Lysias speech is about telling a boy that it's better to be in a relationship with a non-lover than a lover. The difference between the lover and non-lover can be likened to the vulgar and heavenly love distinctions in Symposium, with one being a love for the body while the other is for the soul. Here however the heavenly love is not called a love.

Phaedrus is a big fan of a speech by Lysias, he has gotten the text and is memorising it. Lysias speech argues to a boy that it is better to be in a relation with someone that does not love you than someone who does. Like vulgar and heavenly love from Symposium, but love for one's soul is not called love. The speech lists multiple faults of the lover. The lover will move on when desire dies, will want returns on what is given, will hold their next love grander than the ex. The lovesick are irrational unlike the non-lovers which will join your company rationally. If you only choose your partner among those in love with you it will leave a smaller group with a likelier worse selection than the group including those who don't love you. The desire of the lover will bring them to act shamefully and whenever you go outside people will think you just shamefully completed the act of desire. None of this is brought with the non-lover. The jealousy of the lover will have them isolate and denigrate the loved to strengthen their hold on them, while the non-lover will want the loved to meet people better than them and dislike those who does not want to be their friend. Lovers will sing endless praises the flatter the loved no matter how true they are while the non-lover will tell the truth. There can be no equality with the needful such as the lover, like inviting a beggar to dinner they will be do anything to get what they need. But if you give your favors to those not in need it will be on equal ground, such as the non-lover.

Socrates praises Lysias speech ironically at first, but deems it bad and repetitive. Socrates first speech starts by laying out its purpose and goals. It will investigate whether it is better to be with a lover or a non-lover. First it identifies that love is a desire and puts forward a mental model. We are jointly ruled by desire and judgement which can either be in opposition or unison. The best results come from judgement being in charge of us. When desire, eros, rules it is called outrage and gives a worse outcome. Here the subjects, people ruled by judgement and desire, have been defined and now the benefits and harms of them will be discussed. The lover will want pleasure from the loved and want them to be inferior and defect. If not already the case they will make them so and so they cannot refuse their requests. The lover will want to cut out anyone in the way of their desires such as parents or friends of the loved. Their mad jealousy will make them unbearable company and their obsession disgusting. Once love leaves the lover will change, now that judgement rules them they will break old promises. Socrates speech makes many of the same points as Lysias but is more structured.

As Socrates prepares to leave his divine sign warns him. His and Lysias speech has spoken ill of love and punishment is due if not corrected. There is a tradition of ancient greek writers starting a work by retracting what they said previously. Socrates second speech starts out by retracting everything in the first speech. In the past madness was not a denigration but a divine possession. Prophecy, seers, Muses are all examplles of this. The goal of the speech is put forward, to prove that the madness of love is beneficial. The first tasks are to define and examine madness and the soul. (But not possesion?)

First a definition of immortality is presented by Socrates. What is moved when pushed by others is mortal, as it requires an end and a beginning. What moves by itself has always moved without start or stop and is immortal. The soul is a self-mover and therefore immortal, it has no beginning and no end. It would take a god to fully define the soul but Socrates will set what is necessary. With an analogy of the soul being composed of a two horses representing respectively reason and desire being led by a charioteer we receive a tripartite mental model similar to the one in Republic. However the passion aspect of the Republic model is missing. Souls are lifted by wings that let them move freely and souls also have the ability to occupy mortal objects and make them move, explicitly in a temporary union. Gods do not have bodies and their souls does not have the desireous horse. The wings are nourished by wisdom and beauty while ugliness and foulness make them shrink and disappear. At the edge of heaven the souls follow the gods to peer into true reality, the realm of ideas, where the forms reside. This journey is however perilous and the desireous horse can lead them to fall to the earth. Those souls who have seen a form are safe for another circuit.

The souls will be incarnated in the following order depending of how much they have seen of reality: 1 - Philosopher 2 - Lawful king, warlike commander 3 - Statesman, household manager, financier 4 - Trainer, doctor 5 - Prophet, priest 6 - Poet, representational artist 7 - manual laborer, farmer 8 - sophiest, demagogue 9 - tyrant Below I presume are non-humans.

For 10 000 years no soul returns to heaven. Those living the life of philosophers are exempted and after 3 such consecutive lives they grow back their wings and return. The souls that live justly will get a better life and the others a worse life. The afterlife is where reward and punishment takes place. At the thousandth year the next incarnation takes place. This is where souls can go from humans to animals and vice versa. But a soul must have seen the truth to take a human form.

The madness of love is then defined as being when a soul remembers the true beauty it saw at the edge of heaven and ignores the material world. It is a startling, incomprehensible experience. Witnessing beauty brings joy to a soul and its absence anguish and madness, this is what love is and it is the most noble divine possesion. The sullied are driven to lust but the recent initiates are reminded of true beauty and are nourished to let their wings grow. The gods the souls followed influence what beauty they seek and how they react upon seeing it.

