles: gathering particulars into one idea, and division by natural joints; he calls those skilled in this dialecticians. Discussing rhetoric taught by Thrasymachus, he lists devices from Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Polus, Licymnius, Protagoras, and the Chalcedonian giant. Socrates then examines rhetoric's power, using examples of physicians (Eryximachus, Acumenus), tragedians (Sophocles, Euripides), and musicians, and cites Adrastus and Pericles. He names Pericles as most accomplished, taught by Anaxagoras about Mind. Comparing rhetoric to medicine, he invokes Hippocrates on knowing the whole, and describes analyzing whether the soul is simple or multiform. Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul. Invoking "the wolf" proverb and Tisias, he discusses probability over truth and the case of the feeble and valiant man, concluding that only one who knows truth and divides things into classes becomes a skilful rhetorician.

Socrates states that a good man undertakes this skill to speak and act acceptably to God rather than to please fellow-servants, and that great ends justify long roads. He tells Tisias that rhetoric has a fair beginning here. Phaedrus calls it admirable if practicable; Socrates says failing in an honourable object is honourable. They turn to propriety of writing. Socrates recounts a tradition: at Naucratis the god Theuth, inventor of letters, showed his inventions to King Thamus (Ammon) of Egyptian Thebes. Theuth claims letters aid memory and wit; Thamus replies they create forgetfulness, giving reminiscence and semblance of truth, not truth. Phaedrus notes Socrates invents Egyptian tales; Socrates cites Dodona's oaks, saying old men accepted truth regardless of speaker. Phaedrus concedes the Theban is right. Socrates compares writing to painting, which stays silent when questioned; written words cannot defend themselves. He describes a better word graven in the soul. Using the husbandman and gardens of Adonis, he argues the knower sows seriously in fitting soil. The dialectician sows words in a congenial soul. They return to Lysias and the nature of art. Socrates summarizes requirements: knowing truth, defining, dividing, discerning souls. He judges writing a disgrace when ignorant of justice. The right man treats writing as reminiscence. Socrates sends messages to Lysias, Homer, Solon, calling worthy ones philosophers, not wise. Phaedrus mentions Isocrates; Socrates prophesies his philosophical promise. They pray to Pan and local deities, then depart.