Phaedrus Part 3: Love and the immortality of the soul

This is the last section in the series until Socrates switches gears and begins discussing rhetoric. Here he argues that love is a good sort of madness, since it is divinely inspired, and in fact it is linked to the immortality of the soul, since it is the “wings” of the soul as they ascend to the heavenly reality.

This is especially interesting for me, since I have looked at the immortality of the soul as argued in other dialogues, but here Socrates is just giving a speech; there is no real “dialogue” for any sort of dialectic discussion. Instead, I’m just supposed to take what Socrates is saying about the gods as true, or else be deemed heretical, undoubtedly. His explanation about the different levels of incarnation that the soul can experience that is more in tune with reality or not is interesting; I had heard it explained, but never from Plato’s own mouth. Before he gets into the incarnation stuff, however, he quickly states his argument for the immortality of the soul that it is that which moves the body, and is not moved by anything other than itself, making it immortal. Apparently, unlike the other arguments given in other places, this one is so self-explanatory that it needs no further discussion.

I found really interesting Socrates’ assessment that people find what they love in people based on which god they follow. If they follow Zeus, they will find wisdom-seekers and leaders attractive, and the same goes for the other gods and their attributes. Although Socrates thinks that all souls are immortal and ultimately will love everything real, I couldn’t help thinking about this in a Christian way.

I watch a television show called Dollhouse in which people give up the right to their personalities… they become just shells of bodies that various personalities and skill sets can be uploaded into, like a computer. There is one guy, a former FBI agent, who is trying to figure out where the dollhouse is, so he can free everyone, since he believes you cannot get rid of a person’s soul; it is going to leave a residual imprint on the body, no matter what. Simarlarly, Christians tend to have the notion that every person, while having a universal vocation as human beings, has a very particular imprint, that often is called their “soul,” that is unique to who they are. So I’m wondering, if as Christians who have unique imprints, if we find love and attraction in other humans based on what we have been uniquely imprinted to love in God.Perhaps that is an obvious conclusion to reach… but interesting nonetheless, and pretty easy to relate to one’s own life. When I find someone attractive, if I contemplated why, would I find that it was because they resembled what I love in God? What does that say about my particular imprint of a soul?