Enthusiasm and Divine Madness: On the Platonic Dialogue Phaedrus by Joseph Pieper, 103 pages
It is true that Phaedrus is sometimes regarded as one of Plato's lesser dialogues, but Joseph Pieper (Leisure: The Basis of Culture) did not share in that view. In Enthusiasm and Divine Madness he guides the reader through the dialogue step by step.
In Pieper's interpretation, the central theme of Phaedrus is in the conflict between a reductionist sophism which seeks to manage life according to purely rational principles and a recognition of the divine nature of some of the rapturous passions which transcend reason and rational control. Beauty, even the imperfect beauty of the physical world, can draw the soul involuntarily upwards to higher realities.
Ironically, it is the superficial beauty of the sophists' rhetoric that sways the clever young men, while the deeper beauty of truth offered by Socrates can only be perceived by the wise.
No comments:
Post a Comment