Yasmine Kahly

Professor Carrico

Jerilyn Sambrooke

Rhetoric 103A

26 November 2016

The Fall and Embodiment of Souls within the Chariot Allegory in Phaedrus

In this figurative reading, I will be examining the allegory of the chariot, specifically the fall of the soul from its ascent towards the heavens and its bodily embodiment (248b – 249e) outlined in Plato’s Phaedrus.

The allegory of the chariot symbolizes the tripartite nature of the soul and is composed of a white horse representing the soul’s spiritedness, a black horse representing the soul’s impulsiveness, and a charioteer representing the soul’s rationality and function to synchronize the two discordant horses to maintain harmony. The allegory establishes the soul as immortal and details its ascent towards its destination, the heavens, which hold true knowledge, wisdom, and beauty that are unchanging and definite as opposed to the mutable notions of knowledge, wisdom, and beauty of the mortal world. This ascent is led by the chariots of Gods who have no issues reaching The Forms, naturally, as they are of pureness and divinity themselves and do not have to fight a mortal entity ruled by its impulsive, corporeal tendencies, as symbolized by the black horse. The soul’s proximity to this divine realm and the Gods establishes a hierarchical structure that Socrates uses as leverage for his argument that madness isn’t inherently bad.

Socrates utilizes the allegory of the chariot to disprove Lysias’ principal assertion that the boy is better off giving his favors to the non-lover rather than the lover because the lover’s madness, which is typically accompanied by love, is harmful to the boy. Plainly, Lysias’ argument rests on the premise that madness is inherently bad. In his second speech, Socrates refutes Lysias’ characterization of love as harmful and asserts that madness is not bad because it is of the Gods and is therefore of divinity and pureness. The allegory of the chariot provides an understanding of the soul as both human and divine, thereby establishing how madness, a byproduct of love, is both beneficial and divine to it.

The ascent towards the ridge of heaven, beyond which one may behold The Forms, yields varying reward for every soul. This is evident in the fact that the hierarchal structure of souls’ bodily embodiment is determined by the distance of the soul’s fall from the ascent towards the heavenly realms. In this way, one whose soul can better harmonize the two inharmonious steeds is embodied as a philosopher, striving for true wisdom out of a love of wisdom and a burning desire for self-recollection, reaching much more closely to The Forms than other characters detailed by Socrates in the allegory, such as the artisan or the sophists, and, therefore, retaining more of the true beauty and wisdom waiting beyond the ridge of heaven than the other characters. His memories of The Forms steer him away from bodily tendencies and propel his quest of attaining divine knowledge forward. This proximity to the The Forms optimizes his chances of attaining divine knowledge, wisdom, and beauty, among other heavenly essences, unlike those at the lower levels of divine retention, such as the tyrant or the poet, who cannot keep up with the Gods’ chariots and consequently succumb to their corporeal tendencies.

The allegory operates figuratively to parallel the earthly madness provoked by love with the madness that is incited when the soul is exposed to the true beauty that awaits beyond the ridge of heaven. The latter of this phenomenon is explicit in the quote,“He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god” (249d). Here, it is evident that the philosopher’s fall from the heavenly ascent isn’t as far from The Forms as that of those identified by Socrates as the “ordinary people”, or, more specifically, the farmers, artists, businessmen, and others that also make up the hierarchical structure of the soul’s bodily embodiment and so, because they were unable to rein in both steeds in order to steer their chariot more closely to the gods, they have no conception of the enlightenment attained by the philosopher’s soul and register their foreignness to his enlightenment as madness on the philosopher’s part. In this sense, it is clear that madness is actually a good thing in that it means the soul has attained and retained the divine wisdom awaiting beyond the ridge of heaven. In short, the allegory functions here to demonstrate the divinity of madness by paralleling divine madness and corporeal madness, refuting Lysias’ argument that the boy should seek the companionship of a non-lover over a lover on the basis that madness, which is characteristic of lovers, is inherently bad.

The beautiful, youthful boy, the object of the lover’s desire, is symbolic of the true beauty that the lover’s soul has retention from his ascension towards The Forms. This is explicit in the quote, “...[here enters a] fourth kind of madness-that which someone shows when he sees the beauty we have down here and is reminded of true beauty” (249d). Upon seeing the boy, the lover is overcome with the madness he felt in realizing heavenly beauty during his ascent and engages in what the ordinary people regard as lunacy, flapping his imaginary wings as if he were truly ascending again, a feeling only the lover’s soul would understand from his proximity to the Gods’ chariots and progression towards the heavenly realm. In this sense, Socrates is arguing that being overcome with the madness that is a byproduct of love is a testament to the advancement of the lover’s soul towards divine enlightenment, because the lover being reminded of the beauty beyond the ridge of heaven upon seeing the beauty of the boy means the lover has attained more of the divine beauty and wisdom than others during his ascent and is therefore able to recognize beauty as such because of his retention of true beauty. Socrates establishes that in order to recognize beauty as such, one must have a point of reference of true beauty. This is explicit in the quote, “...nature requires that the soul of every human being has seen reality; otherwise, no soul could have entered this sort of living thing. But not every soul is easily reminded of the reality there by what it finds here- not souls that got only a brief glance at the reality there” (249e). Here, it is evident how the lover could identify the beauty of the boy with the true beauty of the heavens and how ordinary people who have not attained that level of divine beauty and wisdom could perceive the lover as mad.

Through the allegory of the chariot, Socrates establishes that great reward stems from madness, as the lover being overcome by it in the face of corporeal beauty is not inherently bad as argued by Lysias but is instead indicative that his soul has attained a higher level of divine wisdom and beauty during its ascension towards the heavens and can identify earthly beauty as being reminiscent of the earthly beauty attained and retained by the lover’s soul. Therefore, the boy would not be wrong to choose the lover as the madness that accompanies him is not inherently harmful for the boy but is in fact divine and pure.