Phaedrus (dialogue)
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The Phaedrus (Template:Lang-el), written by Plato, is a dialogue between Plato's main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. The Phaedrus was presumably composed around 370 BC, around the same time as Plato's Republic and Symposium; with those two texts, it is often considered one of Plato's literary high points. Although ostensibly about the topic of love, the discussion in the dialogue revolves around the art of rhetoric and how it should be practiced, and dwells on subjects as diverse as reincarnation and erotic love.
Madness (244a-245c)
Socrates begins by discussing madness. If madness is all bad, then the preceding speeches would have been correct, but in actuality, madness given as a gift of the gods provides us with some of the best things we have. There are, in fact, several kinds of divine madness, of which he cites four examples:
- From Apollo, the gift of prophecy;
- From Dionysus, the mystic rites and relief from present hardship;
- From the Muses, poetry;
- From Aphrodite, love.
As they must show that the madness of love is, indeed, sent by a god to benefit the lover and beloved in order to disprove the preceding speeches, Socrates embarks on a proof of the divine origin of this fourth sort of madness. It is a proof, he says, that will convince "the wise if not the clever".
