Due Feb 25
Socrates’ Higher Vision of Love
Reading: Plato, Symposium, 32-77.
Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:
- Agathon offers a glimpse of the rhetorical style practiced among by trained Sophists—those paid teachers of oratory against whom Socrates defined himself. Focus our attention on a particular phrase or turn of logic and say what you like about it—or perhaps what you find distasteful.
- Socrates refuses to “play the game” and give a proper speech. Instead, he interrogates Agathon. Pointing to particulars, what does this move allow the philosopher to do? Does he accomplish something special, or does he simply sidestep the challenge of giving a speech in praise of Love?
- Some of you likely noticed the odd absence of women in this dialogue. Yet the crowning speech is given by a wise woman, Diotima. Pointing to particulars, how does her style of speech or her thinking differ from those of the men who preceded Socrates?
- The dialogue ends with Alcibiades’ drunken entrance. He, too, gives a speech, but his is in praise of Socrates. Pointing to particulars, how does his speech stand in relation to the earlier ones? Does it clash with them? Or harmonize in some way?
Agathon’s Sophistry
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Socrates Does His Own Thing
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Within many philosophy texts, philosophers, most notably Plato, employ a style of asking questions to lead the people debating to better comprehend the argument and perhaps be better persuaded towards agreeing. In pointing to particulars, philosophers are not simply sidestepping giving a speech about love, but rather he is taking an atypical approach to the way his speech is delivered. This can be seen in Socrates asking Agathon, “‘So! If something needs beauty and has got no beauty at all, would you still say that it is beautiful?’ ‘Certainly not.’ ‘Then do you still agree that Love is beautiful, if those things are so?’ Then Agathon said, ‘It turns out, Socrates, I didn’t know what I was talking about in that speech.'” It can be seen here that Socrates was successful in delivering his points about love, not through a speech, but through the breakdown of another’s argument, and the other conceded that Socrates’ was correct. This makes Socrates’ argument have more validity or support behind it, as he applies it to other concepts to create better comprehension.
I agree with your reading that Socrates is doing something more sophisticated than simply avoiding the challenge. By interrogating Agathon rather than delivering a prepared eulogy, Socrates forces the argument to be tested in real time, which is honestly a much higher bar than an unchallenged monologue. The moment you highlighted where Agathon admits “I didn’t know what I was talking about” is exactly the point. Socrates doesn’t just assert a different view of Love, he dismantles the existing one from within, which makes his eventual argument through Diotima land with way more weight. This method also reflects Socrates’ own understanding of what Love actually is. When he recounts Diotima’s teachings, she describes Love as existing in between mortal and immortal, “a great spirit” occupying a threshold space rather than a fixed category. Socrates refusing to play by the rules of the symposium puts him in that same in between position, neither fully participating in the game of speeches nor fully outside it, but using that middle ground to get closer to truth than any of the other speakers managed. That said I think it is worth asking whether this move also conveniently lets Socrates avoid being held to the same standard as everyone else. Everyone else had to make a positive case for Love and defend it openly while Socrates clears the field first and then attributes his own argument to someone else entirely. So while I agree he accomplishes something special, the interrogation also serves a protective function because it is much harder to criticize a philosopher who never directly claimed anything himself.
Diotima: A Woman’s Perspective?
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In Symposium, earlier speakers such as Phaedrus, Aristophanes, and Agathon deliver elegant speeches that treat love as a god already possessing beauty and goodness. Their speeches rely on myth and social convention. By contrast, Diotima proceeds through careful questions and answers to dismantle Agathon’s assumptions and redefine love as something somewhere between gods and mortals. Her emphasis on love as desire for “the perpetual possession of the good” clarifies that love is rooted in its incomplete nature and is directed toward immortality. Unlike the men, who describe what love feels like or what it inspires, Diotima analyzes what love is and what its ultimate object must be, making love the force that pushes people to seek wisdom.
I definetly agree with your statement that Diotomas speech takes the topic of love into a more philosphical and pure sense. Her framing of love as something incomplete that desires goodness and beauty takes the concept of love itself into a driving force for philosophy as a whole. I believe that Diotima is definetly correct in this assumption because the driving force behind anything that we do as human beings is rooted in the concept of love. The idea of love being something only romantic is incredibly narrow-minded when we consider that love drives our interests, arguements, and reasoning behind everything we do. The men in the story view love as something that only inspires pleasure or admiration when Diotima belives it encapsulates much more. Diotima speaks to the idea of love as a driving force beyond immediete gratification
I agree that Diotima’s perspective of love is something incomplete, but I also think it’s important to note that Diotima’s behavior is also very different from that of previous speakers. For instance, she states, “What do you think causes love and desire, Socrates? Don’t you see what an awful state a wild animal is in when it wants to reproduce? (54). I believe Diotima has a more straightforward and bold approach when speaking, which separates her from men who preceded Socrates. Diotima is bold when speaking because she questions Socrates, but also her style of speech is unique because it isn’t gentle and elegant, but rather bold and truthful, as she compares and connects the art of love to an animal wanting to reproduce.
To add on to that, I think Diotima’s straightfoward comparison of the art of love to the mating of animals also highlights a more functional and pragmatic view of love, as something inherently productive, whether the productivity results from giving birth literally or giving birth figuratively to beautiful concepts, ideas, art, etc. To Diotima, love is beautiful and its beauty comes from serving its function, which is to produce in order to have a part of one’s self live on. It’s very interesting that she speaks of something that sounds like evolutionary drive, millennia before the theory of evolution was ever put to paper. She says, “All of us are pregnant, Socrates, in both body and soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth,” (Plato 52). This kind of straightfoward language used as metaphor effectively communicates her view on love as something that prompts creation.
Alcibiades’ Speaks in Praise of Socrates
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