XI · Phaedrus
Divine Madness
In the Phaedrus, Socrates recants an earlier speech that treated the lover as a harmful form of unreason. Some madness, he says, is a gift. There are four: prophetic, ritual, poetic, and erotic. A philosophical name for states that exceed ordinary calculation.
The soul grows wings when it remembers beauty.
Prophetic
A seer moved beyond ordinary calculation.
Ritual
Initiation, purification, the rites that unbind.
Poetic
The Muse taking a maker further than craft.
Erotic
The madness this walk follows. Beauty reminding the soul.
Why have human beings so often experienced love as something that exceeds ordinary reason?
The Phaedrus argues that a certain being-moved is itself a way of knowing, and that the charioteer still has to steer.
when she beholds the beautiful, then the old awe steals over her
Plato, Phaedrus 251a. Jowett, 1892.
knowing that arrives through being moved
Notes · 1
- Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892). Public domain. Source
Eve
Divine Madness
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