Love, Madness, and Magic: In Search of Lost Words of Power in Plato’s Phaedrus

“Brhaspati! When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love. When the wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve, then friends recognized their friendships. A good sign was placed on their speech. Through sacrifice they traced the path of speech and found it inside the sages. They held it and portioned it out to many; together the seven singers praised it. One who looked did not see speech, and another who listens does not hear it. It reveals itself to someone as a loving wife, beautifully dressed, reveals her body to her husband.” — Rig Veda 10.71, The Origins of Sacred Speech 1-4, trans. Doniger.

“As for the revelation of our written traces, when we wave forms onto paper and wooden tablets, the grain of their patterns is brightly concentrated, the [degree of] coarseness and fineness outwardly apparent, the mystic brushwork quite iridescent. But it is the modeled substance that is shown, the darkened words that are expressed, as the forms are conveyed to the [world of] dust and mire. If [the original forms] were to be carelessly revealed to creatures with skeletons and made to join the world’s thrust and pull, that would besmirch the hymns of the superior Perfected above and fail the prohibitions on keeping separate below. Truly this is what my kind does not do, and what the numinous laws do not permit.” — Declarations of the Perfected, How the Perfected Convey Their Teachings to the World 1.7b7-1.11b3, p.50 trans. Smith.

“In the silence of an old temple/ A cicada’s voice/ Splits the rock.” — Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Disenchantment (Entzauberung), the process whereby the sacred is expunged from a people’s culture, consciousness, and collective memory, appears to define the modern era. After the Church’s grip over European life and culture began to slacken with the so called “death of God”, the theological framework that had given meaning to the medieval world gave way, and men were compelled to make sense of their lives in increasingly secular, bureaucratic, and even technocratic terms. While modernity can no doubt be aptly characterized as an age of disenchantment, we must not forget that modern secularization is itself the fruit of an earlier historical process with roots running deep through European history. For example, the so called “triumph” of Christianity can itself be seen as an episode in the saga of disenchantment, as the peoples of the Roman Empire were forced to renounce their traditional Gods and customs and embrace instead the myths and practices of a foreign nation as constituting the only permissible worship of the one true God.¹ And the story of disenchantment goes back yet further still, extending to the very beginnings of Western philosophy in the work of Plato.

For Plato himself lived in an age wherein the Gods appeared to have departed. Spurred by new democratic ideals and their attendant sophistic standards of rationality, the Athenian Enlightenment called into question the reality of the Gods. And, worse yet, by Plato’s time, these new ideals had seemed to have collapsed upon themselves, having led to the Peloponnesian war and its disastrous consequences, including the fall of the Athenian Empire itself. To truly grasp Plato’s philosophical project, it is thus crucial to remember that Plato composed his famous dialogues amid this cultural anomie.

Plato, unlike contemporary philosophers, did not write books that directly set forth and defend a philosophical thesis. Instead he wrote dialogues, something like philosophical plays wherein various characters (usually including his teacher Socrates) debate a given subject matter. In these dialogues, Plato employed the entire panoply of clever literary techniques developed in Athens’ golden age. The dialogues display brilliant rhetoric and sophisticated argument, incorporate elements of Athenian Tragedy and Comedy, and, most importantly, covertly preserve, in Plato’s own ingenious manner, the Greek oracular tradition.

The preservation and collection of oracles was one of the earliest uses of writing in Greece.² Some of these collections consisted of sayings attributed to sages such as Epimenides of Crete, Orpheus, and Musaios,³ but the most prominent oracle was that of Apollo at Delphi. The deliverances of the Pythia were of decisive importance in founding colonies, establishing constitutions, and determining religious rites.⁴ Oracles were thus essential to Greek life, but they were also notoriously difficult to grasp.⁵ They were often articulated as paradoxes. To understand their message, one had to devote all the time, focus, and wisdom one could muster to decipher the meaning in their riddling words. Heraclitus aptly summarized the oracular dynamic as follows: “The lord whose oracle is the one in Delphi neither speaks (λέγει) nor hides (κρύπτει), but gives signs (σημαίνει).” (D41). Here Apollo is said neither to lay things out explicitly (λέγει), nor to conceal them (κρύπτει), but to communicate though signs (σημαίνει). Thus, to understand the Far-Shooter’s message, one must read his signs aright. To fail to do so is to invite disaster.⁶

By Plato’s time, doubts had begun to emerge about the reliability of oracles. The oracle of Delphi appeared to have offered bad advice during the Persian wars by seeming to advocate for Greek surrender. Leaders lost faith on account of this, and the Pythia was consulted less frequently for political decisions, though the steady stream of pilgrims making personal inquiries continued unabated.⁷ This skeptical attitude towards oracles (and religion more generally) continued to grow throughout the Athenian Enlightenment.

Plato attempted to retain and revitalize oracular speech within this skeptical context by using the urbane discourse of Athenian high culture to generate the same kind of riddling speech and express the same kinds of dark truths as the oracles once did. Plato’s idiosyncratic appropriation of oracular discourse can be seen, for example, in his story of how Socrates became a philosopher. According to this story, Socrates had a somewhat mad (μανικός) (Charm 153b) and impulsive (σφοδρός) (Apol 21a) friend named Chaerephon. This friend traveled to Delphi to ask the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the oracle replied that “no one was wiser” (Apol 21a). When Chaerephon returned and reported to Socrates what he had heard, Socrates was perplexed and tried to understand what the God might be signifying with these words, asking himself: “Whatever does the God mean (τί ποτε λέγει ὁ θεός)? What is his riddle (καὶ τί ποτε αἰνίττεται)? I am very conscious that I am not wise at all; what then does he mean by saying that I am the wisest? For surely he does not lie; it is not legitimate for him to do so (οὐ γὰρ δήπου ψεύδεταί γε: οὐ γὰρ θέμις αὐτῷ)” (Apol 21b). Socrates is, in this manner, depicted as undertaking the traditional project of oracular interpretation and attempting to grasp the truth behind the Loxian riddle. Yet, Socrates attempts to decipher the oracle in an unconventional way: he attempts to rationally refute it, a course of action that would later prove problematic. He attempts to discredit Apollo’s pronouncement by seeking those reputed to be wise in his day and conversing with them about the subject matter they claim expertise in so as to demonstrate that they are, in fact, wiser than he.⁸ He could then go to Delphi and challenge Apollo, saying “this man is wiser than I, but you said that I was” (21c). But this strategy did not yield the results that Socrates claims to have anticipated, since his discussions revealed that none of the men who proclaimed themselves wise actually were so, and so none was wiser than he. Indeed, while the others think they know something when they do not, Socrates has the wisdom not to think he knows what he does not know (21d). So, paradoxically, Apollo’s oracle thereby validated itself through the very sort of urbane argumentative discourse meant to debunk it.

In this manner, rather than attempting to directly challenge the corrosive ideals of his day, Plato allows them to unleash their full fury his dialogues and thereby dissolve themselves in the process. This sort of strategy has elsewhere been called “Riding the Tiger”. The idea is that if you see a tiger in the forest, it is not prudent to attack it directly since it will easily overpower you. But if you can manage to get on its back and ride it, not only will it not be able to attack you, but you will also find yourself in a more advantageous position after it has exhausted its strength by running.⁹ Evola explains the principle as follows:

“When a cycle of civilization is reaching its end, it is difficult to achieve anything by resisting it and by directly opposing the forces in motion. The current is too strong; one would be overwhelmed. The essential thing is not to let oneself be impressed by the omnipotence and apparent triumph of the forces of the epoch. These forces, devoid of connection with any higher principle, are in fact on a short chain. One should not become fixated on the present and on things at hand, but keep in view the conditions that may come about in the future. Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, while keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when ‘the tiger, which cannot leap on the person riding it, is tired of running.’… One abandons direct action and retreats to a more internal position” (Evola, Ride the Tiger, 10).

Though Evola meant for this strategy to be employed in the wasteland of contemporary culture, it is interesting too see how Plato himself uses it early on in the development of the western philosophical tradition.

By masking his teaching in the verbiage of Athenian high culture, Plato is able to covertly preserve a sign based oracular discourse under the facade of critical inquiry. Plato’s dialogues, like Socrates, can be compared to a Silenus jar, painted ridiculously as a Satyr on the outside, but hiding statues of the Gods within (Symp. 215b).¹⁰ Plato conceals the enigmatic character of oracular discourse within his dialogues in two crucial ways. First, the dialogue format allows Plato to state his philosophical position indirectly through signs. Rather than explicitly setting forth his philosophical position, he hints at it through the arguments and actions of various characters, he himself never appearing among them. Just as we must infer the messages of Sophocles and Shakespeare by analyzing their plays, so too can we discern Plato’s teaching only by studying the dialectical agon between the characters in his dialogues. Second, the dialogues allow Plato to preserve the riddling character of the oracle through the use of irony. The concept of Socratic irony is well known, but we tend to forget it was Plato’s creation. Irony is a form of revealing under the opposite (sub contrario). For example, a student might, when asked by his friends, who knew he was having difficulties in his coursework and neglecting his studies, how he did on a recent exam, reply “I aced it”. Here the student means to convey something like, <I failed the exam>, even though his statement if taken literally would indicate the opposite, viz. that he performed spectacularly well. Plato, through the figure of Socrates, saturates his dialogues in such irony and thereby forces us to look beyond their literal meaning.

1. The Phaedrus: Background and Setting

The oracular character of Plato’s discourse is perhaps seen most clearly in his dialogue the Phaedrus, eponymously named after Socrates’ interlocutor therein. In this dialogue, Socrates discusses the nature of love and language with Phaedrus, a man blind to both realities. Indeed, ancient readers would have associated Phaedrus with the profanation of the Mysteries and desecration of the Hermai.¹¹ The Mysteries of Eleusus were secret rites of Demeter and Persephone said to secure a better afterlife for those who were initiated into them. They were reportedly profaned by Alcibiades, a traitorous general, and his circle, when they celebrated them in mockery in private houses. The Hermai, in contrast, were apotropaic stone pillars erected at boundaries and crossroads. They often displayed a head of Hermes at the top and a phallus lower down. These Hermai were mutilated when hooligans, Alcibiades and his circle again being the chief suspects, went through town striking off their heads and penises.¹² By being associated with such acts, Phaedrus would have stood out to Plato’s readers as an example of one who desecrated religious language and stripped it of its supernatural power. By revealing, in a profane context, the “things said” in the Mysteries of Eleusis, he mocked the liturgical words of the rite, cutting them off from their essential connection to the Otherworld and emptying them of their power to effect eschatological transformation. And, by literally defacing and unmanning the Hermai, he descacralized language, smashing the mouth of the divine messenger, and castrating the Word of its fertilizing power.

And readers may have held similar associations for Socrates himself, since he also had a reputation for undermining traditional religion and morality by making the “weaker argument appear stronger” (Aristophanes, The Clouds) and was known to have taught Alcibiades (Symp 215a-222c) and to have been convicted and executed for impiety (ἀσεβείᾳ) and corrupting the youth.¹³ And Plato further alludes to these sacriligious associations in the Phaedrus, when he has Socrates declare that he would follow Phaedrus even if he “were walking all the way to Megara” (227d),¹⁴ since Teucrus, who testified that Phaedrus had profaned the mysteries, had withdrawn from Athens to Megara to avoid those charges himself (Andocides, On the Mysteries, 15). It is thus supremely ironic that Plato would use a conversation between these two dubious characters to set forth some of the most profound reflections on divinity and the numinous power of language within the Western intellectual tradition.

And Plato’s irony extends not only to the dialogue’s characters, but also to its setting. The Phaedrus is one of the few Platonic dialogues to take place outside of the city, in nature before the Gods, but the characters, obsessed with the speeches of the city, seem oblivious to their sacred surroundings.¹⁵

Phaedrus, for example, has only ventured outside the city for a walk so as to heed the fashionable medical advice of the doctor Acumenus (227a-b).¹⁶ He has gone out to practice reciting a speech he received from the popular rhetorician Lysias, carrying the scroll with him and reading it aloud (228b, d-e). In this manner, he is presented as so caught up in the written discourse of Athens, we might say, with his nose stuck in a scroll, that he is blind to the world around him.

And Socrates too presents himself to Phaedrus as someone who is “sick with passion for hearing speeches” (228b) and who can “share the revel” with him (228c). He even likens his following Phaedrus to hear a speech to a dumb animal who can be led about by dangling food in front of its face (230e).¹⁷ And Phaedrus too asserts that Socrates is normally neither one to “travel abroad” nor to “set foot beyond the city walls” (230d), and Socrates concurs that he never leaves the city, since he is “devoted to learning” and that “landscapes and trees have nothing to teach” him, for “only the people in the city can do that” (230d).

