Agathon's Speech: Analyzing Plato's Symposium, Part VI | The New Thinkery Ep. 36

Welcome back to the new thing. I'm David Barr with me as usual. The nephew of office. He doesn't know.

Greg, how are you? I'm fine, Mr. Barr. How are you tonight?

Good. How's the semester? What are you teaching right this second? Aren't you supposed to say I have here in my notes, follow us on Twitter, iTunes and Grinder, and Grinder?

I don't know why that's in my notes. Well, Greg, because that's the one you listed, Alex and I put down iTunes and... This is Agathon speech. So, you're about to ask me how the semester is going.

Yeah, what are you teaching right now? I'm teaching... Right now in mid-March. In mid-March.

Well, there's no spring break this year. I'm teaching over this canceled spring break. So I'm teaching a class on politics and religion. I'm teaching Islamic political thought.

So I'm teaching Al-Farabi right now. And I'm teaching an honors, part of an honors class. I've been teaching Bacon's New Atlantis and then Swift's Gulliver's Troughs. Wow, that's great.

So each of those. Yeah, and we're going to record an episode with Charles Butterworth on Al-Farabi, doing one on Bacon's New Atlantis and then again, Swift's Battle of Books. Those are probably all going to be out already by the time this comes out. Well, it's great.

We'll have just done those. That's fantastic. Yeah, so who's that Raspie? Who's that Raspie?

That Raspie Rancher? How's the baby? Yeah. She's wonderful.

Did they finally clear all that stuff off her face? After birth? I don't know. I was just...

Good. We're recording in January the baby hasn't been born yet. I'm trying to pretend like the baby's been born. I don't know what...

This is a great idea of a joke. What are you doing? Well, I'm doing well. What would you be teaching?

About this time, I'm teaching a seminar in the Republic. So I'll probably be about midway through. Very nice. And then, you know, my other class, I don't know, I'll be teaching some modern stuff around this point, maybe lock.

Now I have a question for you guys before we start our episode on Agathon. And Plato's... Never ending series. And Plato's symposium between Agathon's speech, the tragedy in Agathon's speech tonight.

But you know, people often say, Hey Dave, I'd like to meet you in person. I'm like, Yeah, some of the people. Yeah, I even hear that they want to touch Alex's bald head and anoint him with Roman oil and Tikal Krig's beard. So that's a long way of saying, or of asking, are there any political science or philosophy conferences that you guys anticipate will be in person in 2021 that you will be attending and I'll show up to?

Because we love to do a live episode. Oh, I guess. Yeah, this is what we've talked about internally. And I started off in a joking way, but we're actually quite serious who would be fun to the live episode.

I mean, it's looking, it's, you know, I got, I started getting asked about conferences and getting, you know, maybe we're going to do them in April, but turns out, but if most people are going to be vaccinated by the summer and if summer, I think, you know, the fall conferences should be doable. Yeah. And I think that usually go, we usually go to the MPSA every year and it'll be in Boston. So what's that?

What's that? Northeastern political science association. Yeah. Yeah.

Middle Eastern political science association. That was very disappointed. Well, he was hoping to see his family. I just want to issue some thought to us that that's what you do at Middle Eastern political science.

Anyway, we're, we're, but we would like to see people in person and we'd love to do a live show in front of an audience. It's wonderful. But maybe just in our hotel room, we have to, no, breaking. We can't, we can't know.

I think we can get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get five people at like papers. Yeah, sadly, sadly, that would be our entire listening audience. Well, it doesn't matter. They can party.

Everybody's welcome. So Agafone, what's going on? Oh, geez, Louise. Actually, it's a seamless transition.

It catches up to speed. This is the sixth speech. It's a pretty good transition. There's a transition.

Come to our drinking party. It's just like the symposium, which is a drinking party. Except way darker. Way darker.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've been spending a good bit of time these last few months on Plato's symposium. I actually, listeners, we'd love to hear what you think about this extended series we've been doing because we're talking about doing the Republican, you know, we'd like to hear you guys think that's a good idea or not.

So we've been spending several episodes on the symposium. We, there are six speeches in praise of the God, arrows or love. There turns out to be a seventh speech by a man named Asavites. We'll get there.

And these speeches are all given at a party sort of at the height of the Peltonysian War. And the story of that party is being re told approximately 10 years later in Athens. So we're reading a dialogue called the symposium. The dialogue is narrated by one guy to another couple of guys.

