Thoughts on Symposium

 

               Symposium is the most illustrious and literary of the dialogues – my favorite one yet. It is chiefly concerned with a question that is of the utmost importance to all people in all ages – What is love? The reader is invited to view 6 different views on the topic, all of which have their strong points – although one view shines above the rest in regal splendor. We also learn quite a bit about Socrates in this dialogue. His usual humility, self-deprecation, and acknowledgment of his ignorance are present, but with one interesting addition. He says that even though he typically doesn’t think he knows anything – love is the ONE THING he does understand (177e). That should perk the reader’s ears up that Socrates view of love is something Plato probably felt very strongly about Indeed, once it is fleshed out it sheds light on his metaphysics and connecting the dots shows its indispensable character. At the end of the dialogue an unexpected drunken visitor, Alcibiades, ends up eulogizing Socrates and we get a sort of hagiography of his exploits that would rival that of the saints found in the festal menaion or the Prologue from Ochrid.

            The idea of a symposium doesn’t seem too foreign to me. In Ancient Greece, after a large banquet people would gather afterwards for drink and conversation or to listen to music and in general hang out under the influence of alcohol. Sounds like another of the many things that don’t change – a time honored human tradition. As soon as everyone is there and the party starts, they all agree to not drink heavily that night as most of them are hungover from the previous night, another thing that doesn’t seemed to have changed! The doctor, Eryximachus, is pleased with this as heavy drinking is bad for health. It is he who brings up the topic to be addressed – he suggests that they all praise the god of love to the best of their ability, to which all happily assent (177d).

The first speech is given by Phaedrus, one of the main characters in the last dialogue I commented on. He cites Hesiod’s Theogony (116) as evidence for his view on the god of love (Eros). There Eros is described as one of the oldest – indeed unbegotten gods coming directly from Chaos just like Gaia and Tartarus. For him, this is proof that the god of love is the ancient source of all that is good. Love should be the only thing that guides our decisions: “…neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life” (178c). The awesome power of love is seen in its remarkable ability to instill a spirit of sacrifice in us: “the very presence of Love kindles the same flame of valor in the faintest heart that burns in those whose courage is innate….nothing but Love will make a man offer his life for another’s” (179a-b). It’s not clear if it is hyperbole or not, but he even thinks an army that was made up entirely of couples would conquer the whole world. The lover wouldn’t be likely to desert since that would be shameful and no one wants to disappoint their beloved. Also, we see that love gives a supernatural courage to the lovers. Phaedrus seemed very immature in the eponymous dialogue, so it is a refreshing change of pace that he gives such an astute definition of love. I really like how close this is to my own Christian view that Love is unbegotten and that the foremost hallmark of love is its sacrificial character. For Christians, this is most clearly seen in the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. As Paul Evdokimov was wont to say, there is no love if it is not a crucified love.

The next speech is given by Pausanias, Agathon’s lover. His speech is a bit more in depth, as he breaks down love into two types ultimately to demonstrate logically that the best sort of love is one where progress in moral virtue is the first priority among the lovers. He begins by stating that every action we take is neutral, it is how we perform that action and to what goal we do it for that makes it either base or noble. As such, he sees that there are two types of love: earthly and heavenly. The earthly sort of love is passionate, vulgar, random, and ultimately indiscriminating. It is characterized by superficiality and shallowness since its chief care is for the physical pleasures of the body and not for the soul. Heavenly love is older, more mature and cares nothing for lewdness and puts physical pleasure on the backburner and turns most of its attention to intelligence and virtue. Anyone with sense knows that virtue and nobility of character are more beautiful than physical desire. The reason why is due to the unfading character of it that is akin to the eternal. Physical beauty fades and the person that is only concerned with this will eventually leave his lover when her beauty fades for a younger, more physically attractive one. Moral beauty is undying and cannot be taken away and so the couple grows more in love as they grow more in virtue, regardless of how they look physically, and they never abandon each other. He says this is precisely why tyrants have a vested interest in disallowing love and pursuit of wisdom since these are basically identical and love begets higher thinking and friendship; both of these are dangerous to despots. Aldous Huxley thought along the same lines – this is the plot of his novel Brave New World – tyrants promoting base physical pleasure and drug use to keep the population docile because they know that sobriety, clear thinking, and true love that is focused on moral beauty is extremely dangerous to their attempt to control society.