As they make their way along the river Ilisus, Phaedrus asks Socrates whether he believes the local legend of Boreas abducting Orithuia is true, and Socrates declares that “it would not be out of place for me to reject it (ἀπιστοίην), as our intellectuals (σοφοί) do”, and proceeds to give a reductive explanation of the legend, claiming that it could have been a fanciful way of describing how a girl was blown off the rocks by the wind (229c). They eventually find a place to sit under a plane tree to discuss Lysias’ speech. The area is dedicated to the river God Acheleus and the Nymphs as is evinced by the statues and offerings that have been placed there, but the two men seem to have little concern for such matters (230b).¹⁸

Yet, at the same time, the land and its Gods control how the dialogue unfolds. To begin with, one gets the sense that Socrates is not as unfamiliar with the region outside of the walls of Athens as Phaedrus has suggested, for he is able to correct Phaedrus regarding the location in which Boreas was said to have carried away Orithuia (229c) and already seems to be quite familiar with their resting place beneeth the plane tree (230b-c).¹⁹ Likewise, Socrates credits the speech he delivers to possession by the local Nymphs (238d, 241e),²⁰ propounds his own myths about the Gods (e.g. his Palinode (244a-257b), the cicadas (258e-259d), and Thamus and Theuth of Egypt (274c-275b)²¹, and reflects extensively on the nature of ultimate reality, divinity, and the soul. And, in contrast to his claim near the beginning of the dialogue that “landscapes and trees have nothing to teach”, he condemns his own age in comparison to that of the ancients who “found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth” (275b-c).

Nature also structures the dialogue through its movement. Socrates defines the soul as essentially self-moving and declares that, when in perfect condition, “it looks after all that lacks a soul, and patrols all of heaven” so that “the entire universe is its dominion” (246b-c). Motion thus proves central to the dialogue, taking the form of a journey and return as Socrates and Phaedrus depart from and then return to the city. The dialogue begins with Socrates asking Phaedrus “Where have you been? And where are you going?” (227a) and ends with Phaedrus (279b) and Socrates declaring “let’s be off” (279c) as they get up to return to Athens. And so, at its most obvious level, the dialogue follows Socrates and Phaedrus as they walk outside the gates of Athens and along the Ilisus river until they find an idyllic location under a plane tree to sit and discourse until they decide to return home.

And the journey of Socrates and Phaedrus is paralleled by the sun’s journey through the sky which determines the timing and action of the narrative. Phaedrus spends the morning reading, until he grows tired of it and goes outside the city for a walk (228b). Then, as the sun moves further overhead, and the day grows hotter, Socrates and Phaedrus walk along the Ilisus (229a). When it reaches its zenith, pouring down its light and heat from overhead, Socrates recites his palinode in praise of love (242a). And, once the sun has proceeded farther on his journey and begins his decline as the day starts to cool, Socrates and Phaedrus depart (279b). Using the language of astrology, the action of the dialogue thus takes place as the sun travels diurnally from the eleventh house to the ninth house, and the philosophical content of the relevant sections of the dialogue corresponds to the traditional meaning of these houses. The eleventh house symbolizes the sun’s journey as it is carried up to its highest point, and is associated with the people, forces, and events that help one advance in life. It is at this point that Phaedrus and Socrates present their speeches in praise of the non-lover, arguing that one would attain greater benefits from a patron who is not in love with one (and in his right mind) than one who is (and is mad). The tenth house, in contrast, symbolizes the sun’s reaching its culminating point in the sky where it shines down in its full glory and is said to be where Aphrodite rejoices.²² And it is at this point that Socrates praises love as a divine madness given by Aphrodite (265b) and sets forth his vision of the soul, the Gods, and the glories of the world of the forms. And finally, the ninth house symbolizes the beginning of the sun’s decline and is associated with religion and philosophy, activities wherein one reflects on the meaning of what has occurred in life and prepares oneself for death, symbolized by the setting of the sun. And it is at this point that Socrates and Phaedrus, instead of repeating speeches to each other, engage in straightforwardly philosophical dialogue, as Socrates tries to convince Phaedrus that if rhetoric were to be a science it would prove to be identical to philosophy.

And the natural cycle of procession and return not only characterizes the journey of Socrates and Phaedrus and the journey of the sun in its diurnal course, but it also structures the activities of the Gods in Socrates’ palinode. According to Socrates’ tale, the Gods too (along with those souls who wish to follow them) leave their home to travel through the Zodiac to the very edge of heaven to behold the realm of Being that exists beyond our world, and, after feasting on this sight, they return home (246e-247e).

Within this overall structure of efflux and return, the content of the Phaedrus can be divided into two halves. In the first half, Socrates and Phaedrus exchange speeches about love. Phaedrus delivers a speech from Lysias in praise of the non-lover he has been trying to memorize, and then Socrates delivers his own speech on the same theme attempting to correct the structural flaws of the one Phaedrus has just delivered. After this, Socrates, prodded by his daimon, repents of his speech and, as penance, offers a brilliant speech in praise of divine love. Then, in the second half of the dialogue, Socrates and Phaedrus turn to discuss the nature of speeches as such, inquiring into what makes them good or bad, and investigate whether or not rhetoric is an art. Let’s examine each of these sections in turn.

2. Speeches on Love

2.1 Phaedrus’ and Lysias’ Speech in Praise of the Non-Lover.

Plato’s portrayal of Phaedrus as he delivers the first speech, indeed, throughout the dialogue as a whole, is rather comic. The interaction between Socrates and Phaedrus reminds one of that of Dr. Faustus and his familius Wagner in Goethe’s Faust. Whereas Faust is dissatisfied with all he has learned studying philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and theology, and yearns instead for true spiritual knowledge, Wagner, his rather dimwitted assistant, is content with academic life and praises its virtues in overwrought sentimental terms.²³ In like manner, Phaedrus is a self-confessed “dilettante” (228a) who tries to insinuate himself into the intellectual avant-guarde of Athenian life. He takes the health advice of the fashionable medical doctors of his day (Symp 176c-d, Phaedrus 227a-b), and is particularly obsessed with speeches. In Plato’s other dialogue, the Symposium, Phaedrus is said to have proposed the theme of love discussed in the speeches therein (Symp 177a-c) and is portrayed as being the first to give a speech (Symp 178a-c). And, in the Phaedrus, Socrates declares that he is responsible for the production of more speeches in his lifetime than anyone else, apart from Simmias the Theban (242b).

The speech that Phaedrus recites for Socrates has been written by Lysias, whom Phaedrus declares to be “the best of our writers” (228a). He has been pouring over the speech all morning attempting to learn it by heart, and has continued to practice it as he has gone outside for a walk (228b). He finds the speech to be particularly clever (κεκόμψευται) (227c), declares that Lysias is “the cleverest (δεινότατος)²⁴ writer of our day”, and proclaims that he would prefer Lysias’ oratorical skills over material wealth (228a).

Lysias’s speech, which Phaedrus finds so clever, makes an argument that one should give sexual favors to someone who does not love one, the non-lover, rather than someone who does, the lover (227c). At first, Phaedrus attempts to practice the speech from memory, but, after Socrates realizes that he has been hiding the scroll containing the speech in his left hand, he demands that he read it (228d-e). The speech is poorly constructed, haphazardly stringing together a series of points, but Phaedrus is nonetheless enamored with it. After listening to the performance, Socrates remarks that Phaedrus was “radiant with delight” as he read the speech, claiming him to have been in a veritable “Bachic frenzy” (234d).

And, for his part, Phaedrus declares the mediocre speech to be “simply superb, especially in its choice of words” (234c), and maintains that no other Greek could “say anything more impressive or more complete on the same subject” (234e). He asserts that Lysias “has omitted nothing worth mentioning about the subject, so that no one will ever be able to add anything of value to complete what he has already said himself” (235b).

Such is Phaedrus’s evaluation of the speech, let us now examine its content. The speech both begins and ends abruptly. It commences as follows, without, as Socrates points out later, even attempting to define the subject matter under discussion: “You understand my situation: I’ve told you how good it would be for us, in my opinion, if this worked out. In any case, I don’t think I should lose the chance to get what I’m asking for, merely because I don’t happen to be in love with you” (231a). And the conclusion of the speech is equally abrupt: “Well, I think this speech is long enough. If you are still longing for more, if you think I have passed over something, just ask (234c).”

The overall argument of the speech resembles something you might hear from a contemporary “red pill” dating coach and is determined by a couple of implicit definitions which are never explicitly stated. First, it adopts a crass utilitarian definition of reason. On such a view, reason is a tool for acquiring conventional physical and social goods. If one, for example, desires greater wealth or social status, one can devise strategies for achieving these goals through the use of reason. Second, it adopts a corollary definition of love. On this view, love is equated with insanity, and hence, is essentially irrational. This then allows the speech to advance the following sort of argumentative schema:

(1) The beloved can forge alliances for himself by granting sexual favors to various interested parties.

(2) Lovers are in love and, hence, by definition not in their right mind.

(3) Non-lovers, conversely, are not in love and, ceteris paribus, are in their right mind.

Thus,

(4) Non-lovers are able to use reason while lovers cannot. From (2) and (3).

(5) Reason is a powerful tool for acquiring conventional physical and social goods.

Thus,

(6) The non-lover has access to a powerful tool for acquiring conventional physical and social goods that the lover does not have access to. From (4) and (5).

Thus,

(7) The non-lover is in a better position to secure conventional physical and social goods for the beloved than is the lover. From (6)

Therefore,

(8) It is better for the beloved to grant sexual favors to the non-lover than to the lover. From (7).

The speech, again, never explicitly states this schema, but its “argument” nonetheless consists of filling it in with particular illustrations.²⁵ For instance, after the lover falls out of love and returns to his right mind, he will regret the actions he has performed on behalf of the beloved, while the non-lover will have no such regrets. Rather, “he does the best he possibly can” for the beloved, “just as he would his own business” (231a). Likewise, the non-lover, because he remains rational, will not resent the beloved for having caused him to neglect his own affairs as a lover would (231b), nor will he have grounds to shift alliances as a lover does once his fancy alights on someone else (331c), nor will he be carried into indiscretion because of passion as the lover is (232a-b). He will not flatter the beloved in order to gain favors as the lover does (233a), nor change his mind after coming to learn the beloved’s true character (233a). And, because he is not insane like the lover, he will not be jealous or controlling, seeking to isolate the beloved from friends, family, and other potential benefactors (232c-d).²⁶

The speech then attempts to respond to a couple of (notably weak) objections. To the objection that there can be no strong friendship without erotic love, the non-lover points out that we have close bonds with our family and friends without it (233d). To the objection that favors should be given to those who need it most (and so sexual favors should be given to the lover who craves them), the non-lover replies that this would violate ordinary principles of rational self-interest. One would, for example, be compelled by this principle to give feasts to beggars rather than those who might benefit one (233e). And, to the objection that the non-lover is advocating that sexual favors should be given to all non-lovers, he replies that just as the lover asks for favors for himself alone and not all other lovers, so too does the non-lover ask for favors for himself and not all non-lovers (234c).

2.2 Socrates’ First Speech in Praise of the Non-lover

Phaedrus, enraptured after finishing his performance, showers Lysias’ speech with praise, announcing that no Greek could “say anything more impressive or more complete on the same subject” (234e, see also 235b). But Socrates rejects his appraisal and claims that to assert such a thing would be “to stand refuted by all the wise men and women of old who have spoken or written about the subject” (235b). With his typical irony, he claims he cannot remember who these wise people are, and floats Sappho, Anacreon or some prose writer as possible candidates (235c). He claims that his reason for asserting that some wise person from the past must have said such a thing is that his own “breast is full” and that he “can make a different speech, even better than Lysias’” (235c), but he knows himself to be ignorant, and so could not be responsible for these ideas. It thus must be, he claims, that he has been “filled, like an empty jar, by the words of other people streaming in through” his “ears”, though he himself is “so stupid that” he has “even forgotten where and from whom” he “heard them” (235d).

Phaedrus, excited by the prospect of another speech, exclaims that if Socrates can outperform Lysias, he will erect a gold statue of himself and Socrates in Delphi, just as the nine Archons had promised to do were they to violate the laws of Athens (235d-e).²⁷

Socrates claims that he won’t be able to give a speech that makes entirely different points from Lysias’, since some of these are essential to any speech on the topic. He is not claiming that “Lysias failed in every respect”, since that wouldn’t “happen to even the worst possible author” (235e). Specifically, the claim that the non-lover keeps his wits about him while the lover loses his will be essential to any treatment of the subject (236a). Praise will here have to come from the arrangement of the points rather than their novelty, but the non-essential points of the speech can be praised for both their arrangement and their novelty (236a).