And in that interior story, we have heard so far from four speakers, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eric Simikis, and our last episode was on the comic poet, Aristophanes, which we just finished recording and said that was probably the most beautiful speech, at least from my point of view, the most beautiful speech in the symposium. And I think the one that sort of captures best what most human beings mean by love. And with the fourth, fifth, and then six speech, I think we get the higher speeches, the speeches that are pitched a little bit elevated at a level. And we turn from Aristophanes, the comic poet's Agathon, the tragic poet, a reminder actually, I suppose that the whole reason we're at this drinking party is because Agathon has just won the award for the best tragedy.

So I think maybe the next place to go is, maybe Alex could tell us a little bit about Agathon speech. Yeah. So prior to the speech, we get a bit of a dialogue as a transition. Socrates comes in for the first time since the beginning.

We haven't heard him speak at all. He's just been, I guess, sitting there, or if he says anything, it's been, I guess, excise by Aristodemus, though that seems very unlikely, I'm likely considering how much Aristodemus attends to Socrates. But we get this transition and we've been getting a little bit more of dialogical qualities, aspects between them. Eric Simikis and Aristophanes had a bit of a conversation beforehand and before his speech and before Eric Simikis's speech as well.

Now we're getting into what's more of an actual dialogue and the dialogue actually needs to be cut off, right? Greg, you want to jump in? Just one small point. My impression is that Socrates is trying to put an end to the procedure that's been going on thus far.

Speech, speech, speech, Agathon, so Socrates is next. Socrates, I infer from this that Socrates doesn't want to give a speech. So he's trying to derail what's been happening and engage Agathon in a conversation to try and change up what's been happening. Is that?

Yeah, and that's a good point because one of the things we need to understand about Agathon speech, I'm going to go a little bit bigger picture before we go back to the speech to kind of understand what's at stake in this transition, right? Remember when Aristodemus met up with Socrates way back in the beginning, he noted that Socrates had cleaned himself out of the Antigena Bathon, he was wearing shoes, right? And Socrates marked, well, the reason I look this way, the reason I'm beautiful is because I'm going to a beauty and this beauty is Agathon, right? Who's named again, incidentally means good.

Socrates, I think suggests therefore pretty clearly indicates that his primary audience or his primary reason for being there is Agathon, maybe to talk to Agathon. He's just won this prize and maybe he's interested to see how this is having effect on him or whatever his interest is in him. So I think that explains in part, I think Greg is pointing out that he really just wants to talk to Agathon and now that Agathon is about to speak, Socrates maybe has his in and after Agathon speaks, Socrates again, really pushes very hard to be able to speak with Agathon. So this is obviously a concern.

Now, Socrates also- Hold on, before you move on. Do you have a guess as to why Socrates wants to speak to him? Yeah, I'm going to spell that out a bit. I think this will talk about it.

So he suggests also, however, that in order to speak to Agathon, he has to distort himself to make himself look better, a little more pretty, right? At least, outwardly. I think that's important for when we get to Socrates speech. And we'll see this next time we talk about the dialogue.

But I think it's also important for understanding what's going on in Agathon. So Agathon seems to be attracted to Socrates wisdom. If you remember early on, he took a lot of pains to make sure that the seat next to him was saved so that Socrates could sit there right next to him. He was very, he pushed the wrist and he was saying, go sit next to Eric Simikis.

The seat's taken, right? He's also very concerned about whether Socrates is even coming. And if so, when he's going to come in, remember, he stands outside on the porch for a while. And Agathon really wants him in there, but where Stedemus keeps Agathon from disturbing Socrates.

And then what Socrates does come in, it's a down-agathon jokes about soaking up Socrates wisdom. All of this is just evidence to show that Agathon is somehow drawn to Socrates and specifically what seems to be Socrates wisdom. Now, in this transition dialogue between Socrates and Agathon, Socrates points out, and maybe it's actually more of a joke, that Agathon's wisdom seems already to have been proven before the many, right? He won the prize for his tragedy the day before.

What more proof do we need? Why are you self-conscious at all, Agathon, about speaking? Then Agathon, I think, rather sensibly notes that, well, either please, the masses or the many in the theater, but it's another thing to please the few and intelligent, right? The people who seem most wise and do have the most discerning intellect when it comes to these things.

