Loving and Living Well: the Importance of Shame in Plato's Phaedrus

Although Plato uses the same concept of erotic love in both the Symposium and the Phaedrus, his treatment of it differs strikingly in these dialogues. One of the main reasons for this is that whereas, in the Symposium, rational and non-rational erotic desires are considered to be incompatible, in the Phaedrus he attempts to integrate them in the belief that this will allow us to love and live well. This integration is articulated by means of a complex model of the psyche. Plato sets up the dialogue’s three main speeches in such a way as to critique reductive, bipartite models of the psyche that fail to take into account the θυμός from which most emotions originate. He demonstrates that θυμός, and in particular the emotion shame, have important roles in the integration of erotic desires. This chapter will carry out a close reading of the Phaedrus to study how Plato effects this. Divided into three parts, it will: (1) establish the importance
of θυμός; (2) carry out a close reading of the dialogue’s third speech in which
Socrates integrates rational and non-rational erotic desires; and (3) consider the importance of shame in the dialogue’s lengthy discussion of rhetoric and the way it manipulates emotions.