Thoughts on Phaedrus

              Phaedrus is unlike any other dialogue in the narration and setting. It is the first one I’ve read that takes place in the countryside rather than in the city and we learn why. “I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me anything whereas men in the town do” (230d).  This seems to be undercut when he rebukes Phaedrus for being too exclusivist in regard to who possesses truth. He tells him that the “first prophetic utterances came from an oak tree” (275b) and that simple people in the old days, who lacked the “wisdom” of the young were content to listen to trees and rocks. Like many people, I’m not sure what to make of this although I can see this own dichotomy in my experience. In this fallen world, tradeoffs are king, and we must always think hard to try to choose the greater good and the lesser evil. In the countryside you get peace, quiet, cleaner air and water, etc., but you also lose out on better education, cultural institutions and diversity, social gatherings, and job opportunities. Perhaps, Plato or Socrates themselves saw this, although from what I understand they were both lifelong city dwellers. Another item of note is that this dialogue is not portrayed as the memory of an event – it starts in media res more like a novel, which is very unlike the other dialogues.

            I think one of the reasons I love ancient philosophy so much is that it shows us just how connected we are to other people not throughout space only, but time as well. Many of the points brought up in these two dialogues are still important for us today, which is not what I was told earlier in my life. It seemed fashionable to say that people 2000 years ago have nothing to teach us today since we are superior and more advanced in every way – of course, we have iPhones and air travel – what did those savage goat herders have? As it turns out, they had a modicum of wisdom and a massive desire to pursue it. A fashionable logographer (professional speech writer) of that time named Lysias has written a speech on love that has enthralled the young and impetuous Phaedrus and he shares it with Socrates. I was quite shocked that it was so brazenly immature and also that it resembled debates I had with friends when I was younger myself. It seems times really don’t change in certain respects. Basically, Lysias was trying to be provocative by holding the position that it’s best to be sexually intimate with friends with no strings attached than to devote your life to a lover. The reasons he gives are that lovers are jealous and restrict your freedom, they lie to protect your feelings, they bitch about petty stuff, they are super needy and drag you down. He also says that lovers keep score of who owes what, but friends don’t and that you have wider selection and more fun in “open relationships.” If all this hasn’t given us a clue as to how morally fraught this position is, we should get a clue when he completely does a 180 on what the gospel teaches us. He says that when we have banquets, we never invite those disgusting and needy homeless people, we only invite our peers who can pay us back for what we give. He doesn’t stop to think that perhaps we should actually care about those who can’t pay us back.

It would’ve been nice if the gospel according to St. Luke had been around at that time (Lk 6:30, 14:13-14). Even though it wasn’t, the Word is Eternal and is the Light that enlightens all men and so Socrates was against this view. He mocks this, commenting that Lysias has quite the ability to say the same thing repeatedly in different words with equal success, a dubious talent at best. Even so, as a man of great empathy, the fact that the speech made Phaedrus happy also makes him happy. So much so that it causes him to launch into his own blasphemous speech even after Phaedrus gets mad and threatens to beat him up for stalling! In his “bewitched” state, he defines love as the strong passion of irrational desire aimed at the enjoyment of bodily beauty (238c), which we see is wildly false. As it is an irrational passion it behooves the lover to make sure his beloved is completely dominated by him, kept dependent and inferior. The lover will deprive the beloved of all property and contact with loved ones to maintain this control, so no one wrests the beloved from his grip. But as “love” in this base and earthly form is all about physical pleasure and beauty, once the beloved is ruined and bereft of all trace of physical beauty due to years of mistreatment and endurance of horrible sacrifices, the lover will then leave them for a better looking and younger version. So, Socrates ends up agreeing that Lysias was right, that we should prefer no-strings attached friends with benefits type relationships over loving monogamous commitments. These toxic, co-dependent, and abusive relationships do exist, but they obviously have nothing to do with love, which is not just an irrational attraction to physical beauty, that’s lust.  The plot thickens when Socrates is visited by his daimonion who instructs him to atone for his sin against heaven – speaking evil of the god of love (242c).