And it's not really... The men with noose. Yeah, the men with noose. Socrates, again, points out, or again, might actually rather be a joke, that he was in the audience.

So I must be one of the many. And again, Agathon resists this. Now, this seems to point to the fact that Agathon is, and I think this is true, has a kind of detachment from the praise of the many, on the one hand, right? Yet, he still seems to have some vestiges of it.

So, above all, he's concerned with shame, right? He's concerned with shame at not seeming to speak well. And not really so much with the many, but even before the fuse, right? He's concerned with the praise and blame before the many, and also before the wise.

He wants to be praised as beautiful by the many, but actually, it seems like also the wise. He wants to maybe impress Socrates. And that raises the question. Well, he wants his wisdom to be attractive, and he wants Socrates wisdom, but would he ultimately be satisfied with Socrates wisdom?

If it's not as pretty as sexy, it's just kind of a plain Jane, old humdrum wisdom. I'm alluding here a bit to the apology, right? Socrates says his wisdom is paltry, right? It's just knowing that you don't know things, and that's just human.

It's not divine wisdom. And we want it to be more, but that's all it is. Would Agathon be happy with that sort of wisdom, or wisdom that actually proves to be rather repulsive to the many Socrates put to death in his display of his wisdom in the apology? And this gets back to the question of how Socrates has made himself look beautiful.

Is Socrates going to have to embellish his wisdom for Agathon to find it attractive, just as he had to embellish himself physically? Can his wisdom, which might be good? It might be actual wisdom and good for human being and help you live well, as best as possible for human being. But does it make you attractive?

Does it make you impressive? And I mean, obviously, Socrates is somewhat impressive to Agathon, but maybe he misunderstands it. Certainly, it's going to, I think, put Agathon in a strange position, right? He's going to have to choose at some point, perhaps, between the wisdom of the poet, which is beautiful before the many, but which Agathon seems to suspect is actually hollow, or the wisdom of the philosopher of Socrates, which may be good and even substantive and allow you to live well, but it might ultimately be unattractive and even repulsive to the many.

And there he'll have to choose who he wants to go to, to a Socrates or to the people. Now, I bring all this up because I think Socrates is going to draw on this, but also because I think this, this tension or this choice is somehow present in Agathon's speech throughout. He depicts arrows in a way that's hard to discern. Is it a God or is it a human passion?

Is arrows as a God with beautiful and good this thing we praise and worship? Or is arrows a human passion that I think as we discussed in Aristotle's speech has some not so beautiful aspects, maybe some dark aspects to it. And I think as we go through, we're going to touch on some of the ways in which this touch and manifest itself in also how Agathon deals with it. And I think he's very often aware of it, actually.

Well, hold on, Alex, but before we go on, is this is this a stop, a decent stopping point for me to ask you a quick question? That's all I had to say about the transition. Really? What is it that's interesting about Agathon, just in the abstract for listeners?

I mean, why would he be, why does he stand out of a type or? Yeah, can I just amplify that? Like, we did a really good job of showing and this will give Alex a little time to answer our penetrating questions here. I think it was clear last time why an ordinary listener would sort of think he's interesting or important or why that type is important.

I mean, what you said was a fantastic overview for those of us who are familiar with the speech, but for an ordinary listener who comes to this for the first time, why should anyone care who Agathon is or what he has to say about love or does he have anything interesting to say? It's one of the funny things I think about, I think Plato likes Agathon mostly because his name sounds like good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does an airstoffee in the frogs, right?

He mocks a bunch of Agathons versus it's just bad, right? He's not a very good poet. And the airstoffee makes fun of him a lot in a way and he makes fun of rippities and escorts, he doesn't mocksophically, but he's willing to mock a lot of tragedy and I think Agathon the most. So one of the jokes behind him being here as well, it helps him pull off this beautiful good thing because his name does is the Greek word for good.

I mean, he's interesting dramatically from the standpoint that he is a tragic poet, as opposed to the common poet we heard, to he's also educated by the Sophos, which I think is actually really important to understanding his future. I don't know if I remember that. Well, he's in the protagonist, right? And he's among those who are listening to protagonists, I believe, actually.

Right, right. So he's not one of these old fangled tragedies, he's a new tragedy. I always heard of pronounced Tragedians. So we can settle that.

