Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus

"Joe Sachs is a national treasure. His brilliant translations from the Greek, spanning works from Homer to Aristotle, have long enriched scholars and students alike. He crowns those achievements with this exquisite rendering of two of Plato's most beautiful dialogues, with an introduction that evidences his deft ability to drill down to 'the thing itself.'"--Thomas Sheehan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Stanford University The Phaedrus and Symposium are Plato's two dialoguesabout Eros--that is, desirous longing. In these new translations byformer St. John's College tutor Joe Sachs, the reader imaginatively becomes amember, if a silent one, of the conversations Socrates has with his companions. While both dialogues are about love, they differ in intriguingand important ways. The conversation of the Phaedrus takes place in thecountryside and that of the Symposium in Athens. In the Phaedrus onlySocrates and Phaedrus are present; in the Symposium many participate inthe drinking party. But in both, Socrates presents singularly abiding images: The winged horses and chariot in the Phaedrus; the ladder of love in theSymposium. These compelling images attract and move the reader to askquestions of the dialogues, which in their unique ways seem to reply. The interplay of the two texts may spark an unfolding in the reader's thinkingabout love, but for the dialectical motion that mustoccur between the speeches and between the lines of Plato's texts, the readermust do the work, provoked, invited, and assisted by what they contain. The context for our thinking includes inone case the subject of tragedy and comedy, in the other the nature of rhetoricand writing, but it is philosophy, and not poetry or politics, that persistentlyclaims the center of attention. The dialogues themselves seem as different asnight from day, as urbane wit from rustic charm--but do they point to opposingor converging attitudes toward erotic love?