The Strangeness of the Phaedrus

My focus is on the polemical and argumentative force of Plato"s characterization of Socrates in the Phaedrus. His Socrates celebrates the irrational in this dialogue, in a wide variety of forms and manifestations, in direct response to the intellectual sterility so attractive to the interlocutor Phaedrus. Only in the particular context of, e.g., the written speech of Lysias and Phaedrus" enthusiasm for it can we make sense of what Plato"s...