I just don't know. I just imitate people anyway, sorry. Well, anyways, Gregor, he brings up a good point. So I think the thing that I've been doing is, I think, interesting tragedy and he's a tragic poet.

He also just won the prize, which is, I think, one of the reasons he's eager to get there, okay, the many of praise him, he's celebrated. It's the day after. And it's like, you know, after you accomplish something in life, you know, like this is the thing I always was working for finally, and then you wake up the next day and you don't feel any different. You don't feel completed.

And maybe he suspects that maybe on this day, Agathon might be somewhat suspicious of. Can I just tell you? So here's what I'm thinking. I've been struggling with this.

I'm trying to figure out if these are types or something like this. I can't tell you how many times I've, I don't watch the Oscars or anything like this, but I'll follow occasionally when they announce the movie for, you know, best picture, whatever. And sometimes I'll hear, you know, this enormous praise for something and I'll go watch it and think, well, sort of mediocre or something like this. I guess this is a round of way of saying, there seem to be these things that are extraordinarily successful that are actually quite vacuous in the end, right?

Like these, I mean, what was the best picture in 1995 or 1998? I mean, maybe they were actually the films, but more often than not, they're not. And in fact, sometimes the better film was overlooked or something like this. And I just wonder if there wasn't, is there something to the idea that Agathon is telling people, if Erasophanes is speech was somehow popular, but enduringly popular, is there something novel about what Agathon is doing?

Is there something different? Or is it that people like to hear, maybe a different way to ask this, are humans by nature more inclined to tragedy than poetry? And therefore, I don't know, I don't know what to say. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on because Agathon doesn't give a tragic account of love, or does he?

He gives a sunshiney view of love. And so is what's being argued here that the tragic poet knows what people want to hear and that what they usually want to hear is tragedy, but they don't want to hear a tragic account of love. So I'm still trying to figure out the bigger picture here. So when I ask, I'll introduce his first thing in his speech when he's trying to, so it's very structured.

Maybe go through the structure of the speech a bit and then we'll dig into it a bit. So maybe to focus that question is, it's not a terribly tragic account. It's actually quite bright and it's full of praise and everything like that. So I think one of the questions we want to ask is, what is fundamentally his account of Erasophanes?

Not all the things that he attaches to it and praises it for, but what is he really saying Erasophanes is? And what's the view of the world or the account of the human condition such that this account of Eras would be true? I think that will get at the tragic aspects of Agathon's speech. Sure, I can do that.

So Agathon begins his speech by saying that all the other speakers have really just done a David Barr kind of job here, a bad job, who's joking dude. But they have not said... They have what they're speeches? Oh my gosh.

That's just not nice. I was just teasing it anyway. What he's going to do is tell us what Eras is and then he's going to tell us what sort of a thing Eras is the cause of. So he begins his speech by saying he's going to do two things.

One, I'm going to tell you what Eras is. And two, I'm going to tell you what things Eras is the cause of. What I find odd is that I actually think he does three things. In other words, his preview doesn't quite map onto.

Maybe it does. Maybe you guys can correct me or disagree. I don't think what he actually does maps onto what he says he's going to do. His speech, he says, he insists on two parts.

What is Eras? What sorts of things does Eras cause? I divide that first part. What is Eras into two parts?

The first part is a laundry list of adjectives. And the second part is the list of Eras' virtues. So the first is the adjectives or qualities that he ascribes to Eras. It just dawned on either.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but the first three are also perelative. Eras is the happiest God. Eras is the most beautiful or most noble God. Eras is the best God.

Number three. Number four, Eras is the youngest God. He detests old people. I don't like Agathon's speech.

Eras detests the elderly. He's always young. I don't care much for eating the palm. Fair enough.

But he does like the tender. So David's a big fan of this one. That's right. So fifthly, Eras is with the tender and soft and sixthly, Eras is with the supple looking.

So I'm just going to run through those six adjectives. But with the number six. Correct. I don't want to correct it too much.

Correct. No, you can't correct it. I'm right. So he says, I'm going to prove that Eras is happiest most beautiful and best.

Three. Right. Now to prove it's most beautiful, he says it's youngest and softest and most supple and looks. And I think then there's another one.

So I should assume those under the beautiful one. Okay. Does that make more sense? And then the virtues are, I guess, supposed to prove these best.

But why are those beautiful and most know those? He goes, happiest, beautiful best. So the third one would be best. Right.