He must purify himself by palinode (a poem that retracts a statement made in an earlier poem). It was said by Lysias that lovers are mad, and the numerous examples given above were evidence of this; that’s why they are to be avoided. Socrates does not dispute that lovers are made; he takes a much more interesting tactic – the greatest blessings come through madness (244a)! It is true that one form of madness is a sickness of the mind, but there are 4 types that are divine gifts which are superior to sanity (242d). There is prophetic madness inspired by the god Apollo, mystical madness inspired by Dionysius, poetic madness from the intervention of the Muses, and towering above the rest the madness of love inspired by Aphrodite and Eros (Love). This is remarkably interesting and perplexing to many people who think this doesn’t fit in with the rest of Plato’s work that is so focused on ratiocinative, discursive reasoning and dialectic, but it poses no obstacle for me.

The assumptions of these people are just off, since they equate “reason” with atheistic materialism and dry abstract thinking. When we look deeply into the dialogues, we see that Socrates is always praying to the gods, getting messages from his daimonion, claiming that knowledge enters his head from unknown divine sources, etc. In fact, the reason given here as to why heaven-sent madness is greater than human sanity is precisely BECAUSE it leads to prayer and worship. Plato goes so far as to say that skill alone will get you nowhere: “But if any man come to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to naught by the poetry of madness” (245a). I can vouch for this. My very first blog post here welled up from within me suddenly and I had to stop what I was doing in order to let the words flow out from me. I did not feel like I wrote anything, so much as I let what was streaming into my consciousness out onto the keyboard. This is exactly what I’ve read and heard in interviews with great writers and I try to make a habit of listening to those wiser than me.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I am firmly convinced of the truth of this idea that divine madness completely overshadows human wisdom and sanity. This is the story repeatedly told throughout the ages and handed down through all the world’s religious traditions. In my own, the prophets inspired by God are definite not logicians or metaphysicians. The prophets are given a message and told to proclaim what shakes us to the core and we often don’t comprehend or refuse to understand their message that requires a radical change of life. This message is often accompanied by socially unacceptable and borderline insane behavior:

“I asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? He answered: ‘the same thing that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.’ I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, and lay so long on his right and left side? He answered, ‘the desire of raising other men into perception of the infinite: this is the North American tribes practice and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?” – William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell

            I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian and, in contrast to the Roman Catholic Church, we are dogmatic minimalists and it is precisely for this reason: we have to leave room in our fallible human reasonings for the Living God to shake things up, as He is wont to do. Only the absolutely most necessary and critical things related to Christ and how he ensures our salvation should be made dogma. As Vladimir Lossky writes in Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, we should, above all else, see a NEGATIVE meaning in the dogmas of the church, i.e. view them apophatically. God loves to take our little ideas and smash them out of love to bring us to true insight. That’s why I also love the phenomena of the holy fools-for-Christ in Russian spirituality, which is just a modern revival of the Cynicism that inspired Christian asceticism in the first place. These holy fools act in scandalous ways, spurning human conventions in ways that would make Southern Baptist ministers condemn them to hell. They would run around naked, urinate on icons, face backwards in church while praying, and do all manner of socially unacceptable behavior to try to bring people to knowledge of God. As Jaroslav Pelikan states in his book on foolishness for Christ: “The Holy is too great and too terrible when encountered directly for men of normal sanity to be able to contemplate it comfortably. Only those who cannot care for the consequences run the risk of the direct confrontation of the Holy.” For anyone interested in this phenomenon the book Crazy John and the movie Ostrov (The Island) are highly recommended.

I could spend all day talking about this, but I will only bring up a few more examples. In the Symposium, we see that Socrates himself is one of these madmen, as you might have guessed. He goes everywhere barefoot, he is known for randomly stopping and remaining motionless for up to 24 hours while completely unresponsive to sense perception, as well as having an inhuman tolerance for alcohol and bad weather. I’ve been watching this sci-fi show called Farscape recently and the main character is an astronaut named John Crichton who gets thrown into utterly bizarre and ridiculous situations and unlike in most shows like this, he acts accordingly. First, he is afraid, shocked and weak and doesn’t know how to react, but eventually his giveashitter breaks and he completely loses any sanity he once had. This is obviously played to great comedic effect, but it also shows how liberating an effect this can have on the human soul. In the most absurd and insane circumstances it is often more advantageous to act in kind. When the world is mad, we too must be mad. These moments when Crichton embraces the divine mania given to him is when he succeeds and when he rejects it, he fails. We also see the positive impact that can be had on those who “believe 6 impossible things before breakfast” in Through the Looking Glass. We must not always take life so seriously, and also must make sure there is plenty of room for the whimsical to upset the monotonous balance of quotidian life.