Phaedrus concedes, but then Socrates grows apprehensive, claiming that he only criticized Phaedrus’s beloved Lysias in order to tease him, and he tries to back out of giving his speech, proclaiming that his words shouldn’t be taken seriously (οἴει δή με ὡς ἀληθῶς ἐπιχειρήσειν εἰπεῖν παρὰ τὴν ἐκείνου σοφίαν ἕτερόν τι ποικιλώτερον;) (236b). However, Phaedrus compels him, threatening never to recite or discuss speeches with him again should he fail to deliver his speech (236e).²⁸ Socrates concedes, but covers his head with his cloak so as not to be embarrassed by looking at Phaedrus and tries to race through the speech as quickly as possible (237a).

Thus veiled, Socrates begins by invoking the Muses, asking for their help to appear even more clever to Phaedrus than before:

“Come to me, you clear-voiced Muses, whether you are called so because of the quality of your song or from the musical people of Liguria, ‘come, take up my burden’ in telling the tale that this fine fellow forces upon me so that his companion may now seem to him even more clever (σοφὸς) than he did before” (237a-b).

He then sets the stage for his speech by declaring that once upon a time there was a beautiful boy who had many lovers, and that one of these lovers was wily (αἱμύλος), and persuaded the boy he was not in love, even though he really was. “He loved the lad no less than the others” (237b). After this initial deception, he attempted to convince him that it was better to give himself to the non-lover than the lover. His argument was as follows.

He, unlike the non-lover of Lysias’ speech, begins by defining the subject matter in question, so as to procure “agreement at the start of the inquiry” by distinguishing the lover from the non-lover and delineating the nature and effects of love.

The lover and the non-lover are distinguished by their adherence to different governing principles of human action. The lover follows “our inborn desire for pleasures”, while the non-lover adheres to “our acquired judgment that pursues what is best” (237d, 238a). Socrates then attempts to more precisely define love, specifying its nature and effects. First he identifies love with “a kind of desire” (237d), but this definition proves to be too broad, since both lovers and non-lovers “have a desire for what is beautiful” (237d). Someone like Phaedrus, for example, might desire the beauty of great oratory, yet would not thereby qualify as a lover in the erotic sense of the term. Rather, each particular desire will have its own unique object which it craves. There are, for example, desires for food and drink. And we call a habitual course of action governed by the former gluttony, one governed by the latter drunkenness, and the people who have such habits gluttons and drunkards respectively (238b). In like manner, the object of the desire that we can identify as erotic love is the desire to take sexual pleasure in a beautiful human body. “This desire, all-conquering in its forceful drive, takes its name from the word force (ῥώμης) and is called eros” (238c).

Socrates then breaks off his speech in order to comment upon it, proclaiming that he is “in the grip of something divine (238c).” He declares there is something strange about the place and that he would be in danger of being possessed by the madness of the Nymphs were he to continue. But he nonetheless chooses to proceed, declaring it is up to the God whether or not the attack is prevented (238d).

Socrates takes up his speech once more and examines the effects of entering into a relationship with the lover. He notes that, given what it means to be a lover, “it is surely necessary that a man who is ruled by desire and is a slave to pleasure will turn his boy into whatever is most pleasing to himself (238e).” And what pleases the lover, Socrates argues, is deleterious to the beloved.

Socrates first examines the lover’s effects on the character of the beloved. He notes that the lover, a sick man, takes pleasure in what does not resist him, and views anyone equal or superior to himself as his enemy. As a result he “is always working to make the boy he loves weaker and inferior to himself” (239a). And so, since ignorance is inferior to wisdom, cowardice to bravery, ineffective speech to rhetorical sophistication, and slow-wittedness to quick-wittedness, the lover will attempt to cultivate these vices. Socrates explains:

“By necessity, a lover will be delighted to find all these mental defects and more, whether acquired or innate in his boy; and if he does not, he will have to supply them or else lose the pleasure of the moment. The necessary consequence is that he will be jealous and keep the boy away from the good company of anyone who would make a better man of him; and that will cause him a great deal of harm, especially if he keeps him away from what would most improve his mind—and that is, in fact, divine philosophy, from which it is necessary for a lover to keep his boy a great distance away, out of fear the boy will eventually come to look down on him. He will have to invent other ways, too, of keeping the boy in total ignorance and so in total dependence on himself. That way the boy will give his lover the most pleasure, though the harm to himself will be severe. So it will not be of any use to your intellectual development to have as your mentor and companion a man who is in love” (239b-c).

And the lover will have similar effects on the beloved’s physical body. The lover, to follow his desire, will encourage him to be soft and weak. “The sort of body a lover wants in his boy is one that will give confidence to an enemy in war or other great crisis while causing alarm to friends and even to his lovers” (239d).

And the lover proves similarly ruinous to the beloved’s possessions. The lover desires his beloved to be weaker than himself and to be completely under his control. He thus does his best to separate him from his greatest possessions: mother, father, and close relatives, since these might attempt to block the affair. And he wants to cut him off from wife, children, and home for similar reasons. And, finally, he desires to separate him from his wealth, since wealth would make him “harder to snare, and once snared, harder to handle” (240a).

These effects show how truly pernicious the lover is. Many pains in life are mixed with an immediate pleasure. Flattery, for example, brings all sorts of evils, but it still feels good to be flattered in the moment. But, Socrates argues, there are no corresponding pleasures associated with acquiescing to the lover. It is a pure displeasure to interact with such a disgusting being. “What comfort or pleasure will the lover give to him during all the time they spend together? Won’t it be disgusting in the extreme to see the face of that older man who has lost his looks? And more than his face as well” (240d-e). The ridiculous flattery, the loss of freedom, the false accusations, and insults when he is drunk (240e).

Furthermore, once the lover returns to his right mind, he’ll back out of all he has promised and try to avoid the beloved, since he fears falling back into his former madness (241a). The beloved will then be forced to pursue the lover to try to obtain what has been promised (241b). Socrates summarizes the non-lover’s case:

“All along he has been completely unaware that he should never have given his favors to a man who was in love—and who therefore had by necessity lost his mind. He should much rather have done it for a man who was not in love and had his wits about him. Otherwise, it follows necessarily that he’d be giving himself to a man who is deceitful, irritable, jealous, disgusting, harmful to his property, harmful to his physical fitness, and absolutely devastating to the cultivation of his soul, which truly is, and always be, the most valuable thing to Gods and men” (241c).

He then concludes as follows: “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 a boy!’” (241d).

Phaedrus is not satisfied with Socrates’ conclusion, believing Socrates to be only halfway through the speech, since he has yet to praise the virtues of the non-lover and to argue that it is better to give one’s favors to him (241d). But Socrates declares that he has stopped because, if he were to continue “the Nymphs to whom you so cleverly exposed me will take complete possession of me” (241e). He claims that the second half of the argument can be quickly summarized anyway: every disadvantage of the lover has a corresponding advantage, and the non-lover has those (241e). At that Socrates declares that he will cross the river and depart before Phaedrus makes him do “something even worse” (242a).

2.3 Socrates’ Second Speech: Palinode in Praise of the Lover.

But Phaedrus implores Socrates to stay, observing that it is hot and the sun is directly overhead and so he should delay his departure and discuss their speeches together until things cool down (242a). Socrates responds that Phaedrus has inspired him to tarry and make another speech. He explains that, as he was getting up to leave, his daimon forbid him from doing so until he made atonement for his offense:

“My friend, just as I was about to cross the river, the familiar divine sign came to me which, whenever it occurs, holds me back from something I am about to do. I thought I heard a voice coming from this very spot, forbidding me to leave until I made atonement for some offense against the Gods. In effect, you see, I am a seer, and though I am not particularly good at it, still—like people who are just barely able to read and write—I am good enough for my own purposes. I recognize my offense clearly now. In fact, the soul too, my friend, is itself a sort of seer; that’s why, almost from the beginning of my speech, I was disturbed by a very uneasy feeling, as Ibycus puts it, that ‘for offending the Gods I am honored by men.’ But now I understand exactly what my offense has been” (242c-d).

He declares that he now sees that both Lysias’ speech Phaedrus delivered and the one Phaedrus inspired Socrates to give were horrible (δεινόν now used in the sense of terrible rather than clever) (242d), foolish (εὐήθη), and close to being impious (ἀσεβῆ). Indeed, he claims nothing could be more horrible (δεινότερος) than to say what they have said (242d), since Love is the son of Aphrodite and thus one of the Gods (242d). Phaedrus responds cagily by asserting that “this is certainly what people say” (242d), but Socrates retorts that Lysias certainly doesn’t believe it, nor does the viewpoint of the speech Phaedrus pressured Socrates into delivering (242d). Socrates then sums up his fault as follows:

“But if love is a God or something divine—which he is—he can’t be bad in any way; and yet our speeches just now spoke of him as if he were. That is their offense against Love. And they’ve compounded it with their utter foolishness in parading their dangerous falsehoods and preening themselves over perhaps deceiving a few silly people and coming to be admired by them” (242e-243a).

The speeches, Socrates argues, could only criticize love by adopting a shameless and vulgar account of it, not one in keeping with its true nature. Someone noble hearing them would have no idea of the kind of love they were denouncing. “Suppose a noble and gentle man, who was (or had once been) in love with a boy of similar character, were to hear us say that lovers start serious quarrels for trivial reasons and that, jealous of their beloved, they do him harm—don’t you think that man would think we had been brought up among the most vulgar of sailors, totally ignorant of love among the freeborn? Wouldn’t he most certainly refuse to acknowledge the flaws we attributed to love?” (243c-d).

As atonement for the speeches just delivered, Socrates proposes that he make another speech. He claims that he will offer a palinode, a recantation, as that is an ancient rite of purification for those who have told false stories of the Gods. He claims that “Homer did not know it, but Stesichorus did” (243a), for, after losing his sight for defaming Helen, he, unlike Homer, did not remain in the dark as to the reason for his blindness (243a). “On the contrary, like a true follower of the Muses that he was, he understood it and immediately composed these lines: there’s no truth to that story: You never sailed that lovely ship, you never reached the tower of Troy.” (243a). Once he completed his palinode, Stesichorus regained his sight. In this regard, Socrates declares himself wiser than both Homer and Stesichorus in that he will offer his palinode before he is struck blind. He will perform it with his “head bare, no longer covered in shame (243b).” In this manner Plato sets up a stark contrast between the present speech, where Socrates speaks unveiled and in the full light of the sun shining overhead, and his previous speech where he hid his head under his cloak, thus blinded and in the dark.

Socrates then asks Phaedrus to play the role of the beloved boy and listen to his speech (243e), attributing his previous speech in praise of the non-lover to Phaedrus, and the one he is about to give to Stesichorus (244a).

He declares that “there is no truth in that story” of the superiority of the non-lover on account of him being reasonable and the lover being insane, since there are cases in which madness is superior to reason. Indeed, he claims that “the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the God” (244a). He establishes this point by setting forth three examples of such divine madness.

The first kind of divine madness is the prophetic madness given by Apollo.²⁹ Socrates points out that the priestesses of Delphi, the priestesses of Dodonna and the Sybles all guide both cities and individuals, but they provide this essential guidance while prophesying “out of their minds” in trance. In contrast, “they accomplish little or nothing when they are in control of themselves” (244b). Here, then, we have a case in which madness is superior to sanity.³⁰

The second kind divine madness is the mystical madness of Dionysus. Socrates claims that Dionysian madness arises among families who have polluted themselves by having committed ancient crimes and teaches them the rites by which to purge themselves. These rites not only release the afflicted from their current troubles, but also protect them in the world to come. Socrates explains “it turns up among those who need a way out; it gives prophecies and takes refuge in prayers to the Gods and in worship, discovering mystic rites and purifications that bring the man it touches through to safety for this and all time to come. So it is that the right sort of madness finds relief from present hardships for a man it has possessed” (244e). Once more, these rites are delivered through madness, not by soberly reflecting on how to improve one’s situation. And, so, we again have a case in which madness is superior to sanity.

Finally, the third kind of divine madness is the poetic madness of the Muses. Socrates claims that no one can become an expert poet by relying wholly on their own “self-controlled verses.” Instead, to truly shine, they must be “driven out of their minds” by the Muses (245a). “Possession by the Muses”, maintains Socrates, “takes a tender virgin soul and awakens it to a Bacchic frenzy of songs and poetry that glorifies the achievements of the past and teaches them to future generations” (245a). So, poetry, the backbone of civilization, is produced not by careful deliberation, but by possession by the Muses. Again, in this regard, madness is superior to rational calculation.

