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The Phaedrus

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Translated by Thomas Taylor, with introductory essays by Tim Addey and David Nowakowski.

The Phaedrus is an important part of the Platonic corpus: standing as a beautiful and profound dialogue in its own right, it was also incorporated as a part of the structured reading syllabus of twelve dialogues in the Platonic schools of late antiquity from the time of Iamblichus onward. It offers its readers a wide-ranging picture of the nature of the soul and its journey through the beautiful cosmos.

To the dialogue (as translated by Thomas Taylor), the Prometheus Trust has added six introductory essays as well as Taylor’s translation of Hermias’ demonstration of the immortality of the soul, as presented by Socrates at the start of his inspired palinode.

The essays are:

  • The Scope and Structure of the Phaedrus
  • Hermias on Inspiration
  • A Platonic Demonstration of the Immortality of the Soul
  • Self-motion in Metaphysics: Descent and Ascent
  • The Journey of the Soul
  • The Oral Tradition in Platonism

Approximate Stephanus line numbering accompanies the text, and the names of the Gods have been restored to their Greek originals.

224 pages. Paperback.

ISBN 9781898910985.

  • About the Series

    The Prometheus Trust’s Students’ Edition Series offers to the newcomer to the Platonic tradition a number of introductory works. The Series is aimed at introducing philosophy within the framework of its original purpose – which was nothing less than the unfolding of the soul’s powers, the conjoining of the inner and outer life, and the restoration of the soul herself to her divine source. Philosophy as practised by its founders was a yoga of enlightenment, and constituted a most beautiful and well-ordered path towards the very highest goal of human existence – friendship with divinity.

    The Series is produced because that original yoga is still the most sure and direct path to human happiness – both in terms of the individual and for human society as a whole. As Thomas Taylor writes at the beginning of his General Introduction to the Philosophy of Plato,

    “It may be compared to a luminous pyramid, terminating in Deity, and having for its basis the rational soul of man and its spontaneous undistorted conceptions, - of this philosophy, august, magnificent, and divine, Plato may be justly called the primary leader and hierophant, through whom, like the mystic light in the inmost recesses of some sacred temple, it first shone forth with hidden and venerable splendour.”

    The tradition has nourished men and women through the ages as they pursued the ways of wisdom and they, in their turn, added to that tradition, adapting its immutable truths to the needs of their own times. In that spirit, the Prometheus Trust offers this Series, not as a final answer to our quest, but as another small light on a long and arduous path which constitutes the life of soul as she plays her part in the divine cosmos.

    See all Students' Editions