Pausanias then defines the best sort of love – it is devoting oneself to another for the sake of gaining in virtue. “If anyone is prepared to devote himself to the service of another in the belief that through him he will find increase of wisdom or of any other virtue, we hold that such willing servitude is neither base nor abject” (184c). But you cannot give what you do not have, so the lover needs to diligently apply himself to gaining wisdom and virtue so that he can pass it on to his beloved who should diligently learn from him. This is what really matters. You cannot control other people, so let’s say that you are with someone and they dupe you into thinking they are wise and good when really they are corrupt and immoral and leave you high and dry. You will feel pain and be depressed at having been taken advantage of, but you should be of good cheer, since your impulse was noble. You wanted to improve in moral excellence, you just were mistaken in who had it – all you need to do is get better at discerning red flags and have the ability to act on them. For this, Pausanias recommends that you take your time in getting to know your lover, it is immoral to yield too quickly to their advances. It is also immoral to be guided by self-seeking motives, so listen to your heart and look within and make sure your reason for being with them is free of any taint of selfishness and is only about the mutual growth and acquisition of moral virtue. I think this is sage and wise advice and is just as good a definition of love as the last one, just seen from a different angle.

The third speech is given by the physician Eryximachus and is fairly short. His idea of love is that it is all-embracing; the influence of love stretches across all the vast domain of the cosmos from sacred to profane, all the way from plants to humans and everything in between. He ultimately sees love as the principle that can conjoin and bring harmony to opposites. It is the god who is able to unite hot and cold, wet and dry, high and low, etc. to make sure that extremes are avoided at all cost. This is eerily reminiscent of the biblical idea that god humbles the haughty and elevates the downtrodden. To the Greeks, one of the greatest sins was pleonexia—wanting to much and that’s why Eryximachus is eager to see love as the god that helps people avoid “the evils of excess.” As such, he sees love as primarily promoting moderation, harmony, and peace and completely opposed to conflict. He sees love in action in medicine and music, since both disciplines take things that are out of harmony and seek to place them back into harmony. For medicine, this is disordered and unnatural bodily states, and for music this is discordant notes that can be put together in a creative way to be rendered beautiful. All this being said, he sees the purpose of religious rituals as being for the preservation and/or repair of love among the members of a community. Impiety, which is the lack of love, chiefly comes from a lack of moderation among the members of a religious community. I think this is also a true and beautiful definition of love from another angle. It shows also why fasting and other ascetic practices are not world-denying Platonic hatred of the body, but rather a means to make sure we gain humility, which is focusing less on ourselves and more on others so that we may love them. Finally, I absolutely agree that the God who is Love is all-embracing and cares an infinite amount for what we consider almost worthless. There is nothing that he has made that he does not love and that he will not redeem unto the ages of ages.

The comic poet Aristophanes regales us with his eulogy to the god of love by way of an extremely bizarre myth, so bizarre that some took it as Plato making an ironic jab at the man who was partly to blame for the death of his mentor, Socrates. I’m not sure how true that is, but I am sure that the myth is strange. He says that in the beginning we had double of everything and were globularly shaped with the second set of features on the opposite side. Humans came in 3 varieties, double males, double females, and hermaphrodites. We tried to climb to heaven and Zeus punished us by ripping us in half and this is the current form we now have and explains why we long for our other halves. We must be reverent towards the gods or else Zeus will rip us all in half again The upshot of all this is that love is the god who helps us achieve our one true desire, which is to be reunited with the other half we once had. In total opposition to the current cultural milieu, he says that the homosexuality is the ideal as heterosexuals are baser and more untrustworthy. The only reason to engage in heterosexual sex is to keep the species going, but to him it is better to be attracted to your own gender. This is the weakest, as Socrates points out, and utterly bizarre to me, so I could see this being the ancient version of a diss track from Plato towards Aristophanes. There is truth to the idea that love involves longing for “your other half” but love is much deeper than that as we will see. I can agree with Aristophanes assessment of the state of our love, one that he should realize applies to him as well:  “mankind has never had any conception of the power of Love, for if we had known him as he really is, surely we should have raised the mightiest temples and altars, and offered the most splendid sacrifices, in his honor, and not – as in fact we do – have utterly neglected him” (189c).

