Plato

What was Plato’s writing?

Dialogues

Who was the central figure of Plato’s dialogues?

Socrates

Background of Plato:

• Wealthy and political family in Athens

• Never married

• 25 when Socrates was executed for impiety and corrupting the youth

What are The Forms? What are the most important Forms?

The Forms are perfect templates of everything we can perceive. The Forms are blueprints of how to act.

The most important Forms are the Form of Good, Beauty and Justice.

Plato’s soul:

• The allegory of the charioteer from the Phaedrus

• The tripartite soul

• The noble horse - rational impulses, truth, virtue, goodness - will get you to The Forms

• The wayward horse - carnal impulses, appetites, slave to passions, easier to follow

• Both impulses are desire - desire moves human life

• Charioteer - human reason - he can control which horse he follows

What are the four main types of love in A.G?

Storge

Philia

Eros

Agape

What is Storge?

Familial love (undiscriminating)

What is Philia?

Friendship bond - (freely chosen) (better than storge)

What is Eros?

Passionate sexual love - potentially overwhelming and dangerous

What is Agape?

Selfless love - exists regardless of circumstances

How is the Symposium told?

Indirectly

Who are the characters in the Symposium?

• Agathon (tragic poet, host)

• Aristophanes (comic poet)

• Eryximachus (doctor)

• Pausanius (older man)

• Phaedrus (younger man)

• Socrates

• Alcibiades

What does Phaedrus say of love?

• Love is the oldest god

• Love makes us want to be virtuous

• Brings shame in acting disgracefully

• An undetectable army of lovers

What does Pausanius say of love?

• 2 types of love because there are two Aphrodites

• Common (Pandemian) love - physical interest in both men and women

• Heavenly (Uranian) love - intellectual love between men

• Homoerotic appetites can make H.L C.L

What happens after Pausanius’ speech?

Aristophanes gets hiccups and cannot speak - traces of comedy/satire

What does Eryximachus say?

• Partly agrees with Pausanius

• Human response to love is not just moral but physical

• Love is essential to the body and universe

• Love creates harmony

• A doctor’s approach

What does Aristophanes say?

• people were once two head and four of arms and four legs

• They tried to overthrow the gods so Zeus split them in two

• The pairs were male/female, male/male and female/female

• We aspire to return to our other half

• Originally, the people dies hugging to death so Zeus allowed them to have sex

• Calls back to the myth of Hephaestus’ net

What does Agathon say?

• Eros is a god

• It is the summit of all virtue

• Eros can be categorised in three ways:

• Eros is beloved - beautiful, grave, everyone desires Eros

• Eros as an artist - inspires beautiful things

• Eros is good - love is incompatible with injustice or other evils - always fair and moral, produces a fair society

Who is Socrates quoting?

Diotima

What does Socrates (Diotima) say?

• To love/desire is to realise that we are in between a state of lack and one of possession

• What we really desire is eudaimonia (happiness/fulfillment)

• We are all pregnant in body and soul - we want to reproduce/create beauty

• Love is not “of the beautiful” - but of “creation it production of beauty”

• The ladder allegory

What is the ladder allegory?

1) We love/desire one particular beautiful body

2) We love all beautiful bodies

3) We love beautiful souls - we appreciate spiritual beauty more than physical

4) We love beautiful laws - they are created by/create beautiful souls

5) We appreciate the beauty of knowledge - “episteme” - certain knowledge and understanding - philosophy which reveals the cosmos and the order of the Universe

6) Beauty itself - the Form of Beauty and Good

What happens after Socrates’ speech?

Alcibiades walks in drunk and gives a speech on why he loves Socrates - a return to the personal rather than ideals

Why does Alcibiades love/desire Socrates?

Socrates’ moderation

What is Plato’s Republic concerned with?

Justice

What is the word for perfect city?

Kallipolis

What is the rule for everyone’s role in this society?

You must stick to what you are best at

What is the first class of people and who makes up this group?

The producer class:

• Necessities - farmers, doctors…

• Luxuries - poets, merchants…

What is the second class of people and what do they do?

Auxiliaries (the Guardians (but not really))

• Defend the city and keep the peace

• Selected at childhood and educated

What are the rules for auxiliaries?

• Their education is heavily censored

• No bad stories of gods

• No bad stories about death so they they will happily die in defence of the city

What is the last group of people?

The Rulers (The Guardians)

• The wisest, even more educated

• Can include women

• Philosopher-kings

What are the rules for the Guardians?

• No private property or wealth

• No privacy

• No monogamy

• Children are shared

What city does the Laws concern?

The city of Magnesia

What is the differences in The Laws from the Republic?

• Does allow private property, families and written laws

• Criticisms of homosexuality

What is the rule of love/desire in the Laws?

The different concepts of love should not be mixed up. Physical desire should always be secondary.

How and why was homosexuality criticised in the Laws?

Three old men were discussing how to manage new births - homosexuality makes you a slave to pleasure (not productive)