Phaedrus

Phaedrus is a dialogue written by Plato around 370 B.C., not long after The Republic.

Phaedrus presents only two characters, Socrates and Phaedrus, but still develops a wide variety of themes so we could not highlight one as main or predominant. He deals with themes such as love, the art of rhetoric, the nature of the human soul or metempsychosis.

The dialogue begins with a conversation between Phaedrus and Socrates about a speech of Lysias that Phaedrus has. In it, they talk about to whom you should grant your favor: to the beloved or to the one he loves.

Socrates answers with two speeches of his own. In the second he takes back everything he said in the first and praises love as a divine madness, describing the soul as a charioteer driving two horses, one obedient and one unruly.

The second half turns to rhetoric. Socrates attacks the orators for caring only about what sounds plausible rather than about what is true, and closes with an argument against writing itself: a written text cannot answer a question or defend itself, and it weakens the memory of those who lean on it.

This edition of Plato's Phaedrus is based on the English translation by Benjamin Jowett.