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Plato's Phaedrus: The Philosophy of Love
The Phaedrus lies at the heart of Plato's work, and the topics it discusses are central to his thought. In its treatment of the topics of the soul, the ideas and love, it is closely tied to the other dialogues of Plato's "middle period," the Phaedo , the Symposium , and the Republic . Socrates and Plato have left many marks upon our culture, and the strongest one perhaps is the stature they gave to philosophy by contrasting it with other forms of thought and speech. In the Phaedrus, however, Plato does not feel the need to resist other forms of culture but rather is ready to assimilate them. Graeme Nicholson’s study of the Phaedrus brings out the serious philosophical import of a work that is at once a rhapsody and an argument. Nicholson offers a new translation of Socrates’ “great speech” on the divine madness of love, revealing it as a polyphony of rhetoric, dialectic, and myth. He also casts new light on many current debates about the status of writing in the Phaedrus and in Plato generally, and the problems of the “unwritten philosophy.” This close reading of the Phaedrus text shows that the Platonic ideas were never abandoned, neither here nor in the later dialogues. Drawing upon many German commentators, as well as English-language ones, Nicholson makes a strong case for a unitary reading of Plato’s early and late philosophy.
- GenresPhilosophyClassics
231 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Graeme Nicholson
15 books1 followerGraeme Nicholson was a Canadian philosopher and Emeritus Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto known for his research on ontology, hermeneutics, and anarchism. He completed his doctorate at the University of Toronto with a thesis on Heidegger directed by Emil L. Fackenheim.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2023
Philosophy And Eros
The Phaedrus is among Plato's deepest and most moving dialogues. It is full of myth, poetry, insight and thought. Even more than is the case with most of Plato, it is difficult to pin this work down to consider it as a treatise on a single subject matter. The dialogue form and Plato's own thinking do not allow such reduction. Broadly speaking, the dialogue deals with the nature of love with this question threaded in with a discussion of the nature of speech and writing and their respective roles in thinking about important questions (such as the nature of love.) The main body of the dialogue consists of three speeches, one a written speech by Lysias, and two oral speeches by Socrates. The speech by Lysias and the first speech of Socrates argue that it is more advantageous for a young person to be wooed by a person who does not love him. Socrates second speech, the pivotal portion of the dialogue, strongly takes issue with this in a discussion of the nature of love, passion (madness), the human soul, and the world of Platonic form.
Graeme Nicholson is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a fellow of Trinity College. His book is a study of the Phaedrus prepared as part of a series of Purdue University Press' History of Philosophy Series, each volume of which is devoted to a detailed consideration of a specific philosophical text. The Phaedrus has received such consideration in other studies (by Charles Griswold, Luc Brisson, Seth Bernadette, among other scholars), but the work is inexhaustible and well deserves the extended treatment it receives here. Nicholson, properly and commendably, philosophizes with Plato. He sees the ancient character of the texts but does not stop there. He tries to show how the Phaedrus, with all its antiquity, addresses problems of modern readers in an important an elucidating way.
Nicholson's focus is on the nature of love. Many readers understand Plato to argue that eros is a step on the way to a broader, rationalistic understanding of the ideas. But Nicholson argues well that the Phaedrus reverses this pattern. Plato here sees eros and passion - a commitment to study and to understanding and a fire within one -- as a precondition to any serious endeavor, philosophical or otherwise. Nicholson proceeds to show how this understanding of eros allows Plato in the Phaedrus to take a broader view of the nature of myth, poetry, rhetoric, and music as themselves contributing to and enabling the process of philosophical understanding. I find this a valuable insight into the Phaedrus.
Nicholson also has challenging things to say about Plato's concept of being (or of being-beyond-being). He sees this as a spiritual and valuable concept, to simplify broadly, and as an important and, with current explanations and explications, viable antidote to much of the scientism and materialism in contemporary thought and in the assumptions of many people. This too is a valuable and thoughtful way of approaching the Phaedrus.
The core of Professor Nicholson's study is Socrates's great speech on love which he presents in Part II of the book in a fresh translation. This translation is followed by a long, careful, exploration in Part III of the various themes of the book. Part I of the book gives background on Plato and on the Phaedrus's relationship to Plato's body of work. There are introductory chapters on myth, rhetoric, dialectic, and writing. All these themes are important to the Phaedrus and they are developed with good use of authority to other Platonic and Greek texts, and to the work of modern philosophers and scholars.
The book suffers somewhat but ignoring Plato's own order of presentation. There is this a lack of attention to the dramatic development -- to the manner in which Plato tries to show the interrelationship of the themes of the Phaedrus -- how one leads into another. This is no small task. Thus in the early sections of the book, Professor Nicholson discusses themes that Plato reserves for the end of the dialogue -- such as the nature of dialectic and the relative merits of writing and discussion. (The story of the god Theuth and his gift of writing to the King of Egypt is discussed early in Nicholson, for example, but it appears only at the end of the Phaedrus.) The presentation thus misses some of the opportunities to discuss how Plato and the reader should view the development of the themes in the dialogue.
It is good to read the Phaedrus -- or to reread it as the case may be -- in the context of reading and studying this book. I thought the book helped me understand and appreciate the Phaedrus and Plato. This great ancient philosopher has much to teach us.
Robin Friedman
The Phaedrus is among Plato's deepest and most moving dialogues. It is full of myth, poetry, insight and thought. Even more than is the case with most of Plato, it is difficult to pin this work down to consider it as a treatise on a single subject matter. The dialogue form and Plato's own thinking do not allow such reduction. Broadly speaking, the dialogue deals with the nature of love with this question threaded in with a discussion of the nature of speech and writing and their respective roles in thinking about important questions (such as the nature of love.) The main body of the dialogue consists of three speeches, one a written speech by Lysias, and two oral speeches by Socrates. The speech by Lysias and the first speech of Socrates argue that it is more advantageous for a young person to be wooed by a person who does not love him. Socrates second speech, the pivotal portion of the dialogue, strongly takes issue with this in a discussion of the nature of love, passion (madness), the human soul, and the world of Platonic form.