Given there are cases in which madness is preferable to reason, the mere fact that the lover is mad is insufficient to prove him inferior to the non-lover. Rather, the non-lover must show that, in this particular case, madness does not deliver a good which cannot be delivered by reason. In contrast, taking up the position of the lover, Socrates will argue that the madness of love is a great gift to men and attempt to prove that “this sort of madness is given us by the Gods to ensure our greatest good fortune. It will be a proof that convinces the wise (σοφοῖς ) if not the clever (δεινοῖς)” (245c).

Socrates’ argument turns on the articulation of a captivating myth about the fall and redemption of the mortal soul. Though he later claims to have spoken this myth “in play” (προσεπαίσαμεν³¹) (265c), the reader suspects he may, in fact, take it quiet seriously. Socrates’ myth is best understood when the ontological structure it presupposes is stated explicitly. On this view, reality has a hierarchical structure. At the top of this hierarchy is the realm of the forms, which is roughly equivalent to eternal and unchanging Parmenidean Being. This is the realm of true reality where “a being… really is what it is”, where things exist “without color”, “shape”, or “solidity” and are “visible only to intelligence (νόος)” (247c). Below this, is the realm of soul, which is characterized by motion and change, with Socrates even arguing that self-motion is an essential property of the soul (245c-e). Various kinds of souls can then be sorted into their own hierarchy. At this top of this hierarchy are the souls of the Gods and Goddesses. These souls are composed of entirely good elements, and, as a result they can easily travel out to the edge of heaven to perceive the forms (246a). This proves to be a self-reinforcing process, since Socrates declares that it is in virtue of contemplating the forms that the Gods are rendered divine (249c). All souls below the Gods admit of a mixture of good and bad parts. Directly below the Gods are the immortal souls which, with difficulty because of their ignoble elements, can manage to follow them to look upon true reality. And below these are mortal souls who, again because of their bad elements, have not been able to keep pace with the Gods and have fallen into the material sphere and taken human bodies. Below these are the souls who have long forgotten their original estate and have come to reside in animal bodies. And then, finally, at the very bottom of the ontological hierarchy is matter which is looked after by soul (246a).

With this framework in mind we are now in a position to understand Socrates myth. The myth consists of two major parts. The first tells of how the souls of some non-gods fell into bodies and became mortal, and the second tells of how the experience of love can help such souls rise once more and regain their immortal state.

The Fall of the Soul

In setting forth his myths, Socrates makes no attempt to say “what the soul actually is”, claiming that to be a task for a God and to take too much time. Instead, he attempts to describe what the soul “is like”, since that “is humanly possible and takes less time” (246a). Specifically, he likens the soul to the union of “a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a).

As noted previously, the components of the souls of the Gods are all noble. “The Gods have horses and charioteers that are themselves all good and come from good stock besides” (246a). Given that motion is essential to the soul, even the Gods travel, journeying out to the rim of heaven to feast and look out at the eternal world of the forms existing beyond our own (247a-b). They travel in twelve groups, each headed by a particular deity (247a), with Zeus taking the lead (246e) and Hestia alone remaining at home (247a). When they reach the outermost limit of heaven, they stand on its high ridge, “where its circular motion carries them around as they stand while they gaze upon what is outside of heaven” (247b-c). This other world “is the plain where the truth stands.” All souls yearn to look upon it, since it is the proper food for the best part of the soul (248c) and nourishes the soul’s wings (246e). Once they are done feasting, the Gods return home, sinking back inside heaven, stabling their horses, and giving them nectar and ambrosia to eat (247e).

Because the Gods have only noble horses with powerful wings, they make this journey easily (247b). But since the souls of non-gods are of mixed stock, they have great difficulty in making the journey. For the souls of non-gods, one horse is of beautiful and good stock, but the other is of ugly and bad (246b). The noble horse is hitched on the right, and loves “honor with modesty and self control”; it is the “companion of true glory”, “needs no whip, and is guided by verbal commands alone” (253d). The bad horse, in contrast, is hitched on the left. He is deaf, a “companion of wild boasts and indecency” and “just barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined” (253e). Thus, chariot driving, i.e. living, for non-gods “is inevitably a painfully difficult business,” (246b) since these souls are pulled in different directions, and it is difficult to get their opposing drives under control. Yet, despite the difficulty of controlling their unequally yoked horses (247b), they still yearn to follow the Gods and behold the world of the forms. For, just as with divine souls, their souls’ wings find their nourishment there. Socrates explains, “beauty, wisdom, goodness, and everything of that sort… nourish the souls’ wings, which grow best in their presence; but foulness and ugliness make the wings shrink and disappear” (246e). So, those who, with great difficulty, are able to follow in the tracks of the Gods and partake of the divine banquet, keep their wings intact and are kept safe through the entire cycle. But those who are unable to do so lose their wings, distally because they fail to look on the forms that sustain them (and “by some accident” take on “a forgetfulness and wrongdoing” (248c)), and proximally because these maladroit souls crash into each other tearing the wings from one another in the process. Socrates explains:

“The remaining souls [the ones who can’t manage to follow the Gods] are all eagerly straining to keep up, but are unable to rise; they are carried around below the surface, trampling and striking one another as each tries to get ahead of the others. The result is terribly noisy, very sweaty, and disorderly. Many souls are crippled by the incompetence of the drivers, and many wings break much of their plumage. After so much trouble, they all leave without having seen reality, uninitiated, and when they have gone they will depend on what they think is nourishment—their own opinions” (248a-b).

After souls lose their wings, they fall, wandering until they alight on something material to take up as a mortal body (246c). This is how so called “mortal souls” are created, through the union of an immortal soul and a mortal body. On their first incarnation, these souls take on a human body, since humans possess a language that uses general concepts, “proceeding to bring many perceptions together into a reasoned unity” (249c), and this process of subsuming particular perceptions under universals “is the recollection of the things our soul saw when it was traveling with the God, when it disregarded the things we now call real and lifted up its head to what is truly real instead” (249c). The human type a soul first incarnates as is determined by the God it followed and how much truth it managed to perceive (248d, 253d). Those who saw the most become lovers or philosophers, those that saw the least will become tyrants, and a variety of other human types will exist between these two extremes (248d-e).

After they die, souls will either be rewarded in heaven or punished in hell until a thousand years have elapsed. At that point, they select their next incarnation. “Any who have led their lives with justice will change to a better fate, and any who have led theirs with injustice, to a worse one” (248e). Here souls who have lived as animals may choose to be human, and those who have been human to be animals. After ten such cycles, i.e. after ten thousand years, it is possible for the soul to regrow its wings and attempt once more to follow the Gods on their journey (248e). Yet, Socrates argues, it is possible for the philosopher or the lover to do this much more rapidly, in only three thousand, rather than ten thousand, years (249a). To explain how this is so, Socrates sets forth a myth of how the soul is redeemed by love.

Redemption by Love

It is at this point that Socrates elaborates upon a fourth form of divine madness. He argues that in addition to the prophetic madness of Apollo, the mystical madness of Dionysus, and the poetic madness of the Muses, there is the erotic madness of Aphrodite, and that this form of madness brings the greatest benefits of them all. In this kind of madness man remembers what he saw when he beheld the world of the forms: “He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by God….When he sees the beauty we have down here and is reminded of true beauty; then he takes wing and flutters in his eagerness to rise up, but is unable to do so; and he gazes aloft, like a bird, paying no attention to what is down below—and that is what brings on him the charge that he has gone mad” (249d). This, claims Socrates, is “the best and noblest of all the forms that possession by a God can take for anyone who has it or is connected to it” (249e).

Beauty, Socrates maintains, is unique among the (Platonic) forms in that it shines down relatively clearly in our world and can be perceived through our bodily vision (250d-e). When we saw “that blessed and spectacular vision” of Beauty in its purity, before we were incarnate in a mortal body, we “were ushered into the mystery that we may rightly call the most blessed of all” (250c). And, at that time, we saw the other forms as well. Socrates explains:

“And we who celebrated it [the true mystery] were wholly perfect and free of all troubles that awaited us in time to come, and we gazed in rapture at sacred revealed objects that were perfect, and simple, and unshakable and blissful. That was the ultimate vision, and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves, not buried in this thing we are carrying around now, which we call a body, locked in it like an oyster in its shell” (250c).

Socrates then argues that when a lover catches sight of the beauty of his beloved, he comes to remember the true Beauty he experienced before incarnation.³² He first shudders before the beloved as he feels the numinous fear he did when beholding the form of the Beautiful. He then gazes at his beloved with the reverence due a God. He can feel a fever growing in his wings, but this feverish pain gives way to joy. The pain, however, reappears whenever he is separated from the beloved (252a). And “from the outlandish mix of these two feelings—pain and joy—comes anguish and helpless raving: in its madness the lover’s soul cannot sleep at night or stay put by day; it rushes, yearning, wherever it expects to see the person who has that beauty. When it does see him, it opens the sluice gates of desire and sets free the parts that were blocked up before.” (251e). This desire, Socrates observes, is, in fact, the awareness of the soul’s wings growing once more (252b).

Moreover, the lover, in seeing the beloved, remembers the God in whose retinue he followed before he was incarnated (252d-e). He perceives the image of that God in the beloved and seeks to further shape him into that image. Socrates explains:

“Those who followed Zeus, for example, choose someone to love who is a Zeus himself in the nobility of his soul. So they make sure he has a talent for philosophy and the guidance of others, and once they have found him and are in love with him they do everything to develop that talent. If any lovers have not yet embarked on this practice, then they start to learn, using any source they can and also making progress on their own. They are well equipped to track down their God’s true nature with their own resources because of their driving need to gaze at the God, and as they are in touch with the God by memory they are inspired by him and adopt his customs and practices, so far as a human being can share in a God’s life. For all of this they know they have the boy to thank, and so they love him all the more and if they draw their inspiration from Zeus, then, like the Bacchants, they pour into the soul of the one they love in order to help him take on as much of their own God’s qualities as possible” (252e-253b).

And again:

“They take their God’s path and seek for their own boy whose nature is like the God’s; and when they have got him they emulate the God, convincing the boy they love and training him to follow their God’s pattern and way of life, so far as is possible in each case. They show no envy, no mean-spirited lack of generosity, toward the boy, but make every possible effort to draw him into being totally like themselves and the God to whom they are devoted. This, then, is any true lover’s heart’s desire” (253b-c).

This, argues Socrates, is what Aphrodite inspires in true lovers. Yet, mortal love is more complicated due to the fact that the lover’s soul contains a bad horse with contrary desires. While the higher parts of his soul want to remember the forms and the Gods and to shape the beloved in the image of their patron deity, the lower part of his soul simply wants to have sex (254a). Socrates maintains that this part of the soul must be forcibly restrained and rehabituated for an erotic relationship to flower into something redemptive (254e). He claims that if both lover and beloved are successful in restraining their bad horses and take up “the assigned regimen of philosophy”, they will experience “bliss and shared understanding” in their earthly life, and, after death, they will have “won the first of three rounds in these, the true Olympic Contests. There is no greater good than this that either human self-control or divine madness can offer a man” (256b), since if they are successful in their next two incarnations as well, they will have a chance to once more join the heavenly retinue and behold the world of the forms.³³

This myth of the fall and redemption of the soul constitutes Socrates’ chief argument for the superiority of the lover to the non-lover. He notes that the goods provided by the prudent calculations of the non-lover are merely mortal, in contrast to the divine goods delivered by the madness of Aphrodite, declaring:

“These are the rewards you will have from a lover’s friendship, my boy, and they are as great as divine gifts should be. A non-lover’s companionship, on the other hand, is diluted by human self-control; all it pays are cheap, human dividends, and though the slavish attitude it engenders in a friend’s soul is widely praised as virtue, it tosses the soul around for nine thousand years on earth and leads it, mindless, beneath it” (256e-257a).

Here Socrates contends that the kind of slavish utilitarian reasoning commonly held up as a virtue actually proves to be a vice which leads ultimately to the soul’s punishment in Tartarus, while the madness of Aphrodite, in contrast, leads to liberation from mortal ills.

Finally, Socrates concludes his speech with a prayer to Love:

“So now, dear Love, this is the best and most beautiful palinode we could offer as payment for our debt, especially in view of the rather poetical choice of words Phaedrus made me use. Forgive us our earlier speeches in return for this one; be kind and gracious toward my expertise at love, which is your own gift to me: do not, out of anger, take it away or disable it; and grant that I may be held in higher esteem than ever by those who are beautiful. If Phaedrus and I said anything that shocked you in our earlier speech, blame it on Lysias, who was its father, and put a stop to his making speeches of this sort; convert him to philosophy like his brother Polemarchus so that his lover here may no longer play both sides as he does now, but simply devote his life to Love through philosophical discussions” (257a-b).

