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Summary
Prelude (227-230)
The Speech of Lysias (231-234)
Interlude—Socrates’s First Speech (234-241)
Interlude—Socrates’s Second Speech (242-245)
The Myth. The Allegory of the Charioteer and His Horses—Love Is the Regrowth of the Wings of the Soul—The Charioteer Allegory Resumed (246-257)
Introduction to the Discussion of Rhetoric—The Myth of the Cicadas (258-259)
The Necessity of Knowledge for a True Art of Rhetoric—The Speeches of Socrates Illustrate a New Philosophical Method (258-269)
A Review of the Devices and Technical Terms of Contemporary Rhetoric—Rhetoric as Philosophy—The Inferiority of the Written to the Spoken Word (269-277)
Recapitulation and Conclusion (277-279)
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Phaedrus reads Lysias’s speech, which is written in the voice of a “non-lover.”The speaker implores his reader not to think less of him simply because he is physically attracted to him and not emotionally “in love.” Lovers who are emotionally engaged with each other often find that their feelings change, but such a reversal is not possible when a couple are not “in love” with each other. Since emotional love makes lovers do things that may be unwise when looked at rationally, a man not in love will make decisions much more reasonable and well-considered. He can weigh the time and money he spends on his partner against what the relationship is actually worth, whereas a man “in love” will spend beyond his means, or waste much of his time, on a partner with whom he is emotionally involved: “Nothing remains for [a non-lover] but to do cheerfully whatever they think will give their partners pleasure” (27).
Furthermore, old loves and new loves will come into conflict with each other. If one professes to love his current partner so much that other things do not matter, and then a second partner comes along and takes the place of the first, it can be concluded that the lover was wrong to make such claims about his partner in the first place.
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