Plato's Phaedrus

New students are welcome - no previous knowledge required

In the dialogue named after Phaedrus, Plato recounts Socrates' conversation with Phaedrus about love. Phaedrus has recorded a speech he has just heard on the subject by Lisias. He is in admiration of the speech and relishes telling it to Socrates. Socrates is not satisfied with the clarity, finish or rhetorical manner of the language and is moved to give a better speech of his own. After speaking he is unhappy with the tenor and tone of what he has said which is disingenuous to the great subject of love. This inspires him to give another speech in which he must honour the subject to its fullest extent.

In his exploration of love Socrates recounts an image of each man's soul as a composite – a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. One horse is noble and good, the other ignoble and bad. The charioteer's task is to steer the course against competing interests; the best he describes:

“…for I must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul that is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad.”

The course is presented by Brendan Crehan. Brendan has been a student and tutor in the School for many years, teaching courses in Plato's philosophy, Advaita philosophy, and Meditation.