When Socrates Met Phaedrus: Eros in Philosophy

Crazy Hot

Let me set the scene. It’s hot. It’s really hot. It’s the middle of the Greek summer. Socrates is in Athens where he bumps into an acquaintance called Phaedrus. They say hi. They begin to talk.

Phaedrus is a little excited. He has just heard what he thinks is an amazing speech on love — eros — by the orator Lysias. For the ancient Greeks, eros denoted both sexual pleasure and was the name of a god. That is, love has both physical and metaphysical aspects.

Socrates persuades Phaedrus to read him the speech (he has a copy hidden under his cloak). After a long morning listening to speeches, Phaedrus is eager to stretch his legs and Socrates agrees to accompany him on a stroll out of the city. What is remarkable is that this is only time in all the Platonic dialogues that Socrates leaves the city of Athens. He is no nature boy. Trees have nothing to teach him.

Indeed, the climate influences this dialogue more than any other text by Plato that I know. Such is the heat of eros described by Sappho,

Sweat pours down me, I shake
all over, I go pale as green 
grass. I’m that close to being dead

Like I said, it’s hot.

The two men walk some distance along the Illisos River. They are both barefoot and walk in the water. Sweat pours down their faces. They decide to sit down by the banks of the river in the shade of a broad-leaved plane tree — in Greek, a platanos. A Plato-tree. It is hardly mere accident that the shade that provides the shelter for the dialogue is broad-shouldered Plato — from platus, meaning broad— the tree in which cicadas sing.

Socrates tells a story about the cicadas. Because they were so enthused by the Muses, cicadas sing constantly, stopping for neither food nor drink until they die. If cicadas are inspired by the Muses, Socrates suggests, then philosophers should be inspired by cicadas. The difference between philosophers and cicadas is that the former don’t sing so beautifully or so constantly … although they do get to live a little longer.

Read the article in the New York Times