Graeme Nicholson is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a fellow of Trinity College. His book is a study of the Phaedrus prepared as part of a series of Purdue University Press' History of Philosophy Series, each volume of which is devoted to a detailed consideration of a specific philosophical text. The Phaedrus has received such consideration in other studies (by Charles Griswold, Luc Brisson, Seth Bernadette, among other scholars), but the work is inexhaustible and well deserves the extended treatment it receives here. Nicholson, properly and commendably, philosophizes with Plato. He sees the ancient character of the texts but does not stop there. He tries to show how the Phaedrus, with all its antiquity, addresses problems of modern readers in an important an elucidating way.
Nicholson's focus is on the nature of love. Many readers understand Plato to argue that eros is a step on the way to a broader, rationalistic understanding of the ideas. But Nicholson argues well that the Phaedrus reverses this pattern. Plato here sees eros and passion - a commitment to study and to understanding and a fire within one -- as a precondition to any serious endeavor, philosophical or otherwise. Nicholson proceeds to show how this understanding of eros allows Plato in the Phaedrus to take a broader view of the nature of myth, poetry, rhetoric, and music as themselves contributing to and enabling the process of philosophical understanding. I find this a valuable insight into the Phaedrus.
Nicholson also has challenging things to say about Plato's concept of being (or of being-beyond-being). He sees this as a spiritual and valuable concept, to simplify broadly, and as an important and, with current explanations and explications, viable antidote to much of the scientism and materialism in contemporary thought and in the assumptions of many people. This too is a valuable and thoughtful way of approaching the Phaedrus.
The core of Professor Nicholson's study is Socrates's great speech on love which he presents in Part II of the book in a fresh translation. This translation is followed by a long, careful, exploration in Part III of the various themes of the book. Part I of the book gives background on Plato and on the Phaedrus's relationship to Plato's body of work. There are introductory chapters on myth, rhetoric, dialectic, and writing. All these themes are important to the Phaedrus and they are developed with good use of authority to other Platonic and Greek texts, and to the work of modern philosophers and scholars.
The book suffers somewhat but ignoring Plato's own order of presentation. There is this a lack of attention to the dramatic development -- to the manner in which Plato tries to show the interrelationship of the themes of the Phaedrus -- how one leads into another. This is no small task. Thus in the early sections of the book, Professor Nicholson discusses themes that Plato reserves for the end of the dialogue -- such as the nature of dialectic and the relative merits of writing and discussion. (The story of the god Theuth and his gift of writing to the King of Egypt is discussed early in Nicholson, for example, but it appears only at the end of the Phaedrus.) The presentation thus misses some of the opportunities to discuss how Plato and the reader should view the development of the themes in the dialogue.
It is good to read the Phaedrus -- or to reread it as the case may be -- in the context of reading and studying this book. I thought the book helped me understand and appreciate the Phaedrus and Plato. This great ancient philosopher has much to teach us.
Robin Friedman
March 15, 2026
Coming back to Plato at this point in the reading sequence — after working through the Upanishads, Plotinus, the Kabbalistic texts, the Sufi masters, the esoteric tradition — is a different experience from reading him at the beginning. The sources he was drawing from become more visible. The concepts he was trying to express in Greek become more legible through their parallels in other traditions.
The winged chariot allegory is the core image. The soul is a chariot drawn by two horses — one noble (thumos, the spirited part) and one base (appetite, the downward pull) — governed by a charioteer (reason). The gods' chariots move in perfect harmony; the human soul struggles to maintain control, and when the bad horse gains, the soul falls from the realm of the Forms and is embodied.
Once you've read the fourth-way literature — Gurdjieff's coachman allegory, Ouspensky's driver and horse — the derivation is unmistakable. The hackney-carriage metaphor that circulates through twentieth-century esoteric literature comes directly from here. The reader who has worked through the antecedents can recognize exactly where the derivative presentations found their original material.
The discussion of rhetoric in the second half isn't unrelated. Plato's claim is that genuine rhetoric — the ability to speak in a way that serves the soul of the listener — requires genuine knowledge of the soul's structure. You cannot speak well to someone if you don't understand what they are. Constitutional knowledge, in the Platonic sense, precedes communication. That felt contemporary the first time I read it, and feels more contemporary now.
This text is Book 44 in The Mysterious Thread curriculum. The complete architecture can be found via The Collective Press.
The winged chariot allegory is the core image. The soul is a chariot drawn by two horses — one noble (thumos, the spirited part) and one base (appetite, the downward pull) — governed by a charioteer (reason). The gods' chariots move in perfect harmony; the human soul struggles to maintain control, and when the bad horse gains, the soul falls from the realm of the Forms and is embodied.
Once you've read the fourth-way literature — Gurdjieff's coachman allegory, Ouspensky's driver and horse — the derivation is unmistakable. The hackney-carriage metaphor that circulates through twentieth-century esoteric literature comes directly from here. The reader who has worked through the antecedents can recognize exactly where the derivative presentations found their original material.
The discussion of rhetoric in the second half isn't unrelated. Plato's claim is that genuine rhetoric — the ability to speak in a way that serves the soul of the listener — requires genuine knowledge of the soul's structure. You cannot speak well to someone if you don't understand what they are. Constitutional knowledge, in the Platonic sense, precedes communication. That felt contemporary the first time I read it, and feels more contemporary now.
This text is Book 44 in The Mysterious Thread curriculum. The complete architecture can be found via The Collective Press.
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