Plato's Symposium Flashcards
1
Q
different jobs of characters
A
represent all of society to show types of ideas that emerge and all the types of people readers would be likely to encounter
pure form of beauty is subjective and differs for each person
2
Q
Phaedrus, the young man (Pausanias’ eromenos)
A
- Love is an ancient god – eros
- Don’t want to do anything shameful in front of your lover e.g. throwing weapons down in battle or showing cowardice, so an army of lovers would be very effective
- Aidos - shame
- Love is something that makes you want to die for someone e.g. Alcestis, Orpheus and Achilles, who was honoured as he had the kind of love that inspired virtue
- Supports pederasty as he says that no young man could benefit more than from a good lover, and no lover could benefit more than from a young loved one
o Pederasty: the socially acknowledged educative and erotic relationship between an adult male of 20 – mid 20s (erastes) and a younger male of 13 -20 (eromenos) - Love is the most ancient and honoured of the gods, and most capable of ensuring courage and happiness, in this life, and the next
3
Q
Pausanias, lawyer (Phaedrus’ erastes)
A
- Define two kinds of Aphrodite:
o Heavenly Aphrodite, the daughter of Uranus, with whom he associated Uranian (heavenly) love
Aphrodite has no mother, so love is directed only towards males
Usually felt for boys of developing maturity who show signs of intelligence and with whom a life-long partnership is possible
Criticises those who take advantage of young foolish boys or women for the sake of sexual gratification. Suggests that inappropriate behaviour brings a bad name to love and sexual pleasure
o Common Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is considerably younger, and with whom he associated Pandamian (common) love
Attraction is indiscriminating and directed towards beautiful bodies rather than minds
People motivated are equally interested in women and boys
The less intelligent the better, they can get what they desire more easily - Notes that appropriate love takes place when the lover makes the loved one good, wise and virtuous, educating him and teaching him virtue, and the loved one gratifies the lover, and is eager to acquire the wisdom he can share
- Love is not shameful – doing anything for the one you love is highly commended
- Should be based only on affection for partner
- Those in love are granted indulgence from humans and gods
- Wanting love for personal gain is considered shameful, but wanting to be better is noble
o Even if deceived by who the partner truly is
o Wanting to be with someone who has a lot of money – shown himself to the sort of person to do anything for money
o Wanting to be with someone who is good and likely to make him better is noble - Loved one won too easily over by influence or money is not after the wisdom of his lover and should be ashamed
- Main purpose of love is to produce virtue and love pursued for any other means is wrong
- Refines and deepens Phaedrus’ account
4
Q
Euryximachus, doctor
A
- Commends Pausanias for distinguishing two different kinds of love, but suggests he is limiting himself when he considers all love to be expressed in emotional response between human beings
- Links love to medicine and science
- Love is essential to harmony of universe and can harmonise two people together and guides everything
- Medical training shows that love is expressed in bodily responses of plants and animals
- In medicine, one should gratify the good and healthy parts if the body while depriving diseased parts any satisfaction, so they cease to be diseased. Doctors’ role is to implant one type of love in the body and flush out the wrong kind to create love between antagonistic elements.
- Medicine, athletics, agriculture and music are all governed by the god of love – creation agreement from concord
- By practising love, one is promoting order and may this improve people.
- One must be careful to gratify the recipient of love without rendering him self-indulgent
- In all things, both kinds of love are present, but we must proceed with moderation
- Love is ever-present and all-powerful, and is the cause of self-control, happiness and justice and produces good actions
5
Q
Aristophanes, comic poet
A
- Explains a myth:
o Three genders, female, male, androgynous, and each person was combined with another
o They angered the gods, but they did not want to destroy them because it would forfeit the sacrifices the humans made to them. Zeus cut each person in two and threatened to do it again.
o The humans longed for their original nature and kept trying to find and reunite with their other half.
o The origin of instinctive desire for other human beings
o Halves of formerly androgynous beings are attracted to the opposite sex while men who like men and women who like women are halves of formerly whole males and females - He applauds pederastic relationships as such couples value boldness, braveness and masculinity, both in themselves and in others
- When we find our other half, we are overwhelmed with affection, concern, and love for that person, which cannot result simply from a desire for sex, but we have difficulty articulating what it is that makes us care so much
- If Hephaestus were to offer to weld a couple together so they become one, they would leap at this opportunity.
- Love is the name that we give to desire for wholeness and restoration to our original nature
- We must strive ourselves and others to behave well to the gods to avoid Zeus’ wrath
- Love is our leader, and if we work against love, we will find ourselves on the wrong side of the gods.
- Love guides us towards those similar to us, and if continued reverence is shown, he may one day restore us to our whole selves.
- Love is the most worthy and important god
6
Q
Agathon, tragic poet
A
- Love is the happiest of the gods because he is the most beautiful and the best, and is the youngest god
- Avoids old age, and only associates with the young
- All the terrible things the gods did to each other in ancient times they did because of Necessity and not Love. Since Love has ruled amongst the gods, they have been far more peaceful and organised and motivated by a love of beauty.
