Veiled, Out of Shame
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Socrates — ἐγκαλυψάμενος ἐρῶ ἵνʼ ὅτι τάχιστα διαδράμω τὸν λόγον καὶ μὴ βλέπων πρὸς σὲ ὑπʼ αἰσχύνης διαπορῶμαι.
Pressed into speaking, Socrates strikes a peculiar pose: he'll deliver the speech with his cloak pulled over his head. That way, he says, he can rush through it and, spared the sight of Phaedrus's eyes, won't seize up from embarrassment. It is played for comedy, but the reason is exact. He is about to argue, cleverly and against his own conviction, that the non-lover is the better bet — and saying so to a friend's face shames him. The veil lets him get the false thing said quickly, in the dark.
Before he begins, Socrates makes a strange request: he'll give the speech with his head covered, so he can race through it and not falter — because to speak this way, to Phaedrus's face, shames him. The gesture is the first sign that the speech to come is one he does not stand behind.
Watch the veil, because Plato means it. Socrates covers his head — enkalypsamenos, the gesture of a mourner or a man in disgrace, from the same kalyptō that hides Kalypso and that an 'apocalypse' undoes — and gives his reason as aischynē, shame. This is not stage fright. He is preparing to say something he believes false, praising the calculating non-lover, and his body flinches before his argument does. In a culture that treated shame and its cousin aidōs as the deepest inner guards against wrongdoing, a philosopher's blush carries weight: it is conscience registering the offense in advance. Everything that follows grows from this moment. Soon his daimonion will halt him, he will name the first speech a sin against the god of love, and the whole palinode will be the uncovering — the recantation delivered, that time, with his head bare and his eyes open. The veil is the lie's natural costume; taking it off will be the truth's.
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