Phaedrus

2. Phaedrus • Introduction • The Speech of Lysias • Socrates’ Challenge to Lysias • Socrates’ First Speech • Socrates’ Recantation • Socrates’ Second Speech • Transition—Discussion of Rhetoric—Discussion of Writing—Conclusion

3. Introduction • Setting the Stage • Who is Phaedrus? • A friend, the first speaker in the Symposium, a student, later exiled like Alcibiades for impiety • Who is Lysias? • A great writer (228a) • What is Socrates’ central task? • To “know himself”…he still hasn’t been able to do this (229e5) • He’s devoted to learning , but he’s not interested in mythological explanations or nature. (See 230d)

4. The Speech of Lysias • Phaedrus reads this to Socrates. • The speech is about love “in a roundabout way” and its point is that it is better to be seduced by a non-lover than a lover. • Why? There are many reasons:

5. Lover Non-lover • Will change his mind regarding favors when desire dies down • “Keeps an eye on the balance sheet” • Lacks control, easily annoyed, jealous • Won’t, since his favors are voluntary not forced. • Doesn’t complain… • A better friend, wants you to become a better person. • A Moral: It’s better to have relations with those who aren’t sexually attracted to you than those who are. The Psychology of Love

6. Socrates’ First Speech • Socrates isn’t satisfied by Lysias’ speech, which is repetitive and lacking in content. • He can do better (although his ideas have come from elsewhere). • He presupposes the essential distinction in Lysias’ speech, i.e., that “the lover is less sane than the non-lover” (236b). • Socrates gives his first speech with his head covered—why?

7. Socrates’ First Speech • Towards a definition of love: A methodological point for Socrates: we must define our inquiry before we begin speaking • Love is defined as “unreasoning desire” (238c), a form of hubris (excess, outrageousness). • From this it easily follows that “a man who is ruled by desire and is a slave to passion” (238e) will be harmful and “not of any use to your intellectual development” (239c) or your physical development. • Socrates’ final warning (241c)

8. Socrates’ Recantation • Both speeches so far were horrible. Isn’t Love a god or something divine? In which case he can’t be bad in any way. • So Socrates has to purify himself and does so by offering a Palinode (a “taking-it-back” poem) to Love. • Away from the negative: Socrates wants “to wash out the bitterness of what we’ve heard with a more tasteful speech” (243d).

9. Socrates’ Second Speech • Introduction • On the authorship of the speech (244a) • Starting Point: • Madness (mania) is not always bad… • “in fact the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god” (244a) • Examples: • Prophets, those who foretell the future • Mystics, discoverers of rites and purifications • Poets, those possessed by the Muses • And now we must prove that the madness of lovers is also divine.

10. On the Nature of the Soul • The soul is immortal, it is a self-mover distinct from the body. • The structure of what the soul is like: • “the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a). • The souls of the gods and their view of “what really is what it is” (247e) (e.g., Justice, Self-control, Knowledge). • The hierarchy of human souls and their behavior (248a-249b): On philosophers and the “rat-race” • The theory of recollection (249c): Only humans have seen the truth.

11. On the 4th Kind of Madness • The idea of Beauty (249d-250d) • …and the face (254b) • The effects of Beauty on embodied human souls (250e-252b)… “this is the experience we humans call love.” • The behavior of the lover: how to capture the beloved (253c-254e) • The behavior of the beloved (255a-256a) • Different ways of living for different souls (256a-256e) • Conclusion (256e-257b): the only way to grow wings is through love, so the companionship of non-lover should be avoided.