3. On Speech in General

Upon hearing Socrates’ new speech, Phaedrus proves himself particularly unresponsive to its content. He inquires neither into the complicated ontology sketched by Socrates (including its novel vision of the Gods and the realm of the forms existing beyond them), nor into the soul, its fall, and the hope of its redemption, nor, indeed, into Socrates’ indirect admonition through his prayer that he should abandon his passion for rhetoric and devote himself instead “to Love through philosophical discussions” (257b). Instead, he remains fixated on the rhetorical contest between Socrates and Lysias and fears that Lysias will not be able to deliver a speech to match the one Socrates has just delivered, both because he lacks the rhetorical skill to do so and because he may give up on writing speeches entirely on account of recent accusations of being a sophist (257c-d). Finding Phaedrus unresponsive to love, Socrates shifts the conversation to the object of Phaedrus’s love, speech-making, proposing that they examine the question of what it means to speak or write well or badly (258d).

Socrates signals this shift in communicative strategy by presenting a new myth, the myth of the Cicadas. Socrates notes how the Cicadas are singing above their heads in the heat of the day, and claims that he and Phaedrus must be diligent to remain awake and discuss the issue before them, rather than being lulled to sleep, like most people, by the Cicada’s song (259a). He claims that “if they see us in conversation, steadfastly sailing past them (παραπλέοντας)³⁴ as if they were the Sirens, they will be very pleased and immediately give us the gift from the Gods they are able to give to mortals” (259a-b). This gift, he claims, is a good report to the Muses. Socrates explains that “the cicadas used to be human beings who lived before the birth of the Muses” (259b). Once the Muses were born, these men were so “overwhelmed with the pleasure of singing that they forgot to eat or drink; so they died without even realizing it” (259c). After they died, they became Cicadas, and the Muses gave them the gift of not requiring nourishment. “Instead, they immediately burst into song, without food or drink, until it is time for them to die. After they die, they go to the Muses and tell each one of them which mortals have honored her” (259c). They report those who devote themselves to dance to Terpsichore, those who devote themselves to love to Erato, and those who devote themselves to philosophy “to Calliope, the oldest among them, and Urania, the next after her, who preside over the heavens and all discourse, and sing with the sweetest voice” (259d).

Though Socrates’ story of the Cicadas has a comic aspect, the Cicadas, and, by extension, the Muses they serve, are nonetheless depicted therein as rather sinister figures. He compares them to sirens, whose enchanting song was said to lure sailors to their deaths in the Odyssey, and points out how their afternoon song lures people to sleep as if they were “slaves” or “sheep gathering around the spring in the afternoon” (259a). And the very fact that Cicadas are Cicadas and not men is an ominous portent in light of the mythology of Socrates’ prior speech wherein souls descending to the material world never first incarnate as animals, since animals lack the language necessary for recollecting the divine world. And further ill omens can be found in the fact that those who became Cicadas died without being aware of it by failing to eat or drink, and that, after being incarnated in their insect form, they are given the “gift” of requiring no nutrition whatsoever. This again contrasts with the central myth of Socrates’ previous speech in which the highest good of the soul is to feast with the Gods by beholding true Reality. And so, by offering this myth of the Cicadas to transition from the discussion of love to the discussion of rhetoric, Socrates insinuates that Phaedrus, like the Cicadas, may be dead without knowing it. He is oblivious to the true nature of love and the soul, and is fixated instead upon the empty pleasures of songs that give no true sustenance. Furthermore, Socrates’ new myth also serves to redefine the scope of the discussion. Whereas previously the philosopher and the lover were treated as a unit, now Socrates will discuss a form of philosophy that is distinct from erotic love, with lovers serving the Muse Erato, and philosophers serving Calliope and Urania who “preside… over discourse” (259d). In this manner, having failed to convince Phaedrus to take up philosophy as an art of love, Socrates now attempts to convert Phaedrus to different form of philosophy he may be capable of understanding, philosophy as an art of talking.

After Socrates shares this myth, Phaedrus agrees that they should talk and not waste the afternoon in sleep (259d), and they thus begin to examine the question: “When is a speech well written and delivered, and when is it not?” (259e). Socrates begins by proposing that knowing the truth is a presupposition for speaking well (259e), but Phaedrus rejects this assertion, saying that what matters is not the truth itself, but what seems true to one’s audience, claiming, “it is not necessary for the intending orator to learn what is really just, but only what will seem just to the crowd who will act as judges. Nor again what is really good or noble, but only what will seem so. For that is what persuasion proceeds from, not truth” (260a).

Socrates then attempts to refute this contention by way of an example. He asks Phaedrus to consider a case in which a man is ignorant of the nature of horses, and thereby mistakes donkeys for horses. Suppose that this man then gives a speech based on his misunderstanding and praises the virtues of these “horses” in military combat (260b). If a city were actually to rely on his speech and mount their calvary on donkeys, they would be led to ruin. So too, Socrates contends, is a city misled by a rhetorician who mistakes the good for the bad (260c). He asks:

“And so, when a rhetorician who does not know good from bad addresses a city which knows no better and attempts to sway it, not praising a miserable donkey as if it were a horse, but bad as if it were good, and, having studied what the people believe, persuades them to do something bad instead of good—with that as its seed, what sort of crop do you think rhetoric can harvest?” (260c-d).

But Socrates then considers a possible objection available to the advocate of sophistic rhetoric. Such a rhetorician might claim that he does not maintain that one shouldn’t learn the truth, indeed, it would be beneficial to know it. His contention, however, is that “someone who knows the truth couldn’t produce conviction on the basis of a systematic art” without rhetoric (260d).

Socrates responds to this objection by arguing that if rhetoric were to be a systematic art, then it would be identical to philosophy. He he begins by defining rhetoric as the attempt to direct “the soul by means of speech” both in private and in public and in issues both great and small (261a). Phaedrus at first is hesitant to accept this broader definition of rhetoric, saying that he has only heard of it being applied to speeches in the lawcourts or the assembly (261b). But Socrates persuades him by citing some rhetorical treatises allegedly written by Nestor and Odysseus, two Homeric heroes who used their powers of speech in all sorts of situations, and a treatise by someone he calls Eleatic Palamedes (who seems strikingly similar to Parmenides’ pupil Zeno) (261b). Socrates argues that just as people argue both sides of a case in a lawcourt, philosophers like Zeno apply the same sic et non to emperical objects as such, arguing that “the same things” are “both similar and dissimilar, both one and many, both at rest and also in motion” (261d). Phaedrus accepts this expanded definition of rhetoric and they proceed.

Socrates then contends that such an art must range over similarities. “By means of it one can make out as similar anything that can be so assimilated, to everything to which it can be made similar, and expose anyone who tries to hide the fact that that is what he is doing” (261e). It is by knowledge of the similarities between things that one is best able to deceive others, since deception is easier in cases where two things are similar (and so one can be passed off as the other) than in cases where two things are clearly dissimilar (and so cannot be mistaken for one another) (261e). For example, if you wanted to deceive someone into thinking a wax fruit was a real fruit, it would be easier to try to convince your mark that a wax apple was an apple than that a wax banana was. Socrates argues that, in this manner, by making a series of small steps each of which involves a close similarity to the one before, one can “shift from one thing to its opposite”, and that knowledge of this procedure protects one from being deceived oneself (262a).³⁵ So, to master the art of rhetoric, one “must know precisely the respects in which things are similar and dissimilar to one another” (262a). But Socrates then points out that this knowledge of the similarities and dissimilarities between things presupposes the knowledge of what things are essentially. It is by understanding, for example, that x is F, that one understands how it is similar to dissimilar to a y that is G. Socrates queries, “could someone, then, who doesn’t know what each thing is ever have the art to lead others little by little through similarities away from what is the case on each occasion to its opposite? Or could he escape this being done to himself?” (262b). He believes the answer to be an emphatic “no”, and concludes that any rhetorician who is ignorant of the truth of things and merely “chases opinions” fails to possess a genuine art (262c).

In fact, argues Socrates, knowledge of the essences of things is acquired by none other than the art of philosophical dialectic. This art, he claims, consists of two fundamental skills. The first is subsuming individual entities under a universal– “seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give” (265d). And the second is dividing universals into the natural kinds that fall under them– “to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do” (265e). Socrates explains:

“I myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that I may be able to think and to speak; and if I believe that someone else is capable of discerning a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many, I follow ‘straight behind, in his tracks, as if he were a God.’ God knows whether this is the right name for those who can do this correctly or not, but so far I have always called them ‘dialecticians’” (266b).³⁶

So, Socrates argues, if Phaedrus wants to study the art of rhetoric, he must learn philosophy. But Phaedrus objects declaring Socrates may well have defined the art of dialectic, but he still hasn’t given an account of rhetoric. Socrates asks him what he thinks has been left out of his account, and Phaedrus replies that he has not discussed the techniques “written up in the books on the art of speaking” (266d). Socrates then catalogs these manuals and their techniques such as preambles, statements of facts and evidence, indirect evidence, refutation, speaking in maxims, speaking in images, etc. (266d-267d), and Phaedrus confirms that these are the sorts of things he has in mind. But Socrates then points out that knowledge of these techniques would not constitute an art of rhetoric. He makes his argument by drawing an analogy to similar cases in the arts of medicine, tragedy, and music. Simply knowing techniques that allowed one to raise or lower temperatures in people’s bodies, or to make them vomit or defecate, would not suffice for knowledge of the art of medicine, since to be a doctor one must know when, to whom, and to what extent to apply such treatments (268b). Similarly, merely knowing how to write long passages on trivial topics and short passages on grave topics, or to write in such a way as to evoke pity or fear, would not suffice for a knowledge of the art of tragedy if one lacked the knowledge of how to fit these elements together into a single play (268d). Likewise, simply knowing how to produce the highest and lowest notes on strings would not suffice for knowledge of the art of music. For what one would have learned in this case would be what is “necessary to learn before you study harmony, but not harmony itself.” In like manner, argues Socrates, learning the techniques contained in rhetorical handbooks is a prerequisite to the art of rhetoric, rather than the art itself. Contemporary rhetoricians thus think they have mastered an art, when in fact “they have mastered only what is necessary to learn as preliminaries” (269b). Indeed, hey cannot even define what rhetoric is, since “they are ignorant of dialectic” (269b).³⁷

Finally convinced, Phaedrus asks how to go about learning this true art of rhetoric (269d). Socrates notes that it will likely not come by following famous rhetoricians like Lysias and Thrasymachus (269d), but by following the strategy adopted by Pericles when he worked with Anaxagoras.³⁸ Socrates explains:

“All the great arts require endless talk and ethereal speculation about nature: this seems to be what gives them their lofty point of view and universal applicability. That’s just what Pericles mastered—besides having natural ability. He came across Anaxagoras, who was just that sort of man, got his full dose of ethereal speculation, and understood the nature of mind and mindlessness—just the subject on which Anaxagoras had the most to say. From this, I think, he drew for the art of rhetoric what was useful for it” (270a).

Just as one must learn the nature of the body if one is to learn medicine, so too must one learn the nature of the soul if one is to learn rhetoric (270b). And, in order to learn the nature of the body or soul, one must understand “the nature of the world as a whole” (τῆς τοῦ ὅλου φύσεως)(270c).

Socrates then adopts the Hippocratic method which claims that to know the nature of anything one must determine whether it is simple or complex. If it is complex, it should be broken down into its subsidiary parts until one reaches its simple constituents. And, once one grasps the fundamental simple constituents of a thing, the causal powers of each should be analyzed. “What things does it have what natural power of acting upon? By what things does it have what disposition to be acted upon?” (270d).

The rhetorician must therefore provide such an analysis of the soul, “since it is in the soul that he attempts to produce conviction” (271a). He must “describe the soul with absolute precision and enable us to understand what it is: whether it is one and homogeneous by nature or takes many forms, like the shape of bodies” (271a). And, after discovering what the soul is, he must analyze its causal powers (271a). He must then explain how various forms of speech affect various souls. He has to “classify the kinds of speech and of soul there are, as well as the various ways in which they are affected, and explain what causes each. He will then coordinate each kind of soul with the kind of speech appropriate to it. And he will give instructions concerning the reason why one kind of soul is necessarily convinced by one kind of speech while another necessarily remains unconvinced” (271b). And then, after grasping the theoretical truths of his art in this manner, the rhetorician must gain the practical skill of knowing when to apply which rule to the cases that confront him (271e-272a). This, and only this, claims Socrates, is what must be learned to master the true art of rhetoric (272b).