Yes. That's the aim of what sort is Eras and it's going to be these three things. First I'll talk about most. Yes.

He starts with beautiful and to prove he's beautiful. He proves that he's four beautiful things. Why wouldn't youngest interesting? Okay.

Fair enough. So we get these long list of adjectives and then he turns to qualities or the virtues of Eras. And here we get four virtues, justice, moderation, courage and wisdom. So Eras is just moderate courageous and wise.

You'll notice that one of the key Greek cardinal virtues is missing from that list. Piety, pious. Under wisdom, Agathon being the poet praises Eras for being a maker or a poet of wisdom. Eras is responsible for music, the making of animals and the number of arts and under arts.

He mentions particularly for specifically, excuse me, for gods. Apollo is responsible for the arts of archery, medicine and divination, Hephaestus, flaximethin, Athena weaving and here Alex can correct me. He also mentions Zeus, but I didn't see an art mentioned in that regard. He does say something about guiding human beings.

That's all part one, what Eras is. And then the second part of his speech is, as I mentioned earlier, what are the things Eras a cause of? And here he says two things, but I'm happy to be corrected here again. He says that Eras is the cause of the fairest and best things, number one, and number two of human coming togethers, coming together, how would you say that?

Human beings coming together, that's the second thing to the cause of. And he gives three examples of human coming together. Festivals, dances and sacrifices, all three have religious or pious undertones, I would say. That's his, that's what he does.

And by the way, that's the much shorter part of his speech. It's only a one short paragraph discussing things Eras causes. Yeah. His speech is now wild applause.

People are. Yeah, they love it. Yeah. And so what's the question right is, is what's distinctive about Agathon's speech or, you know, what's tragic?

One of the important things he does is he corrects Phaedrus early on and says, Eras is not the oldest or one of the oldest of the gods, as he said in Permanities say, but he's in fact the youngest. Now, the singling out these two figures is because, right, Phaedrus quoted them. But if you read Hesiod, you know, especially the Theogeny, which is the line that they're quoting us from, he's talking about the gods reproducing and he often talks about them mixing together with Eros, right? And Eros is all over the place.

And, you know, they fall in love because one of the goddesses is lovely, right? That's got this root of Eros in it. So it's strange. It suggests that the gods are not made through Eros or through erotic couple, right, which then raises the question, well, where are they made from?

Well, he suggests by saying that Hesiod is wrong, that the poets made this up, right? The poets are the ones that tell us what's true about the gods. And he's connected to the point later that Eros is a great poet, right? That Eros is supple and changes form, right?

The idea that Eros is at bottom the poet's faculty or something like that. So to push it, I would suggest that what Agathon is doing is subtly indicating, as he praises Eros as a god, subtly indicating that there are no gods, right? He's indicating his atheism. This would suggest, again, a connection to the Sophos, right?

That there's this superficial piety there, whereas if you read it a bit carefully and you notice the ironic aspects, he's actually quite envious, right? He's, it seems to be at bottom atheistic. That would certainly be tragic. And this would suggest to go back to the other question.

You've traced that out again for me again? I'm sorry, traced that atheism out for me again. Right. So the gods, according to Hesiod, are made through Eros, right?

The first ones are generated, it seems like randomly. And then all the gods beguette each other through erotic couplets. Okay. So Eros is prior to the gods, therefore.

Yeah. So I asked to be one of the first four gods. But he says he's the youngest, which then raises the question, where do all these other gods come from? They're either sort of sui-genesis or created out of nothing, whatever it is, or they're made by the poets.

And that's the suggestion, right? Because if Hesiod's wrong, he made it up, right? Right. Or if Agathon's wrong, he made it up, right?

Either case, the poets are making the gods here. I think that's one important question. One important feature. I would then connect that to the fact that he, to prove that Eros is wise, or the wisest of all the gods, he talks about the role Eros has in making a good poet famous, right?

Again, suggesting that Eros is the distinctive capacity of somebody who makes things, or makes things up, right? These are just subtle, a few subtle, I think you can push this on a number of ways. A lot of the arguments he gives for the virtues for Eros having this or that virtue are really just awful, right? And it suggests that there's, but so then the question becomes, I think, well, if he sees through this and he understands that the many are praising him for something that he doesn't believe to be true.

