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
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]
Δόκει με ἀριστός – and it”s true, Mair is magic!
Testing, testing!
I am trying to thinl of something outrageous to say such that Mair will have to think very hard about whether she is able to approve this……..
okay so I failed …….
Yes 🙂
Can I ask a really really really Plato’s Symposium related question please? How do I get my picture on the blog?
Yes, I can see Plato would really have approved of this question Maddy so …. I think what you need to do is look into acquiring a gravatar – its ok they are free – a globally recognised avatar. You can upload one here: http://en.gravatar.com/ or I think if you click on the swirly bluey green thingy where your picture should be, it will take you to a place to upload one … I will look out for your smiley face or lovely patterned legs … the picture may travel to other places you use the same email to login – so twitter, fb etc … not sure how widespread it is yet 🙂 best of luck.
aha
I now have a gravatar
Now for decidedly-platonic question 2….
How do I get smileys?
Anne, congratulations on your most appealing gravatar. You can get smileys by typing the usual colon and close bracket etc – they get converted when you submit. 🙂
my admiration for your knowledge is as ever unbounded
🙂
χαιρε
PS. I wonder if there is a way of changing font type and colour?
Experiment with colour didn’t work but I can get bold and italic using the edit comment facility … have tried using html tags but no joy yet …
I can’t see Anne’s avatar! 😦
Oh that is interesting! Are you on the Mac or the PC? Do you see anything against Anne’s posts or is it just blank? I take it you can see my picture?
A ha! I was on the Mac at home yesterday, but I am now on a pc at work and I can see what looks like a character from The Simpsons! Ha ha! So it is presumably a problem for the Mac?
erm… excuse me Ms Barking, but that is a highly-stylized Simpsonesque gravataric interpretation of my own features….. character from the Simpsons indeed!
**** Flounce ****
Calm down Msiestophanes! I’ve just worked really hard to be as highly-stylized in a Simpsonesque gravataric way and I can even see your delightful image on my Mac! Phew! I’m off to crawl up the wooden hill.
On a lighter more frivolous note, I would like to thank Robert for kicking us off with his excellent Framing Narrative piece.
How lovely you look my dear barking – so true to life! I feel I should try harder with my own rather unimaginative representation of my features … off to experiment 🙂
loving that purple hair Ms Barking!
Shame I couldn’t get the other three colours in! Looking forward to seeing yours Mair! I think everyone on the blog should Simpsonize themselves!
I’m hoping my new image is going to appear soon … now are we all ready to start posting about the Symposium do you think?
Already have!
oh dear – does this mean I have to actually start reading the Symposium?
**scared**
😦
Well I haven’t yet, and probably won’t be able to until Week 23 or whenever the course starts on it, so anything I say will probably be rubbish ~ it will probably be rubbish even when I have started reading it, but I can hide behind my Simpsoneque persona!
**slowly going under**
I don’t know what has happened to my Simpsonesque persona – she appears behind the scenes but not yet in the comments here – perhaps she is shy ….
aha Ms Magic! – you are now gloriously simpsonized!
*** thinks to self – why am I the only one with yellow skin? ***
Don’t worry ~ it happens in two stages ~ first yellow skin at the start of A396 and then white skin when you realise the enormity of the task ahead!
I don’t see the two pairs of specs on top of your head! and not a kipper in sight!
I am afraid I have fallen into some sort of time warp and can only see the old pre-Simpsonite me … I did take my specs of for the Simpsonization as I do in real life photographs, unless my son is too quick for me … i have just realised Simpson sounds a bit like Symposium so perhaps this is not all off topic at all …
Sorry, Guys, but where on earth did you get your Simpsonish images from?
Ah finally you have reached the key question in the study of the Symposium. What you need is a Simpson’s avatar in your WordPress gravatar. Your challenge, should you chose to accept it, is to follow the google trail to enlightenment. It isn’t easy but you can get there – and without registering too if you wish. The rest is left as an exercise to the reader 🙂
Is it not called the Simpsopium? Have I got it all wrong yet again?
No it’s the Sympsons sylly bylly!
🙂
Hmm, you can change your image – being unable to Simpsonize my photo I selected a similar icon – but it doesn’t appear to change. I can stll only see myself in a gutra and agal. John
Yes it is odd – I see your canine persona but not my own Sympsoniumesque one, and yet Maddy and Anne, and presumably you, see me in all my new gravitaric glory. Maybe when we reach the highest point on Diotima’s ladder we will all be able to see our true natures …
Ah! So Brianization worked! At least we know where we are, then. μαλιστα!
