Plato's Symposium

PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM Continuum Reader’s Guides Continuum’s Reader’s Guides are clear, concise and accessible introduc- tions to classic works of philosophy. Each book explores the major themes, historical and philosophical context and key passages of a major philosophical text, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of often demanding material. Ideal for undergraduate students, the guides provide an essential resource for anyone who needs to get to grips with a philosophical text. Reader’s Guides available from Continuum Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics – Christopher Warne Aristotle’s Politics – Judith A. Swanson and C. 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COOKSEY Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Thomas L. Cooksey 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-4067-9 PB: 978-0-8264-4417-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (Pvt) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire CONTENTS 1. Context 1 2. Overview of Themes 13 3. Reading the Text 19 4. Reception and Influence 133 Notes 156 Further Reading 162 Index 171 v This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 CONTEXT Dear one, come to the tavern of ruin And experience the pleasures of the soul. What happiness can there be apart From this intimate conversation With the Beloved, the Soul of souls? Jalal al-Din Rumi (2000, p. 49) The deepest insights spring from love alone. Friedrich Nietzsche (Friedländer 1958, p. 50) Symposia were drinking parties in the ancient Greek world, the noun e¯ symposia meaning literally “the drinking together,” and the noun to symposion, “the drinking party” or the place where the drinking party occurred. They were convivial occasions for passing the cup, reciting snatches of poetry, singing songs, telling jokes, and performing pantomimes. These were also essentially masculine affairs, wine, song, but no women, the occasion for male bonding, the initiation of boys into the masculine world of citizens, and a vehicle for the transmission of its cultural traditions. Plato’s Symposium takes the form and spirit of the traditional symposion as his starting point, but proceeds to transform it. It is ostensibly based on the recollection of a symposion hosted by Agathon, the tragic playwright on the occasion of his victory in the Lenaean Festival. Among the guests is Socrates and the comic playwright Aristophanes; later in the evening a drunken Alcibiades joins the group. Because everyone is still feeling the effects of the previous day’s drinking, the guests decide to con- test their rhetorical skills rather than their capacities to imbibe wine, each delivering an extemporaneous speech praising love (Eros). Among many memorable moments are Aristophanes’ myth of the androgynes, Socrates’ account of a wise woman named Diotima, whom he calls his erotic teacher, his recollection 1 PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM: A READER’S GUIDE of Diotima’s “Ladder of Love,” and finally Alcibiades’ compari- son of Socrates with the satyr king Silenus, as well as his confession about trying to seduce Socrates. What emerges from Agathon’s party is one of the most engaging masterpieces of philosophical literature. With the possible exceptions of the Republic and the Phaedrus, the Symposium is the most influential of Plato’s dialogues, affecting not only on philosophy, but literature, the arts, and theology. Instead of the transmission of cultural traditions, the succession of speeches turns these traditions on their head. Plato uses the occasion of a symposion as a literary device that allows him to explore the power and nature of the erotic, and how it relates to issues of ethics, epistemology, and ontology. Perhaps most fundamentally, it also provides him with a means of dramatizing the nature of the philosopher, what it means to be a philo-sophos, a lover of wisdom. Plato (427–347 BCE) was born in or near Athens, to a wealthy aristocratic family. He grew up during the turbulent last stages of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) and its aftermath. His stepfather, Pyrilampes, was a friend of Pericles and an important advocate of democracy, while his uncle, Charmides, was a mem- ber of the oligarchy known as the Hundred, and his uncle, Critias, was a leader of the infamous Thirty. Early in his life Plato met and came under the spell of Socrates (ca. 470–399 BCE), whom he later described in a letter as “the most just man of his time” (Letters 324e). After the restoration of democracy in 403, Socrates was arrested on dubious charges of impiety. This was largely because of his association with many of the figures con- nected with Athens’ defeat, perhaps most notably the brilliant but unscrupulous Alcibiades (ca. 450–404 BCE). Found guilty, Socrates was executed in 399 BCE, by a toxic infusion made of hemlock. Disgusted, the young Plato withdrew from Athens to Megara and then traveled around the Mediterranean, eventually making the first of three visits to the court of Sicily, meeting the tyrant Dionysus of Syracuse. There, according to some accounts, he intrigued with Dionysus’ son, Dion, and was imprisoned, ransomed, and eventually returned to Athens. Plato was silent about the details, but kept up a correspondence with Dionysus, Dion, and later Dionysus II, nursing the futile hope of creating a philosopher-king. Back in Athens, Plato founded a philosophical school, the Academy, whose most famous student was Aristotle. 2 CONTEXT Plato’s philosophical and literary activities extend over a 50-year period. Diogenes Laertius indicated that in his youth Plato applied himself to painting and poetry, composing dithy- rambs, lyric poetry, and tragedies. Not irrelevantly, when he was about to compete for the prize in tragedy, he was dissuaded upon listening to Socrates in front of the theater of Dionysus (Diogenes 1972, p. 281). In addition to a series of 12 letters, we have 26 extant philosophical dialogues that are attributed to him. An exact chronology cannot be established, and Plato himself had the reputation of revising and polishing them throughout his life, leading the Greco-Roman critic Dionysus of Halicarnassus to quip that “Plato, even at the age of eighty, never let off combing and curling his dialogues and re-plaiting them in every way” (1985, p. 225). In turn, distinguishing the Socratic from the Platonic in the dialogues remains a matter of debate. That said, the scholarly consensus, focusing on thematic and linguistic features, divides the dialogues into three broad groupings, pivoting around Plato’s three voyages to Sicily. Thus the Apology, Crito, Laches, Lysis, Charmides, Euthyphro, Hippias minor, Protagoras, Gorgias, Ion, and perhaps Hippias major fall into an early period from before his first trip in 388/387 BCE. Their original impetus was to defend the reputation of Socrates, featuring him in debate with the eponymous antagonist. They tend to focus on moral or ethical issues, deploying a strategy in which the interlocutor makes a statement and is interrogated by Socrates. These represent the purest instances of the Socratic method, in which Socrates moves toward some understanding of the issue in question by determining what he does not know, even if he cannot establish with certainty what he does know. The middle period from 388 to 367 BCE includes the Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus, Euthydemus, Menexenus, and Cratylus. Here the dialogues take on a more friendly tone, the animated and often hostile arguments of the earlier ones giv- ing way to long stretches of exposition. Although morality and virtue remain important, they are situated in discussions of metaphysics and epistemology. The late period falls between a second trip to Sicily around 367 BCE and a third around 361, and includes the Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Politicus (Statesman), Timaeus, Critas, Philebus, and Laws. The works of the third period extend and complicate the tendencies of the 3 PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM: A READER’S GUIDE middle period. Plato is primarily concerned with questions of knowledge and a critical reexamination of his early ontological doctrines.

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