And so, if he's not a atheist yet promoting as a tragedy and a kind of public piety, right, then why is he attached to the praise of the many? And it might be that that's all there is, right? It might be that there's a fundamentally kind of tragic or even nihilistic view of the world, that we are alone in the world, that the only way we come together is through these kind of delusions, right? Delusions about the gods and the poets are the one who put this together and that's all great for them, but there's nothing left to contemplate.

It's all sort of meaningless about it. That might be a subtle way in which there's something quite tragic at the heart of this very pretty speech. Yeah, that's very persuasive. It would be putting Agathon on a higher pedestal than the beginning of his speech would imply as well, right, where he says, well, I actually am not that impressive and I want your praise, but this would be re-elevating him above them.

Yeah, but I think he would also be a maker of these in a way, he's a maker of these gods then. He's on par with the makers of gods. Yeah, it seems like he's up there. But the question I think that you'd want to ask is, is he perhaps unduly skeptical about the gods or is atheism rightly won?

What is the basis of his atheism in the world? Yeah, yeah. That's a question I have. I figured out.

Sure. Yeah, a couple of, I do have a response to that, I think, actually. First, I want to say I think you're right, though, that the four, five, and six in my list, I think we're evidence of beauty, not additional ones, but that leads me to the question of what's the evidence then that he has his happiest investment come back to this wrong moment. I wonder if Agathon's his poetic activity, so what he does, the obviously fictitious quality, that's not the right way to make that an adjective, his fiction making himself, the fact that he makes stuff up.

The fact that he does that, I wonder if he thinks that that gives him insight into what the other poets are all. In other words, they're doing the same thing that I'm doing. They're not actually divinely inspired. So I wonder if the basis of his atheism then is his own activity.

I'm aware that I'm a maker, therefore he's a must be a maker, even though he's self-presentation is not that he's a maker, but that he's he hears what the muses are saying or something like this. Yeah, and actually reminds me of what a protagonist says in the protagonist where again, that's the right one. Very good point. Yeah.

Why don't you leave that out? No, no, I go ahead. Well, yeah. I mean, just that that protagonist argues that all these famous wise men, even the ones you thought you had to exercise, they're all office deep down.

Homer, he's the orpheus. These guys, all of them. That's great. That's great.

You brought up a question before, but you dropped the beautiful and the good thing. Well, this is one of the interesting conundrums about this speech. He's very organized. He says, I'm going to talk about of what sort it is and then what it's the cause of.

Okay, great. And you kind of have a sense. Yeah. He goes into what sort and then he goes into what it's the cause of.

Fine. Okay. Now, one of the questions we want to ask is, well, Socrates always says, you shouldn't talk about what sort of a thing something is before you talk about what it is. So the question that's begged by the whole thing is, yeah, but what is it?

He purposefully goes over it because if he really asked that question, what is Eros, he have to decide on whether it's a God or not. Right? Yes, I presume it's a God and then he can slide into Eros as the public's capacity. So this is really good for as a preview for Socrates, a speech because you're saying that Agathon is making an implicit case that Eros is not a God.

I don't want to just speak too much, but we'll see that Socrates makes that much more explicit. Yeah. And if Eros is always inclined towards the beautiful things as Socrates argues in his first speech and his conversation with Agathon, therefore, he cannot be beautiful nor good, right? Assuming that the beautiful things are also good.

So he ends up gutting Agathon speech very quickly. And Agathon, I think, gets a little bit annoyed with this early on in there. Yeah. Now, now an interesting point here.

So to prove what sort he says, well, I say he's of this sort and he gives those three adjectives, happiest, most beautiful and best. And then for beautiful, we see all these qualities. Then he shifts from beauty, says, now this is enough about beauty as a trivial to the God, though many points are still admitted, but Eros is virtue must not be spoken of. And he again goes through the virtues except for piety, as you say, right?

And then finally, and this is now at 197 C, says, thus Eros in my opinion, Phaedrus stands first because he is the fairest and the best. And after this, he is the cause. So he moves on to the cause question. So now, happiest has dropped out.

I think I can't really. Ferris for readers, by the way, obviously is going to be this. So Ferris remains for most beautiful. It's my, yeah.

Yeah. But he drops happiest. I'd suggest that the reason happiest is dropped is because I don't, does Agathon think you can be happy? Can you be happy on Agathons account of the world?

Is there a deeper meaning to life of going to Agathon? It seems like no. Not if you're a nihilist atheist. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it.

