Self-Knowledge, Eros and Recollection in Plato's "Phaedrus"

At the beginning of the Phaedrus, Socrates distinguishes between two kinds of people: those who are more complex, violent and hybristic than the monster Typhon, and those who are simpler, calmer and tamer (230a). I argue that there are also two distinct types of Eros (Love) that correlate to Socrates’s two kinds of people. In the first case, lovers cannot attain recollection because their souls are disordered in the absence of self-knowledge. For the latter, the self-knowledge of self-disciplined lovers renders them capable of recollecting the Forms by ordering their souls naturally.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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