The Symposium (Greek drinking party) is a series of speeches in praise of Eros, the god of love. Celebrates tragedian Agathon’s first victorious production. Story told by Apollodorus, a former follower of Socrates.
Humans were originally round and could roll around, but were cut in half so we could only walk around. We spend our lives wanting to be whole again. Love is the drive to re-establish the broken nature of the original whole human being.]
Phaedrus (178-180)
- No one will die for you except a lover, and a lover will do this even if she is a woman. [179b]
- “Love is one of the most ancient of the gods, the most honored, and the most powerful in helping men gain virtue and blessedness (because lovers don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their beloved), whether they are alive or have passed away.” [180b]
Pausanias (180-185), lover of Agathon
We need to clearly define love. Really there are 2 goddesses:
- Common Aphrodite: responsible for the love felt by the vulgar, who are attached to women no less than to boys, to the body more than the soul, and to the least intelligent partners, since all they care about is completing the sexual act.
- Heavenly Aphrodite: purely male love (because they are stronger and more intelligent), preferring those who are old enough to show real physical and mental promise.
[Here we see the beginnings of gnosticism]
Eryximachus (185-189), the physician
Says Pausanias’s ideas are underdeveloped. Love is about fostering the good in a thing, and killing the bad.
- Love is not simply attraction toward beauty, it’s broader. It directs everything that occurs, in humans and among the gods. 186b
- Medicine is the science of the effects of Love on repletion and depletion of the body. 186d
- Music is the science of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony (resolving dissonance to consonance). 187c
- Divination is the practice that produces loving affection between gods and men; it is simply the science of the effects of Love on justice and piety. 188d
Love is an absolute power, yet it is greater when directed toward the good.
Aristophanes (189-194)
- In the beginning there was an round androgynous human, both sets of genitals, 8 limbs, could roll with limbs tucked. They made an attempt on the gods and Zeus cut them in half. This was our punishment.
- The act of physical love is the attempt to reunite our two halves, to go back to our true selves. We seek the other half of ourselves, which is the desire of love, not wanting to be separate from each other. 191-192
- Man split from the double sort favors a woman. Women split from women love women. Men split from men love men (these are the most manly).
- If we are not careful, we will be cut in two again, having to hop on one foot. 193a
- To flourish, each man must win the favor of his own young man so he can recover his original nature. 193c
- Love brings us together, thus healing us and making us happy.
Agathon (194-198)
Criticizes others for only praising the god’s gifts, not the god himself. Love, of all gods, is the most beautiful and best.
- Youngest of the gods (flees old age, moves fast, lives with young people) and stays young forever. 195b
- Delicate (Homer says she walks on the heads of men (what is soft)) 195e
- Fluid, supple shape, attracted to flowers, at war with ugliness
- Character is Just: neither the cause nor victim of injustice. Love is not violent or demanding or pushy (cf. I Corinthians 13)
- Moderate: power over passions
- Brave: Not even Ares can stand up to love (from Sophocles)
- Wisdom: anyone love touches becomes a poet 196e
Poetic tribute to love: “Love fills us with togetherness and drains all our divisiveness away. Love calls gatherings like these together. In feasts, in dances, and in ceremonies, he gives the lead…” ends in applause of the group.
Socrates (198-
Claims he can’t possibly top the eulogy of Agathon. The self-deprecating Socrates questions Agathon on his speech, hoping to expose the truth about love and let the words and phrasing take care of themselves.
- Is love “of” something, or “of” nothing? Does it have an object?
Yes. - Does love desire something it has, or something it doesn’t have?
Something it lacks. - If it wants what it already has, it really wants to have it in the future also.
- If love needs beauty, then it doesn’t have it. So how can you say that love is beautiful?
I don’t know what I was saying. - If good things are beautiful, then love will need those also?
Yes.
and relates Diotima’s contribution:
- Love is always “of” something. It has an object.
- The object is something that love lacks.
Love turns out no longer to be a god, but a daemon (divine being in between being and non-being). It’s not itself beautiful or good, but “of” the beautiful and good. It’s the object of love that turns out to be beautiful or good. Socrates now turns to praise love’s object instead of love itself.
Diotima’s Ladder (210-211)
Climbing from one object of love to another, until we get to the form (or essence) of beauty, the Platonic “Beautiful” of GTB (the Good, the True, and the Beautiful).
Love is to pro-create in beauty. Love someone “for themself” or for some other reason. Love is creative recognition: seeing the other as what they are, recognizing the beauty of the other person. Love is calling forth the virtue of another. Love draws the world toward itself. Love is not just what happens to us, but something that has an end or goal. Love is not just a longing for the Beautiful, but brings it forth. Love is a virtue, not merely a passion.
Most of the people we love are not those we choose. But these are people whom we are required to and must learn to love. And our love is just a particular instance of the philosophical love, the essential love.
Lessons
By loving your friends you are helping them love their true selves.
Alcibiades: the symbol of self-love gone arye. He sees Socrates like Eros, a man of need and cunning.