Socrates: “So you see, only by falling in love with a pretty boy can we experience a reminder of the beauty our souls saw in heaven.”
Phaedrus: "But what about women? Don’t they have souls? Don’t they get to experience love?"
Socrates: "Who cares? Now, when a philosopher and a pretty boy love each other very much, Phaedrus, the philosopher teaches the boy to nourish a nobility in his soul."
Phaedrus: "But in “Protagoras” you said that you believed virtue could not be taught. How then can the philosopher teach his lover to be like Zeus? Isn’t being god-like and noble a sort of virtue too?"
Socrates: "Well, that’s because philosophers are awesome. It only takes the souls of philosophers 3000 years to return from whence they came. Your average soul takes at least 10,000 years to do that. Souls that followed god closely when they were in heaven become philosophers. That’s the best sort of soul! Even higher than poets, who rank sixth! Now sophists, they rank eighth, only one step above tyrants. Wouldn’t you rather be with a philosopher, you handsome hunk?"
Phaedrus: "Why do you keep saying that you do not possess the art of speaking when all this time you’ve been using so many rhetorical devices?"
Socrates: "That’s because I know that the orators are onto something. But I’m too proud to admit that. So what I’m doing is making rhetoric and oratory submissive to philosophy. That way I can speak skillfully and still say philosophy is the best. Everyone will have to pay attention to ME!"
Phaedrus: "Isn’t all this just a verbose attempt to get into my toga?"
For serious I think that we could make money dramatising some of the dialogues... that is so dorky, but I think it is possible. I like your version Karen... nothing deep from me, except that your version of Phaedrus makes me happy!