The Internet Classics Archive | Symposium by Plato - 14 views
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Daryl Bambic on 05 Feb 15Context: The group is deciding how they will drink given the excessive partying from the previous night. -
Nick Adoranti on 05 Feb 15Hiya -
Eric Bensoussan on 05 Feb 15Im surprised that philosophers drank so much -
hebaali1998 on 05 Feb 15How can you have a philosophical conversation while being intoxicated?
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entirely has this great deity been neglected." Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer him a contribution; also I think that at the present moment we who are here assembled cannot do better than honour the. god Love
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Let Phaedrus begin the praise of Love,
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The dinner party decides they are going to take turn giving speeches in praise of Love.
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Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life, and of happiness after death.
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Phaedrus
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encouragement which all the world gives to the lover;
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Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.
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We have a custom of forgiving unreasonable behaviour when people are in love.
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Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting
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Basically, he said that people who love for physical attraction and evil and vulgar because their love is cheap and disappear when youth's beauty fades.
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Pausanias
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Eryximachus
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rightly distinguished two kinds of love
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harmony is composed of differing notes
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harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony,
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Aristophanes
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Mankind; he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love
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original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous
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sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;
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will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.
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Love is about finding our true nature in another and in so doing, becoming whole.
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Agathon
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ut I would rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything.
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flexibility and symmetry of form
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beauty of the god
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virtue I have now to speak: his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man
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ll men in all things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement
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courage and justice and temperance I have spoken, but I have yet to speak of his wisdom-
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for I do not praise in that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would like, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you?
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Socrates here says that he cannot praise Love the way Phaedrus does (because he said it all and laid all manner of claims of Love).
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Socrates then proceeded as follows:-
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Is Love of something or of nothing?
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The inference that he who desires something is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing, is in my judgment,
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Socrates gets Agathon to agree with his claim that we desire that which we don't possess OR that which we are not.
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nd yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can desire that which he has? Therefore when a person says, I am well and wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to have what I have-to him we shall reply: "You, my friend, having wealth and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this moment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And when you say, I desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you want to have what you now have in the future?
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Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is in want;
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First, is not love of something, and of something too which is wanting to a man
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Love is the love of beauty and not of deformity
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Then Love wants and has not beauty?
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Is not the good also the beautiful?
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Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
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Diotima of Mantineia
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Love was neither fair nor good.
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is love then evil and foul?
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must that be foul which is not fair?
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And is that which is not wise, ignoran
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a mean between wisdom and ignorance?
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Diotima shows Socrates that there is a mid point between extremes; she avoids the 'either-or' trap.
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ou also deny the divinity of Love.
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What then is Love?" I asked; "Is he mortal?
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he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit (daimon),
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e interprets," she replied, "between gods and men
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For God mingles not with man; but through Love
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god Poros or Plenty
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son of Metis or Discretion
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Poverty,
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always poor
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nything but tender and fai
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rough and squalid
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no shoes, nor a house to dwell in;
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is always in distress.
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But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth;
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he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this
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god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already;
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neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want."
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He who is neither 'good nor wise' is satisfied with himself because he does not desire that which he is not aware that he lacks.
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ho then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.
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what is the use of him to men?
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of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?-or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?
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hat the beautiful may be h
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rther questio
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Let me put the word 'good' in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves good, what is it then that he loves?
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And what does he gain who possesses the good
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generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good?" "That is most true."
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"Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further," she said, "what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which they have in view?
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hat all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls.
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onception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be.
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The love of generation and of birth in beauty."
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mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality
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love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality."
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hy should animals have these passionate feeling
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Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.
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Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality."
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even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal.
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will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and immortality
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But souls which are pregnant-for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?-wisdom and virtue in general.
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oets and all artists
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temperance and justice
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he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same!
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become a lover of all beautiful form
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beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form.
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birth thoughts
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mprove the youn
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beauty of institutions and laws,
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and that the beauty of them all is of one famil
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ersonal beauty is a trifle;
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sciences, tha
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who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession,
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oward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty
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everlasting,
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rowing and decaying, or waxing and waning; s
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At the end of life, the one who has pursued beauty will perceive its true eternal nature.
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not fair in one point of view and foul in another
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ut beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change,
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begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end.
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And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
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The true order of discovering love and beauty; first of the body and the individual and then ascending upwards to the idea of absolute beauty itself.
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beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?"
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nature of Love first
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Whether love is the love of something or of nothing?
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whether Love desires that of which love is.
