Phaedrus

Socrates declares that mortals cannot truly describe the nature of the soul, but we can approximate the truth by using an allegory. He compares the soul to a winged charioteer driving two horses: one well-bred and obedient, and the other impulsive and disobedient. The “wings” of the soul are things that raise the soul closer to the divine.

Socrates describes a procession of the Olympian gods and how the path they travel is easily taken by the “horses,” which guide them, but is impossible for the soul that is guided by the “evil” horse, which drags the soul down towards the earth. The realm to which the gods can ascend is the realm of pure truth, and can only be understood by pure intellect, which is separate from the physical world. In this realm lies “reality without color or shape, intangible but utterly real” (52). Human souls can approach, but not entirely gain, this view of reality that the gods can see, as the behavior of their souls’ “horses” keeps them from it. The noble “horse” of the soul seeks the “pasture” of the world of absolute truth, but when the soul falls away from the path that leads to it and drops to earth, it takes up an incarnation in various types of human bodies.