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book~370 BCE

Phaedrus

Disciplines:
philosophy
plato
rhetoric
jungian psychology/soul
psychology/love

Summary

Plato's dialogue set by a river outside Athens — featuring Socrates's three speeches on love (the last, the palinode, recanting the first's dismissal of eros) — and the discussion of rhetoric (only philosophy-based rhetoric is genuine rhetoric), the myth of the charioteer, and the critique of writing.

Core Contribution

Provides the charioteer myth — the soul as a charioteer driving two horses (reason, noble spirit, and appetite) — as the most vivid Platonic account of the soul's internal conflict, and the palinode's praise of divine madness as the highest gift of the gods, against the cold calculation of the sober man.

Historical Influences

Plato

Intellectual Lineage

Plato Research Socratic dialogues

Allied Works

Symposium Republic

Contemporaries & Peers

Symposium Republic

Minds Influenced

Platonic psychologyPhilosophy of rhetoricJonathan Bi

Intellectual Posterity

Phaedrus Charioteer mythDivine madnessCritique of writing

Discussing

Phaedrus

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