The Phaedrus
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Plato’s Phaedrus, written around 370–355 BC, is one of his most lyrical and intellectually adventurous dialogues, bringing together questions of love, beauty, the soul and the art of persuasion. Set beneath the trees beside the river Ilissus outside Athens, it follows Socrates and the young Phaedrus as they exchange reflections on a speech by the orator Lysias concerning the nature of love. What begins as a debate about desire develops into a remarkable exploration of divine inspiration, culminating in Socrates’ celebrated image of the soul as a charioteer guiding two winged horses.
The dialogue gradually turns towards the nature of rhetoric, the responsibilities of the speaker and the relationship between spoken and written words. Moving effortlessly between philosophical argument, myth and poetic imagery, Plato considers how language can either illuminate truth or merely persuade, and how genuine love might lead the soul towards wisdom. Both a meditation on the nature of human desire and an enduring examination of communication, Phaedrus occupies a distinctive place among Plato’s dialogues, revealing the extraordinary range of his philosophical and literary imagination.
From the book
“For the soul which has never seen the truth cannot pass into this our human form.”
— Plato, Phaedrus
On Phaedrus
“All three are justly viewed as rhetorical masterstrokes by Plato.”
— Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy