Plato’s Symposium

Welcome to our new unofficial*  Open University A396 2009 blog for discussing Plato’s Symposium.  I am hoping this is going to be as simple as setting up some categories with very basic posts about the different sections of the Symposium and inviting all you knowledgable poeple to comment about them.  I was thinking of having sections for

1 The Framing Narrative

2 Phaedrus’ Speech

3 Pausanias’ Speech

4 Eryximachus’ Speech

5 Aristophanes’ Speech

6 Agathon’s Speech

7 Socrates’ Speech

8 Alcibiades’ Speech

9 The Conclusion

How does that sound to the rest of you?

I think you will be able to leave comments without logging in but the first one will need to be approved before it appears – I will try not to take too long 🙂

*NB This is not an official Open University site – it is provided by students for students but anyone is welcome to contribute 🙂

[This content was provided by Mairsmagic]

The Framing Narrative

Plato has gone to quite a lot of trouble to present the Symposium within a Framing Narrative …

While Plato wrote the Symposium sometime after 385 BC, the framing conversation between Apollodorus and his companions appears  to take place between 401 BC and 399 BC, while the Symposium itself is set in the year of Agathon’s first victory in the Dionysia, 416 BC.

These dates were taken from the interesting Wikipedia article on Plato’s Symposium

Here is my own diagram of the framing events:

So what is all that about then? Why so complex? What does it add? How much of it is true?

[This content was provided by Mairsmagic]

Phaedrus’ Speech

Φαῖδρος

Eros. Attic red-figure bobbin, ca. 470 BC-450 BC provided by Wikimedia Commons

Phaedrus is the first to speak, apparently because the whole thing was his idea. Eros is the oldest (or one of the oldest) of the gods. He has no parents: according to Hesiod, Eros and Gaia came into being after Chaos. Eros confers the greatest benefit upon us, for from him comes the bond between lover (ἐραστής) and beloved (ἐρωμένος); there can be no greater benefit for a boy than to have a worthy lover, nor for a lover to have a loved one worthy of him. From this bond comes all that is noble, for neither will wish to be caught in any shameful or cowardly act by the other. An army consisting of men united in this way would be practically invincible. Only lovers will give their lives for each other.

What exactly does Phaedrus mean by Eros/eros? He doesn’t spell it out; he assumes everyone knows. He seems to understand more than just sexual desire and fulfilment, for otherwise why would each member of a partnership care what the other thought of his character, or be prepared to sacrifice his life?

According to Dover, sexual desire is most commonly denoted by ‘ἐπιθυμία, love in general by φιλία, suggesting that there is indeed more to Eros than just sex.

The commentators are not kind to Phaedrus, pointing out several illogicalities and non sequiturs in his argument. For example, his claim that all are agreed that Eros has no parents is, as Rowse points out, disingenuous: we find an account of his parentage in Alcaeus. Rowse also says that he ‘tries to be clever without quite pulling it off’.

[Mageiros kindly provided this summary]

Pausanias’ Speech

Παυσανίας

The Birth of Venus - Sandro Botticcelli provided by Wikipedia Common

Phaedrus made no attempt to define eros and referred only to its benefits. Pausanius now looks a little closer and asserts that there is a bad as well as a good side to it. He points out, first, that there is another god (whom Phaedrus did not mention), closely connected with Eros – Aphrodite. If Eros is the god of sexual desire, Aphrodite is the goddess of sexual fulfulment (τὰ Ἀφροδίσια is the general term for sexual intercourse). However, there are two Aphrodites: the ‘Heavenly’ Aphrodite who was born from the foam of the sea (Ἀφροδίτη Οὐράνια) and a later ‘Common’ Aphrodite (Ὰφροδίτη Πάνδημος), the child of Zeus and Dione (Pausanias is here drawing on two different accounts of Aphrodite’s origin, Hesiod’s Theogony, 188-202, and the Iliad, 5.370-430). Since these gods are so closely connected (there can be no sex without desire) it follows that there must be two Erotes (Ἔρωτε – a lovely dual!): Ἔρως οὐράνιος and Ἔρως Πάνδημος.
Deriving from these two Erotes, Pausanias identifies two attitudes to sex and sexual desire. There are those who, inspired by Common Eros, are interested only in sexual gratification; their desire is directed indiscriminately towards women, men and young boys and does not lead to any lifelong commitment. Those, however, who are inspired by Heavenly Eros look to older boys, boys approaching puberty who have acquired some level of intelligence, and are as interested in their character as their good looks (we should remember, here, that Greek boys reached puberty later than we do: see The World of Athens (JACT), 5.32).
Pausanias goes on to discuss the codes of behaviour associated with Eros in various Greek cities and in Athens itself, but admits that they are not easily comprehensible. In some ways I found this the most interesting part of the speech, because of what it tells us about Greek attitudes. He does, however, have a slight problem: how can any god be bad? He skates round this by saying that eros is not of itself good or bad, but takes on these qualities from the use to which it is put, but this seems to go against his contention that there are two gods.
Hamilton says that ‘Pausanias, though hardly more profound [than Phaedrus], is a good deal more subtle’. My feeling was that, although he makes a good attempt, he is somewhat confused in his contrived theology. How far, I wonder, does this speech reflect the attitudes of the Athenian in the Agora?

