“It’s been less than three years that I’ve been Socrates’ companion and made it my job to know exactly what he says and does each day. Before that, I simply drifted aimlessly. Of course, I used to think that what I was doing was important, but in fact I was the most worthless man on earth—as bad as you are this very moment: I used to think philosophy was the last thing a man should do.”

In Praise of Love: An Encore

This is a dialogue about the human aspiration towards happiness, and how that desire is best satisfied. 

Plato’s overriding concern as a teacher is how to achieve eudamonia or how to live the good life. However, this is as difficult a topic to capture in teaching as it is to achieve in action. Hence he approaches the topic by defining many peripheral topics - by showing various aspects of the good life.

In The Symposium too the same ultimate question is approached, this time through the question of how to love perfectly. Many wonderful explanation of Love are given but in the end it boils down to how to live the good life  through the question of what should one love to do and hence what should one do in life. The answer that emerges is simple - love only things that are ends in themselves, do only them. Ends-in-themselves are not to done for any further end, to achieve something else. And most importantly, they should be eternal.

Symposium: The Setting

Plato’s dialogues are fictional and often richly dramatic snippets of philosophical imagination. The Symposium is a particularly dramatic work. It is set at the house of Agathon, a tragic poet celebrating his recent poetic victory. Those present are amongst the intellectual elite of the day, including an exponent of heroic poetry (Phaedrus), an expert in the laws of various Greek states (Pausanias), a representative of medical expertise (Eryximachus), a comic poet (Aristophanes) and a philosopher (Socrates). And the political maverick Alcibiades towards the end.

The Symposium

The Symposium consists mainly of a series of praise speeches (encomia), delivered in the order in which these speakers are seated:



They begin with the discourse of Phaedrus, and the series contains altogether eight parts divided into two principal sequences:



The Speeches

1. Phaedrus: Love makes us noble and gods honor it. Love is the greatest god. Love is nobility. This is the simplest of the speeches.

An unconditional praising of Love and this from the same Phaedrus who unconditionally condemns it in his own eponymous dialogue !

2. Pausanias (perhaps the most interesting of these speeches for this reviewer): Wants to define Love before praising it. Love is not in itself noble and worthy of praise; it depends on whether the sentiments it produces in us are themselves noble. Differentiates between “Common Love” & “Divine Love”: How hasty vulgar lovers are, and therefore how unfair to their loved ones?

"Love is, like everything else, complex: considered simply in itself, it is neither honorable nor a disgrace - its character depends entirely on the behavior it gives rise to. The common, vulgar lover loves the body rather than the soul, his love is bound to be inconstant, since what he loves is itself mutable and unstable. The moment the body is no longer in bloom, “he flies off and away,” his promises and vows in tatters behind him. How different from this is a man who loves the right sort of character, and who remains its lover for life, attached as he is to something that is permanent."

Pausanias goes on from this to provide a theory on the origins of Social Customs (of courtship, etc):

"We can now see the point of our customs: they are designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, the proper love from the vile. That’s why we do everything we can to make it as easy as possible for lovers to press their suits and as difficult as possible for young men to comply; it is like a competition, a kind of test to determine to which sort each belongs. This explains two further facts: First, why we consider it shameful to yield too quickly: the passage of time in itself provides a good test in these matters. Second, why we also consider it shameful for a man to be seduced by money or political power, either because he cringes at ill-treatment and will not endure it or because, once he has tasted the benefits of wealth and power, he will not rise above them. None of these benefits is stable or permanent, apart from the fact that no genuine affection can possibly be based upon them."

***

"Only in this case, we should notice, is it never shameful to be deceived; in every other case it is shameful, both for the deceiver and the person he deceives. Suppose, for example, that someone thinks his lover is rich and accepts him for his money; his action won’t be any less shameful if it turns out that he was deceived and his lover was a poor man after all. For the young man has already shown himself to be the sort of person who will do anything for money—and that is far from honorable. By the same token, suppose that someone takes a lover in the mistaken belief that this lover is a good man and likely to make him better himself, while in reality the man is horrible, totally lacking in virtue; even so, it is noble for him to have been deceived. For he too has demonstrated something about himself: that he is the sort of person who will do anything for the sake of virtue—and what could be more honorable than that? It follows, therefore, that giving in to your lover for virtue’s sake is honorable, whatever the outcome. And this, of course, is the Heavenly Love of the heavenly goddess. Love’s value to the city as a whole and to the citizens is immeasurable, for he compels the lover and his loved one alike to make virtue their central concern. All other forms of love belong to the vulgar goddess."

Makes one wonder if we should really be proud of our modern methods, sans the niceties of elaborate courtship.

3. Eryximachus: Differentiates between “Healthy” & “Unhealthy” Love, doctor that he is.

Everything sound and healthy in the body must be encouraged and gratified. Conversely, whatever is unhealthy and unsound must be frustrated and rebuffed: that’s what it is to be an expert in medicine.