Oh, hang on, I think I may have attained enlightenment – I can see myself as others see me! If you wait a few days, it may just all suddenly dawn on you too John!
I await with bated breath the Brianization of Shikari 🙂
Hey (Family) Guys – I can see Brian Shikari, but Magic Simpson has disappeared!
Yes she does seem to come and go a bit … I am sure she is with us in spirit all the time though 🙂
I have absolutely no idea what you are all talking about.
Aw Mageiros you are so cute! I had no idea you were so young! What a prodigy ….
I suppose I should be honest – it’s not the most recent photo of me, though I think it’s the best – it’s been downhill all the way since then.
Ah young Mageiros is indeed very cute.
However it seems I am doomed not to see Brian Shikari in all his glory
Gutted of berkshire
x
Don’t give up hope – it took many days before I could see my own avatar – these things appear at different times to different people 🙂
Baby Mageiros is indeed an infant prodigy and very precocious for his tender years! Maybe it will all come to me in my second childhood.
I wish these avatars/gravatars would stay in place!
aha – there is Brian Shikari looking well cool!
Enough frivolity. Settle down. After the first quick reading, I decided to go through the Symposium again and try to work out what Plato’s purpose was and how each speech contributed to this. No doubt this is a useful exercise when one is thoroughly acquainted with the work, but I think there is a lot to be said for just taking it at face value – i.e. as an account of a symposium, in which the various speeches can be taken, and enjoyed, in isolation. There is so much to learn from it, without having to get bogged down in the philosophy, increasingly important though that may become as ones studies progress. Which, presumably, is why the OU chose it.
Were boys present at symposia?
According to Frisbee Sheffield (Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire) young boys were traditionally present at symposia, though evidence for their presence beyond the Archaic period is not decisive. Education was an important function of symposia. Encomia, too, were an important way in which young people were educated. She gives several citations, but does not discuss the evidence herself.
Gill (The Symposium, Penguin) says boys were present in Archaic Greece, but not in late 5th century (not free-born boys, anyway).
No reference to boys in Plato’s Symposium. How old was Aristodemus? No internal clues. Could he have been a boy? Would explain his devotion to Socrates, his slight reticence about attending symposium uninvited, and the fact that he plays no part in the activities. He is described as an ἐραστής of Socrates (173b4), but Rowe says of this, ‘he is not being described as S.’s ‘lover’ in the sense of being his sexual partner; rather his passion resembles that of a lover for his beloved.’ S. would have been in his fifties.
Meaning of Ἔρως
Love, mostly of the sexual passion; generally, love of a thing, desire for it. In Homer, of food and drink, of a goddess and a woman. Also of country or city.
(Liddell & Scott)
Commonly referred to erotic love. However, Ludwig (Eros and Polis, 2002) argues persuasively that it referred to intense desire (whether bodily or spiritual). Eros, he argues ‘occurs in cases in which the desire, whether sexual or not, becomes obsessional and the subject of desire becomes willing to devote nearly all his or her life, time, or resources to achieving that goal’.
(Sheffield, Plato’s Symposium, The Ethics of Desire, p2n)
Phaedrus, Pausanias, Agathon and Socrates treat ἔρως as a response to what is καλός. (Kenneth Dover, Plato Symposium, Introduction)
‘… core meaning in the Symposium is inseperable from sexual desire … The standard case of Ἔρως, from which most of the speakers begin, is the Ἔρως felt by an older, male, lover for a younger, also male, beloved, and at least includes the desire for sexual gratification …’
(C. J. Rowe, Plato Symposium, Introduction, 3.2)
‘Plato’s (Socrates’) point is often supposed to be that our erotic impulses are to be transformed, in a kind of Freudian sublimation, into a desire for something else. Rather, as I shall argue in the commentary, the point is that they themselves represent a misdirection of our desires’. (Ib., 3.5)
James Davidson interesting on Eros. He mentions a vase depicting Eros, Himeros and Pothos at the Judgment of Paris and discusses their different roles. He also points out that Eros received sacrifices and other honours at a number of places, notably in the Academy gymnasium (where, of course, Plato had his school).
(The Greeks and Greek Love, chapter 1)