Abstract

This commentary on Nicholas Pappas’s paper, “Telling Good Love from Bad in Plato’s Phaedrus,” reflects on a number of Pappas’s thoughtful observations and interpretations of features woven into the drama of the discussion. However, unlike Pappas, who refrains from claiming that divinely inspired human love can be discerned by turning to the earthly, this commentary suggests that Pappas’s contrasts of wings which conceal versus wings which elevate, of left and right, and my added contrast of traditional Greek mythology versus Platonic mythology, lay the groundwork to discern the divine in the earthly, and to distinguish concomitantly bad from good human love. Additionally, the commentary discusses how Plato’s use of collection and division is used to distinguish good and bad human love.