Author: Reinhold Urmetzer

Phaidros was a contemporary and—as with Plato—a student of Socrates. He was however also a young man whom Plato had loved. He—and not the colleague of the same name in the passel of students around Socrates—was immortalized in the master’s dialogue of the same name. Concerning its subject, and whether love has desire, or desire has love, under its control,...

Hallo On Love and Lust Plato’s dialogue “Phaidros” is a peculiarly heterogeneous artwork. It deals simultaneously with truth, and also with the invalidity of isosthenias. In this case also with the provocative, in a speech on Lysias’ proclaimed and subsequently well-founded argument, that one may only indulge oneself sexually with those in whom one is not in love: “And I...

 Response (Interview) Why did you choose such a delicate subject? You’ve ventured to go quite far with it. Why? Pæderasty and homosexuality have become something of an old chestnut in public discourse recently. One even hears intimations of a new “culture war.” My subject is love and desire as discussed by Plato, particularly in his “Phaidros.” Of course, to the...