Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus - Joe Sachs

\nJoe Sachs is a national treasure. His brilliant translations from the Greek, spanning works from Homer to Aristotle, have long enriched scholars and students alike. He crowns those achievements with this exquisite rendering of two of Plato's most beautiful dialogues, with an introduction that evidences his deft ability to drill down to 'the thing itself.' \n--Thomas Sheehan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Stanford University \nThe Phaedrus and Symposium are Plato's two dialogues \nabout Eros--that is, desirous longing. In these new translations by \nformer St. John's College tutor Joe Sachs, the reader imaginatively becomes a \nmember, if a silent one, of the conversations Socrates has with his companions. \n \nWhile both dialogues are about love, they differ in intriguing \nand important ways. The conversation of the Phaedrus takes place in the \ncountryside and that of the Symposium in Athens. In the Phaedrus only \nSocrates and Phaedrus are present; in the Symposium many participate in \nthe drinking party. But in both, Socrates presents singularly abiding images: \nThe winged horses and chariot in the Phaedrus; the ladder of love in the \nSymposium. These compelling images attract and move the reader to ask \nquestions of the dialogues, which in their unique ways seem to reply. \n \nThe interplay of the two texts may spark an unfolding in the reader's thinking \nabout love, but for the dialectical motion that must \noccur between the speeches and between the lines of Plato's texts, the reader \nmust do the work, provoked, invited, and assisted by what they contain. The context for our thinking includes in \none case the subject of tragedy and comedy, in the other the nature of rhetoric \nand writing, but it is philosophy, and not poetry or politics, that persistently \nclaims the center of attention. The dialogues themselves seem as different as \nnight from day, as urbane wit from rustic charm--but do they point to opposing \nor converging attitudes toward erotic love? \n