The creators of Farscape, Lewis Carrol, Socrates, and Plato enjoin us to embrace divine madness and rise above worldly sanity when inspiration comes upon us and I wholeheartedly concur with this message. The wise and not the learned prefer the company of the passionate to the sane. God’s wisdom seems like folly to the uninitiated. The Sermon on the Mount is not only one of the most moving and beautiful discourses ever given, but also the most logical. The fact that it goes against time-honored human yearning for sex, money, drugs, power, and all other sorts of short-sighted pleasure confirms this. What we should really want is to be persecuted for righteousness sake, to mourn, to be poor, etc. This seems paradoxical, but if we had seen the truth and the light it wouldn’t be. The wise and not the learned prefer the company of the passionate to the sane.

Back to Socrates encomium on love, he ends up saying that love really is the highest form of divine madness that stretches out towards beauty in order to make us more like God. Contrary to Lysias and Phaedrus, the true lover exhibits no spite or jealousy towards their beloved. In fact, they deny themselves utterly in order to aim for the good of their beloved and to help unite them to the god they worship. Mutual affection arises through the madness inspired by love. The true lover cares absolutely nothing for this world beneath and gazes intently on the things above and is drawn by the beauty of the infinite into communion with the God who made him. Part of this love is the craving of truth, which Socrates defines as the proper food for the soul (248c). This leads Socrates to speak of asceticism alongside love, which may be paradoxical to some, but not to those who truly love. They know that true love is sacrificial, the only love worth having is crucified love. The bad thing about being a human in this fallen world is that we are at war with ourselves and have to constantly fight irrational urges to do things the higher, more pure part of us knows is wrong. This is what ascesis essentially is – training the irrational part of our souls to do good even when it really doesn’t want to. This may also be a definition of maturity.

This leads to Plato’s famous image of temptation and the tripartite structure of the soul. The soul, Socrates tell us is made up of three elements that can be imagined as a driver of two horses. One is a good, upright, modest, temperate, and obedient horse who delights in pleasing his master. The other is a hotblooded, vain, deaf, wanton, and much stronger horse who is extremely difficult to control and is nearly immune to discipline. The driver symbolizes the nous or intellect which should guide all our actions. These two horses obviously symbolize the conflict raging within us, the angel and devil on our shoulders arguing. The evil beast within is very persuasive and passionate, but we must not give in to his demands – he makes us lose all reverence and decorum. Our goal in life should be self-mastery which leads to inner peace and to do this we must subjugate evil so that the good within may be liberated. Plato here seems to be very hopeful. Most accounts of the nature of temptation that I encounter focus on the snowball effect that results from giving in to temptation and the disastrous consequences that can result. Instead Plato does the opposite, if we have once been triumphant over the evil horse it makes him weaker and as we keep attaining victory, he gets progressively weaker until he is humbled and obedient. This more optimistic note strikes a chord with me and seems much more useful, especially in our dreary and hopeless age.  Nevertheless, the evil horse will still try to be sneaky and ask for “rewards” for his submission, but we must be constantly vigilant and never become complacent. We must be especially watchful of wine which strengthens the evil horse like spinach does for Popeye. This asceticism is critical if we are to honor our beloved. She deserves to be treated with awe and reverence and not just as an object of unthinking and irrational desire. The lover is a blessing since all things pale in comparison to their company for us (255b). It is fitting that Socrates ends this reflection with a prayer.

The last section of the dialogue focuses on how we are to understand the role of speech, writing and rhetoric in the philosophic life. Socrates starts off by saying that writing is neutral – bad writing is bad and good writing is good. What makes writing good or bad is whether or not the author has knowledge of the truth when they write. Phaedrus thinks that the bar is too high here, a good writer is one who persuades someone regardless of if they know what they are talking about or not. Socrates rightly denies this. If you can move around the sentences in a speech and it doesn’t change the message at all, it’s obvious it’s all bloviating fluff and of no worth! He points out the truth that it is easier for us to be misled when the difference between two things is narrow rather than great. If it were big, we would see how big the gap was, but since it is small it’s harder to see, especially if we aren’t well versed in the topic. That’s why Socrates says it is critical to precisely define our terms, so we can know exactly what is being discussed, make sure it is understood in the same way by all parties, and so better be able to see if the discussion is drifting. This leads to an examination of the role of rhetoric and how to master an art in general.