That would be my suggestion. Happyness doesn't come. Now, Socrates is going to respond, I think implicitly to this view of the, uh, the idea of man's place in the world and try to re-ennoble arrows, right? Or create room for human happiness, uh, in at least the depiction of arrows that he gives.

But I think Agathon, and this is what I think makes him so interesting in a way, is he's really loved a deep challenge, right? It's almost Nietzschean, right? There is nothing in the world. There's a kind of cartoonish Nietzsche, right?

But there is no meaning in the world. Meaning has to be created, right? And that means that who is the best of men, not the philosopher, the rationalist who picks everything apart, but the poet who notices this and creates meaning, who wills some kind of meaning and some kind of gods for human beings and deludes them. So at least there could be some kind of place for human beings in the world.

That's a very cartoonish version of one side of Nietzsche's thought, but there's a bit of that in the speech I think. So why is his speech, I mean, Aristotle needs to speak does the same thing. And yet Agathon's speech is met with applause, as you mentioned. So what is it about Agathon's making that has appeal to these elites that Aristotle needs to speak doesn't?

Because I think you're right. I mean, I mean, I would go back to the better job of fooling them. Is that what's going on? I think he does a better job of giving an account of arrows that appeals to these kind of decadent cosmopolitan, so where they are they?

If Aristotle's was the popular kind of arrows, Agathon, I think, would give an account that would be, you know, these actual elites, these cos nihilistic, atheistic academic types, right? The kind of David Lutz. Yeah, maybe they would have been Kensington, Maryland. Yeah.

But yeah, I think that would be one. So they are inclined to receive it because it is a kind of a sophisticated speech, right? And it does kind of, and it's playful and it's quite beautifully written as a result. And it ends, as you notice, right, with this laundry list of praises, right?

That seems to give a great place to his own speaking ability, right? The fact that he can draw these massive conclusions on the basis of what is really not that beautiful picture of the world. It's a testament to Agathon, finally. Perhaps there's a degree of politeness he did just win the night before, but certainly for everybody to erupt in praise, which I guess would include Socrates, right?

He says all those present. It would include Aristodemus and Socrates, apparently. But it seems like there's something very noteworthy in what he's done. It is, I think, one of the most ironic speeches here, and that's not often, or I remember when I first read it, I just thought it was a hot mess.

I mean, it's just full of just bad arguments. And when Socrates does that, you give him the benefit of the doubt. I think you should do the same for Agathon. It just seems like a few, it seems like a, like how a teenager would eulogize something, right?

Just all of the superlative good things that they know. Right. It seems like, right. There's nothing bad.

I mean, in other words, you have to tease out the dark side. It's the best. He's the most beautiful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He's courageous, moderate, just these kinds of things.

And it's also funny. I mean, it's proof of moderation. I'll just read it real quick. Right.

So the darkness is not without its laughter because it laughs at our ordinary delusion, right? He says, besides the share he has injustice, he has his fullest share in moderation. For it is agreed that to be moderate means to dominate over pleasures and desires, but no pleasure is stronger than arrows. And if other pleasures are weaker, they will be dominated by arrows.

And since it is he who is dominant, then in dominating pleasures and desires, arrows must be exceptionally moderate. This is absolutely sophisticated. I mean, it seems to be the highest in moderation, right? That's like David saying, you know, I ran 15 miles because he's chasing a chocolate cake truck or something like that, right?

Like, oh, you're so moderate. No, that's a sign of your, your in moderation, your lack of virtue, right? David. So, but, but, but I think that's where the comedy comes is look how silly it is to reason about these things, right?

It's all such, it, when you all tease it out, it's all just meaningless and empty speech, right? Well, I can turn empty speech into something that's persuasive. So, so can I, can I press you on? I think that's great.

I want to press you on. I just want to move just a moment. So fair to say that on Agathon's view, Homer and Hesiod are atheists. Consciously or not?

Maybe? Yeah. Yeah. All right.

All right. I took it to be, okay, I took him to be saying that that was conscious. It could be, it could be. I haven't thought about that.

That's a good question. I mean, that he sees himself like a kindred spirit. Anyway, yeah, very good. Do you have anything else you want to add?

I don't really know. I mean, I think you've done a really good job of laying bare why this speech is a little more serious than I took it with the few times that I've tried to make sense of it. Because I did see, I did see it as sort of unserious. I think the connection to protagonists is really important for understanding what's going on here, as you pointed out.

