Plato's Phaedrus: dialogue on rhetoric and the soul

Plato

Given that Plato's Socrates is an Idealist and a dualist, the highest form of love is not the sexual or erotic kind, or that of family and friends, all of which are materialistic and impermanent. On the contrary, the highest form of love is for God (the Good), as expressed through the immortal soul, for God is a perfect and ideal Form and the soul longs for union with the divine. Love expressed for mortal bodies or any other material object in this world is necessarily of an inferior kind, a pale reflection or shadow of love for the Eternal and the Perfect. There existed a Divine Intelligence above all the other gods and demigods, which could only be contemplated and nurtured by the "pure intelligence" of the soul (Plato 27). This is perhaps one reason why the dialogue is set outside the walls of Athens, away from the city and its obsession with money, commerce and practical matters, which had so little appeal for Plato and Socrates. Phaedrus is a typical example of the shallow young men who pursue all the latest fads in the city, although Socrates is persistent in trying to enlighten him and open his eyes to the ultimate truths of philosophy. To attain true wisdom and enlightenment, the philosopher does have to soar above these narrow, material concerns: they affairs of the city and the physical world are the starting point, not the ultimate destination. Initially, Socrates gives a speech praising love in its physical and sexual aspects, but almost immediately he realizes that this is as shallow as the speech of the public orator Lysias -- a witty and clever speaker who willingly pontificates on any subject as long as he is paid. He goes so far as to call his first speech "impious" for God was also Love and should not be spoken of in the same terms as love between mortal beings (Plato 22). He also is also sarcastic about the great rhetorician, asking rhetorically "you really imagine that I am going to improve upon the ingenuity of Lysias?" (Plato 13).

By the same token, the highest form of friendship is that which the philosopher has with God -- the Ideal and Perfect Forms -- and the passionate and loving desire to learn their true nature. Love of Beauty in this sense is not the love of mere appearances, but of God. Of course, the goal of the philosopher is to achieve wisdom and enlightenment, and guide the desires seeker from the lower, baser forms of love to the higher. Our souls are in a base and fallen condition, however, focused only on the physical and material rather than God and eternal truths. These fallen souls have "an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved," yet it is only a mortal being, while the Divine "is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished" (Plato 27). Socrates did not regard ethics and virtue as simply a matter of abstract universal principles but as part and parcel of the everyday lives of individuals in society -- in this case, the polis or Greek city-state. Virtue could be obtained by constant learning and self-improvement which would also bring individual happiness, while the worst sin was to remain willfully ignorant and refuse to use philosophy to become enlightened. Socrates also feels the intense need to know the state of his own soul, and whether he is a monster or a gentle creature.

Socrates never regarded moral good as independent of the knowledge (or ignorance) of the individual, and the universal good was always related to the good of the each person. For Socrates especially, knowledge was good and ignorance evil, for ignorance of what was right caused individuals to do evil (Kosch 170). He argued that all persons have certain goals in life and that philosophical (or scientific) knowledge could assist them in making "better or worse choices" in pursuit of their personal good and happiness. Universalist or abstract ethics divorced from the actual lives of real individuals are therefore "foreign to Socratic ethics" (Reshotko x). What Socrates meant by "virtue" (arete) was the pursuit of human excellence and actions could be judged as virtuous or evil only in the context within which they occurred. Goodness did not necessarily depend on "intentions, sincerity, or character, but in their happiness, which results from their having put their knowledge to practical use" (Reshotko 3). Using his critical methods, Socrates preferred to question common sense moral beliefs and practices, and constantly raised questions about what justice, truth and morality really were. His method was not to provide readymade answers but to give each individual the tools to pursue virtue and knowledge of the Good.

Socrates and Plato might not have believed in the literal truth of ancient myths and legends, but they were quite willing to use them to express some higher meaning in their search for enlightenment and ultimate truth. He was openly skeptical of many of these and stated that "the wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted" (Plato 5). Even so, myths could still make some illuminating points, as long as they were combined with reason -- both logical-dialectical reason and rhetorical reason. Myths could be useful to express the higher truths of philosophy for both self-knowledge and the knowledge of the Good, perhaps even more so than the highly polished arguments of the rhetoricians. Certainly there were many great speakers in the city who used finely crafted rhetoric for their own material gain, such as lawyers and politicians who would give excellent speeches for a price on any occasion. They would "make the same thing appear to the same persons to be at one time just, at another time…to be unjust" (Plato 47).