He then concludes his case as follows:

“No one will ever possess the art of speaking, to the extent that any human being can, unless he acquires the ability to enumerate the sorts of characters to be found in any audience, to divide everything according to its kinds, and grasp each single thing firmly by means of one form. And no one can acquire these abilities without great effort—a laborious effort a sensible man will make not in order to speak and act among human beings, but so as to be able to speak and act in a way that pleases the Gods as much as possible. Wiser people than ourselves… say that a reasonable man must put his mind to being pleasant not to his fellow slaves (though this may happen as a side effect) but to his masters, who are wholly good” (273d-274a).

With that Socrates claims to have answered the question about the grounds of good and bad speech, and turns to the question of what good and bad writing consists in (274b).³⁹

In answer to this question, Socrates once more appeals to a myth, this time one he claims comes from the ancients (274c), though Phaedrus suspects he is simply making it up (275b). Socrates maintains that once upon a time in ancient Egypt, when king Thamus, also called Ammon, was reigning in Thebes, Theuth, the God who discovered “number and calculation, geometry and astronomy, as well as the games of checkers and dice, and, above all else, writing” (274d), came to visit in order to “exhibit his arts to him and urged him to disseminate them to all the Egyptians. Thamus asked about the usefulness of each of the arts, and Theuth would explain them. Thamus would then issue his evaluation praising what seemed right in the explanations, and criticizing what seemed wrong” (274e). When it came time to evaluate the art of writing, Theuth declared: “O king, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom” (274e). But Thamus objected that this was not the case, claiming instead that writing “will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding, you provide our students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will appear to be wise instead of really being so” (275a-b).

So, according to this myth, instead of serving to enhance memory, writing actually serves to cripple it, since people come to rely on external signs to remind them of things rather than actually using their own internal ability to remember. In this way people will appear to gain wisdom, when, in fact, they remain just as ignorant as before, if not more so, since they now think they are wise when they are not. Furthermore, Socrates argues that written words, like images in a realistic painting, “stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything they remain solemnly silent” (275d). It is easy to imagine that hearing a text is like hearing someone speak, but, in fact, unlike a living speaker, if you ask a text a question about what it has “said” it will never answer. “It continues to signify just that very same thing forever” (275d). Likewise, a written text lacks the discretion to judge to whom it should speak and to whom it should remain silent. Socrates puts the point as follows:

“When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support” (275e).

Plato offers a similar critique of writing in his Seventh Letter, arguing that physical writing is incapable of conveying philosophical truth. In this letter, he declares that there exists no writing of his on philosophical matters, “nor will there ever be one” (Letter VII, 341c). “For this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other sciences; but after long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject, suddenly, like light flashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and straightway nourishes itself” (Letter VII, 341c). He claims that if he thought his teaching could be “put into written words adequate for the multitude”, he would have done so, since it would have been a noble deed to give “such great benefit to mankind and bring to light the nature of things for all to see” (Letter VII, 341d). But he doesn’t think that such a work is possible, declaring:

“But I do not think that the “examination,” as it is called, of these questions would be of any benefit to men, except to a few, i.e., to those who could with a little guidance discover the truth by themselves. Of the rest, some would be filled with an ill-founded and quite unbecoming disdain, and some with an exaggerated and foolish elation, as if they had learned something grand” (Letter VII, 341e).

Plato claims that the reason philosophical truth cannot be expressed in writing is that our merely human means of knowing (i.e. names, definitions, and images) are inadequate to the objects of knowledge (i.e. the forms). He explains:

“There is a true doctrine that confutes anyone who has presumed to write anything whatever on such subjects… For every real being, there are three things that are necessary if knowledge of it is to be acquired: first, the name; second, the definition; third, the image; knowledge comes fourth, and in the fifth place we must put the object itself, the knowable and truly real being” (Letter VII, 342a-b).

According to this passage, there are five ontological components at play whenever a real object is known. To clarify Plato’s position, let’s consider the example of an apple, even though such an empirical object likely would not qualify as a real object in Plato’s view. Knowledge of an apple presupposes the existence of i) the name, “apple”, ii) the definition, say, “the fruit of the malus tree”, iii) the image, the familiar image of a red round fruit, iv) the knowledge itself, and v) the object itself, the apple. One might, for example, know an apple by being able to apply the name “apple” when confronted with the sensory image of an apple and to provide the definition “the fruit of the malus tree” when asked what that object is.

But the problem for writing arises from the “weakness of language” (342a) when one tries to use it to know real objects rather than merely empirical ones. Plato illustrates this point by appealing to the geometrical form the circle. Plato argues that names, to begin with, are incapable of expressing the essences of things. Though we currently use the name “circle” to refer to circles, we might just as easily have designated them with the words “straight lines” and straight lines with the word “circles” (343b). Yet the essence of a circle remains fixed despite any such variations in the names by which we choose to designate it (343b). Names are arbitrary while essences are fixed. And Plato argues that the same problem holds for definitions. For definitions, he claims, are nothing but “a combination of nouns and verbs” and so are liable to the same problems as names. “There is nothing surely fixed about” them (343b). And finally, Plato argues that images also fail to capture the essences of things. He observes that “every circle that we make or draw in common life is full of characteristics that contradict the ‘fifth,’ [i.e. the circle as a real geometrical object] for it everywhere touches a straight line, while the circle itself, we say, has in it not the slightest element belonging to a contrary nature” (343a).

Our ordinary human means of knowing, then, are insufficient to secure knowledge of true reality:

“The soul seeks to know not the quality but the essence, whereas each of these… instruments presents to the soul, in discourse and in examples, what she is not seeking, and thus makes it easy to refute by sense perception anything that may be said or pointed out, and fills everyone, so to speak, with perplexity and confusion” (343c).

And Plato criticizes writing not only on account of the weaknesses of human language but also on account of the weaknesses of human readers. He explains:

“By the repeated use of all these instruments, ascending and descending to each in turn, it is barely possible for knowledge to be engendered of an object naturally good, in a man naturally good; but if his nature is defective, as is that of most men, for the acquisition of knowledge and the so-called virtues, and if the qualities he has have been corrupted, then not even Lynceus could make such a man see. In short, neither quickness of learning nor a good memory can make a man see when his nature is not akin to the object, for this knowledge never takes root in an alien nature; so that no man who is not naturally inclined and akin to justice and all other forms of excellence, even though he may be quick at learning and remembering this and that and other things, nor any man who, though akin to justice, is slow at learning and forgetful, will ever attain the truth that is attainable about virtue… Only when all of these things—names, definitions, and visual and other perceptions—have been rubbed against one another and tested, pupil and teacher asking and answering questions in good will and without envy—only then, when reason and knowledge are at the very extremity of human effort, can they illuminate the nature of any object” (343e-344b).

And so:

“Whenever we see a book, whether the laws of a legislator or a composition on any other subject, we can be sure that if the author is really serious, this book does not contain his best thoughts; they are stored away with the fairest of his possessions. And if he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it is because men, not the Gods, ‘have taken his wits away’” (344c).

In the Phaedrus, Socrates contrasts such pseudo-writing with true writing, which he calls its legitimate brother. In contrast to the writing inscribed in books, true writing “is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener (μετ᾽ ἐπιστήμης γράφεται ἐν τῇ τοῦ μανθάνοντος ψυχῇ); it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent” (276a). And to this, Phaedrus declares: “You mean the living, breathing discourse of the man who knows (τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον), of which the written one can be fairly called an image” (276a).⁴⁰

Socrates likens the true writer to a farmer who uses “his knowledge of farming to plant the seeds he cared for” in their appropriate seasons and is content to wait for them to grow in their natural time (276b). The dialectician, claims Socrates, resembles such a farmer. He explains:

“The dialectian chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge (μετ᾽ ἐπιστήμης λόγους)—discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human being can be” (276e-277a).

In contrast the pseudo-writer, who writes in ink, is like a farmer who plants his seeds in pots for the festival of Adonis, Aphrodite’s young lover who died before he could grow into adulthood, and allows them to shoot up in seven days to be destroyed in the festival.⁴¹ Such a farmer plants his seeds not expecting a harvest, but “as an amusement (παιδιᾶς) and in honor of the holiday” (276b).⁴² And the same holds true for the writer of books:

“When he writes, it’s likely he will sow gardens of letters for the sake of amusing himself, storing up reminders for himself ‘when he reaches forgetful old age’ and for everyone who wants to follow in his footsteps, and will enjoy seeing them sweetly blooming. And when others turn to different amusements, watering themselves with drinking parties and everything else that goes along with them, he will rather spend his time amusing himself with the things I have just described” (276d).

Such a writer does not take writing as a serious endeavor but only as a means to amuse himself as others amuse themselves at drinking parties. Socrates observes that such is the man:

“Who thinks that a written discourse on any subject can only be a great amusement, that no discourse worth serious attention has ever been written in verse or prose, and that those that are recited in public without questioning and explanation, in the manner of the rhapsodes, are given only in order to produce conviction (πειθοῦς ). He believes that at their very best these can only serve as reminders to those who already know. And he also thinks that only what is said for the sake of understanding and learning, what is truly written in the soul concerning what is just, noble, and good can be clear, perfect, and worth serious attention: such discourses should be called his own legitimate children, first the discourse he may have discovered already within himself and then its sons and brothers who may have grown naturally in other souls insofar as these are worthy; to the rest, he turns his back. Such a man, Phaedrus, would be just what you and I both would pray to become” (277e-278b).

Conclusion

With this discussion of writing, Socrates takes himself to have answered the question of when a speech is artfully written and when it is not (277b), and claims to have completed his “playful amusement regarding discourse” (οὐκοῦν ἤδη πεπαίσθω μετρίως ἡμῖν τὰ περὶ λόγων) (278b). He asks Phaedrus to deliver a message to Lysias (and other speech writers), Homer (and other poets), and Solon (and other legislators) (278c): that if they have composed anything “with a knowledge of the truth”, can “defend” their “writing when challenged”, and can take up the opposing point of view and argue that their “writing is of little worth” (278c), then they must be called not by a name derived from their writings and the mere twisting around of words (278d), but from the subject matter they actually pursue, philosophy (278d). Phaedrus asks what such a name would be, and Socrates answers that, “to call him wise… seems to me too much, and proper only for a God. To call him wisdom’s lover—a philosopher—or something similar would fit him better and be more seemly” (278d).

Phaedrus, instead of agreeing to convey Socrates’ message to Lysias, attempts to change the subject by asking what Socrates has to say about his beautiful friend Isocrates, inquiring “what shall we say he is?” (278e). Socrates responds that though Isocrates is still young (279a), he will nonetheless give a prophecy (μαντεύομαι) concerning him. He declares that Isocrates has a nature capable of outperforming all the rhetorical masters of his day and of making “everyone who has ever attempted to compose a speech seem like a child in comparison”, especially if he tires of conventional writing and takes up philosophy, since “nature… has placed the love of wisdom in his mind” (279b). That, declares Socrates, “is the message I will carry to my beloved, Isocrates, from the Gods of this place; and you have your own message for your Lysias” (279b).

Phaedrus concedes, but suggests that they leave since it has begun to cool down (279b). However, Socrates points out that it would be inappropriate to depart without offering a prayer to the Gods, and Phaedrus once more concedes (279b). Socrates then gives the following prayer to Pan and the other local deities:

“O dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him” (279c).

Socrates asks Phaedrus whether he has anything to add, and Phaedrus responds that he doesn’t and requests that Socrates make the same prayer for him as well, since “friends have everything in common” (279c). The dialogue then ends with Socrates announcing “let’s be off” (279c). In this manner, the dialogue ends as it began, with Socrates and Phaedrus on the move.

What are we to make of this puzzling text? We seem to have just a read a serious philosophical work which argues that serious philosophical works cannot be written. How can we make sense of this paradox? We appear to be left with one of two strategies for resolving this enigma. On the one hand, we might solve the problem by denying the claim that Plato offered the Phaedrus as a serious philosophical work. Perhaps, as Socrates suggests, it was penned as a mere “amusement” (276d-e, 277e, 278b), and was not intended to convey Plato’s serious philosophical doctrines. On the other hand, we might also solve the problem by arguing that Plato’s specifically dialogical form of writing can overcome Socrates’ argument that writing is incapable of expressing philosophical truth. Or, perhaps, these two strategies prove to be, in fact, identical. For a dialogue is an amusement in the sense that it does not express philosophical truths directly, but forces us to infer them from the dialectical exchange between the interlocutors. Yet, by writing in this manner, Plato may nonetheless attempt to express philosophical truths indirectly, embedding clues in the text for those who know to ponder and recollect. If this is so, then, like the oracles of old, rightly interpreting a Platonic dialogue will require an intense hermeneutical effort, an effort demanding all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength, to read the signs aright.