The host of the party, the tragic poet Agathon, chimes in with an admonition before giving his encomium on love. The previous speeches were all well and good, but the error they promulgated was focusing on the blessings the god of love bestows upon his and neglecting to speak of him as he is in himself. “Our duty is first to praise him for what he is, and secondly, for what he gives” (195a). This makes perfect sense – you should love someone for who they are, not what they do for you. Being is logically prior to doing – to do well, you have to be well. He goes against Phaedrus and bucks tradition by saying that Love is not the oldest but rather the youngest god, if he were around since the beginning, then why hasn’t there been constant peace since then? What really happened, he declares in Manichean fashion, is that Necessity was king in the beginning and was the cause of the terrible things that set us off course, but now love has come to save us. Also, it seems love is something more for the young and like attracts like, so the god of love must be young. He also says that love must be soft, dainty, and delicate since these are qualities that reside in a heart that is full of love.

Love does not hurt anyone and cannot be hurt by anyone since he is the most powerful god of all. The proper object of love is beauty and now the actions of the gods are governed by this principle. The god of love will have absolutely nothing to do with what is ugly, especially what is morally ugly. This does not mean that he ignores the plight of the evil, he actually banished all that is brutal and evil in his creatures and relentlessly brings kindness and happiness wherever he goes. He also has perfect self-mastery and instills this in us – he slays all desire for lust and short-term dopamine hit seeking behavior in us. In the end, we must ALL follow him, so our voices are in tune with the heavenly harmony of the song of love. This god of love kindles a fire in even the most cold-hearted among us so that “no matter what dull clay we seemed to be before, we are every one of us a poet when we are in love” (196e). There is much to be commended in this eulogy to love. Aristophanes speaks well when he realizes that we are to honor God more than the gifts he gives. As a universalist, I also agree with the God of love’s ability to utterly destroy alienation and bring peace, friendship, and total reconciliation to fruition among his beloved creation.

Socrates, however, is unimpressed. The best, and longest, speech was saved for last. He begins by insulting everyone present, claiming that while their descriptions were indeed flowery and beautiful, they were about flattery and not praise. They were nice sounding but hollow words because they were completely bereft of facts. Socrates declares that he will not give a eulogy, but he will tell the truth about the one thing on this earth that he does know—love. He learned the truth from an extremely intelligent Mantinean woman named Diotima and he proceeds to tell the group what she taught him. I think it is absolutely wonderful that you have one of the most respected teachers in philosophy saying he learned the one thing he knows well from a woman – perhaps the ancients were not so backward as we think sometimes. Moving on, he commends Agathon for being correct that love longs for beauty, but he chastises him for not logically carrying out what this means. Since love yearns for beauty it must mean it must not be beautiful or good, since beauty = goodness. This doesn’t mean that love is ugly or bad – there is a middle ground. He explains using knowledge as an analogy – it is possible to have a correct belief, but not be able to explain it. This hovers between true knowledge and absolute ignorance. Love’s lack of beauty is the same, it isn’t yet ugly, but it isn’t beautiful either although it sincerely desires to be so with all its power. In fact, he goes even further than Agathon in going against the tradition of his day. Love is not only not the oldest god, but not even the youngest either. Since the gods are both beautiful and good, and love is in some halfway state between beauty and ugliness, goodness and evil, he can’t be a god – but he isn’t a man either. He must be a daimon – that spiritual being that is halfway between the gods and mortals.

