What Love Instills
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Phaedrus — οὐδὲν ὡς ἔρως. λέγω δὲ δὴ τί τοῦτο; τὴν ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς αἰσχροῖς αἰσχύνην, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς καλοῖς φιλοτιμίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἄνευ τούτων οὔτε πόλιν οὔτε ἰδιώτην μεγάλα καὶ καλὰ ἔργα ἐξεργάζεσθαι. φημὶ τοίνυν ἐγὼ ἄνδρα ὅστις ἐρᾷ, εἴ τι αἰσχρὸν ποιῶν κατάδηλος γίγνοιτο ἢ πάσχων ὑπό του διʼ ἀνανδρίαν μὴ ἀμυνόμενος, οὔτʼ ἂν ὑπὸ πατρὸς ὀφθέντα οὕτως ἀλγῆσαι οὔτε ὑπὸ ἑταίρων οὔτε ὑπʼ ἄλλου
Nothing does, as love does. Now, what do I mean by this? The shame felt at shameful acts, and the ambition felt at noble ones — for, without these, it is not possible for a city or a private person to achieve great and noble deeds. I claim, then, that a man who is in love, if he is caught doing something shameful, or suffering it from someone, through cowardice, not defending himself, would not be so pained at being seen by his father, nor by his companions, nor by anyone else—
Continuing straight from 178c's unfinished list — kinship, honor, and wealth all found wanting — the sentence completes here: nothing does it as well as love. Phaedrus then names what Eros instills: shame at shameful acts and ambition for fine ones, without which he says no city or private person accomplishes anything great. He opens his central claim, a sentence that runs on into 178e: a man in love, caught doing wrong or failing to defend himself out of cowardice, would not be so pained at being seen by his father, his companions, or anyone else.
The word doing the real work is katádēlos — 'becomes manifest,' caught out, exposed to view. Phaedrus's account of what keeps a person honest runs entirely on visibility, not conscience: what disciplines the lover is not an inward court that judges him whether or not anyone is watching, but the fact of being seen by someone whose good opinion he cannot bear to lose. Greek aischýnē works the same way — it names the pain of exposure before others, closer to what an anthropologist would call shame than to private guilt. Plato's own Socrates spends much of the rest of his career arguing against exactly this basis for virtue: at Republic 359c–360d he has Glaucon propose the ring of Gyges, a device that removes every witness, and ask whether a man still acts well once no one can see him. Phaedrus's ideal lover is Glaucon's test case in miniature, and by Phaedrus's own logic here, take away the beloved's eyes and this man's discipline has no obvious reason to hold. Phaedrus does not treat this as a difficulty. He is about to turn it into a proposal — an army built entirely of lovers and their beloveds, each man performing for an audience that never leaves the field.
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