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Plato's Symposium: the Ethics of Desire

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Plato's Symposium: the Ethics of Desire Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire FRISBEE C. C. SHEFFIELD 1 Contents Introduction 1 1. Ero¯s and the Good Life 8 2. Socrates’ Speech: The Nature of Ero¯s 40 3. Socrates’ Speech: The Aim of Ero¯s 75 4. Socrates’ Speech: The Activity of Ero¯s 112 5. Socrates’ Speech: Concern for Others? 154 6. ‘Nothing to do with Human AVairs?’: Alcibiades’ Response to Socrates 183 7. Shadow Lovers: The Symposiasts and Socrates 207 Conclusion 225 Appendix : Socratic Psychology or Tripartition in the Symposium? 227 References 240 Index 249 Introduction In the Symposium Plato invites us to imagine the following scene: A pair of lovers are locked in an embrace and Hephaestus stands over them with his mending tools asking: ‘What is it that you human beings really want from each other?’ The lovers are puzzled, and he asks them again: ‘Is this your heart’s desire, for the two of you to become parts of the same whole, and never to separate, day or night? If that is your desire, I’d like to weld you together and join you into something whole, so that the two of you are made into one. Look at your love and see if this is what you desire: wouldn’t this be all that you want?’ No one, apparently, would think that mere sex is the reason each lover takes such deep joy in being with the other. The soul of each lover apparently longs for something else, but cannot say what it is. The beloved holds out the promise of something beyond itself, but that something lovers are unable to name.1 Hephaestus’ question is a pressing one. What is it that the percep- tion of a beloved person or thing arouses? Why do we love whatever or whomever we love? What is it that we really want? According to the above account of desire (given by the character Aristophanes), the copulating lovers would welcome Hephaestus’ oVer. They would think they had found what they wanted: to fuse with their beloved, so that one emerged from two. According to this story, this is because we used to be complete wholes, but were torn apart by the gods; love is the name for our pursuit of this original state of unity. Socrates will disagree with Aristophanes’ answer to this question. A lover does not seek the half or the whole, the philosopher explains, unless it turns 1 Adapted from the Nehamas and WoodruV (1989) translation of 192d–e. 2 Introduction out to be good. After all, people are willing to cut oV their own arms and legs if they are diseased. It is only by the possession of good things that we are made happy and we all want that. But as Socrates explains elsewhere, although we all desire the good things that will make us happy, we are as perplexed as the copulating lovers in the story when it comes to specifying what this good is (cf. Republic 505d11 with Symp. 192c5). Plato was clearly struck by the idea that the real aim of our desires is unknown to us—that we do not know what we really want—and the Symposium is an attempt—or rather, a series of attempts—to answer that question. One might be surprised that a rationalist philosopher such as Plato was interested in the nature of ero¯s. And it is, speciWcally, erotic love, or better, passionate desire (ero¯s), that interests him in the Sympo- sium.2 One might think that Aristophanes was onto something when he had the copulating lovers perplexed at Hephaestus’ questions regarding the grounds, and the aim, of their ero¯s. One might think that ero¯s is inexplicable, that it does not involve reasons. If so, then one might also think that ero¯s cannot be the subject of philosophical analysis at all. In our post-Freudian climate we typically view the relationship between our desires and reason with suspicion. So what characterization of desire did Plato operate with in the Symposium such that he not only attempted to analyse human desire, but characterized philosophy as the highest form of it? Further, even if one thinks that desire does involve reasons and that one could, in principle, answer the question Hephaestus poses, why would the nature of desire be of concern to a philosopher? And why are erotic 2 The Greeks of Plato’s day categorized diVerent kinds of love: ero¯s quite com- monly referred to erotic love, wheareas philia was most commonly used for the love for friends or family. There is some degree of slippage between the two terms. As Dover (1978) 43 and 49 notes, although ero¯s and its cognates frequently denote sexual activity, philia can refer to sexual activity where the context is a loving and aVec- tionate one, as opposed to a purely sexual encounter which would call for the use of ero¯s. Ludwig (2002), 8 warns against the dangers of sexual reductionism in our construal of ero¯s. He argues persuasively that it referred to intense desire (whether bodily or spiritual) and has a wider semantic range than the purely sexual. Eros, he argues, ‘occurs in cases in which the desire, whether sexual or not, becomes obses- sional and the subject of desire becomes willing to devote nearly all his or her life, time, or resources to achieving the goal’. See Ludwig (2002) 13. It will be useful to bear this in mind when considering the range of things considered as objects of ero¯s in this text. Introduction 3 relationships celebrated as a potentially positive vehicle for educa- tion? This is an idea which is, at the very least, surprising and often downright shocking to us today. The purpose of this study will be to address these questions and in a way, it is hoped, that will remove certain obstacles that have hindered appreciation of this text as a substantive work in Platonic ethics. For in some respects the Symposium has been seen as anomalous. It is not just that the dialogue is concerned with personal desire, a topic that does not typically receive much attention from modern philosophers, but it is set at a dinner party (not an obviously philosophical setting), and there are so few arguments and so many extended and literary speeches.3 These features are often used to promote the study of this text most widely in literature departments and a recent edition of the text boasts that ‘this is the most literary of all Plato’s works and one that students of classics are likely to want to read whether or not they are studying Plato’s philosophy’.4 Even those scholars who have read the Symposium together with the Phaedo and the Republic as hall- marks of Platonism have had diYculties in avoiding a highly selective approach to the text. Although both its topic and its form may be surprising to us, this study argues that these features are intimately related to standard Platonic preoccupations: with the nature of the good life, with virtue and with how it is acquired and transmitted. If so, then the Symposium deserves to be taken more seriously by those interested in Plato’s philosophy.5 This study argues that the apparently anomalous features of the Symposium are insuYcient grounds for marginalizing this text in debates about ancient ethics. First, for Plato, as we shall see, our desires embody our values and beliefs about what is worth having or 3 See Taylor (1926) 209, Stokes (1986) 115, Frede (1993) 399–400, Rowe (1998a) 239, and Wardy (2002) 1–2 on the particular challenges posed by the form of the Symposium. 4 Dover (1980), who argues that there is ‘so much unjustiWed and implausible assertion and so little rigorous argument’ in the work, see Dover (1980) 6. 5 The Symposium has just begun to receive more systematic philosophical atten- tion from the work of Price (1989), Kahn (1996), and Rowe (1998a, b), for example. But there is still relatively little material on ‘the structure and purpose of the dialogue as a whole’ (Rowe 1996b) 239), and considerable debate about whether the philo- sophical material is located throughout the dialogue or just in Socrates’ speech. If the latter, then how are we to read the work as a whole? For a recent and novel treatment of these issues, see Wardy (2002). 4 Introduction doing. Insofar as they do so they are an important part of our ethical lives. What and whom one desires determine the choices that one makes and the kind of person one turns out to be. Our desires shape our lives in important respects and aVect our chances of happiness. Analysing our desires, then, is a way of reXecting on the kind of people that we will become and on our chances for living a worth- while and happy life. This kind of reXection is ethical reXection about which it is quite natural for a philosopher to be concerned. If one is concerned to change people’s lives for the better, then one way to do that is by encouraging them to reXect upon their desires and to consider the kinds of things it would be good for them to value and desire. This, of course, assumes that desires are the sorts of things that are amenable to such reXection and redirection, and we shall be examining why Plato held such a view, and in what direction he thought our desires could best be shaped. First and foremost, then, this book will be concerned with Plato’s ethics of desire.
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