The Symposium

• Just means: “drinking party”. • A male institution. • Could be either a civilized or an uncivilized gathering.

• Sometimes contests were held (as in ’s Symposium).

Greek Krater Plato’s Symposium

• A fictional conversation that reports a speech contest about love. • A way for Plato to philosophically explore the nature and role of love in human life. • The speeches build up to ’ speech. • Held at Agathon’s house, to celebrate his victory in a poetic contest.

• Many well-known Athenians attend. • Alcibiades: a notorious demagogue, lover of debauchery and traitor to Athens.

• Agathon: a famous tragedian. • Pausanias: Agathon’s lover • Eryximachus: a doctor. • Aristophanes: the greatest comic poet of the Classical Age (wrote: “The Clouds”). • : a follower of Socrates (character in “Phaedrus”). • Apollodorus: Socrates’ excitable friend (cf. “Phaedo”). The narrator. Structure of the dialogue

• Various speeches are given about love, but most have a fairly traditional understanding of it. • Socrates proposes a revisionary interpretation of what love is. • Alcibiades interrupts the contest. Socrates the Contemplative

• Aristodemus gets to Agathon’s house early, but Socrates is nowhere to be seen. • He is transfixed in the doorway of a nearby home. • Reportedly, he did this a lot. Eros The Speech Contest

• Most of the participants are badly hung over from the previous day’s revelry. • Eryximachus, as a doctor, warns against the evils of drinking too much. • The Flute-girl is also removed. • Flute-girls were of dubious virtue. Phaedrus’ Speech

• Love is the eldest of things, and the source of the greatest benefits to us. • Love is the best means to implant a sense of honour and dishonour in a person. • Love is a powerful moral force. • It causes one to wish to appear one’s best to the other person. • Love can transform even the worst coward into a hero. • cf. the Theban brigade. • e.g. Alcestis, Achilles, the failure of Orpheus. • This is an idealized version of our ordinary notion of love. Pausanias’ Speech

• There are really two loves: one heavenly; the other earthly (reflected by alternate goddesses). • The higher is pure and is exemplified in male/ male relationships. • The lower is disgraceful and indiscriminate and characterizes all heterosexual love. • The higher form of love sees the beloved as a being of reason, not merely a body. It cares more for the character and mind. • But bad people have given it a bad name in many places (so homosexuality is not tolerated in many communities). • It also makes many actions which would otherwise be dishonorable, not so. • Pausanias: the only justifiable form of love is one founded in virtue (love of the body, of money, of power, etc. is disgraceful). • The acceptance of another for the sake of virtue. • We seem to agree with him to an extent. Phaedrus and Pausanias

• Both focus on the moral dimension of love. • Neither is particularly revisionary. • Although Pausanias does reject love of the body on the grounds that it is perishable. Eryximachus’ Speech

• Because he is a doctor, he gives a sort of “scientific” theory of love. • Eryximachus: Love is not merely human, but is something that pervades the kosmos (universe). • Its “empire extends over all things, divine as well as human.” • Eryximachus is a Heracleitean – he believes that the point is to bring opposites into harmony. • This sort of idea is the conceptual foundation of Greek medicine. • Love is a uniting and harmonizing force, whether it be in music, or medicine or whatever. • The bad sort of love brings disharmony and ill health to whatever it infects. • The universe as a whole is better when it is ruled by the good sort of love. • Diseases and disasters are the result of opposites not being harmonized. Aristophanes

• The greatest Greek comic poet. • Lampooned Socrates and philosophers in “The Clouds”, but is presented here as a decent and thoughtful person.

• His sense of humour seems rather vulgar to many moderns. Aristophanes’ Speech

• Like the speech of Eryximachus, it is a cosmological account of love. • He recounts a myth (much like Protagoras did). • There were once three sexes: male, female and mixed. • Human beings were originally double the size they are now, and rather round (it seems that this is meant to be funny).

• They made war on the gods. • Zeus has all of them divided in two, in order to limit their power. Their faces are turned towards the cut to remind them of it.

• Love is the desire of the halves to be reunited. • Some people are heterosexual, others homosexual (both men and women) depending on which originals they were part of.

• Each of us is continually searching for the other half with which we were once united as a single being.

• Love is a consequence of the incompleteness of persons. • What we really want is to be fused together with the other person, and no longer to be a separate being. • This would be the final happiness of any human being, but as we are, we must make do with our ordinary ways of love. Summary

• Love is a powerful moral force. [Phaedrus; Pausanias] • There are better and worse kinds of it. [Pausanias; Eryximachus] • Love is in some way a desire for wholeness and harmony. [Eryximachus; Aristophanes] • Love is a natural part of the kosmos. [Eryximachus; Aristophanes] • The existence of love reflects our incompleteness as persons. [Aristophanes].

The Mid Term Test

• Next Wednesday – 26 April at 4:30. • Four questions of equal value. • On everything up to the Phaedo. • Questions will be on general issues in what we have read. • Write about 1/2 page to a page for each answer • The test will last for approximately one hour and ten minutes. • Don’t worry too much about your English. • Write in simple sentences and don’t repeat yourself. • Reading your notes should be sufficient preparation.