[Mageiros kindly provided this summary]

Eryximachus’ Speech

Ancient Greek Medicine Wheel from GreekMedicine.net Click the wheel to go to explanation

Eryximachus’ speech I have found the most difficult so far to understand. He seeks to extend Pausanias’ idea of a good and a bad Eros, affecting human life only, into a general principle bearing on all existence, by which conflicting elements are brought into harmony. Being a doctor, he considers, first, medicine and the human body. The idea, I suppose, is that Eros tries to keep a body healthy by maintaining a balance between Hippocrates’ four humours, but his account, to my understanding, is less than lucid. He proceeds to music, in which sounds previously in discord are harmonized, education, meteorology and, finally, divination, which establishes good-will between gods and men.

The commentators are not kind to Eryximachus, seeing him as a pompous, self-important pedant, and his speech, in Hamilton’s word, ‘poor stuff’. He has, however, played his part in extending the concept of Eros into a universal principle. I feel I shall understand Eryximachus, and Plato’s intent, better, when I know more about contemporary Greek science.

[Mageiros kindly provided this summary]

Aristophanes’ Speech

 

YouTube video illustrating Aristophanes’ Speech

Aristophanes, the master of Old Comedy, and Menander, the master of New Comedy, here depicted in a push-me-pull-you form that might or might not have amused them both, but which is certainly reminiscent of Aristophanes’ description of the original male-male creatures. Provided by Wikipedia Commons.

The above link gives as good an introduction to Aristophanes’ speech as we are likely to get. However, for completeness, sake, I suppose we had better have one here as well. Aristophanes imagines a time when men were twice what they are now. Each individual had two faces, looking in opposite directions on one head, and a spherical torso with four arms, four legs and two sets of genitals. It follows from the last that there were three genders: all-male (two sets of male genitalia), all-female (two sets of female) and hermaphrodite (one set of each). For details on how this came about, their mode of progression and other technicalities you must read the full account. These men, as is the wont of men (cf. Ephialtes and Otus) overreached themselves and attacked the gods. Zeus decided, therefore, to reduce their power by cutting them all in half: the resulting individuals had one face, two arms, two legs – and only one set of genitals, meaning that there were now only two genders. For details on just how he did this and how Apollo stitched them up after the operation, see the text.

The poor humans were distraught and went about searching for their other halves, as they still do. Those who were half of an original all-male looked for another male: these were the best, for they were the most manly and virtuous; those who were half of an original all-female looked for another female: these were the Lesbians and we don’t need to bother much about them (my apologies to any Lesbians out there, but that’s the way it was). Finally, those who came from an original hermaphrodite searched for an individual of the other gender: these included the adulterers and prostitutes, and we don’t want to talk much about them either. Sometimes an individual found his actual other half, with whom he then formed a lifelong and intense partnership.

At this point Aristophanes decides he had better introduce Eros, who has played no part in the above at all and is not really needed now. However, he, apparently, will help us all find our other halves. He will also help us behave properly towards the gods and so avoid being chopped up again and having to hop about on one leg (we aren’t told what would happen about the genitals in this scenario).

While the speeches of Phaedo, Pausanias and Eryximachus seem to present something of a progression in our view of Eros, Aristophanes’ flies off at a tangent.. Should we just take it as a comic interlude? Is Plato seeking to make the Symposium look less contrived by introducing a brilliant irrelevance? Do we, perhaps, have here the authentic voice of Aristophanes? It is not difficult to imagine that he really did present some such account, perhaps, even, at a symposium. Did it suit Plato to take this account and insert it here?

