Meno: Intro

From John:

Meno is hands down my favorite Great Book so far. There are several different components. Here are some questions I want to delve into with the chums:

Those of you that were part of the last discussion on Homer’s Iliad… remember the big ah ha when considering the historical context of the story? Please consider the apparent (the actual year is not known) timing of the writing…For what was Plato’s school famous? And how might Plato’s pupils or prospective pupils interact with the Meno story?
What could be the purpose in Plato writing the story as a dialogue between men that likely were deceased instead of writing it as his own narrative on the topic?
It has been speculated by commentators that there may have been something lost in the translation where satirical comments were translated as serious. Which portions of the story seem open to this possibility? Why?
What is your take on the idea of remembering vs. reincarnation? Is Socrates’ logic sound on this point?
Please identify historical examples of good men who always did good.
How do you personally define “being good”?

And of course I am fascinated to know how the final conclusion resonated with each of you, but hesitate to ask specific questions here and ruin the end for those of you that have not yet completed the reading… I look forward to hearing your impressions of the conclusion.

Symposium: Discussion

Background

Greek drinking party; Ken = symposiarch or host of a symposium; job to control guests’ drinking (by watering wine); often come together for discussion – each person takes his turn w/o interruption or argument; Plato uses these historical figures as editorial

Greek words used: love – eros; wisdom – sophia

Comments on Speeches

Phaedrus

love is an ancient god; most ancient, most honored, most powerful; set the rules; this love is asymmetrical – older to younger; source of greatest gifts/benefits; preventative power of love against being ashamed, foolish, rash; sacrifice inspired by love is honored by the gods

Background – Patroclus is cousin and young apprentice of Achilles
love in Greek culture – common love bet. man and woman; higher love bet. older man and younger man – “apprenticeship-plus” – training them up to be something greater; older one coming to woo apprenticeship of younger – parents would play game of protecting child, older = lover, younger = non-lover/beloved; relationship can be sexual but not always (men are homosexual/bisexual)
pederasty – Gk, relationship bet. adolescent boy and adult man outside his immediate family

Pausanias

separates into two kinds of love

vulgar – heterosexual love, attributed to younger Aphrodite
virtuous – heavenly Aphrodite (older), pederasty, homosexual love (elevating their own custom as best kind), better b/c transfer of wisdom; more than just sexual; shows value of wisdom (spiritual) above physical (Gnostic view of physical as base)

what we see as perversion in our culture was means Greeks used to advance their culture

Eryximachus – the doctor

expands love beyond just human – universal force (in body, music)
balance/harmony of opposites (vulgar and virtuous)
hint of divine – (188D) – love as force for reconciliation between gods and men
(Ken – context – best to be ignored by gods than on either their good or bad side)
first to bring in the idea of the good and of virtue (temperance, justice)

Aristophanes – comic playwright

Comic playwright of Athens, wrote Clouds (which slanders Socrates and which Socrates blames in part for his demise, see Plato’s Apology)

originally man had three sexes – double male, double female and androgynous (both male and female)
androgynous – to explain heterosexual love, longing we have to love someone
question over what androgyny means in these ancient “double-people”
love = pursuit of the whole, desire to be complete (193A)
now we’re half, love is a cure (that heals us)
no positive heterosexuality (continues to be vulgar)
misogynistic undertones? is female homosexual love middle tier of three? (lower than male homosexual love)

Agathon – companion of Pausanias, tragic poet, won first prize for tragedy Lenaia

tragic poet, just won prize that drinking party is celebrating (3 days in a row – one tragedy each day and winner of three gets prize); 32 yrs old (Wikipedia)

makes love youngest god; forever young and tender
love is delicate, resides in people’s souls (soft places)
never forces itself
always beautiful
love – moral character — moderation, brave, just, wisdom (classic virtues)
everyone he touches becomes a poet
we need love so we don’t sink into obscurity; love is high form of community (Ken – obscurity defined as absence of community)

specific lines commented on

196D- “he who has the hold is more powerful than he who is held” – interesting point
just above 197A – can’t give what you don’t have or teach what you don’t know
197C – idea of necessity coming before love – dreadful deeds done by gods out of necessity (brute survival)

