Phaedrus
Place on List:
I. Literary Theory and
Criticism
1. History of Literary Theory and
Criticism until 1930
Plato. Phaedrus.
Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff.
Supporting References:
- “Plato.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. 33-7. Print.
- Kraut, Richard. "Plato." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall Edition. 2013. Web. 15 Aug 2013.
The article with
URL( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/
) offers an overview of Plato and less a discussion on the
above-cited text.
“Plato (429–347
B.C.E.) is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in the
Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating,
wide-ranging, and influential authors in the history of philosophy.
An Athenian citizen of high status, he displays in his works his
absorption in the political events and intellectual movements of his
time, but the questions he raises are so profound and the strategies
he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and provocative that
educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been
influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been
philosophers who count themselves Platonists in some important
respects. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word
“philosopher” should be applied. But he was so self-conscious
about how philosophy should be conceived, and what its scope and
ambitions properly are, and he so transformed the intellectual
currents with which he grappled, that the subject of philosophy, as
it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of
ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed
with a distinctive method—can be called his invention. Few other
authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth
and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas,
and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank.”
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