[Mageiros kindly provided this summary]

Agathon’s Speech

Young boy as Eros Louvre provided by Wikimedia Commons

After some banter with Eryximachus and Socrates, Agathon begins his speech by criticising the earlier ones for concentrating on the benefits bestowed by Eros rather than the character of the god himself. This sounds rather as if Plato is moving the discussion on to consider the essential nature of a quality rather than its manifestations (cf. Meno’s ‘What is Virtue?’).

Eros is the happiest of the gods, most beautiful (κάλλιστος) and best (ἄριστος). Agathon directly contradicts Phaedo by claiming that he is the youngest, not the oldest, of the gods, for he hates old age and seeks out the young; surely, too, the gods of old would not have castrated each other and tied each other up, if Eros had been among them. He is also ἁπαλός -‘sensitive’ (Hamilton), ‘delicate’ (Rowe) – for he settles in those souls which are soft (μαλακός). He is supple (ὑγρός), otherwise how could he pass through the whole soul, and beautiful, living as he does among the flowers.

Eros displays virtue (ἀρετή), neither wronging nor being wronged (really?), justice (δικαιοσύνη), for all obey him willingly, and moderation (σωφροσύνη). Agathon justifies the last surprising assertion by the following piece of sophistry: moderation is mastery over pleasures and desires; no pleasure is stronger than love; therefore love masters all pleasures and so is supremely moderate (it’s this sort of thing that got Greek Philosophy a bad name, if you ask me, though, to be fair to Agathon, he is probably only joking – see his concluding remark). In courage (ἀνδρεία) too he is supreme, for did he not overcome even Ares when he made him fall for Aphrodite?

Nor does Eros fall short in wisdom (σοφία). All who are touched by him become poets and musicians. Indeed all skills owe much to him inasmuch as their practitioners are inspired by a desire for Beauty.

Agathon now supplies a peroration which, as Dover points out in his commentary, provides examples of many of the elements of Greek lyric poetry as well as being a caricature of the sort of Rhetoric practised by Gorgias.

Agathon concludes by saying that his speech is part play, part serious (τὰ μὲν παιδιᾶς, τὰ δὲ σπουδῆς μετρίας). This is, to my taste, the speech’s  saving grace: it turns what could, to the modern reader, be very irritating into something quite funny.

Now for Socrates! What will he make of it? One cannot escape the feeling that Plato has set Agathon up to be shot down.

[Mageiros kindly provided this summary]

Socrates’ Speech

Socrates follows Agathon and begins with his tongue so firmly in his cheek, I am surprised he can say anything at all.  Damning poor Agathon with faint praise, he claims ignorance for himself in the matter of eulogies – he doesn’t know how to make eulogies, only how to tell the truth!  Being encouraged to go ahead with a truthful speech anyway, Socrates turns his attention to Agathon and uses him to display his method of leading students to knowledge through questioning.

The logic goes like this:

• Love is love of some object.
• Love desires that object
• One desires only what one does not have (one can desire the continuance into the future of what one already has though)
• Those who love do not have the object they love/desire.

Agathon has said ‘the gods made the world from a love of beautiful things for there was no love of ugliness’ so….

• Eros must be love of beauty and not of ugliness. (hmmm ?)
• Eros then lacks beauty and does not possess it.

Poor Agathon at this point admits he didn’t know what he was talking about only to receive the most damning rejoinder ‘καὶ μὴν καλῶς γε εἶπας’ – ‘Ah, but at least you spoke beautifully’.

The logic contiues

• Love lacks beautiful things
• Good things are beautiful
• Love lacks good things

Jadwiga Łuszczewska, who used the pen name Diotima, posing as the ancient sage in a painting by Józef Simmler, 1855 provided by Wikimedia Commons

Socrates finally lets Agathon off the hook and proceeds to a description of what he has learned about Love from the Matinean woman, Diotima.  Apparently it was she who put right Socrates’ own misguided belief that Love was a great god, and was of beautiful things, using the same method he has just demonstrated using Agathon.

Diotima reveals (using the same dialectic teaching method) that there is a halfway house between beauty and ugliness, just as, for example, the the state of having correct beliefs (ἔχειν λογον)  without understanding, lies between knowledge and ignorance.  Eros is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, but something between the two extremes. Neither, she contends, is Eros a mortal nor a god, but something between the two – one of the spirits who mediate between men and gods.

