Phaedrus (Oxford World's Classics)

170 Pages·2003·0.72 MB·English

by  Plato

 ’ 
PHAEDRUS
P (c.– ), Athenian philosopher-dramatist, has had a pro-
found and lasting influence upon Western intellectual tradition. Born
into a wealthy and prominent family, he grew up during the conflict
between Athens and the Peloponnesian states which engulfed the Greek
world from  to  . Following its turbulent aftermath, he was
deeply affected by the condemnation and execution of his revered master
Socrates (–) on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. In
revulsion from political activity, Plato devoted his life to the pursuit of
philosophy and to composing memoirs of Socratic enquiry cast in dia-
logue form. He was strongly influenced by the Pythagorean thinkers of
southern Italy and Sicily, which he is said to have visited when he was
about . Some time after returning to Athens, he founded the Academy,
an early ancestor of the modern university, devoted to philosophical and
mathematical enquiry, and to the education of future rulers or
‘philosopher-kings’. The Academy’s most celebrated member was the
young Aristotle (–), who studied there for the last twenty years
of Plato’s life. Their works mark the highest peak of philosophical
achievement in antiquity, and both continue to rank among the greatest
philosophers of all time.
Plato is the earliest Western philosopher from whose output complete
works have been preserved. At least twenty-five of his dialogues are
extant, ranging from fewer than twenty to more than three hundred
pages in length. For their combination of dramatic realism, poetic beauty,
intellectual vitality, and emotional power they are unique in Western
literature.
R W has been a university lecturer (at Newcastle upon
Tyne and St Andrews), and an editor and publisher. Currently, however,
he is a self-employed writer, whose books range from philosophy to
children’s fiction. He has previously translated, for Oxford World’s Clas-
sics, Plato’s Republic, Symposium, and Gorgias, Aristotle’s Physics, Hero-
dotus’ Histories, Plutarch’s Greek Lives and Roman Lives, Euripides’
Orestes and Other Plays, and The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and
the Sophists.
 ’ 
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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
PLATO
Phaedrus
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
ROBIN WATERFIELD
1
3
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For Kathy: aim at the heart
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CONTENTS
Introduction ix
Note on the Text l
Select Bibliography li
PHAEDRUS 
Explanatory Notes 
Textual Notes 
Index of Names 
vii
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INTRODUCTION
Phaedrus is named, as are most of Plato’s dialogues, after one of
the characters appearing in the work. In fact, Phaedrus purports
to be the record of a conversation between only two people:
Phaedrus, an upper-class Athenian and devotee of the new rhet-
orical learning which was popular in Athens at the time, and
Socrates, who in the real world had been Plato’s teacher, and in
the fictional world of the dialogues is commonly Plato’s main
spokesman. The two bump into each other as Phaedrus is about
to take a walk in the countryside outside Athens, to gain enough
peace and quiet to memorize a speech he has just heard by the
soon-to-be-famous speech-writer Lysias. The conversation that
takes place between Phaedrus and Socrates is both interrupted
and motivated by the declamation of three speeches––the one by
Lysias (unless it is a Platonic fiction), and then two extemporized
by Socrates himself in response. The topic of Lysias’ speech was
the relationship between a lover and his beloved in a homoerotic
relationship, and so this is the topic of Socrates’ two speeches as
well. Lysias had argued that a lover is to be avoided in favour of a
non-lover, and in Socrates’ first speech he seeks merely to
improve upon this thesis of Lysias, but in the second he entirely
repudiates the content of the first, for its disparagement of love,
and he calls this second speech a recantation, or palinode. After
these three speeches, the conversation turns to the value of rhet-
oric in general, and what could be done to make it a true branch
of expertise or knowledge, rather than something based on and
pandering to more fleeting opinions. The contrast between know-
ledge and opinion is a basic feature of Plato’s thought, and he
always assumed that a philosophical life and worthwhile pursuits
were grounded on knowledge and truth, rather than on more
superficial values.
The dialogue is astonishingly rich, not just in terms of the
quality of the writing and thought it contains, but also because of
ix