How to Read Platos Phaedrus

Published: Sept. 10, 2020, 4:23 p.m.

This episode is about written language, as the Greek philosopher Plato describes it in his dialogue Phaedrus.

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The Latin proverb I cite is Verba volant, scripta manent; and the Greek word that means both 'cure' and 'poison' is pharmakon.

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The quotation from John Milton is from Areopagitica (1644).

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Selections from Plato\u2019s Phaedrus are from Benjamin Jowett\u2019s 1892 translation, as cited in the anthology Critical Theory Since Plato, 3rd edition of 2005, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle.