Plato's erotism / symposium

Plato's symposium

• There are a total of 6 speeches plus a seventh by Alcibiades who comes in drunk and uninvited 

• Recurring motif is the obsession with socrates 

• They start talking about love because they believe it is neglected 

Agathon's speech 

• Love is qualities that enable him to give benefits for which we praise him 

• The most beautiful and the best 

Refutation of Agathon 

• Socrates criticizes Agathon for falsely applying to love as the grandest and most beautiful qualities 

• C1: Therefore, love is not beautiful but the desire for beauty 

• P4: All good things are beautiful 

• C2: Therefore, love is also lacking what is good  

The ladder of love 

• 5. Finally, we grasp the Form of Beauty itself.

• 4. We come to see beauty in activities, laws, customs, and kinds of knowledge (or sciences).

• 3. We realize that the soul is more valuable than the body, and so we come to love beautiful souls (even when housed in ugly bodies).

• 2. We realize that the beauty of all bodies is the same, and so we come to love all beautiful bodies.

• 1. We love one beautiful body.

• The form of beauty is eternal, unchanging and causal 

Alcibiades speech 

• He was implicated in the mutilation of the herms 

• He was charged with impiety, defected to Sparta and sentenced to death, charges were dropped 

• He compared Socrates to satyr, who charmed people with melodies and popular statues which were opened and filled with golden images of gods 

• He complains that Socrates makes him feel ashamed of political ambitions, pursuit of wealth and fame and desire to please a crowd 

• Alcibiades was upset Socrates refused to take him as a lover and he wants Socrates to teach him