How, then, are we to interpret the signs given to us in the Phaedrus? Ultimately, each reader must decide this for him or herself, and so I’ll leave that question for you to ponder. Nonetheless, I’ll conclude by pointing out some patterns I see.

First, Plato has given several indications in the Phaedrus to suggest that Socrates’ assertions should not be taken at face value. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the fact we have noted above, namely, that within this text Socrates rejects texts as an adequate means of articulating philosophical truths while himself attempting to articulate such truths. But Plato has left other hints as well. For example, Socrates warns how rhetoricians use similarities to deceive their audience (262b), yet, his majestic vision of the fall and redemption of the soul in the palinode is itself introduced as expressing not truth but likeness (246a).⁴³ Or again, Plato puts a false prophecy about Isocrates into the mouth of Socrates. For Socrates praises Isocrates and claims that nature has endowed him with a noble character and a gift for philosophy (279a), but people in Plato’s own day would have known Isocrates to have been unconcerned with philosophy and to have set up a rhetorical school more famous than Plato’s academy.⁴⁴ Or yet again, Socrates seems to admit he is keeping secrets from us when he claims that whenever he sees a dialectician, he follows him “straight behind, in his tracks, as if he were a God” (266c). These words are a direct quotation from Homer’s Odyssey (II.406) in which Telemachus follows Athena after she has knocked out the suitors, prepared a ship for him, and commanded him to journey forth in search of news of his lost father. By alluding to this passage, Socrates invokes the theme of secrecy for those clever enough to follow along with him, since, in the immediate context of this passage, Telemachus has told his trusted servant Eurycleia to keep quiet about his upcoming expedition (II.372-376) and announces to his crew: “Here, friends, let us carry the provisions. They are all ready and stacked in the hall. But my mother has been told nothing of this, nor the rest of the serving women. Only one knows the story (μία δ᾽ οἴη μῦθον ἄκουσεν)” (II.410-412). With these facts in mind, Socrates’ claim that those who write manuals of rhetoric “are cunning (πανοῦργοι) people: they hide (ἀποκρύπτονται) the fact that they know very well everything about the soul (εἰδότες ψυχῆς πέρι παγκάλως)” (271c) begins to take on a new meaning.

If Socrates’ exoteric doctrines are not meant to be taken literally, and he (and Plato) knows more about the nature of the soul than he claims, it may be useful to search for clues of a deeper teaching hidden in the text. I believe Plato has left several such clues hidden, like the Gods of the landscape, in plain sight.

One such clue is the fact that Socrates concludes with a prayer to Pan (279b). This conclusion is anticipated by Socrates’ earlier rather abrupt and unexpected conclusion to his discussion of what makes a speech good or bad, when he declared that the goal of speech is not to please men, but to please the Gods, one’s true masters who are wholly good (273e-274a). Socrates’ prayer to Pan further emphasizes this transcendent dimension of speech, a dimension to which ordinary rhetoric is oblivious. There are several reasons why Pan in particular would be invoked here. First, Socrates has noted earlier in the dialogue that Pan is the son of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods (263d). To pray to Pan would thus to be to invoke a relation to a divine dimension of language. And this would be further emphasized by the fact that in some versions of the myth Pan is said to be the son of Hermes and Odysseus’ wife Penelope (Herodotus, Histories II.145). Now, Odysseus was the greatest speaker of the Homeric heroes and his wife Penelope was likewise praised for her cleverness that allowed her to preserve her chastity despite the opposition of the suitors. So, in appealing to Pan as the son of Hermes and Penelope, Plato is calling attention to a divine speech capable of outstripping even the highest of Homeric virtues. Second, the invocation of Pan hearkens back to Socrates’ attempt to fulfill the Delphic injunction to “know thyself”. Earlier, Socrates had declared that he had no time for investigating myths, since he did not yet know himself and was not sure whether he was “a beast more complicated and savage than Typhon” or an animal of a tamer simpler nature (230a). By invoking Pan at the end of the dialogue, Socrates appeals to a myth capable of putting the monster Typhon to flight, since Pan, as Aegipan (Goat-Pan), was instrumental in Zeus’s defeat of Typhon. According to Apollodorus, Typhon had defeated Zeus in their first battle, and had cut out Zeus’s sinews and sealed them away so he could no longer move. But Aegipan, along with Hermes, snuck into where they had been hidden, stole them, and returned them to Zeus. Once Zeus had thus regained his strength, he challenged Typhon and decisively defeated him (Apollodorus 1.6.3). Likewise, under the epithet of Aigokeros (the goat horned one), Pan was decisive in defeating the Titans in the Titanomachy. For he discovered under the ocean a horn which, when blown, was capable of terrifying the Titans and putting them to flight (Epimenides).⁴⁵ So, instead of myth being superfluous to the pursuit of self-knowledge as Socrates had previously suggested, Socrates now appears to have found a tale capable of putting to flight the monsters of human nature. And, finally, the invocation of Pan also helps to fulfill the Delphic injunction through another meaning of the word “Pan”, since πᾶν is also the word for “all”, as in “ἕν καί πᾶν”, “one and all”. So, again, Plato indicates that the quest for self-knowledge must be undertaken in prayer, since, as Socrates had pointed out earlier, in order to know the nature of the soul, one must know the nature of the cosmos as a whole (270c).⁴⁶

A second clue to the hidden teaching of the Phaedrus is the glaring, yet unremarked presence of the sun throughout the dialogue. As noted earlier, the sun’s journey through the sky determines the action of the dialogue. Phaedrus studies indoors with Lysias as it rises in the morning, he then walks outside, and he and Socrates perform their two speeches in praise of the non-lover as it continues to rise overhead. Then, as it reaches its height at midday, Socrates recites his Palinode. As it begins to decline, Socrates and Phaedrus discuss their speeches and the nature of rhetoric, and, when things begin to cool off, they return to the city. And the sun likewise plays a prominent role in the Myth of Theuth, since Socrates notes that Thamus, the king of Egypt, was also called Ammon, another name for the Sun God Ra (274d).

This hidden dominance of the sun in the Phaedrus should lead us to recall Socrates’ Analogy of the Sun in the Republic wherein he likens the Form of the Good to the Sun, claiming that just as we need the light of the sun to perceive sensory objects, so too do we need illumination from the Form of the Good to cognize any other forms (Republic VI 506d-509c). Yet, explicit discussion of the Form of the Good is notably absent from the Phaedrus which focuses instead on the form of Beauty (Phaedrus 250d-e) as it is manifested in speech and the human form.

The dialogue’s seeming obliviousness to the Form of the Good and almost obsessive preoccupation with beauty, should lead us to wonder whether other central truths have been either distorted or ignored as a result. For example, one wonders whether Socrates’ assertion that eternal self-motion is “the very essence and principle” of the soul is a result of this obsessive quest for beauty. Socrates gives a cosmological argument for the perpetual self-motion of the soul, arguing that, without the soul, we would have no ultimate explanation of motion in the cosmos (245e). But, as Aristotle would later point out, the causal regress is not adequately explained by self-motion, and a more adequate explanation comes by positing an ultimate mover that is itself unmoved (Metaphysics XII.6). And, while there does seem to be an apparent empirical connection between motion and the soul, since living bodies are distinguished from dead ones in that the former move while the latter don’t, and since the mind seems to constantly “move” through a turbulent stream of thoughts and sensations, yet, this may not be truly essential to the soul. Might we not conceive of the soul not as the burning desire driving us from one mental act to the next, but as the still point from which the flow of experience is observed? The possibility of stillness is again conspicuously raised only to be ignored in the myth of the soul’s journey in the palinode when Socrates notes that, while all the other Gods go out to their feast, “Hestia is the only one who remains at the home of the Gods” (247a). Now, to those versed in Pythagoreanism, as Plato was, Hestia is a significant deity. She was identified with the central fire around which the other planets in the solar system revolved and whose light the sun was said to reflect.⁴⁷ So, the very fact that Hestia does not venture out on the journey like the rest of the deities in the palinode should lead us to consider whether there is another path for the soul, one which might reveal a light more glorious than can be observed following after the Gods on the path of desire.

And these hints of another path are also suggested by allusions and contrasts that Plato draws between the perpetual motion of the soul depicted in the Phaedrus and Parmenides’ journey to the house of the Goddess in On Nature. Plato makes several allusions to Parmenides’ journey in the Phaedrus. For example, the sun’s course through the sky which controls the sequence of events in the Phaedrus, was also known as “the path of the daimon”, the path that took Parmenides to the house of the Goddess (Parmenides, D4 Laks and Most).⁴⁸ Or again, when Phaedrus declares that true writing, “the living breathing discourse” which inscribes truth in the soul, belongs only to “the man who knows” (τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον) (276a), Plato calls to mind Parmenides’ claim that the path of the daimon “carries through all towns the man who knows (εἰδότα φῶτα)” (D4). Or yet again, there is Socrates’ praise of “the Eleatic Palamedes”, Parmenides’ disciple Zeno, who proved that dialectic appplies not only in lawcourts and the assembly, but in every aspect of empirical reality by showing that “the same things” are “both similar and dissimilar, both one and many, both at rest and also in motion” (261d). And finally, there is Socrates’ declaration that he and Phaedrus must remain awake to sail past (παραπλέω) the siren song of the Cicadas (249a). Plato seems to be drawing an allusion to the beginning of the dialectical section of On Nature when the Goddess declares that she will teach Parmenides the world of appearance so that no one might sail past (παρελαύνω) him (D8).

Yet these allusions seem to be included merely to signpost the contrast between Parmenides’ journey and the journey sketched in the Phaedrus. Whereas Parmenides actually takes to the sky, treading the sun’s course, Socrates and Phaedrus remain below, shuffling out of the city only to return again. Whereas Parmenides is carried by divine mares and led by the daughters of the sun (D4), the human souls in Socrates’ palinode struggle to follow the Gods, and, bereft of divine aid, trample each other in the ensuing war of all against all (248a-b).⁴⁹ And whereas Parmenides is brought to the house of the Goddess, the house “where the gate of the paths of night and day is” (D4), to be taught by her directly about the nature of Being, the souls in the palinode venture out with the Gods seeking to feast upon the vision of the forms existing beyond the edge of heaven (247c-e). In this manner, Plato once more signals a contrast between the philosophical path explicitly discussed in the Phaedrus, a path of yearning and unendliche Annäherung, and another philosophical path, a path wherein one moves without motion and not only seeks wisdom, but actually finds her.

Plato’s writing thus appears to operate at two levels: the exoteric and the esoteric. At the exoteric level, Plato’s dialogues draw us into the perpetual motion of dialectic as we try to follow along with each of the protagonists’ arguments, evaluating each in turn and attempting to correct them by constructing our own. But, at the esoteric level, Plato’s writing preserves a more primordial form of philosophy and an oracular mode of speech. At this level, the text knows “to whom it should speak and to whom it should not” (275e), and, when it chooses to make itself known, its words, like those of a mantra or the Vedas, effect the reality to which they refer. By writing thus twinned, with different messages conveyed at different levels, Plato has bequeathed to us a Hermetic game, a game to which, unfortunately, the rules have been largely forgotten. As a result, most of the subsequent history of western philosophy has been playing it wrongly, its crass logomachy and empty dialectical preening continuing to this day. It is often said that the history of western philosophy consists in a series of footnotes to Plato, but this isn’t entirely accurate. It would be more truthful to say he conjured it.

Peter Yong, Ph.D.

1See Catherine Nixey’s tendentious yet informative The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World.

2Burkert, Greek Religion, Chapter 8: Ecstasy and Divination, p. 224. “The preservation of oracular utterances was doubtless one of the earliest applications of the art of writing in Greece, which began to spread about 750. The utterance is thereby freed form the context of question and answer, and from the execution of ritual, and can become of importance at another time and another place.”

3Ibid.

4Ibid., 222. “It is clear that in the founding of the Greek colonies in the West and on the Black Sea from the middle of the eighth century the instructions of the Delphian God assume a leading role. Once again this is less a matter of predication than of helping to make decisions in these risky and often abortive undertakings. Later, important state constitutions are also submitted to the Delphian God for approval; this was done with the Spartan Rhetra which was attributed to Lycrugus and even with the thoroughly rational phylai constitution introduced by Cleisthenes in Athens in 510.” The oracle’s role in the founding of Elea is discussed in Herodotus, Histories I.164-167. Its role in the founding of Syracuse in Sicily is discussed in Ps-Plutarch, Moralia, Love Stories 772e-773b. And its role in the founding of Tarentum is discussed in Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.10.6-8.

