Dialectic as Philosophical Divination in Plato's Phaedrus

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the relationship between dialectic and divination in Plato’s Phaedrus. Analyzing Socrates’ two speeches about love, it shows that dialectic originally relies on an act of divination (μαντεία) that eventually acquires the sense of a philosophical divination. It explains how divination determines the dialectical framework of the dialogue, with its change from criticizing the lover of the body to praising the lover that seeks the good. It then concentrates on the nature of the dialectical discourse developed by Socrates, showing that this discourse develops as a specific type of divination and presents divination (associated with the madness of love) as a condition of true knowledge. The demonstration follows three steps. First, it underlines the link between divine madness and divination. Second, it shows that any madness has a form of divination or art of madness associated with it, which converts it into a correspondent discourse. Third, it shows that the art associated with the divine madness of love is precisely dialectic, manifested through the recollection of divine reality. The dialectical discourse thus appears as pleasing the gods and it comes as a divine gift and message received in a state of divination.