According to the priestess Diotima, the true genealogy of Love is as the child of the gods Resource (god of wealth) and Need (goddess of poverty). He was born on the same day as Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and so that’s why he seeks the beautiful. As the child of Need, he will forever be needy and as the child of Wealth he will also always be energetic, even if a bit impetuous. Contrary to Agathon’s flowery and poetic description, love is neither dainty nor delicate he is harsh, barefoot, homeless, and poor. This was the chief error of some of the previous speeches – they mixed up the lover with the beloved. The lover seeks what he doesn’t have – so it is the beloved who is utterly beautiful, delicate, dainty, and prosperous, but not Love. He is good at enchantment and seduction towards the good and beautiful as he is a lifelong truth seeker. In keeping with the other halfway measures that describe him, he is also halfway between ignorance and wisdom – he craves the truth because he doesn’t know it. If he did, he wouldn’t pursue it; if you have something, you don’t look for it. Since the object of Love is beauty and wisdom is the most beautiful of all things, the daimon Love is a philosopher – a lover of wisdom.

So far, Socrates has been mainly focused on correcting Agathon’s mistaken perception of love, but now he turns to fixing the incongruities in Aristophanes view, who said that love ultimately was a longing for your other half. He stridently disagrees: “Love never longs for either the half or the whole of anything except the good. For men will even have their hands and feet cut off if they are once convinced that those members are bad for them…. what we love is the good and nothing but the good” (205e-206a). Since the good is eternal and unchanging, love is also the passionate desire for immortality—this is why men will endure great hardships and face great danger, so that they are remembered long after they are dead. It is also why even dumb animals will sacrifice their lives for their children; their method of partaking of immortality is through procreation. Since love desires beauty, it longs to make both body and soul beautiful, although the beauty of the soul far outshines the beauty of the body, which fades (206b). A virtuous person is one who has a beautiful soul and is more attracted to beautiful souls and not just bodily beauty. These virtues are inculcated in us by way of art and creativity.  His passion is to educate others in order to make their souls beautiful as well. As Socrates beautifully expresses it: “beauties of the body are as nothing to beauties of the soul, so that wherever he meets with spiritual loveliness, even in the husk of an unlovely body, he will find it beautiful enough to fall in love with and to cherish—and beautiful enough to quicken in his heart a longing for such discourse as tends towards the building of a noble nature” (210b-c).

Socrates then unleashes one of the most poetic descriptions of the ascent of man toward God ever recorded. He describes the famed scala amoris (ladder of love): first, we love a few individual bodily beauties, then we progress to loving every bodily type of beauty. Next, we progress to loving more immaterial things like minds and the general learning that makes them more beautiful. Next, we go from this general learning to a higher form of learning that concerns only the beautiful itself. The final revelation is the direct experience of the beautiful as such, and once we have seen this in all its glory there is no going back.

“if man’s life is ever worth the living, it is when he has attained this vision of the very soul of beauty. An once you have seen it you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, of dress, etc.; you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and kindle such a longing in you… you would be content, if it were possible, to deny yourself the grosser necessities of meat and drink, so long as you were with him [the beloved].” (211d)

This vision is above flesh, words, and even knowledge—it is impossible to explain or put into words. Even thought that is the case, Socrates gives us the most adequate explanation possible that is obviously far inferior to the experience itself. “It is an everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor goes, which neither flowers nor fades, for such beauty is the same on every hand, the same then as now, here as there, this way as that way, the same to every worshipper as it is to every other” (211a). How do we attain to this vision and become “the friend of God”? Socrates says that it is actually the vision of beauty that allows us to seek virtue in the first place. We can never attain to anything without God giving us his grace first. Once that happens then we are free to become perfect in virtue. As we adorn our soul with the virtues, we attain ever greater heights in this scala amoris, and it is love that helps us more than anything in the world (212b). Socrates ends his speech by urging us to worship the God of love and to cultivate his elements into our lives so they we may attain this vision of the Good and the Beautiful.

