Saturday, March 16, 2013

Phaedrus by Plato translated by Christopher Rowe

This dialogue is a conversation between Phaedrus and Socrates. Phaedrus has just heard an impressive speech of Lysius's which contends that it is better to separate sex and love. Socrates, again adopting the pose of an ignorant man, at first gives a speech in agreement (with his head covered!) but then argues that love is a kind of divine madness (the highest of four kinds, actually) and that because the madness is divinely inspired it is actually good. This work is short, but very dense.

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