Soul‐Leading: The Unity Of The Phaedrus, Again
Soul‐Leading: The Unity Of The Phaedrus, Again
The Phaedrus claims that good logoi must be “put together like a living creature”, with parts that suit one another and the whole; but the dialogue itself seems to be a misshapen jumble. It begins as a series of elegant rhetorical speeches about love, and ends as a dry philosophical discussion of rhetoric. What makes it hang together? This essay argues for a new reading: the Phaedrus is a treatise on the kind of persuasion that Plato calls soul-leading (psuchagōgia). Here as in other dialogues Plato is concerned with how a philosopher can lead people’s souls (that is, their attention and concern) away from worldly things and toward the goods of philosophy – a task at which Socrates’ typical methods often fail. The two parts of the Phaedrus consider two methods of such soul-leading, love and rhetoric, and the dialogue as a whole asks how either or both can be successful. The events of the dialogue dramatize the endeavour, and unify the two proposed methods: we see Socrates engaged in an attempt at soul-leading, using as his tool Phaedrus’s love, not of another person, but of rhetoric.
Keywords: erōs, love, rhetoric, beauty, psychagōgia, soul-leading, persuasion, Phaedrus, symposium, drama
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