Context and Contradictions in Platos Phaedrus and Platos Symposium Es

Context and Contradictions in Platos Phaedrus and Platos SymposiumIt is well known that Plato, a devoted savant of Socrates, chronicled many of Socrates talking toes and conversations. Every so often one can bring out instances where Socrates and other players in these conversations seem to contradict themselves, or at least(prenominal) muddle their arguments. One such occurrence of this is in Platos Symposium and Platos Phaedrus. Both texts emit of love in its personal sense, both(prenominal) texts describe love and its effects, and both discuss how it is best realized, yet they do this in very distinguishable trends, and for different reasons.Platos Phaedrus is a conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus. In this conversation the new-made Phaedrus is overjoyed to tell Socrates of the speech that he had just heard Lysias, The best writer living (Plato Phaedrus 22), tell. In this speech Lysias uses his rhetorical skills to argue that physical love without ablaze attachme nt is preferable to physical love with emotional attachment, That is the clever thing about it he makes out that an admirer who is not in love is to be preferred to one who is (Plato Phaedrus 22). Socrates listens to this speech, as relayed by Phaedrus and quickly becomes aware that this speech was a ploy by Lysias to drive Phaedrus into bed with him. Socrates then fashions a speech, on the spot, that argues the same points that Lysias did. Socrates? speech is sledding well but is interrupted by divine sign. Socrates then has to fashion a new speech that renounces the blasphemous nature of the first. Socrates? second speech contains the famous image of love as a charioteer with two horses. He also addresses the nature of the soul and the effects that love has on it (which provide be ... ...ut different contexts and thus different ideals. The differences in the manner in which they reference love is nothing short of appalling. It would seem as though physical attraction was a Go d who (and whose gifts) came under lots criticism, so much so that Socrates and Phaedrus needed to define Eros, both the verb and the God. Then the same intervention takes place in Symposium but with quite a different outcome. work force are Men they deviate, as do their ideas. In this case the change in ideas came from context different goals were trying to be achieved. This does not connote that either text is more or less valid or has more or less value than the other. For in both Eros is still given his due.Works CitedPlato. Phaedrus. The Works of Plato. Trans. B. Jowett. New York The Dial Press, n.d.Plato. The Symposium. Ed. Christopher Gill. Harmondsworth Penguin Books, 1999.