The Muses of Philosophy
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Socrates — τῇ Καλλιόπῃ καὶ Οὐρανίᾳ τοὺς ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ διάγοντάς ἀγγέλλουσιν… περὶ οὐρανὸν καὶ λόγους θείους τε καὶ ἀνθρωπίνους… καλλίστην φωνήν.
The cicada myth reaches its point, and the point is a coronation. The cicadas, Socrates says, carry word to each Muse of those who honor her — the lovers to Erato, and so on down the roster. But the people who spend their lives in philosophy are reported to the two highest of the nine: Calliope, the eldest, whose name means 'beautiful-voiced,' and Urania, 'the heavenly one,' whose name is built on ouranos, the sky. These two, Socrates says, are 'concerned with heaven and with discourse both divine and human,' and of all the Muses they 'send forth the most beautiful voice.' In other words, the highest music in the cosmos — the loveliest of all the Muses' songs — belongs not to poetry or drama but to philosophy. And so, he concludes with a smile, there are many reasons to keep talking and not doze off in the noonday heat.
Socrates finishes the cicada myth. The cicadas, he says, report to each of the Muses who among mortals honors her: lovers to Erato, and so on. But those who spend their lives in philosophy they report to the two greatest Muses — Calliope, the eldest, and Urania, 'the heavenly one' — who are concerned with the heavens and with discourse both divine and human, and who send forth the most beautiful voice of all. So, Socrates concludes, there are many reasons to keep talking and not to sleep at noon.
Under the charm of the myth Plato is making a bold and characteristic claim: that philosophy is the highest of the arts, the truest music, the song the greatest Muses most love to hear. The move is done entirely through the two names. Calliope, 'beautiful-voiced,' is the eldest Muse and traditionally the Muse of epic — of Homer, the summit of Greek poetry; by assigning philosophers to her, Socrates ranks philosophical conversation with the grandest poetry there is. Urania, 'the heavenly,' is the Muse of astronomy, of the study of the ordered heavens; her name, ouranos, 'sky,' quietly links this passage back to the palinode, where the soul rose to the very 'back of heaven' to behold the eternal Forms. Between the two of them, Calliope and Urania preside over 'heaven and discourse, divine and human' — which is a precise description of what philosophy does: it turns the soul's attention upward, toward the divine and cosmic order, and it works in logoi, in reasoned discourse, the give-and-take of human argument. Philosophy is thus placed at the exact meeting point of the heavenly and the human, of contemplation and conversation. This is why the cicada myth is not a digression but the hinge of the whole dialogue. The insects overhead embody the danger of art divorced from thought — beautiful song that sings itself into a drowsy death. Socrates answers that danger not by rejecting the Muses but by claiming their highest gift for philosophy: the point of loving beautiful words is to be carried by them all the way to truth, to let the pleasure of discourse become the discipline of understanding. That is the music Calliope and Urania reward. And the myth ends where it began, in the sunstruck heat with the cicadas singing — but now the drowsiness has a meaning. To keep talking, to refuse the easy sleep of mere enjoyment and press on with the hard, delightful work of thinking together, is itself an act of devotion to the two greatest Muses. The conversation Socrates and Phaedrus are about to resume is, quite literally, the most beautiful voice there is.
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