Music, Learning, and λόγος in Plato

This essay examines the relation between music, learning, and λόγος in a few Platonic dialogues. Beginning with the dream Socrates recounts in the dialogue Phaedo, it investigates how music inspires philosophy and how music first arrives as an original capacity to learn. Book III in the Republic is taken up to show how music prepares the soul to learn and directs the course of inquiry. The image of a gentle breeze is traced to bring out a musical element of λόγος which helps move the soul from ignorance into knowledge. Nevertheless, one of the guiding questions of the essay is whether music gets left behind once the soul advances in knowledge. This question bears on another concerning whether Socrates fulfilled his recurring dream by pursuing philosophy rather than making music. The essay sets out to show how music helps us undertake philosophy and how dreams motivate philosophical questions.