Enthusiasm & Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue Phaedrus

by Josef Pieper

Plato's famous dialogue, the Phaedrus, was variously subtitled in antiquity: "On Beauty", "On Love", "On the Psyche". It is also concerned with the art of rhetoric, of thought and communication.Pieper, noted for the grace and clarity of his style, gives an illuminating and stimulating interpretation of the dialogue. Leaving the more recondite scholarly preoccupations aside, he concentrates on the content, bringing the actual situation in the dialogue -- Athens and its intellectuals engaged in spirited debate -- alive. Equally alive is the discussion of ideas, which are brought to bear on contemporary experience and made to prove the perennial validity of Socratic wisdom, and its power to excite the mind. The main thesis -- that in poetry and in love man is "beside himself", that is, divinely inspired -- is discussed with reference to modern poets, novelists, and modern psychology.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

125 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1999

About the author

Josef Pieper was a German Catholic philosopher and an important figure in the resurgence of interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas in early-to-mid 20th-century philosophy. Among his most notable works are The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance; Leisure, the Basis of Culture; and Guide to Thomas Aquinas (published in England as Introduction to Thomas Aquinas).

Reviews

[Simona Sanduleac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read Plato yet but I think this was a great little book that awakens the appetite for reading his work. Pieper shows that anybody can dare to approach this literary giant, and that his writings are about universal human experiences.
In this book, Pieper focuses specifically on the essence and origin of Love and Truth and on how those two are codependent. Interesting to see that the currents of thought that Plato talks about have not been eradicated even to our day, which shows us just how lies are ever the same, and yet are so hard to get rid of. He talked about how some people (Lysius in Plato's source) seem to take pride in the coarse description of human love, while Pieper, together with Plato, argues that humans can never be totally utilitarian even in approaching very material subjects, because of the nature of their souls, because they are more than their animal instincts.
An interesting thought that Pieper tied to both Plato and Aquinas is that truth is always enfleshed, and it lacks something of its essence when it is put in writing, detached, so to speak, from the land of the living.
I don't think for me there could have been a better introduction to Plato than through Pieper. Now it's time to get to the sources.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Socrates tells Phaedrus the story of the invention of the alphabet. When Tammus sat upon the throne of Egypt, there came to him Toth, the inventor, who praised alphabetic writing as 'medicine for memory and wisdom'. Thereupon the wise king replied that writing would have just the opposite effect. 'If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will...rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.'
This story belongs among the great statements of human wisdom, and should never be allowed to fade from the memory of man. It makes the eternally modern point that technical improvements which to all appearances facilitate man's participation in reality and truth actually do just the opposite: they hamper and possibly even destroy that participation. The ease of communication abolishes real communication...The very great teachers do not write...Thomas (Aquinas) asks whether Christ should not have set down his own doctrine in writing - and answers that the higher mode of teaching is proper to the greater teacher, and that that higher mode consists in impressing his doctrine on the hearts of his hearers."
(Pieper, p. 101)

[Othy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it strange that Pieper had written two short books on the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, and indeed there were many sections that were exactly the same as in both books. This one in particular, though, took the entire dialogue with a bit more depth, while his other book focused on divine madness.

As always, I find Pieper's views interesting and at many times refreshing, though his reading of Plato, I think, is at one point in the book a bit off. Generally, though his discussion wasn't as illuminating as other books I've read about Plato (I thought about most of what was written while writing a paper myself), Pieper's discussion fit together a lot of singular ideas and constructed a cohesive whole that led me deeper along paths I had previously scouted.

Man, I love reading Pieper...

[Erik]

Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Chapter 6, as one of Four Books and Two Essays to Help You Begin Wondering about Plato.

Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Intro to Part Three, as one of Fourteen Books by Josef Pieper.