Phaedrus

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prelude (227-230)

The Speech of Lysias (231-234)

Interlude—Socrates’s First Speech (234-241)

Interlude—Socrates’s Second Speech (242-245)

The Myth. The Allegory of the Charioteer and His Horses—Love Is the Regrowth of the Wings of the Soul—The Charioteer Allegory Resumed (246-257)

Introduction to the Discussion of Rhetoric—The Myth of the Cicadas (258-259)

The Necessity of Knowledge for a True Art of Rhetoric—The Speeches of Socrates Illustrate a New Philosophical Method (258-269)

A Review of the Devices and Technical Terms of Contemporary Rhetoric—Rhetoric as Philosophy—The Inferiority of the Written to the Spoken Word (269-277)

Recapitulation and Conclusion (277-279)

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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The Myth. The Allegory of the Charioteer and His Horses—Love Is the Regrowth of the Wings of the Soul—The Charioteer Allegory Resumed (246-257)Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Summary: “The Myth. The Allegory of the Charioteer and His Horses—Love Is the Regrowth of the Wings of the Soul—The Charioteer Allegory Resumed”

Socrates declares that mortals cannot truly describe the nature of the soul, but we can approximate the truth by using an allegory. He compares the soul to a winged charioteer driving two horses: one well-bred and obedient, and the other impulsive and disobedient. The “wings” of the soul are things that raise the soul closer to the divine.

Socrates describes a procession of the Olympian gods and how the path they travel is easily taken by the “horses,” which guide them, but is impossible for the soul that is guided by the “evil” horse, which drags the soul down towards the earth. The realm to which the gods can ascend is the realm of pure truth, and can only be understood by pure intellect, which is separate from the physical world. In this realm lies “reality without color or shape, intangible but utterly real” (52). Human souls can approach, but not entirely gain, this view of reality that the gods can see, as the behavior of their souls’ “horses” keeps them from it. The noble “horse” of the soul seeks the “pasture” of the world of absolute truth, but when the soul falls away from the path that leads to it and drops to earth, it takes up an incarnation in various types of human bodies.

Socrates continues: philosophical insight into the nature of things that one has during a human life is really just a “memory” of the higher level from which the soul fell. The wisest humans are those with souls that remember the most of this previous state. When a sight on earth reminds the soul of the higher level it came from, this memory is called “madness” by other humans who are unaware of its true significance.

Since sight is the sharpest of our physical senses, it is the most able to give us this “memory” of beauty that the soul once witnessed. In this way, the sight of physical beauty is the best way of reminding the soul of higher goodness and truth. One who knows the importance of love to the soul will have a deep respect and reverence for it. Love, regarded in this way, helps the soul to regrow some of its lost feathers. The pain of love is really the growing pains of these feathers.

Socrates then resumes the allegory of the charioteer. He describes in great detail the qualities of the good horse and the negative traits of the bad horse. The good horse is obedient and listens to the command of the charioteer, while the bad horse is nearly uncontrollable. When the soul falls in love, the bad horse, preoccupied with physical love, rushes towards the beloved. It takes all the might of the charioteer to resist this and instead to remember the image of perfect beauty that the beloved reminds him of. It is only by going through this process several times that the bad horse finally learns to be obedient to the charioteer.

Now both the lover and the beloved inspire a genuine love in each other; each one reflects the feelings of the other. If the noble aspects of their souls guide them to seek wisdom above physical pleasure, their souls will regain their wings.

Finally, Socrates returns to refute the argument of the two earlier speeches: if one insists on a relationship not founded on love, the soul of the non-lover will never regain its higher state. Socrates concludes by praying to the god of Love that he has sufficiently atoned for his previous offenses with this speech.

Analysis: “The Myth. The Allegory of the Charioteer and His Horses—Love Is the Regrowth of the Wings of the Soul—The Charioteer Allegory Resumed”

How can we make sense of Socrates’s second speech, which is so much longer, more poetic, and much more elaborate than his initial speech? His own answer is that the Muses have inspired him; they prompted him to remain instead of leaving the conversation earlier and then, once he began by invoking them at the outset of this speech, they supplied his words. It is up to the reader how seriously we can take Socrates’s assertion that the words are not his own. On a different level, the exposition of the nature of the soul is clearly the centerpiece of the dialogue, and of great importance to Plato. Whether Socrates’s speech is “divinely inspired” or not seems to be of lesser importance than the fact of Plato’s own deep convictions on the subject. Indeed, the consistency or believability of the narrative here seem to take a backseat to the expression of Plato’s theory of the soul. Perhaps it is here that the narrative details of the dialogue do the least to influence the speech presented within it.

Socrates’s elaborate description of the soul, and of the origins of madness, is not entirely immune to the criticism which Socrates leveled at Lysias’s speech. How does Socrates know that this worldview is accurate? Given his previous insistence on beginning by defining terms and assumptions, how can he justify simply “knowing” all of these mysteries concerning the nature of the soul? Plato (and Socrates) get around these questions by presenting this speech as divinely inspired; if the speech is not Socrates’s own, but comes from a higher, more authoritative source, it seems to be freed from the obligation to justify every single assumption it makes.This speech, ultimately, is a description of a heavenly vision, more concerned with events (the procession of the gods, the discovery of the “pastures” outside of reality) than with arguments. Socrates’s vision allows him to present what he sees and then draw conclusions from his vision, not from facts in the human world.