Personal tools
You are here: Home → Philosophy → Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love → Lecture Notes → Session 9 Notes

Session 9 Notes

Document Actions
  • Send this
  • Print this
  • Content View
  • Bookmarks
  • CourseFeed
— filed under: , ,

Notes for David O'Connor's 2/5/07 lecture on Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates’ second speech (the charioteer speech) for PHIL 20214

Phaedrus, Socrates’ second speech (the charioteer speech)

 
I. Socrates praises Love
 
II. Falling in love
 

            A. Remembering something divine

            B. Beauty’s privileged position

“Beauty alone has this privilege, to be the most clearly visible and the most loved.” (Plato, Phaedrus, trans. A. Nehamas & P. Woodruff, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995: 250e)

C. The beloved’s response to the lover

  Charioteer

Image courtesy of Prometheus Imports
   

“Think how a breeze or an echo bounces back from a smooth solid object to its source; that is how the stream of beauty goes back to the beautiful boy and sets him aflutter. It enters through his eyes, which are its natural route to the soul; there it waters the passages for the wings, starts the wings growing, and fills the soul of the loved one with love in return. Then the boy is in love, but has no idea what he loves. He does not understand, and cannot explain, what has happened to him. It is as if he had caught an eye disease from someone else, but could not identify the cause; he does not realize that he is seeing himself in the lover as in a mirror.” (Phaedrus 255c-d)

 
III. Writing as a mediated experience of beauty
Copyright 2009, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. O\'Connor, D. (2007, July 03). Session 9 Notes. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/philosophy/ancient-wisdom-modern-love/lecture-notes/session-9-notes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons License
Reuse Course
Download IMS Package