on Platos Phaedrus Homework Help

Topic: Essay on Platos Phaedrus

Order Description

In the course of reading Plato’s Phaedrus, we have been trying to pay attention to the continuities, or “threads,” present in this work. Since the dialogue could appear to be divided into three loosely connected parts, we are trying to attend to how it works as a whole. For this midterm, you are asked to write an essay that follows one of these “threads” through each of the three parts (since trying to present the “whole fabric” would take at least a couple volumes). Be sure to think through and explore this thread in terms of its philosophical import—namely, asking questions like “what is the nature of the soul?” or “if language is called a ‘drug’ or ‘food,’ what does that suggest about who the human person is and our relationship with language?”

The essay can be divided into three parts:
1) Find some image or phrase or significant feature of the setting or something along those line from the “prelude” (pgs. 1-7) such as language as medicine/poison or the opening question (“where have you been? And where are you going?”). Begin to expose and explore some philosophical possibilities associated with what you selected. For example, what does medicine do, what is the significance of the fact that what cures can also poison, and what could it mean for language to be a pharmakon (medicine/poison)?
2) Proceed to the “speeches section” (pgs. 7-39). How do you see the philosophical import of what you selected for number one emerging more fully? What in these speeches (you don’t need to talk about all three but at least two of them) aIDresses your selected “thread” in such a way that the philosophical implications of it begin to become more apparent?
3) Proceed to the “conversation section” (pgs. 40-71). How, through this conversation, can you see the presence your “thread”? This conversation could appear to be disjointed from the rest of the dialogue, so how has your attention to this “thread” in one and two helped you see that this conversation is continuous with the rest of the dialogue? So, ultimately, how does the philosophical import of this “thread” become even more apparent in this conversation? Please note that this does not mean that I expect you to have some grand claim about the nature of soul or language or love, although you are free to try and express such a claim. It is perfectly legitimate to realize that you are finally in a place, having worked through one, two, and three to ask the right question or questions.