PHAEDRUS

by Plato




Translated by Benjamin Jowett




INTRODUCTION.

The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded
either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain
the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic
and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a
figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy
join hands, and one is an aspect of the other. The spiritual and emotional
part is elevated into the ideal, to which in the Symposium mankind are
described as looking forward, and which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the
Phaedo, they are seeking to recover from a former state of existence.
Whether the subject of the Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of
the two, or the relation of philosophy to love and to art in general, and
to the human soul, will be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive
at some conclusion such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly
confined to a single subject, but passes from one to another with the
natural freedom of conversation.