Reading the classics is a good way to illuminate some fundamental questions of human existence, such as the tension between desire, erotic passion, and love.

Pieper, in his book  Enthusiasm and Divine Delirium: On Plato’s Dialogue Phaedrus  (Rialp, 2026, Kindle Android version), offers a lucid reflection on this dimension of the human condition through Plato’s lens. From the outset, this dialogue reveals the atmosphere in which young Athenian intellectuals lived, eager for novelty and pleasure. Phaedrus has just heard the sophist Lysias’s final speech on  logos erotikos  (love) and wants to hear Socrates’s perspective.

The great Sophists, Pieper reminds us, are not charlatans; rather, they are representatives of the high literature of their time. They are at the forefront of thought, living in the modern present, abreast of the latest trends, and presenting current events, usually with a falsehood difficult to unmask. The Sophist is brilliant in his exposition and seeks the success and effectiveness of his discourse. He emphasizes the ”  how”  of the proposal, without regard for the truth of the content. In this atmosphere, Lysias delivers his discourse, which revolves around a young lover who  desires  but acknowledges that  he does not love.  A formally constructed discourse centered on mere instinct, oriented toward the pursuit of sensory pleasure. Desire, without true love, without the participation of the person. Pure sensual contact where the sensual is consciously and explicitly separated from the spiritual; sex from eros. (cf. p. 26). A biased discourse, Socrates notes, as if truly noble and generous love had never existed (p. 46).

The Socratic proposal is different. It encourages us to raise our gaze toward the model of humanity we are called to be, distinguishing four forms of  enthusiasm  or  theia mania  (situations in which one is beside oneself). There is the  prophet , who, insofar as he announces the future, is beside himself, for otherwise he has no capacity to say anything. The  poet , for his part, thanks to the inspiration that comes to him from the muses, opens his understanding and can receive from on high the light that illuminates reality. The  convert,  on the other hand, radically transforms his  way of life  ( metanoia ), reordering his life, not through an act of will, but through a divine gift that comes to him from without. Finally, there is the  erotic turmoil , proper to the lover, whose being beside himself does not end in desire, but opens itself to the spirit, for to have a spirit is to be related to all of existence.

 The prophet, the poet, the mystic, the convert, the lover are beside themselves. All of them are filled with burning enthusiasm that lifts the soul to the realms of the gods. An ascent to lofty heights of beauty, goodness, and truth. An ascent that we perceive not as a final fulfillment, but rather as  a promise , one that will probably not be fulfilled within the realm of bodily existence (cf. p. 89). A promise whose fulfillment is inscribed in time and causes, for example, lovers to meet again, to want to be together, to yearn to share the reasons of their hearts time and again. It is the ascent to  caritas  , which, “as a human act, cannot be set in motion or kept alive when separated from the vital support of the  passio amoris  (p. 98).” Nobility of body and nobility of soul, the substantial unity of the human person intuited in the final prayer that Socrates addresses to Pan and the other gods: “Grant me inner beauty and let my outer self befriend it.”