THE APPROACH OF REMINISCENCE TO RHETORIC IN PLATO'S PHAEDRUS

Abstract

In the Phaedrus, Socrates produces a rhetorical speech in which the question of reminiscence appears as a fundamental activity: the soul remembering its divine origin. Through reminiscence, only the philosopher can go back to the divine origin of the soul, retrieving and understanding the truth, the being really existing and the intelligible forms. Phaedrus is distant from Socrates because he is not a philosopher, but close to him because, as a lover of speeches, he accompanies Socrates in the exercise of reminiscence to criticize and reconfigure Lysias' rhetoric.