The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phaedrus, by Plato

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Title: Phaedrus

Author: Plato

Translator: B. Jowett

Posting Date: October 30, 2008 [EBook #1636]
Release Date: February 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

PHAEDRUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be
regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues
together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love,
which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only
introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and
Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the
other. The spiritual and emotional part is elevated into the ideal, to
which in the Symposium mankind are described as looking forward, and
which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the Phaedo, they are seeking to
recover from a former state of existence. Whether the subject of the
Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of the two, or the relation
of philosophy to love and to art in general, and to the human soul, will
be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive at some conclusion
such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly confined to a
single subject, but passes from one to another with the natural freedom
of conversation.

Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated
rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside
the wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not
leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias
has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more
probably in a book hidden under his cloak, and is intending to study
as he walks. The imputation is not denied, and the two agree to direct
their steps out of the public way along the stream of the Ilissus
towards a plane-tree which is seen in the distance. There, lying down
amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will read the speech of Lysias.
The country is a novelty to Socrates, who