To master an art, we need 3 things: innate capacity (talent), knowledge, and practice (269d).  If you are deficient in any one of these, you will never master an art. The knowledge required to be a good rhetorician comes from dialectic. Dialectic is comprised of two procedures that are necessary in order to attain to the truth of things. A dialectician is someone who can correctly and objective find the unity underlining a plurality aka finding the essences of things and can also correctly divide a unity into its parts based on real and not imagined divisions (analysis by successive dichotomies). This is only the beginning, I’m afraid. The rhetorician’s aim is to fix men’s souls like the doctor’s is to fix men’s bodies. Therefore, just like the doctor must have a profound knowledge of the body, the rhetorician must also have a profound knowledge of men’s souls. An expert rhetorician will be able to quickly, accurately, and precisely ascertain the type of soul the person(s) has to whom he is speaking. He must know this so that he knows exactly what to say, when to say it, how long to speak for, whether to be gentle or harsh or whether or not he needs to speak at all or just stay quiet. This level of knowledge and prudence is quite a tall order and takes tons of practice and study. Even though this seems hard enough, we must always bear in mind that all will still be lost if we exert all this considerable effort in order to please men rather than the gods (273e).

Socrates revisits the role of writing at the end with a fable about Egyptian gods having an argument. Theuth brings writing to mankind in the belief it will make them wiser and improve their memories. The king God Thaumas (Ammon) disagrees completely – it will make them more forgetful because they won’t be forced to memorize, they will just look things up. It will also detract from the wisdom of experience, people will think they know everything because they read it in books, even though they have no real world experience. Socrates seems to agree with this assessment – he says that all a written document does is remind you of the truth that is already within you, it doesn’t provide any reliability or permanence (275c). Another huge problem concerns exegesis and hermeneutics—a document isn’t alive to answer questions and people bring a wide variety of suppositions and life experiences to bear on their reading of texts and so invariably interpret them differently. A democratic view of textual interpretation has its merits, but it also has the problem that utter morons have equal access to the text as experts do. Also, writing cannot defend itself like a real live person can. All in all, Socrates says it is better suited as a pastime for pleasure and that it is good for us to refresh our memory, but not much else. The best way to pass on truth is orally in person.

I think there is some definite truth to this, but it seems to be overstating the case to me. If that were true, why did Plato write so much then? Or any other great writer? Also, every religious tradition to my knowledge has some sacred text that is to be reverently studied for the wisdom contained within. Also, when you go to university you will be surrounded with books. I can also personally attest to the fact that reading has helped me psychologically, emotionally, and above all else spiritually. I have learned a great deal from reading. I do think that he brings up some valuable points such as the problem of interpretation which is familiar to anyone belonging to a religious tradition with a sacred text. The problem of how to interpret a text, who gets to interpret it, and how we know which interpretation is correct is a huge problem with no easy answers. But I absolutely do not believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. Even some of the mystical saints seem to belie their rhetoric. My patron saint, Isaac the Syrian was all about silent prayer, thinking it key to the spiritual life – but he also read so much he became blind. All of my greatest heroes read tons of books and were extremely well read and knowledgeable and I aspire to be like them, though I know I fall far short of their greatness. I recently learned of a medieval Chinese Confucian philosopher named Zhu Xi who wrote vociferously in favor of book learning and studying as an aid and not a replacement for inner contemplative prayer. Hopefully I’ll get to read his work someday. Reading and writing are absolutely wonderful; seeing into the mind of people from far away lands and times is a great blessing and I will treasure this gift God has given our age forever.

If we are going to write though, Socrates urges us to imitate the skills of the rhetorician and dialectician mentioned above to make sure the document is as well written as possible. No matter what, whether in writing or in person it behooves us to be able to defend our beliefs if challenged although we must also bear in mind that it is impossible for humans to be wise—that honor is reserved for the gods exclusively. The most we can hope for is to be philosophers – lovers of wisdom who search for the truth by way of beauty and whose origin is in wonder. I will end with the prayer Socrates utters at the end of the dialogue:

“Dear Pan, and all ye other gods that dwell in this place, grant that I may become fair within, and that such outward things as I have may not war against the spirit within me. May I count him rich who is wise, and as for gold, may I possess as much of it as only a temperate man might bear and carry with him” (279b-c)