Diotima answers Socrates question about the origin of Eros with the story of his birth.  He is the son of Poverty and Resource who met at the celebrations for the birth of Aphrodite. His attachment to Aphrodite and all things beautiful springs from this, and he also shares his mothers neediness and his father’s resourcefulness.  He oscillates between flourishing and dying and also stands between wisdom and ignorance.

This shimmies neatly, though not particularly logically, into the claim that in general neither the ignorant nor the wise seek wisdom, but (back to the original argument) that Love does seek wisdom because he stands between ignorance and wisdom.

Now we get a link back to the original speeches with a claim that Socrates must have believed the ‘beloved’ (the young boy) rather than the ‘lover’ (the older man) to be Love. Diotima seems to associate the ‘beloved’ with beauty, and the ‘lover’ with the Eros she has described.

Discussion proceeds into the usefulness of Love to mankind, and more dialectic takes us (via a pretty tortuous route which I have not attempted to map) to the conclusion that Love has many forms which are encompassed in the desire for good things and being happy.  I think that is the conclusion anyway but am happy to be corrected! Apparently the  Greek is difficult to decipher too.

After a glancing (and prescient, since Diotima hasn’t heard him) reference to Aristophanes’ speech in 205e , we get the answer to Socrates’ question on how to pursue love.  Apparently, it is all about the begetting of beautiful things, either with the body or through the soul.   Fortunately, Socrates doesn’t follow this so we get further explanation:

At a certain age, men yearn to beget things to win themselves a sort of immortality. Beauty is a necessary adjunct, as they only want to beget beautiful things, and recoil from ugliness. So, after all, love is not love of the beautiful, but love of engendering and begetting upon the beautiful…. τῆς γεννήσεως καὶ τοῦ τόκου ἐν τῷ καλῷ.  Love is love of immortality as well as of good because ‘love is of permanent possession of the good’ – ‘τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἑαυτῷ εἶναι ἀεὶ ἔρως ἐστίν’.

So now Diotima take us on to discover the cause of love and desire, which is common to animals and men, and which makes them beget and nurture and protect the things they bring to birth, even if it costs their own lives.  This desire is obviously (though Socrates needs to be told) caused by the wish to brings themselves as close as possible to immortality by leaving behind a new creature. Even as men age, they constantly renew themselves, losing bits (eg hair) and beliefs and growing others though we still have the illusion of being the same person. We also lose knowledge through forgetfulness and re-grow it by study giving the impression we keep it the same all the time.  This losing and growing lets a mortal taste immortality, which is then extended by the birth of an offshoot. Reputation, even more than children, can be considered such an offshoot as it wins ‘deathless memory for valor’, ‘οἶμαι ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς ἀθανάτου’. Furthermore, those who give birth to prudence and virtue in the form of poetry and arts are revered as inventors, εὑρετικοὶ, and are superior. The highest and fairest prudence is directed towards regulating cities and justice.  The most divine men will seek beauty not only of body but of soul upon which to beget and also lead that which they beget upon in education.  So …. men who take younger men as lovers have a very strong relationship because their children are children of the soul rather than human children.  (Its a bit strange that this woman love expert seems to assume it is not possible to find such a soul sharing parenthood between a man and a woman or indeed between two women.) Examples of offspring of this higher type include poems, laws and customs.  Diotima reckons Socrates might be able to cope at this level but there is more to come which she thinks will be beyond him….

So this is the ladder which needs to be climbed:

1. Find a single body and love it (presumably him)
2. Appreciate the beauty of all (beautiful?) bodies – reduce love of single body
3. Appreciate the beauty of souls – reduce love of beautiful bodies
4. Find beauty in laws, observances and kinship – let go of the beauty of bodies
5. Find beauty in knowledge (general not particular branches) – let go of observances etc
6. Turn to the wide ocean of beauty and bring forth a plenteous crop of philosophy until … you see …. the revelation of essential beauty which is imperishable and constant. This is much better than boys…

So … the next bit is very tricky … if he can see this essential beauty, he can breed true examples of virtue, because he has consorted with truth, and then he will have the friendship of Heaven and be immortal …..

Portrait of Socrates. Marble, Roman artwork (1st century), perhaps a copy of a lost bronze statue made by Lysippos, provided by Wikimedia Commons.