5“Nah ist/ Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.” Hölderlin, Patmos.

6 This is illustrated in Herodotus’s story of king Croessus. According to Herodotus, Croesus, king of Lydia traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle as to “whether he should make war on the Persians,” and the Pythia responded that “if he made war on the Persians, he would destroy a great empire” (Herodotus, Histories I.53 trans. Dewald and Waterfield). Croessus, thinking that the meaning of the oracle was obvious, took it to indicate that he would destroy the Persian empire if he went to war, but learned afterwards that, in fact, the opposite was the case. The Empire to be destroyed was his own. Tales such as this served as warnings that the Gods’ messages are subtle, and that it requires all one’s attentiveness and cognitive resources to unlock their meaning.

7Burkert, Greek Religion, 222. “That Delphi manifestly failed to foresee the Greek victory in the Persian Wars and all to clearly recommended surrender badly damaged its reputation, in spite of all attempts to reinterpret its pronouncements. Thereafter political decisions were increasingly taken without reference to the oracle. Instead, we hear of inquiries by private individuals such as Chairephon’s question whether anyone was wiser than Socrates.”

8Plato may have been drawing a parallel to Sophocles’ treatment of the sophistic rejection of oracular wisdom in Oedipus Rex.

9Evola, Ride the Tiger, 8.

10In the Symposium, Alcibiades declares: “Isn’t he just like a statue of Silenus? You know the kind of statue I mean; you’ll find them in any shop in town. It’s a Silenus sitting, his flute or his pipes in his hands, and it’s hollow. It’s split right down the middle, and inside it’s full of tiny statues of the Gods” (215b). There are further religious implications to Plato’s simile here, since Silenus was an important figure in Orphic rites. Satyrs, for example, were believed to be some of the first initiated into the rites of Dionysus (Euripides Bacchae 120-134). “O secret chamber of the Kouretes and you holy Cretan caves, parents to Zeus, where the Korybantes with triple helmet invented for me in their caves this circle, covered with stretched hide; and in their excited revelry they mingled it with the sweet-voiced breath of Phrygian pipes and handed it over to mother Rhea, resounding with the sweet songs of the Bacchae; nearby, raving Satyrs were fulfilling the rites of the mother Goddess, and they joined it to the dances of the biennial festivals, in which Dionysus rejoices.” Likewise, Silenus himself is presented as the “foster father of Bacchos” in the Orphic Hymns, indicating that he raised and taught the God (Hymn to Silenos Satyros and the Bacchae).

11Andocides, appears to charge him with both crimes in On the Mysteries 15, but modern scholars argue that he was actually convicted of profaning the mysteries, not desecrating the Hermai. Nonetheless, given that the charges are presented together in this passage from Andocides, ancient readers would likely have thought of both. “An alien named Teucrus, resident in Athens, quietly withdrew to Megara. From Megara he informed the Council that if immunity were granted him, he was prepared not only to lodge an information with regard to the Mysteries—as one of the participants, he would reveal the names of his companions—but he would also tell what he knew of the mutilation of the Hermae. The Council, which had supreme powers at the time, voted acceptance; and messengers were sent to Megara to fetch him. He was brought to Athens, and on being granted immunity, furnished a list of his associates. No sooner had Teucrus denounced them than they fled the country. Take the list, please, and read out their names. Names: the following were denounced by Teucrus: Phaedrus, Gniphonides, Isonomus, Hephaestodorus, Cephisdorus, himself, Dionetus, Smindyrides, Philocrates, Atiphon, Teisarchus, Pantacles” (trans. Maidment).

12See again, Andocides, On the Mysteries. See also Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.27. “In the midst of these preparations all the stone Hermae in the city of Athens, that is to say the customary square figures so common in the doorways of private houses and temples, had in one night most of them their faces mutilated. No one knew who had done it, but large public rewards were offered to find the authors; and it was further voted that any one who knew of any other act of impiety having been committed should come and give information without fear of consequences, whether he were citizen, alien, or slave.”

13See Plato’s Apology and Phaedo.

14Nehamas and Woodruff’s translation of the Phaedrus will be used throughout this essay.

15Socrates and Phaedrus even give and discuss their speeches before a shirne to the river God Achelous and a group of Nymphs (230b). The Laws also recounts a conversation as people walk from Cnossus to Zeus’s shrine on Mt. Ida.

16Acumenus was the father of Eryximachus (268a), the physician who presented a speech in the Symposium. Notably, Acumenus and Eryximachus were also both accused of profaning the mysteries, and the former fled Athens in 415. See Nails, The People of Plato.

17“But you, I think, have found a potion to charm me into leaving. For just as people lead hungry animals forward by shaking branches of fruit before them, you can lead me all over Attica or anywhere else you like simply by waving in front of me the leaves of a book containing a speech” (230e).

18“The place appears to be dedicated to Achelous and some of the Nymphs, if we can judge from the statues and votive offerings.” (230b).

19Phaedrus: “Couldn’t this be the very spot? The stream is lovely, pure and clear: just right for girls to be playing nearby.” Socrates: “No, it is two or three hundred yards farther downstream, where one crosses to get to the district of Agra. I think there is even an altar to Boreas there.” (229b-c).

20He also invokes the Muses (237a), and delivers a message from his personal daimon (242c).

21And it is also interesting to note that though Socrates maintains that he has no time for the analysis of myths since he is concerned instead with attempting to attain self-knowledge, he roots this demand to know himself back to an inscription on Apollo’s Temple in Delphi. “But I have no time for such things; and the reason, my friend, is this. I am still unable, as the Delphic inscription orders, to know myself; and it really seems to me ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that. This is why I do not concern myself with them. I accept what is generally believed, and, as I was just saying, I look not into them but into my own self: Am I a beast more complicated and savage than Typhon, or am I a tamer, simpler animal with a share in a divine and gentle nature? (230a).

22See my essay “Manilius and the Planetary Joys”. https://premieretat.com/manilius-and-the-planetary-joys-an-alternative-pythagorean-account-of-the-places-in-hellenistic-astrology/

23See Goethe, Faust Part I, Night. Faust responds to Wagner that “what you don’t feel, you won’t hunt down by art, unless it wells from your own inward source, and with contentment’s elemental force takes sway of every hearer’s heart. Just sit there, pasting joints to members, concoct from others feasts your hash, and blow a puny glow of embers up from your little heap of ash! From minds of babes and apes you may be coining tribute of awe, if this be what you seek; but never heart to heart will you be joining unless you let your own heart speak” (trans. Arndt).

24LSJ III. Compare this to the Homeric and tragic usage as “fearful” or “terrible”. Note the transformation here from something sacred into something merely clever.

25He also argues that it is better to give favors to the non-lover rather than the lover, since it gives one more options to choose from (231d)!

26“That is why a lover prevents the boy from spending time with other people. He’s afraid that wealthy men will outshine him with their money, while men of education will turn out to have the advantage of greater intelligence. And he watches like a hawk everyone who may have any other advantage over him!” His ultimate goal being to have the beloved “completely isolated from friends” (232c-d).

27Note how Phaedrus’s irreverent attitude is once again on display here. It is also seen when he compares his future offering to “the offering of Cypselids in Olympia (236b), and in his oath to the plane tree as a divinity (236e).

28Phaedrus even invokes the threat of physical force. “Get it into your head that we shall not leave here until you recite what you claimed to have ‘in your breast.’ We are alone, in a deserted place, and I am younger and stronger. From all this, ‘take my meaning’ and don’t make me force you to speak when you can do so willingly” (236d).

29Socrates identifies these gifts with individual Gods later on in 265b, correlating prophetic madness with Apollo, mystical madness to Dionysus, Poetic madness to the muses, and the madness of lovers to Aphrodite.

30Socrates then adds a further etymological argument to bolster this basic point. He notes that originally prophecy was called “manic” and was meant to associate madness with “the finest experts of all—the ones who tell the future—thereby weaving insanity into prophecy”, but people today have forgotten this and added a “t” calling it “mantic” (244b). He contrasts this form of prophecy, with the more scientific kinds of divination such as the reading of bird omens, and declares direct inspiration to be superior. “To the extent then, that prophecy, mantic, is more perfect and admirable than sign-based prediction, oinonisitc, in both name and achievement, madness (mania) from a God is finer than self-control of human origin, according to the testimony of ancient language givers” (244d).

31The verb προσπαίζω can mean both to sport or jest and to sing. In fact, LSJ takes this example from the Phaedrus as meaning “to sing”. Def. II “c. acc., θεοὺς π. sing to the Gods, sing in their praise or honour, Pl.Epin.980b: c. dupl. acc., ὕμνον προσεπαίσαμεν . . τὸν . . Ἔρωτα sang a hymn in praise of Eros, Id.Phdr.265c.”

32Socrates observes that only “recent initiates” are capable of doing this. Those initiated long ago, or who have become defiled, stay focused on the beauty they see here and don’t recall the Beauty from above. They end up behaving like beasts and surrendering to pleasure (250e-251a).

33 Socrates notes that even if the lovers give in to temptation, they still have a better life than non-lovers. When they succumb to passion, they do so only sparingly “since they have not approved of what they are doing with their whole minds” (256c), and they still procure a better afterlife. “In death they are wingless when they leave the body, but their wings are bursting to sprout, so the prize they have won from the madness of love is considerable, because those who have begun the sacred journey in lower heaven may not by law be sent into darkness for the journey under the earth; their lives are bright and happy as they travel together, and thanks to their love they will grow wings together when the time comes” (256c).

34Compare παραπλέω used here and the similar παρελαύνω used by Parmenides in the introduction to the dialectical section of On Nature (D8).

35Later Socrates also argues that it is important for the rhetorician to distinguish between concepts wherein people are in agreement such as <iron> or <silver> and those wherein they disagree such as <just> or <good> (263b).

36 Socrates is here quoting Odyssey II.406. Athena has knocked out the suitors and calls Telemachus out to voyage in search of his father Odysseus. Telemachus tells the sailors to say nothing of it to his mother or the other servants. “Only one knows the story.”

37Socrates puts these words into the mouth of Adrastus, the leader of the seven against Thebes, or Pericles, the famous Athenian leader (269a).

38And once more Plato establishes an association with impiety, since Anaxagoras was exiled from Athens on such charges.

39Somewhat cryptically, Socrates takes this to be equivalent to the question of “how best to please God when you either use words or discuss them in general?” (274b).

40Compare to “the man who knows” (εἰδότα φῶτα) in Parmenides (D4).

41Zenobius, Cent. 1.49. Diogenianus, 1.14

42 Plato is making a play on words here. For παιδιᾶς can be a form of he word παιδία, which means education. But here it is a form of the word παιδιή, meaning childish play, game, sport, or pastime.

43“That, then, is enough about the soul’s immortality. Now here is what we must say about its structure. To describe what the soul actually is would require a very long account, altogether a task for a God in every way; but to say what is like is humanly possible and takes less time” (246a).

44See, Cooper ed. n. 78. See also https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isocrates and the entry in Nails, “The People of Plato”.

45“The story of Aigokerôs: honoured because he was a foster-brother of Zeus, being with him in Crete when he fought the Titans. Aigokerôs is believed to have discovered the horn, the sound of which put the Titans to flight. He and his mother the Goat were placed in the heavens by Zeus: because he found the horn in the sea, Aigokerôs has a fish-tail.” Epimenides Fragment.

46In addition to these reasons it is also fitting for Socrates to invoke Pan here, since Pan, as a quintessential nature spirit, would emphasize the role that nature, the realm outside of the city and its pretensions to culture, plays within this dialogue.

47Aristotle De Caelo II.13.1, 293b, Aëtius II.20.12 in Gutherie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol 1. The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, 284-285; Philolaus 10.B (Pythagorean Sourcebook). “The Prime composite, the One placed in the center of the sphere, is called Hestia” (Stobaeus, Eclog. Physic. 1.21.1.p.468). Philolaus 11.A (Pythagorean Sourcebook) “Philolaus has located the fire in the middle, the center; he calls it Hestia, of the All, the Guardpost of Zeus, the Mother of the Gods, the Altar, the Link, and the Measure of Nature.” (Stobaeus, Eclog. Physic. 1.22.1.p.488).

48 https://premieretat.com/making-the-eleatic-stranger-parmenides-and-the-phenomenology-of-non-ordinary-reality/

49Although the Gods in the palinode are without jealousy and prevent no one from following along, they also do nothing to help anyone to do so (247a).