Phaedrus (Plato) (beginning: 227-234)

This is a reading of the first portion of Plato's dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus wherein they discuss the pros and cons of erotic love.
Plato wrote the Phaedrus dialogue sometime around 360BCE, roughly in the middle of his works. In Plato’s fictional discourse, we find Socrates in dialogue with Phaedrus. Unlike any other dialogue written by Plato, which are usually set in the marketplace and involve a small group, this intimate one-on-one episode takes place outside of the walls of Athens in a secluded natural scene beside a small stream. The text can be divided into two major sections. The first section includes a speech about erotic love written by the popularly acclaimed political speechwriter, Lysias, which Phaedrus reads aloud to Socrates. Following some dialogue, Socrates then offers his own extemporaneous speech on the same topic. His speech is very lengthy, itself divided into two parts (a dialectic), and is often referred to as Socrates’ “Great Speech.” In the second half of the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates and Phaedrus reflect together on the merits and demerits of the two speeches about love with particular focus on the distinction between logic, which speaks to the rational part of the tripartite soul, and rhetoric, which speaks to the erotic part of the tripartite soul, leaving the intellect (third part) to decide between them.
In this video, Dr. Brad Bannon reads both the Socrates and Phaedrus sides of the dialogue leading up to and including Phaedrus’ reading of Lysias’ speech (227A-234D), using the excellent translation by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. An alternative translation is available here. Plato’s complete works in Greek are freely available from Perseus at Tufts.
If you are interested to learn more about the Phaedrus or if you would like to participate in our public discourse about the text, please watch my 6-part seminar on the text, beginning with part 1 and like and subscribe to my channel. We stream live on YouTube nearly every Thursday at 6:00pm (EST).