Issues in Plato's Symposium

The purpose of this research is to examine Plato's Symposium. The plan of the research will be to discuss these issues in the text: the superiority or inferiority of lover and the beloved; the intention and position of Diotima's speech in answer to positions taken by various speakers; the role of Alcibiades as interloper on the party and participant in the dialogues; the purpose of the speech in praise of Socrates; the understanding of eros that the speeches of all, including those of Socrates and Diotima, demonstrate.

Phaedrus maintains the superiority of the beloved in a love relationship, although his argument is deceptive. When he first advances his basic tribute to the fulfilling nature of Love, Phaedrus extols the benefits of a "worthy lover" (42) for the beloved, noting that the height of emotional and psychological feeling is reached by both lover and beloved, irrespective of the opinion of others outside the relationship. Indeed, the core of Phaedrus's argument is an apotheosis of the love relationship:

If then one could contrive that a state or an army should

entirely consist of lovers and loved, it would be impossible

for it to have a better organization. . . . Moreover, only

lovers will sacrifice their lives for another; this is true

of women as well as men. Ins peaking to Greeks I need no

example to support this assertion beyond that provided by

Pelias' daughter Alcestis (43).

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ch moves beyond the positions of both Aristophanes and Agathon for the reason that it puts the exercise of the praise of Love on a higher plane than either the physical or the psychophysical. Aristophanes's praise of Love was as the psychological mechanism of physical fulfillment, while Agathon's praise was of abstractions (e.g., delicacy, desire, grace) to which Love adds a higher experience of such abstractions. But Diotima takes the argument beyond comfortable abstractions that are penultimate and deals with ultimate things. It is no accident that physical sensations or the wish for them such as Aristophanes describes are wholly of the corporeal world, and that the abstractions such as Agathon describes are acquired characteristics, of the world. But wisdom, beautiful as it is, can be eternal and can be made available for all time. This is the heart of the argument about Love (i.e., love of wisdom) as an aspect of immortality, or as Diotima calls it, spiritual procreation (867, passim). Now, why is procreation the object of love? Because procreation is the nearest thing to perpetuity and immortality that a mortal being can attain. If, we agreed, the aim of love is the perpetual possession of t

Category: Philosophy - I