Absolute Truth Within Personal Realities

As others have noted, I felt the discourses in the beginning of Phaedrus very general, arguably beyond any hope of what Plato might worthily title 'absolute truth'.

Though I still feel this a weakness to the aim for absolute truth (though I cannot judge entirely until I've finished the text), as a rhetorical strategy, I profess to find this one alluring. It feels in essence less like the discoursers Socrates or Lysias are unthreading absolute truth from our own reality as they are weaving their own, with kernels of 'absolute truth' to those realities embedded within them. Perhaps this is the nature of all rhetoric—not the painting or attempting to persuade of a truth within our familiar ideology, or beliefs, but instead the unfurling of entirely new realities, with these the rhetor's own truths existing absolutely within them.

I felt one incredibly dense line encapsulate this idea of the light, epiphanic truth existing in tangled and idiosyncratic ‘realities’ is on the bottom right of page 144. It reads,

…so I say that the desire which overcomes the rational opinion that strives toward the right, and which is led away toward the enjoyment of beauty and again is strongly forced by the desires that are kindred to itself toward personal beauty, when it gains the victory, takes its name from that very force, and is called love.

Of course, this sentence is only really able to glow (or, rather, show its 'truth' in that moment of warmth we feel as it sparks a connection within us) when it is taken in context of Socrates' discourse (or 'reality') on the struggle we as a species suffer between pleasure and reason. Out of the entire weekend’s reading, I loved this first section of Socrates' speech most. It felt deeply important, immediate to my own existence. Perhaps that is part of the key to Plato’s belief in absolute truth: through the mystifying night sky of generalities that make us human come the specifics that, aligning as stars within our own constellations, lend to us personal fact. 

By broadening your view, you may find yourself actually honing in.