Phaedrus

About the book

Phaedrus brings Socrates a speech that provokes competing accounts of love and its effects. Their conversation develops beyond the immediate performance to consider the soul, inspiration, truth, and the difference between genuine understanding and effective persuasion. Plato gives the setting unusual sensory presence, making the outdoor exchange feel distinct from a formal lesson. Images and stories carry ideas that the dialogue then examines through further questions. Its later discussion of writing asks what is lost when words circulate without a speaker able to answer for them. Readers are invited to connect the subject of an argument with the form in which it is offered. The work's variety makes philosophy appear as an inquiry into how language reaches another person and what that contact should accomplish.

• Love
• Persuasion and truth
• Speech and writing

Why read it

For a richly varied dialogue that asks not only what makes an argument convincing, but what makes communication responsible.

Benjamin Jowett translation · English text