Phaedrus: Beginning scene
But when I read the beginning dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates, I was struck by the same thing. There has been debate over what the Phaedrus is really about, but one of the candidates is the topic of the speeches themselves: love. The descriptions of the setting that begin this dialogue seem to reflect that: love for nature. Which seems strange that it occurs in a platonic dialogue… I mean, isn’t Plato supposed to hate the material world? Yet Socrates remarks about the beauty of the world in which he is. It is notable that he has not often traveled outside the city, if ever. I think for Plato, that means that Socrates is a lover of beauty– and although he recognizes it in the landscape of the country, there is a place in which even more true beauty resides: other people.
The friendship he has for Phaedrus is already evident, and it is no accident that the speech they are to read together is on love. This presentation of their relationship is a foreshadowing of the dialogue that is about to take place: Socrates is going to discuss love as a physical, erotic thing, and then will find that his “divine sign” is telling him he has blasphemed true love. True love is not the “happily ever after” man and woman presentation that Disney has portrayed. Instead, it is a type of homosexual love in that two males are like minded enough (i.e., rational) to be friends.
There are many platonic themes in the Phaedrus, and the next blog post will deal with the speeches themselves.
This is a good start, Jasmine. You’ve rightly honed in on a key theme: love, and particularly the love (even “madness”) elicited by beauty. And you’re right that the take on the “material world” here is different than, say, the Phaedo. In the Phaedrus, we see a much more positive role for physical, material things as a sort of ladder that invites one to climb up to intellection of the Forms. So the material has a positive (albeit instrumental) role to play.
And it’s interesting to open with the nature/culture distinction. You’re right that both can be material mediators of the divine (or, in Plato’s case, the intelligible). The culture that humans create (cathedrals, paintings, etc.) are elucidations of nature. But in the dialogue, we’ll also see that the beautiful face of Phaedrus plays an important role, which is a case of nature having the same function.