Two neglected details in Plato’s chariot allegory

This paper is the first of two discussing several problems in Plato’s allegory of the soul in the Phaedrus. I revisit the description of what goes on in the lover’s soul when he approaches and encounters the beloved (253e5–255a1), because I think that crucial issues arising from the description have been neglected or misinterpreted so far and that crucial passages have been mistranslated. After considering two minor points concer- ning (i) the evil of the black horse and the origin of the soul’s fall and (ii) the white horse’s capacity to restrain itself, the more substantive issue of neglected details is then addressed. The first detail taken up is the meaning of the whole soul in 253e5 and the second pertains to Plato’s description of memory as falling back- wards in 254b5. An analysis of Plato’s text leads to a conclusion that the simple model of a tripartite soul, in the way it is commonly attributed to Plato, is not supported by the Phaedrus. The interpretation of both neglected details instead gives support to the thesis that, on the one hand, the three elements of the soul are each functionally complex and, on the other, each function is ascribed to more than one element of the Platonic soul