Source edition
Platonis Opera, Tomus II: Tetralogia III-IV. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.
Source data
Perseus Digital Library · CC BY-SA (per Perseus's terms)
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
In this dialogue, the philosopher Socrates and the young Phaedrus meet in the beautiful countryside outside Athens to discuss love (Eros) and the art of rhetoric. The conversation begins with a speech advocating that one should yield to a non-lover rather than a lover, prompting Socrates to counter with his own grand discourse. In his famous recantation, Socrates portrays love as a divine madness and explains the nature of the soul using the myth of a winged chariot, describing its journey to contemplate ultimate beauty in the heavens. The dialogue then shifts to an inquiry into the nature of beautiful writing and speaking, where Socrates argues that true rhetoric must be based on dialectic—specifically the methods of collection and division—and a deep understanding of the human soul. Ultimately, they criticize the written word for inducing forgetfulness and conclude that only the living speech written directly in the listener's soul possesses genuine value for a true philosopher.