What is love and what role does it play in human experience? Over the course of the Phaedrus, Plato portrays love in a number of (perhaps unexpected) ways. Does he hit the mark here or is there something missing? And what does all of this have to do with the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric? Once again, Plato provides us with much food for thought.
3 comments:
Phaedrus was an entertaining read because yet again Socrates disproves an account of knowledge on lovers. Lysias gives a speech on why it is better to give your love to a non-lover than a lover and the reason being that you are more compelled to change feeling for the lover. This can not happen with a non-lover because your feelings can only grow for such. In such shame of his response to this speech (which as Socrates proves is completely false and redundant) Socrates must cover his head with a cloth. I found the most interesting point of this reading to be the analogy of the wings and the philosopher, holding that the philosophers mind grows wings and soars to the divine. Only this mind knows what is true because it has seen the real, just as the slave in the "cave" see's what is real under the sun instead of the fire.
Although I enjoyed the Phaedrus there were a couple points Socrates makes that I thought worth pointing out. In particular, Socrates begins saying that no person wants a lover that is equal or superior to them. He says that a person wants their lover to have an ugly body so the person feels better about his. He also says that the person would want their lover to be poor so to have financial power over that person. I do not agree with these points Socrates makes. I think that sometimes people find comfort in having a feeling of superiority over another person but I think that is human nature. A feeling of strength and belonging makes people feel important. However, I think that most people would like to have a person that is equal to them as their lover. It would be pointless to be with someone that you could just control at all times. Also, I thought that Socrates brought up his theory of recollection in certain ways. At one time he is discussing the soul and says "then it follows necessarily that soul should have neither birth nor death."(245E) Although it is different texts, I like how Socrates continues to use his conversation to further prove his idea of an immortal soul. I think that his points here have validity and provide food for thought.
One of the first things I noticed about Phaedrus is that once again Socrates decides to define a word to better understand a discussion, as is seen with Meno and the definition of virtue. After defining love Socrates tells us that a person cannot put up with an equal and rather works to make the person he loves weaker and inferior to himself. If this proves to be true I feel as though Socrates truly means that men can not be in love with one another. For if one man can’t love a superior or an equal he is making that person weaker and inferior thus that weak and inferior man can’t love the other back for he is now the weaker/inferior person. I know this probably sounds confusing so here is an example… Joe and Pat are “in love”. During the beginning of the relationship Joe is the superior being which kind of makes Pat mad and not love him as much, so throughout the relationship Pat tries to make Joe the weaker person. At some point the tables have turned and now Pat is the superior person, but now that Pat is superior, Joe gets mad and kind of doesn’t love Pat anymore and begins to try and make Pat the inferior person… if this is what Socrates is trying to say, then any two people can not be in love with each other at the same time. Socrates goes on either further to say that the superior keeps the inferior from good company to prevent the inferior from becoming a better man while also trying to prevent the inferior from noticing. The question that this raises for me is that is the inferior notices what the superior is doing does he try to become the superior as I mentioned above or does he leave his “love” and look for another?
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