Socrates describes the reaction to love from thos living a philosophers life: At the sight of beauty the good horse and charioteer will be in awe while the bad horse will drag them to spoil it with lust. Only after the charioteer has disciplined it will it stay. Eventually the love of the lover will spill over to the loved. If they both can restrain their lust they will have completed one of 3 cycles to regrow their wings. If they fall to lust but sparingly their wings will still be aided in growth. A non-lover can never give this benefit. The conclusion of the speech is that a non-lover will never be able to give this gift to a soul that transcends life.

With the final speech finished, Phaedrus and Socrates discuss what makes Lysias speech bad and thus what is good and bad writing. As in other dialogues like Gorgias the value of the oratory art is discussed. Is the truth required to produce conviction? But only someone who knows the truth can truly lie, as discussed in Hippias Minor. Socrates concludes that a master orator would need expert knowledge in two subjects. The first is what words are commonly agreed upon, such as wood or iron, and what others are in dispute such as love or beauty. The second is that the master orator must have expertise of the soul in order to know what techniques to apply to produce conviction in different souls. Like how a doctor knows the body the orator must know the soul. Good speeches have a set structure which Lysias speech lacks, there is no introduction of its contents and matters such as love are not defined. Speech structure and innovation together with their inventors are listed: Preamble, statement of facts, evidence of witness, indirect evidence, claims to plausability, confirmations and supplementary confirmation, refutation and supplementary refutation, refutation, covert implication and indirect praise, indirect censure. etc. It is determined that it is unfeasible for a mortal to know the nature of the soul, undermining the art of the orators.

When discussing what makes writing good or bad Socrates brings up an Egyptian myth: Thoth discovered many arts and was to gift them to thye Egyptians following consultation with Ammon. When introducing writing Ammon said it would make people forgetful and dependant on text instead of their minds for wisdom. Text, like painting, is unchanging and cannot respond to inquiry or criticism. Wise people will only write for reminding themselves, not to spread knowledge through text. There is an analogy for planting seeds where a wise person would rather plant knowledge in another soul since it is immortal. This can be compared to the struggle for immortality through reproduction outlined in Symposium.

My Own Take:

Phaedrus takes us into many different subjects that other dialogues are singularly dedicated to. It discusses the nature of the soul, its composition, reincarnation and provides a myth of the afterlife all of which we have seen previously in Meno, Republic, Symposium and Gorgias.

The immortality of the soul is argued from it being a self-mover unlike in Phaedo where it's invisibility is tied to immortality. The myth of the afterlife is more elaborate than the one in Gorgias. Souls are not simply judged for their actions but instead their wisdom is what decides whether they elevate or descend to reality. The recollection theory of Meno is extended with the souls having knowledge of their previous lives depending on the gods they followed. In accordance with Symposium the souls search for beauty and the philosophers means of reaching it is through guidance in a partnership where they love another's soul. At the end we get an example of this struggle for immortality through reproduction by Socrates saying that planting knowledge in the souls of others is superior to writing as it is more lasting. This love is more than cultivation in this life but transcends to the cycle of the souls.

We also see criticism of the oratory arts as previously seen in Gorgias where its claim to be an art is in doubt. That true liars must know the truth is also apparent in Hippias Minor. Though I wonder if it is not a bit unfair to claim that orators must have expertise of the soul to perform their art which is unfeasible for mortals. Wouldn't you make the same argument about generals needing expertise of the soul and all variations of the soul to know how to break the resolve and morale of enemy troops?

The critique of writing as being unable to impart wisdom that only in person dialogue can give is interesting. What is then the purpose of these dialogues by Plato? You can make the distinction that simply accepting a text verbatim and repeating the facts and arguments is not wisdom and tricks you into thinking you have learned. Though I deem this too simple of a conclusion to make. As Socrates says, these dialogues cannot respond to inquiry and Plato certainly is not here to defend them. It could be that the dialogue format is to force the reader to engage with the text at multiple levels where one has to judge the intentions of the characters and Plato which leads us to find the answers ourselves. This process has us cultivate our wisdom by ourselves instead of simply accepting a treatise. The discourse on possible interpretations can be seen as a feature of the dialogues in stimulating critical thought.

Observations:

Socrates never travels abroad and rarely beyond the walls of Athens. Landscapes and trees has nothing to teach him, only people in the city. Interesting that there is no romanticism for nature that we often see contemporarily. Is Socrates or Plato convinced that wisdom can only be gained from interaction with other souls and the products they make with their own reasoning? In the Symposium I compared natural beauty vs human art where the latter can be understood with intention that the later lacks (or is beyond human).

Socrates and Phaedrus reach a resting place close to the location of the myth telling that Orithuia, daughter of Athenian king Erechtus was abducted by Boreas, the northern wind, while playing with the nymphs. They discuss the veracity of the myth and Socrates says that one would have to make a rationalisation for all connected myths which would be too much effort for little reward. Socrates accepts common beliefs and focuses on knowing himself. I find this part very interesting as it is an example of the prioritization that one has to make when learning. There is too much in the world for you to ever learn it all and even if you restrict it to direct concerns it will still be too much. Even a lover of wisdom will have to make do with learning the truth of this specialisation and accept a faulty understanding of the rest.