Phèdre (Plato)

See also: Phèdre

The Phèdre (in Greek: Φαίδρος) is a speech of maturity of Plato. It relates on the love and the writing. Socrate discusses there with Phèdre, the pupil of Lysias.

At the request of Socrate, Phèdre reads the speech on the love that Lysias wrote very little time before. Socrat reacts against this speech whose form and contents are bad and makes a speech on the same topic but which wants to be better. After which Socrate affirms that its speech either was not correct and makes a new speech on the love, in which it exposes in particular the theory of the Réminiscence and of the transmigration of the hearts. The end of the text is devoted to a reflection on the writing.

This part can seem to be a digression without bond with the original topic, which led many critics to consider Phèdre as a badly built work. However Jacques Derrida defends the idea that it is not the case. In the pharmacy of Plato, it shows how Phèdre is actually a dialog relating primarily to the writing, the speeches on the love being to attach to the love of the writing and the speeches, which are like a drug for Socrate.

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'' Greek Phèdre '' in

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