ABSTRACT
This chapter argues against a merely epistemological understanding of Plato’s use of divination and the divinatory language consistently appealed to throughout the dialogues. Rather than merely attempting to elucidate a form of thinking that is intuitive or non-rational, Socrates appeals to divination in order to highlight the importance of enthused or divinely guided speech/argumentation that cares for or tends to the good of individual practitioners and auditors. This form of divinely inspired speech/argumentation is deliberately set in juxtaposition to a form of reason that professes to be objective or “sober” – a form of reason that highlights the power or centrality of the human. Contrariwise, for Socrates and, by extension, Plato, reason by itself is not philosophy insofar as philosophy must be committed to revealing the good, the true and/or the just in order to transform the human into the “more than human.” Consequently, the prolific appearance and parallels to phenomena like prophecy, divination, mystagogy and enthused poetry in texts as diverse as the Apology, Symposium, Phaedrus, et al. testify to the uncanny power of a way of life (versus a mere practice of reason) that is prophetic, initiatory and creative in its pursuit of divine contact and love through inspired conversation and argumentation.