4. Aristophanes:  Bases Love on the conception of Longing & Completion - beautifully illustrated in his famous Myth of Soulmates: We used to be complete wholes in our original nature, and now “Love” is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.

Plato also uses this occasion to make fun of Aristophanes by painting whims lewd and bawdy man, given to sensual pleasures and fits of hiccups. There are even direct references to Aristophanes’s irreverent clouds:

“Aristophanes, do you really think you can take a shot at me, and then escape? Use your head! Remember, as you speak, that you will be called upon to give an account. Though perhaps, if I decide to, I’ll let you off.”

5. Agathon: Decides to stop the praising of Love and focus on the Qualities of Love -

"For every praise, no matter whose: you must explain what qualities in the subject of your speech enable it to give the benefits for which we praise it. So now, in the case of Love, it is right for us to praise him first for what it is and afterwards for its gifts."

He goes on toe elaborate on the perfection of Love’s qualities - about the god’s justice, moderation, bravery and wisdom - and how Love confers all these qualities to its devotees. Thus, Love is the source of all good, according to Agathon.

6. Socrates: Enough with the Eulogies!

Socrates sets out with a series of questions, in an attempt to pin down Love:

“You have beautifully and magnificently expounded his qualities in other ways, tell me this, too, about Love. Is Love such as to be a love of something or of nothing?"

He proceeds through the same arguments as in Phaedrus and arrives at:

“No one is in need of those things he already has.”

***

“Whenever you say, I desire what I already have, ask yourself whether you don’t mean this: I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as well."

Socrates’ Conclusion: Love is a lack and desire to fill that. It is a desire for something lacking or a desire for preservation of what has been acquired. What constitutes eudaimonia is not to be had in a moment in time.

“In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever.”

If this is the objective of Love, The next question is how to pursue this objective.

Answer: Seek Love in Beauty; and Reproduction and Birth, in Beauty - The argument does not deviate much from that in Phaedrus; readers will want to compare this speech on Love with those of Socrates in Phaedrus.

Socrates’ account thus moves from an analysis of the nature of such desire to an account of knowledge and its acquisition; for if we all have a desire for our own good and happiness, the issue becomes how to identify correctly the nature of this good. He defines intellectual activity to be the best good, and more central to human happiness than any other activity.

7. Alcibiades: An almost pointless speech, does not contribute much to the dialogue directly, and yet it does, by adding to the context:

Plato’s Political Intent: Praise Socrates & Distance Socrates from the follies of this young man.

Alcibiades’ account reveals that although he desires the wisdom he perceives in Socrates, there is a competing value pulling him away: “Yet when I leave him I am equally aware that I am giving in to my desire for honor from the public, so I skulk out of his sight like a runaway slave.” 

This conflict between the attractions of wisdom and the sort of excellence that earns honour from the people is the very one argued out theoretically in Socrates’ speech. Alcibiades’ choice to organize his life around the pursuit of personal honor exonerates Socrates from any association with the terrible events that resulted from his choices. Socrates was not responsible for the corruption.

Plato’s Philosophical Intent: Also, show how even Socrates’ teachings are not flawless. Even Philosophy is dependent on good students to produce results.

Symposium: A Conclusion

The Symposium belongs with the dialogues concerned with Education, especially the moral education of the young. Its discussion of the nature and goals of loving relationships takes us to the heart of Plato’s concern with the good life and how it is achieved. That Education and Desires are seen to play such an important role in moral development draws on a theme elaborated in the Republic , and is concerned with the development of character and how that contributes to the good life.

Though Plato leads us to the lofty heights of the Forms as the true end of our desire for good things and happiness, his account is nonetheless one that resonates beyond such abstractions. The Symposium does not contain a fully developed theory of the self, although it outlines with considerable care the dimensions of concern which preoccupy human beings. Its achievement is a rich and unitary image of human striving.

Through this conception, even if narrow, of a flourishing life where certain things are advocated to the young as valuable, the dialogue explores the nature of eudaimonia, which may be translated as "happiness" or "flourishing". This is ultimately why a dialogue devoted, on the surface, to the nature of erotic relationships is an ethical work at its core, which culminates in the specification of ‘the life which a human being should live’. And it is this concern that relates the Symposium to a fundamental question that informs a variety of Platonic dialogues: How should one live?

Thus, Plato’s concern with desire and its role in the good life leads to his conclusion: One’s ability to act well and to lead a worthwhile and good life depends, in part, on desiring the right kinds of things and acting on that basis. What, or whom, one desires determines the choices one makes and thereby affects one’s chances of leading a worthwhile and happy life.

It is by prompting us to reflect more deeply on the relationship between our desires and their real end, and the role that our lovers might play in helping us to achieve it, that the Symposium really makes its mark.