one page paper for classical mytholgy.

Symposium by Plato Introduction & Outline

The Symposium narrates the events of a drinking party that was supposed to have taken place in Athens, in 416 BC, two days after a festival called Lenaia. The party took place at the home of Agathon, a tragic poet who had just won the prize for best tragedies at the festival. Those attending the party were an intellectually elite group including the comic poet Aristophanes, a physician named Eryximachus, and Socrates. The last to arrive is Alcibiades, an important Athenian politician and general who later became the strongest advocate for the (eventually disastrous) expedition to Sicily. The guests at the party play a game in which each makes an extemporaneous speech upon a given topic--this time, the topic is to compose an encomium in praise of the god Love (Eros in Greek). Unlike most Platonic dialogues, the Symposium has little question-and- answer led by Socrates; instead several guests give continuous speeches praising Love. In all of the speeches "Love" refers to sexual pleasure, but none of the speeches praises the pleasure of sex itself; each praises Love because of some personal improvement that occurs through or because of sexual pleasure and desire. Each speech displays something about the individual who makes it, something about what he thinks of Love, and most importantly something about what he thinks makes a person good. It is the job of the reader to interpret the principle behind each speech and how it relates to the others. In reading each speech notice how the benefit of Love emerges in association with a kind of education, and what each kind of education implies about what a person is and what he needs to learn. The various speeches follow a tacit trajectory leading to a speech in which Socrates explains how he learned that the desire for physical possession of another person is a symptom of the soul's desire to find and possess its own immortal beauty through the soul of another. This furnishes the paradigm for a particular kind of education, Philosophy. According to Socrates Philosophy is Love (philosophia = "love of wisdom"), and the pursuit of philosophy in conversation with friends is love. (This is where the expression "Platonic relationship" comes from.) Two essential questions:

1. What makes a good teacher? 2. What’s so good about Love (i.e., “Eros” = physical lust)?

Outline (remember the numbers here refer to the “page” numbers in the outside margins of your text):

• Intro: Rumors of Socratic speeches. Getting to Agathon’s (172-178).

• Phaedrus’ speech (178-180b): Phaedrus, likely in his late 20’s, is the boyfriend of Eryximachus, the doctor, who must be at least 30. Regardless of the details of age, note that Phaedrus has a crush on an older, very learned man, and the relevance of this relationship to Phaedrus’ account of Eros. Phaedrus has also had a traditional education in poetry.

2

• Pausanias’ speech (180c-185e): Pausanias is an adult gay man who is essentially

married to Agathon the star tragic poet, also an adult gay man but younger than Pausanias (they’re both probably around the age of 30). Pausanias’ speech justifies the seduction of a boy by an older man only when the man is the boy’s teacher.

• Eryximachus’ speech (186a-188e): A physician, lover of Phaedrus. He thinks of

Eros in terms of physical health. But this specific instantiation of Eros is not limited to the human body; it extends to the entire material world.

• Aristophanes’ speech (189a-193e): A great comic poet (i.e., playwright). Eros is

not just a desire one person has to physically possess another, but an intuitive yearning for wholeness that is characteristic of the human condition.

• Agathon’s speech (194a-201c): Prize-winning tragic poet (i.e., playwright),

partner of Pausanias. Sexual attraction is a kind of sweet persuasion that makes the soul soft, peaceful, and cooperative.

• Socrates’ speech (201d-212c): First he cross-examines Agathon, then he relates a

speech he heard from a wise woman named Diotima. Eros is the human soul’s desire for immortality in communion with other souls.

• Alcibiades’ entrance and speech (212c-222c): Alcibiades is a politician and

general. He is very intelligent, good-looking, charming, and popular (and very wealthy). Infatuated by Socrates’ intellect, he tries to get Socrates to convey his wisdom by making himself his teacher’s sexual pet. It doesn’t work. Readers are provoked to consider the implications of the teacher-student relationship in general, and that of Socrates-Alcibiades in particular, when it is remembered that the historical Alcibiades was a strong advocate for an Athenian expedition to Sicily that was ultimately unsuccessful: many Athenian men died on this military endeavor.

• Outro (222c-223d)