- Love is sensitive, and settles in minds and characters, and of those with soft natures. He can pass unnoticed in and out of our minds; he is fluid
- Virtues of love:
o Just – never forced and never uses force, everyone consents to his authority
o Moderate – master pleasures and desires
o Brave – more than Ares, since he fell in love with Aphrodite and was mastered by Love
o Wise – inspiration for all acts of wisdom – no poet can be wise without love, or gods and muses master their arts without love for those arts. - Eulogy praising every aspect of Love, who is responsible for beauty, excellence, mildness, wisdom, goodness, excellence and much more.
7
Q
Socrates, philosopher
A
- Questions Agathon:
Whether or not Love is the love of something or other, who agrees.
He also agrees with the idea that Love desires what it is love of.
If love desires what he loves, then that would suggest that he does not possess the object of his desire.
What we desire is to continue to have that thing in the future.
o Gods are organised through a love of beautiful things
o Love must be love of beauty, implying that Love itself must be without beauty.
o If good things are beautiful, Love must also be lacking in good things and cannot himself be good. - Claims he once held the same view as Agathon, and picks up where he left the dialogue, now presenting himself in Agathon’s position
- Restating account given to him by Diotima:
- Convinced that Love is not beautiful or good, does that mean that Love is ugly and bad?
o Not everything must be one or the opposite.
o Unjustified true opinions is neither wisdom or ignorance
o Wisdom consists of justified true opinions, but a true opinion is not ignorant - As they concluded that love is not good and beautiful as he is in need of those things, they have denied that Love is a god altogether. Gods are both happy and beautiful, and Love is neither of these things.
- Since not everything is its opposite, that does not mean that Love is mortal.
- Love is a spirit somewhere between mortals and immortals
- Story of Love’s birth:
o Conceived at a feast to celebrate the birth of Aphrodite, so becoming her follower
o As a child of Resource and Poverty, Love is always poor and tough, and like his mother, he is always in a state of need, but like his father, he can scheme to get what he wants - Love is a lover of wisdom
- None of the gods love wisdom because they are already wise and do not need wisdom, nor do the ignorant love wisdom since they don’t realise that they need it. Resource is wise, while Poverty is not.
- Claims of Love’s greatness were directed at the object of love and not the lover himself. Beauty and perfection are the qualities of the things we love, but the lover himself is not this.
- Love is love of beautiful and good things, as he wants these things to become his own so he can be happy. Everyone wants good things and happiness to be theirs forever. But lovers love what is good and love is the desire to have the good forever.
- Everyone is pregnant in body and mind, and we give birth by physical reproduction and the sharing of ideas.
o Body – seek out women to reproduce
o Mind – bring forth wisdom and virtues, and seek one who is beautiful is mind as well as body, and a pederastic bond is stronger than a familial bond since wisdom is shared, and ideas are more immortal than people - Object of love is not beauty, but reproduction in birth and beauty.
- Since love is the desire to have the good forever, we must desire immortality as well as the good and reproduction brings us closest to immortality. All mortal things desire reproduction.
- Sees a drive for immortality in search of honour. Alcestis and Achilles would not have died for their lovers if they didn’t know their heroism would be immortalised.
- As a boy grows up, he will develop from being attracted to a particular beautiful body to appreciate the beauty of minds and will see that all kinds of beauty are similar and come to love beauty in general and will eventually become a lover of knowledge.
- Eventually reach the goal of love, which has a constant absolute beauty, which appears in itself and by itself, independent of everything else.
- All beautiful things derive from Beauty, and a life pursuing this is the best life one can lead, as someone would be able to produce true virtue rather than images of virtue, as they can see beauty itself, not images of it. True virtue allows them to be immortal and loved by the gods.
- No greater partner for human nature than Love
8
Q
Alcibiades, general and politician
A
- Eulogy to Socrates himself
- Says that Socrates pretends to be attracted to younger men and ignorant, but lives with moderation and is wise and not concerned with bodily matters
- Alcibiades hoped to seduce Socrates to gain some wisdom
- Cannot liken Socrates to anyone apart from a satyr, Silenus, who is a god on the inside
- Warns Agathon not to be fooled or seduced by Socrates
- Socrates seeks to lead young men through the ascent towards the form of beauty
- Socrates saved him in battle
9
Q
Waterfield
A
one part of us sympathises with Alcibiades and his sorry tale of unrequited love; but then we remember that Socrates is meant to be our ideal and we disapprove of Alcibiades being so stubbornly erotic
10
Q
Dodds
A
Plato expresses with some clarity that sexual gratification distracts from the focus on recollection, but Socrates does not wholly condemn couples who occasionally give in to their sexual urges
11
Q
Jiminez
A
Diotima engages with the previous speeches, and their parts contribute to her whole speech
12
Q
C.D. Reeve
A
[Socrates] a man so powerfully erotic that he turned the conventional world of love upside down by seeming to be a lover (erastes), while really establishing himself as a beloved boy (eromenos) instead
13
Q
Scheller
A
love itself… brings about the continuous emergence of ever-higher value in the object - just as if it were streaming out from the object of its own accord, without any exertion (even of wishing) on the part of the lover
14
Q
Burton
A
in the Phaedrus Plato emphasises the relationship that love has to the divine and hence to the eternal and infinite, in the Symposium he emphasises more the relationship that it has to the practice of philosophy, the search for happiness, and the contemplation of truth
15
Q
Ferrari
A
Plato does not have a comprehensive theory of love… he diverts certain opinions about love to his own peculiarly philosophic ends… [he constructs] a bridge between love and philosophy