Socrates

refocuses argument entirely – criticizes others of just attributing all good things to love and instead tries to find truth about love via questions;

why use questions? – aids with progression of logic and taking assumptions to their logical ends and showing their absurdity; questions help engage his opponents

Ken – #1 Socratic principle – only claims that he is wiser in one aspect – that he knows that he doesn’t know, and that is the beginning of wisdom; seeks truth by asking questions of those who claim to know

Argument with Agathon:

love has an object
love’s object is something it doesn’t have (or wants to continue to have)
love seeks beauty, the good
therefore love is not beautiful or good

Diotima

priestess who Socrates seeks as knowing something about love; from Manitea; could be fictitious; according to legend, kept plague away from Athens for 10 years

love can be ugly
love can be neutral; love is in between – a spirit not a god – aligns better with what other speakers were actually saying about god
Greek word for spirit = daemon (spiritual/non-physical version of demi-god)
love is intercessor between gods and men; in the middle – connecting force
knowledge –> desire –> love
Diotima’s ladder – 210-211 – progression of love – from love of one form/body (outward appearance) and upward to higher loves (of inwards) – from bodies to practices/customs to ideas to absolute beauty
acc. to Plato, essence of beauty (absolute beauty) is highest form
researcher: these are the 6 steps of love up ladder, used extensively in Renaissance when discussing Platonic love
6 levels: one body, two bodies, all bodies, practices/customs, ideas, absolute beauty
debate over whether first six speeches mirror these 6 forms of love (introduced by Angie)

Alcibiades

traitor in Peloponnesian War – switched sides multiple times

what is point of his entrance?

Opinion #1 (John): Plato setting up Socrates as ultimate man, different way of living (Socrates never writes and Plato never appears)
Opinion #2 (Julie) – Socrates saying that Alcibiades asking for higher form of wisdom from Socrates, already higher on ladder than he realizes

Our Own Love Speeches

Tait

I could really use a case of the hiccups right now.
I agree with Aristophanes, it’s a longing and pursuit of the whole (just don’t think we were split apart), because we were created by God and God is love. Love brings out the best in us, makes us go beyond looking ourselves when we love someone else. Love is sacrificial and makes us go beyond our comfort zone when we have something we love.

Cheryl

I also agreed with Aristophanes, but in a different perspective. When we were as a whole, as Adam and Eve, we were perfect and then we sinned. And now we’re split apart and longing for that wholeness and that love, and that love came as Jesus – keeps us passionate about what we do and how we live our lives – it’s emotion, anger. Love is communication between us and God – we know are able again to communicate with him and be with him because of Jesus.

Megan

Focus on highest love, as agape or spiritual love.
Love is seeker of good, beautiful, but it doesn’t just seek or ask for something, in seeking it also bestows good on its object, as well as the seeker. In seeking abstract essence of beauty, also find beauty and goodness in other forms (physical forms, people cultures), and in doing so, honor and ignoble and impart good to them, the beloved, as well as to the lover.

Ken

Love is an ever transformative force. As Eryximachus said, love complements and brings us together with object of our love (Lover and Beloved come together). Perfects us, as Socrates said, and brings us to our true selves (Lover and Beloved perfect each other). Seventh rung on ladder, love is not just a force but a person, in God. We all become more and more alike as we love and are loved, also becoming more like our true selves (Lover and Beloved are perfected AND come together by the same process).

Julie

Gave me a savior before I knew I needed to be saved
Protective of father, jealous love of brother
I have mate, feel his love, desire to lie next to me at night
Children who confuse I love you with I need you
Friends with whom I laugh and cry
And after all this, one day I might just understand what love is.

