Posted for Samuel Coromandel

Phaedrus, on love, expounding upon the Lysias scroll

In Phaedrus, the humble Socrates shows off his rhetorical talents by entertainingly fabricating supplementary arguments for Lysias’s argument on love and relationships - that one who has affairs with a lover is worse off than one who has affairs with someone who doesn’t love him. Phaedrus, who adores Lysias and is in love with his idea that love – when it comes to relationships – is toxic, acquires a scroll of Lysias’s mellifluous speech and argument on love and relationships. In recounting the scroll, Phaedrus provokes Socrates to build upon Lysias’s argument. Though reluctant at first, Socrates erupts into making the compelling and sound argument that one who is in a relationship with a lover is paradoxically unrewarded and punished because being in a relationship with a lover gone with passion entails the withdrawal of reason and therefore, the surrender of that which is good and best, for that which is bad and worst. 

Before indicating the role that a lover plays in a beloved’s life, Socrates sets the stage for his argument by distinguishing between a lover and a non-lover to give an idea of the sickening nature of the lover. He explains that the lover is led by a “natural desire of pleasure” while the non-lover is led by acquired opinion (Phaedrus). When the non-lover is led by acquired opinion in combination with reason, he follows the principle of temperance and is lead to the “best” (Phaedrus). Much to the contrary, when the lover is led by desire, “which is devoid of reason,” he follows a principle of excess and is dragged down to “misrule” (Phaedrus). The lovers desired excess takes many forms - for instance, the form of “gluttony”- and overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, leading one astray to the “enjoyment of personal beauty” by what Socrates calls “supreme desire” (Phaedrus). Essentially, Socrates argues excess to be the enemy of reason and temperance and therefore, the vile principle which causes one to be led away from what is right and best, i.e. towards what is wrong and worst.

The stage set, Socrates ardently dives into how being in a relationship with a lover is grueling by arguing that the lover will engulf his beloved, stripping the beloved of wisdom and reason and leading him towards what is worst by making him like himself, someone taken with the desire of pleasure and ignorance. This idea is introduced by Socrates’ profound proclamation: “he who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible” (Phaedrus). Socrates argues that when it comes to affairs, the lover, twisted and “employed in reducing his beloved to inferiority,” can’t endure any superiority from his beloved or he’ll be unhappy himself (Phaedrus). Therefore, because the beloved is superior to the lover in the sense that he is not overruled/consumed by desire of pleasure and steeped in ignorance, Socrates argues the lover must make the beloved as ignorant as he is, thus making the beloved like himself. To do this, Socrates claims that the lover must drain the beloved of reason and that which is good by keeping him “out of society,” deprived of “parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of every other good,” so that “he may have him all to himself” (Phaedrus). Furthermore, Socrates argues that the lover will compel the beloved out of fear to forgo what Socrates deems “divine philosophy” which is the encapsulation of all that is reasonable and good, marking the worst of all grievous wounds the lover can inflict to the beloved (Phaedrus). Ultimately, as the lover is a slave to his pleasurable desires, Socrates argues the beloved is a slave to the lover – the beloved is a “delight to the lover's heart, and a curse to himself” – and therefore, that the beloved is indirectly a slave of the lovers ignorant and pleasurable desire which leads the beloved to the worst (Phaedrus).

In the spirit of estrangement from what is reasonable, right and best, Socrates goes on to explain how a relationship suffused with ignorance between the lover and the beloved is unpleasant, unrewarding and leads one to what is worst, even at its end. Socrates argues that there are stages that the lover goes through during and after a relationship. During the relationship, the lover is mischievous and jealous of the beloved. Later, the lover is borderline abusive and “mighty disagreeable,” being of old age, saying detestable, atrocious things about the beloved despite whether those things are praiseworthy or not (Phaedrus). Here, Socrates implies that the beloved endures the lover’s borderline abusive behaviors because as aforementioned, the lover has taken away his means of escaping the relationship – his friends, family, possessions and his reason, reason which would direct the beloved away from the desires of pleasures and ignorance which keep him bound to what is worst, the lover, and towards what is best, liberation. At last, after the relationship, Socrates argues that as the lovers love runs dry, he “perfidious[ly]” becomes distant and no longer provides the beloved means of affection, changing “pursuit” of the beloved to “flight” from the beloved (Phaedrus). Socrates ends his account with how the beloved, robbed of reason as a compass towards what is best, endures a terrible relationship and is left in an abysmal place, desperate for the lover he sold his soul (reason) for and alone. 

Though having his differences with Lysias, Socrates has successfully formulated a scintillating argument of Lysias’s which validates why a relationship with a lover taken with passion is devoid of reason and therefore leads a beloved to the worst. Ironically, Socrates shows that even in love – especially in love – if one loses sight of reason and that which is best, one will find himself without love and at a miserable end.