Phaedrus

Phaedrus asks why Socrates has stopped at this point and not gone on to describe the benefits of the non-lover (rather than just the defects of the lover). Socrates declares that he’s said all he needs to say and intends to leave, but then says he has received a “supernatural sign” that has prevented him from walking away. This supernatural intuition tells his speech was blasphemous, and that he has offended the gods, including the god of Love, by speaking against lovers.

Socrates now insists that they have both sinned against Love in their speeches, and that he must correct his error by offering a refutation of the previous speeches. He declares that love, in its truest and best form, is much different from what they have been describing. Socrates then begins his second speech. He reminds Phaedrus that Lysias had better do the same as well, before the god of Love has his revenge on him, or before anyone acts on his advice.

As in his first speech, Socrates once more speaks in the voice of the admirer of a young man. He begins by disavowing the previous speech and blaming Phaedrus for its argument. The argument that the non-lover is rational and sane and should be preferred to the lover would only be true, he states, if “madness” were always a flaw. But certain kinds of madness are a divine gift, he says, as evidenced by prophets and poets who are eloquent when mad but useless when “sober”: “Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human” (47).

Socrates outlines three types of madness: prophecy, divination, and possession by the Muses. Far from being curses, these are great blessings; therefore, the argument that love is a “madness” and that a lover is not “in his right mind” is not sufficient unless one can prove that love is not a blessing itself, and beneficial to the soul. To truly determine this, Socrates argues, we will need to define the nature of the soul.

He continues: the essence of the soul is immortal, and is derived from a source which is constantly in motion. Anything which is moved by something else cannot be immortal: if its source ceases to be, it in turn ceases to be. But the soul can be traced back to a “prime origin of movement,” which is necessary for anything to exist. Socrates says that to truly explain the nature of the soul, he must use a myth, representing ideas with symbols.