PLATO’s SYMPOSIUM

Protocol of November 14

 

Love – Truth only exists as an idea or form. Truth is an idea of which we can never achieve full, constant understanding. Perfection only exists as an idea. We never experience true perfection. Beauty in the Symposium is increasingly regarded as being the same as happiness, goodness, and wisdom (sophia). Love (eros) is the desire or longing for beauty, for wisdom, for the good. Romantic love is not “true” love since the object of it is desire for a mutable object, not an eternal truth – not goodness in itself but only a material being – a single body and soul partaking in goodness only partially. 

 

Plato’s deductive reasoning – Forms are pure ideas. Thus manifestations of Forms cannot be pure; they are adulterated. These concepts are and have always been, constant and immutable. There are many manifestations of each concept, but the concept itself informs our recognition of its material manifestations. The Form is the general apriori concept from which we deduce particular manifestations. Such deductive reasoning is in contrast to inductive reasoning, in which our understanding moves from particular instances or objects to a general idea or principle governing them. For example through deductive reasoning we recognize that a particular table is a table because we have the idea of the table in our minds. An immature mind would understand “table” only by its concrete manifestation; a mature mind would understand it as an idea.

 

 

Hierarchy of knowledge – from book 6 of Plato’s Republic

 

Knowledge (noesis)	Platonic forms, pure ideas	philosophers
Understanding/reasoning (dianoia)	Mathematics, sciences, laws	Law-makers, mathematicians, scientists
Opinion (doxa), emotions (pathoi)	Social org., material perceptions	Human beings in society and nature
Imagination	Arts	Artists

No one is in a constant state of knowledge (noesis); even philosophers can only get glimpses of knowledge.  One may encompass several stages on the ladder at once, since one can simultaneously be a social being and a poet, mathematician, or philosopher.

 

Diotima –  She is a priestess of a mystery religion. There is no proof that she actually existed. It is believed that she was created by Socrates in order to convey his beliefs.

She gets Socrates to admit that Love (eros) is neither good nor bad.  Love is in between good and bad, ignorance and understanding, and god and mortal (pg. 46).  She dismisses Sophists who believe that all is either black or white, much as Socrates dismisses them at the beginning of the dialogue when he tells Agathon that knowledge is not like water that flows from high concentrations to low concentrations. (Sophists argued that knowledge could be communicated easily from one to another). Love does not belong to the wise or ignorant. Wisdom or the desire (love or eros) for wisdom can never be fulfilled. The ignorant believe they already have happiness (love, wisdom) but they do not, because it cannot be fully achieved. Her section is called Diotima’s speech yet in the classic Socratic Method, it is really a dialogue between Diotima and Socrates. It is odd that here a woman teaches a man about love when the Symposium, begins with homosexual love as the purest form of love. She borrows from the previous speeches to construct her own. For example, from Aristophanes she borrows myth; love comes from Resource, the son of Metis, and Poverty. From Euryximachas she borrows the idea of the productive conflict of opposites. He used hot and cold, she used resource and poverty

 

Pedagogical relationship – Diotima teaches Socrates that we are pregnant with ideas and must give birth to them (pg 53). Those with desire for wisdom need a beautiful soul (a teacher) to bring forth their ideas

• (pg 57) The progression of a lover’s understanding of beauty is as follows: as the lover matures, he will see that all beautiful bodies are the same and will realize that the soul is more beautiful than the body of a person. Progressively, then, he will come to the conclusion that knowledge is the most beautiful thing and come to appreciate absolute beauty, which is the same as wisdom (sophia) and goodness. The love of absolute beauty encourages one to help reproduce beauty. A lover of beauty would want to help the boy he loves to cultivate his mind and ideas and subsequently to give birth to them. Although in 5^th century Athens, the instructor actually loved the boy’s body, as well as his soul, Socrates shows that the teacher needs only to love the boy’s soul in order to help him to make his mind the best it can be.  Ideas are not planted by the instructor; he only helps the boy understand the concepts that are already in his mind better and subsequently the boy gives birth to the gestating new ideas.

 

• We desire to reproduce children and/or ideas. Philosophically speaking, reproducing a child is less satisfying than producing lasting ideas, since bodies decay and ideas last forever. Reproducing ideas, particularly ideas that achieve the status of law, is the greater achievement.

 

• Plato placed art or mimesis as the lowest level of knowledge. He banished it from the Republic because he understood that it could make people respond in unreasonable ways. If the theatre-going demos, for example, was not wise enough to understand the meanings of the playwright, the play could cause great damage. Aristophanes’ making fun of Socrates in the Frogs in 405 B.C.E., and Socrates’ being put to death for corrupting the youth of Athens in 399 B.C.

 

• (pg. 55) Our identity is constantly changing like our body, soul, ideas, pleasures, and pains.

 

• Knowledge is a process of learning, forgetting, and remembering. Studying brings back knowledge but in a new way. What is forgotten leaves something behind for new things to grow out of. Ideas are immortal in the sense that they keep getting renewed from generation to generation and because they give birth to new ideas. The process of education is never ending.

 

Socrates – he is the embodiment of wisdom and of love in the Symposium. Like wisdom, which is experienced as a moment of epiphany (“All of a sudden ……”) Socrates has an epiphany-like effect on Alcibiades, who comes upon him “all of a sudden.” Alcibiades makes us see how Socrates is physically ugly but is truly beautiful on the inside like Silenus’ statues (pg. 68). Socrates’ arguments seem ridiculous at first but once you look deeply you discover that his are the truest arguments you have ever heard. Socrates is moderate: he was never hot or cold; he drank as much as anyone and never got drunk; he has desire but does not indulge it; he redirects desire to the pursuit of good or wisdom

 

One cannot rely on a direct statement from Socrates. He is not sarcastic; his meaning is not the opposite of what he says, but it is different. He is ironic as when he praises Agathon’s speech, and Agathon knows he is being made fun of.

 

Alcibiades is enslaved to his desires. He does not have the discipline to obtain wisdom. Alcibiades tried to seduce Socrates in order for him to receive his wisdom (as a Sophist might) but Socrates rejected Alcibiades’ advances. Alcibiades is tortured by the fact that he cannot achieve the wisdom of Socrates.

 

Philosophy, like the Bacchic frenzy is a form of existence, taking us out of ourselves and our normal perceptions of things. For example Socrates was in a trance on the porch of Agathon in thought before joining the drinking party.