Brad Barna

GSI: Kuan Hwa

First Socratic Argument in favor of Lysias in “Phaedrus”

In Plato’s first part of the “Phaedrus,” Socrates and Phaedrus follow the argument of Lysias’s Scroll which describes the relationship between the non-lover and the lover and why the first would be better to choose other than the latter. Socrates compiles a list of reasons why Lysias would be accurate (although he mentions later that Lysias actually mentioned the same argument three times over) and simplifies his terms into ‘manageable’ arguments he later refutes due to the reason of Lysias’s scroll and its inherent incompetence.  The lover is a slave to pleasure while the beloved becomes a slave of the lover through deprivation of property and time-based dependency, the showmanship of the relationship causes the beloved to be oblivious to the lover’s drunkenness and only when the lover becomes wise and temperate (out of love for the beloved) does the beloved realize that he is now effeminate and spoiled by the lovers encaging passion. This essentially summarizes the argument embodied by Socrates’s first speech, but he is later conflicted upon searching within himself and sees that he was wrong, complementing Lisyas’s poorly made thesis in order to prove his argument. In Socrates’s interpretation of the lover and the beloved’s relationship, the beloved is seen almost as a prey to the lover to satisfy the powerful hunger of lust and irrational passion.

We follow Socrates’s argument from the beginning where he initially states that the “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.” This is where the inherent transformation of the beloved begins to happen, later detailed by Socrates as a transformation mirroring effeminate values, which are despised by his patriarchal dogma. He continues to mold the beloved in this manner “will he not choose a beloved who is delicate rather than sturdy and strong? One brought up in the shady bowers and not in the bright sun, a stranger to manly exercises and the sweat of toil…” Here we begin to see the clear dependency that the lover begins to impose on the beloved and why it is detrimental to the being and independence of the beloved. It almost feels like he is withering the wings of his soul, later on detailed in the reading as one of the reasons why the soul must remain ten thousand years in earth being recycled until it can regenerate its wings once more. Here we begin to see the stratification of the lover’s imposition upon his beloved. While the lover is a slave to pleasure, the beloved becomes a slave to the lover and thus to his pleasure. One thing that Socrates also mentions is deprecation of the beloved not only from property and people, but of his ability to attain philosophy, which to Socrates is one of the worst evils one can do.

Socrates begins to mention that a deprivation of property begins as the lover cages in the beloved. “… to deprive his beloved of his dearest and best and holiest possessions, father, mother kindred, friends, of all whom he thinks may be hinderers or reproves of their most sweet converse…” in this way we begin to see not only his effeminate but his inability to converse with the rest of the world, only having the lover as his consolation. Socrates continues to say that the more time he is deprived of his property, the more dependent he becomes on his lover, almost hoarding the beloved for himself. Socrates then mentions the animals who happen to be flatterers (which he mentions in Gorgias) to be dangerous, as they fall into a temptation of spoils and an inability to escape the clutches of its continuous flattery “for the time they are very pleasant.” This flattery does not allow for the beloved to see the lover’s aging affection and physical being, which then Socrates analogizes it to be almost as sexual assault “forces himself upon him.” This extreme flattery conduces a notion of false pleasure among the beloved and he is then unable to escape until the lover falls out of love.

Socrates then continues to argue that the lover in all his ‘drunkenness’ of love is compelled to exhibit his unfaltering love and pushes the comparison to 'enhibriation' when he says “besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk.” He then transforms the lover into a wise and temperate being, after falling out of the love he feels for his lover, and the beloved without the acknowledgment of this falling out is left without the artillery to continue on a fight in which he cannot win. The lover becomes a coward under pleasure and the beloved “believes himself to be speaking to the same person and the other, not having the courage to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfill the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly […] does not want to do as he did or to be as he was before.” The lover is transformed as much as the beloved and we see that the domestication of both sides ills both.

Thus we learn, through this argument, that it is better not to fall into the clutches of the lover for love is a madness, and this madness later on refuted, is agreed to be intoxicating and invigorating for the ill of both persons. Socrates has made his point clear and we begin to see the nature of what love is in the eyes of Lysias.