            This would seem to be the climax and a good ending point, but Plato, thankfully, saw things differently. He has Socrates’ jealous lover Alcibiades burst in on the party staggering around drunkenly. Instead of giving a speech in praise of the god of love, he gives a eulogy for Socrates and this is fitting. I think Plato uses this as an opportunity to take all the abstract theory he has been discussing and show what love looks like concretely manifested in a real person. Alcibiades begins his hagiography by describing how ugly Socrates looks – he looks like a satyr and like them he bewitches people, with words instead of flutes. He also says Socrates fills him with a “sacred rage,” always making him feel like a lowlife and ashamed of himself. This is because whenever he talks to him, he sees how inadequate he is and just being in his holy presence fills him with the urge to change his way of life and to care for his soul. He knows he should do as Socrates tells him and focus more on his soul rather than politics, but this is extremely hard work and as soon as he is out of Socrates presence he falls back into his old ways – following the easy and wide path of the crowd rather than the narrow path of the truth. Socrates may be ugly on the outside, but he is the most beautiful person in the world on the inside since he is the most temperate and sober person Alcibiades knows. He doesn’t care for looks, money, or his reputation whatsoever – he is godlike in this way (219c). Alcibiades repeatedly tried to seduce Socrates, but Socrates wouldn’t budge – he cares more for higher things than short-lived pleasures.

            Even though Socrates holiness fills him with rage at his own inadequacy, so much so that he likens Socrates’ philosophy to a venomous and painful snakebite he does realize that Socrates makes him a better person. One of the foremost characteristics of Socrates was his incredible self-control – he was moderate in all things and only pursued what was reasonable. They were in the battle for Potidaea together and Socrates endured the hardships of war better than anyone else. He even singlehandedly saved Alcibiades life and never received recognition for it, and Socrates preferred it that way. He never complained about anything, he took everything in stride as it came. He was so tough, in fact, that other people we get offended, thinking he was trying to insult them by outdoing them, but he was merely doing what he thought was right. He also wasn’t ever in a sour and our mood – he enjoyed good food and conversation with friends. He never really drank unless pressured and even so, he had an amazing tolerance—he never seemed to get drunk. He even had strange, antisocial habits like suddenly stopping while walking and remaining motionless, transfixed on something no one else around could see. He even did this once for 24 hours straight – he didn’t move from one spot from sunrise to sunrise and once he was done contemplating whatever it was he was contemplating, he said his prayers to the sun and went on like nothing had happened. Socrates was so smart that he made everyone around him look like fools, though that was never his intent. In fact, people thought his arguments were stupid, although they are the only ones on earth that make any sense (221e).

            In summary, we have 6 views of love and then a concrete view of what a person who actually follows love to the fullest may look like. The first view is that love is what makes us sacrifice ourselves for others. The second view is that the most heavenly sort of love is one where moral virtue is privileged over everything else. The third view is that love is the all-embracing principle that joins opposites together in harmony. The fourth view is the love is search for our other halves. The fifth view is that love is that which destroys alienation and separation and brings about peace and reconciliation. The final view given by Socrates is the love is the powerful yearning for the good, the beautiful, and for immortality that ultimately leads to the apophatic vision of unchanging and everlasting beauty that makes our souls pure and beautiful. It instills in us a love of virtue that cares more for immaterial things rather than material things.

Plato then answers the question we might all have at this point: how would it look like for a person to do all this? His answer is that the person that is fully driven by love would have extraordinary, even godlike self-control. He or she would never complain about anything no matter how bad things got – he or she would be tough as nails, but also joyous and a pleasure to be around. They would do things because they were right and not to gain honor among men – as George MacDonald loved to say – we should care everything for our character and nothing for our reputation. This type of person will be tempted like the rest of us, but he never gives in and this isn’t even difficult—he just genuinely doesn’t care for the temptation as much as he does for higher realities. The saint (or philosopher) doesn’t care for looks, money, or the praise of men. They will seem foreign and weird, even insane to most of us since they see something we don’t. They may also anger us and make us feel foolish and ashamed of ourselves since we realize that they are so much better than us. This “sacred rage” as Alcibiades calls it, is what leads us to condemn a just man to death by hemlock, to crucify a Galilean peasant, and to shoot those who love peace in the head. Instead of feeling jealousy or inadequacy we should learn from their example and strive to reach ever greater heights on the ladder of love until we too see the delightful vision of beauty that makes life worth living.