Jeff

Inspired by Agathon. Love is ancient, debated through ages. It cannot be grasped or pictures, but can be felt. Make you feel lighter than air. Noble – perhaps ultimate power in this universe. Would have nothing to do if not for love, no entertainment. Love stinks, yeah yeah. Love binds us together, gives us hope, has power to transform us. Can see great examples of love, of sacrifice. True story of WWII concentration camp, someone did wrong and no one would confess, and guards were going to kill everyone, and one man stepped up to take blame and be killed. Love is when one man lays his life down for another. Love is deep and not shallow, so keep reaching for love

Wendy

is an expression of the Creator, the divine. Defined in Creator himself, a commitment – love is patient, kind, etc (I Cor 13 attributes) – we only have ability to love b/c he first loved us. We love him and others b/c of his overwhelming love. B/c God so loved us, we ought to love one another. We cannot see God, but when we love one another we can see Him. Love is sacrifice, for He gave himself . Love not about receiving gain, though we may benefit. We have committed to loving the other – different expression of loves depending on nature of relationships. Sexual love between man and wife. Falling in and out of love, “I love you” only for those you commit to loving forever; love = commitment.

John

Challenged in thinking is Biblical version of love what I believe or what I’ve been told by others. Is it feeling, decision, commitment, is it aspect of being whole? I can see all those things in my personal experience, and considering tonight’s discussion and how we can’t be complete apart from the Lord – why is it that he loves us and suffers and brings us back to Him? Do we complete God – I don’t think so, so brings us back – is it the building up or holding on?

Scott

What beautiful hints of love that love brings out what is honorable, that love imparts, that there is something greater than just body, completes us, cures us. Love is mediating relationship. Love is mediator. Yet desires unfulfilled, desires bent, toward others, eros. Thank goodness that Jesus would come and bring new word – agape – love that settles for nothing less that completeness, fulfillment, our very best. Augustine – love needs to be set in order – cherishes creation, animals, human beings, children, spouses, God – love in each relationship but love set in order – takes least and brings it to greatest.

Angie

As reading this, how do we find what we know of God and find it in this reading. Sacrifice inspired by love honored by gods; force of reconciliation between gods and man. Having the Word, and God is love – moving through speeches from little to more. We know that love is cure. (#5) – Love leads us to highest form of community. And with Socrates, love is highest form of beauty. Seeing words like intercessor, savior, that we use as Christians when pointing to God as love. Ref. 1 Cor. 13. Theme of younger pursuing older — love is servant because love is master – servanthood leads.

Pat

Compare love in ancient Greek society to our society. Birth – 3 yrs – love is called Mommy. From 3 – 20 yrs – love is car, action, play, schooling (male), girlfriends, gossip, schooling (girl); from 20s – love is career or family; by time you reach 50s, love is either about you or about others. When put on Jesus Christ, turns life from fighting and black and white, to living color.

Closing Remarks

Benefit to soul in seeking definitions of what we discuss and seek, to also knowing what is good and what we pursue.

Symposium: Intro

Aristotle and Plato are considered the bedrock of philosophy in the Western tradition. Whitehead said all of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato.

In this first of our Plato discussions, we crash a drinking party where a bunch of celebrants (recognize any from our readings?) are waxing eloquent on love, of all things. (The Romantics among us are already gearing up for Valentine’s Day.) The diversion is a round-robin series of soliloquies in praise of the god of love. And all play along, except for Socrates who reverts to his old conversational ways (ever the interrogator) and only relays his “own” thoughts (if they can understood as his) by way of Diotima, a priestess. (Who is she, and why can’t he just play by the rules?)

So you have a bunch of speeches followed by a discussion. For us the reverse: a great discussion on the work followed by a series of speeches on love.

Your job is to follow their argument, comment on their insight in the discussion, and deliver your own thoughts on what love really is (or at least what it isn’t). In so doing we not only come to a greater understanding of one a truly foundational ingredient of humanity, but we may be living a more examined life—even one worth living.

Symposium: Summary

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.