Customer Reviews

Phaedrus (Penguin Classics)

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This is one of my favorite Platonic dialogues, an analysis of both rhetoric and love which leads to some compelling discussions. However, the translation offered by Pengin Classics is hideously lacking. I can't put my finger on exactly where it goes wrong, but the translator makes it a pain to get through just one page. Everything seems laborous and technical, including the normally exquisite speeches.

Get another translation instead. Might I suggest the one published by Hackett? Or perhaps Cornell University Press? Both of those translations take care to make the dialogue as lively annd exciting as it rightfully should be.

This Platonic dialogue is one of the most intriguing and crisply enjoyable. It is here that Socrates relates his ideas on the complex intermingling of the beautiful and the good, as well as brilliant reflections on speech and writing. "Since it is the function of speech to lead souls by persuasion, he who is to be a rhetorician must know the various forms of soul." A privileging of speech over writing is preeminent in Western thought, perhaps it originates here. Writing is exterior to the soul, to the 'psyche,' thus it is mere mimesis. This is a wonderfully mysterious and complex text. Be sure to consult Fowler's translation in the loeb edition.