So, with quite a bit of relief we turn back to Socrates, who has been relating Diotima’s words. He thinks she is right! Because of this, he is persuading others to use the best helper they can find ( ie Love) to lead them towards the top of Diotima’s ladder.  And so Socrates honours Love’s power and valor…. τὴν δύναμιν καὶ ἀνδρείαν τοῦ Ἔρωτος.

So there you have it.  I am sure there is a lot here that needs further explanation and / or correcting …  please help with your comments ..

Meanwhile, some questions.  Are there direct correspondences here to the other speeches?  Is Socrates recommending the lover – beloved relationship as a first step on the ladder?  Why is Plato attributing the wisdom delivered through Socrates’ words to someone else?  Why is the source of the wisdom a woman? Why is she from Mantinea? What’s it all about really?

[This content was provided with a great deal of difficulty by Mairsmagic]

Alcibiades’ Speech

Ἀλκιβιάδης

So-called “Alcibiades”, ideal male portrait. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original of the 4th century BC—the hermaic pillar and the inscription (“Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, Athenian”) are modern additions. This image was provided by Wikimedia Commons Jastrow (2006)

At 212d, Alcibiades makes his entrance like this:

‘A few moments after, they heard the voice of Alcibiades in the forecourt, very drunken and bawling loud, to know where Agathon was, and bidding them bring him to Agathon. So he was brought into the company by the flute-girl and some others of his people supporting him: he stood at the door, crowned with a bushy wreath of ivy and violets, and wearing a great array of ribands on his head. “Good evening, sirs,” he said; “will you admit to your drinking a fellow very far gone in liquor …’

Being welcomed, he flirts with both Agathon and Socrates and then takes over the running of the Symposium, making his own speech in praise, not of love, but of Socrates.  He likens Socrates to a Silenus figure which can be opened to reveal images of the gods, and to the satyr Marsyas, in his ability to draw a crowd of admirers to himself and fill them with emotion.  He tells of his own infatuation and  his rejected attempts to become Socrates’ lover.  He praises Socrates imperviousness to his own charms, to inebriation and to the cruellest of weather.  He commends the endurance which lets him stand from one dawn to the next considering a problem.  He recounts Socrates courage in battle and reluctance to accept recognition for it.  Finally he praises the wisdom hidden within the shell of Socrates’ simple words.

Alcibiades ends his speech abruptly at 222b with a warning to Agathon that many beautiful young men have loved Socrates but been hurt by his rejecting them as lovers.

Alcibiades’ speech takes up about one fifth of the entire content of the Symposium.  Why did Plato devote so much space to his words?  What does the speech add to Plato’s exposition on love?  What does it tell us about Socrates and why?  Socrates himself accuses Alcibiades of trying to stir up trouble between him and Agathon.  Is there any justification for this? Why is the character of Alcibiades so attractive relative to the others at the Symposium? Does this reflect anything of the character of the ‘real’ Alcibiades?

Answers on a largish postcard please 🙂

[This content was provided by Mairsmagic]

The Conclusion

The end of Alcibiades’ speech is met with laughter because ‘he seemed still to be affected by love for Socrates’. Socrates accuses him of trying to stir up trouble between Agathon and himself and Agathon, agreeing with him, manoeuvres round Alcibiades, who has physically placed himself between them, so he can be by Socrates again. Socrates denies Alcibiades request that Agathon lie in the middle, saying, inaccurately, that this would mean that Agathon now had to make a speech in praise of Socrates too. (In fact it has only been agreed that Alcibiades may praise Socrates instead of Eros – no general agreement on praising the person to your right has been made).  Agathon is keen to receive Socrates’ encomium and he moves right so that Socrates can be between him and Alcibiades.

At this point, the Symposium is interrupted by revellers and no more speeches are made. We begin to move back out of the framing narrative  with “ἐφη ὁ᾿Αριστοδημος” (‘Aristodemus said’) as he tells us that Eryximachus and Phaedrus (his ‘friend’) and some of the others left and that Aristodemus himself then slept. At dawn he found Socrates, Agathon (comic dramatist) and Aristophanes (tragedian) still drinking and Socrates trying to persuade his companions that the man who can write tragedy can also write comedy. They are overcome by Socrates’ argument and by sleep so Socrates leaves, shadowed by Aristodemus, washes at the Lyceum and spends the day as usual and before going home to rest next evening.