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.Socrates, in his palinode, will somehow haveto transform our understanding of eros so that it is compatible with nous kaisophrosyne, and that is what he will do in a very complex and surprising way,since the compatibility will be exhibited in the context of the experience of thebeauty of the beloved.One might say, then, that despite their vulgar teaching, the first two speechesare not entirely wrong: love, after all, can be irrational and destructive.It hardlyfollows that one should gratify non-lovers.The issue for Socrates now, as in theSymposium, will be to understand both the promise and danger of love, and tothink about how to stand in proper relationship to it.This, as we shall soon see,the question of beauty in the phaedrus 71will have everything to do with the way we respond to beauty, to the experienceof a beautiful beloved.Socrates ends his first speech with his critique of eros (241d), much toPhaedrus s dismay, since he expected Socrates to now turn to the desirable traitsof the non-lover.Socrates indicates his distaste for the entire standpoint bysimply saying that one can attribute to the non-lover the opposite of what wassaid of the lover (241e)! At the same time, he once again indicates his dismay atthe way he is speaking in poetically inspired terms.He is about to leave the spotand go home when his customary daimonion stops him.He has committed a  sin against eros  (242c); it was a   terrible, terrible speech  (deinon, deinonlogon) he just gave.He knows, he says, that eros is in fact   a god or somethingdivine.  So he must atone for his sin with yet another speech, a palinode, whichhe yet again attributes to someone else this time to Stesichorus.This palinode,to which we can now turn, is surely one of the more memorable speeches inphilosophical literature.We need to keep in mind the two explicitly stated intentions regardingSocrates second speech.First, it is a palinode, meant to correct the   sin againsteros  of Lysias s speech and Socrates first speech.We shall have to watch withcare, then, the very di"erent account of eros given here, particularly in itsconnection to beauty, which, as we saw, was barely mentioned in the first twospeeches.Second, the palinode is especially directed to Phaedrus as Socratesacknowledges in his prayer at the end of the speech in the hope that Phaedruswill be turned away from his indiscriminate infatuation with sophistic rhetoricand toward philosophy.We shall have to evaluate the success of this intention aswell, but of course, only at the end of the palinode.The first issue Socrates raises in the palinode is that of   divine madness (244a 245b).We have seen that both early speeches treated eros as a form ofmadness, but in the entirely negative sense of the term.Socrates interestingrecantation on this particular issue will not be, as one might expect, to deny thateros is madness, but instead to distinguish between sorts of madness: a   divine madness which is a great blessing to its su"erer, and a   human  madness whichis the worst thing that can happen.Socrates introduces four forms of divinemadness, indicating explicitly, however, that there are other forms of divinemadness as well.His list is exemplary, but not exhaustive (245b).The fourexemplary types of divine madness that Socrates mentions are: prophetic,   re-ligious  (purifications, rituals, mystical experience), poetic, and erotic.So theearly speeches were right that eros is madness; they were mistaken in not appre-ciating, as Socrates will now try to exhibit (apodeixis 245c), that eros is a formof divine madness.It must not be forgotten, however, that divine madness is madness.As such,it presumably refers to an experience over which we do not have technicalcontrol.We cannot avoid it with sophrosyne, nor can we call it forth at will.72 plato and the question of beautyInstead, something   comes over us,  as if from an outside force of some sort weourselves are not its source.When this   possession  by some force outside us hasnegative results, we call it simply madness.What do we call it when it has positiveresults? Typically, something like inspiration.(The Greek term for this is instruc-tive: enthusiasmos literally,   the god is in us.  ) Now, most of us easily accept thisnotion when it comes to poetic or artistic inspiration.We are not so given to thislanguage when it comes to philosophy, although we certainly speak more gener-ally of the   inspiration  of love.Especially because the focus of the erotic experi-ence that Socrates will describe in the palinode will be what he calls   Zeus friendships (250b) that is, philosophic friendships we should note the im-plication that philosophy, as a mode of eros, involves a similar sort of   inspira-tion  to that of poetry and art.To the extent that this is so, it prepares us for therecognition that philosophy cannot be simply a   logical  activity but is one, likethe arts, that involves inspiration.This is the striking claim that will be set out inthe palinode, and we shall see that Plato sustains it in the Second and the SeventhLetters, to which we shall turn after addressing the palinode.That philosophy issomehow inspired reminds us of Socrates tendency to resist inspiration; we sawthis in his first speech as well as in his introduction to the palinode.We shouldnote as well how   poetic  the palinode will be, with its image of the charioteerand two horses, journeys to the hyper-ouranian place, etc.If eros, and so philosophy, is a form of divine madness, is it always divine?Or is it sometimes divine, and sometimes human madness? A little later in thepalinode (248c ".), Socrates will present a list of the types of lives that devolvebased on how much of   the beings  souls have seen.There,   someone devoted tothe Muses,  that is, inspired art, is placed in the highest position along withphilosophers, lovers of beauty, and lovers (248d), while   imitative poets  areplaced way down in sixth place (out of nine).4 This suggests clearly the distinc-tion between inspired poetry or art and   merely  imitative poetry.(We shouldnote that in the notorious   criticisms  of poetry and art in the dialogues, it isnearly always their imitative and not their inspired character that is criticized, adistinction not suH"ciently observed in most discussions of Plato s supposed  distaste  for poetry.) Might something like this same distinction be true of erosand so of that mode of eros which is philosophy that there is inspired (divine)eros and sick eros as well? If so and doesn t it seem to be so? determining thedi"erence will be a decisive but no easy task.Whether eros is divine or human madness, it is not entirely within ourcontrol.This means that eros and so its manifestation as philosophy willexhibit a certain resistance to our e"orts at sophrosyne, at that self-control whichseems so important to Socrates [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]