I guess, I mean, I don't want to skip too much ahead, but if we want to just look at the list of the things that he does cause, I don't know, maybe someone can try to make sense of this. It's at 197C and following the things that he's the cause of. So as I mentioned, this is just basically the last paragraph. Maybe it would help if we knew who this quote was from, or is this his own spontaneous poet poem that he just made?

I understand it. It is his creation here. Yeah, that's what I thought. He just falls into verse like a good poet.

Yeah, which I mean, we ought to probably reflect on that from all. But anyway, in any event, he says the following does, he has the pharaohs in my opinion, Phaedra stands first, because he's the pharaohs and best. And after this, he's the cause of, excuse me, he's the cause for everyone else of the same sort of fair and good things. So he's left out happiest, by the way, as you mentioned earlier.

He occurs to me to say something in meter two, that he is the one who makes and here he speaks in meter, peace among human beings on the open sea calm and cloudlessness, the resting of winds and sleeping of care. He arrows, empties us of a strange when he fills us with attachment, he arranges in all such gatherings as this are coming together with one another. This is actually maybe this does make sense. Let me try the following.

I'll make this even more dark or more tragic. Agathon seems to be saying that arrows is the cause of all human coming togetherness. Now if arrows to God is the invention of the poets, oh my gosh, to connect this to the people, this is wildly conventionalist, right? That humans by nature are a social by nature that life is nasty, brutish and shorts and that's only with the poets telling us about this God love, can we actually have coming together?

And notice as I mentioned earlier that those coming together, the first three examples, the only three examples are sort of infused with religious undertones, right? Sacrifices, festivals and dances. Can I have to, we need to, sorry, I'll just want to build my head. We need God's created by the poets to provide the Browning for the reason humans can live together in communities.

One more step further without the gods, humans can't live together in community without gods made by the poets. And just to underscore that, I think this is why he jumps into verse. It's a bit of irony. He says arrows is the one who makes peace among human beings.

So as that, as arrows makes peace, right at that moment, Agathon makes a poem, right? And so he wins you over, right? So he points to arrows as making while quietly pointing to himself as making. Like, oh, I'll just throw this into meter, essentially saying that I'm the one who, who does this sort of, does this sort of creating or making of the gods and making of peace, therefore.

And so ultimately, and he says this, I'm going to praise my own art. Ultimately, this is a praise of the poet above all. He didn't beneath a praise of a God, right? And that, I guess would be the most obvious way in which this is and a deeply atheistic speech, maybe willfully.

So, very good. Another detail I wanted to point out, but now actually I'm my memory just. Why don't you reflect on this in a moment and I'll try and take this as a slightly different direction. Yeah, you can.

He's a six CD, where he lists the virtues, for example. Given that he was a sort of a kind of a student of protagonists, as you pointed out, maybe we should do an episode on that dialogue at some point. But, protagonists seems pretty clear that the human virtues seem to have been fabricated for the purpose of getting people to live in to get in line to sort of be tamed and these kinds of things. So, I don't know if that's what's happening here, but now I'm suspicious that that might be what's happening here as well.

The gods are, excuse me, the poets are making these gods who sort of are exemplifying these virtues and these virtues will offer the sake of us living together. Virtue, justice, moderation, courage. What's interesting, of course, is the act of making the preconditions for piety. So, the poets insofar as they are advocates of human piety are not themselves pious.

I don't know if that's an implication we want to draw out or not. Because it's the only way I have to do piety to create the gods. Right, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Certainly, Agathon's view. So, on the virtues, just a quickly go through them, we just cover the moderation. And moderation seems to be the most immodernate, actually.

Right? His claim about justice is, well, everyone who serves aros does it willingly, right? But it's like, well, isn't that just a kind of like, it's a positive use of the term of willing slavery, a kind of willing servitude? Isn't that just a kind of enslavement?

And is that actually justice to be dragged around by aros to do its bidding? Again, with courage, he says, well, courage is he's courageous because he overcame aros, he's made aros, he's made aros, he's like, well, is that actual courage then to innovate aros? I mean, again, to say aros is wise, he ends up having to make the poet wise, right? A bubble.

And so, it does seem like at each point, the support of the virtues points to a kind of incoherence of the virtues. That seems very much a protagonist. One point we should bring on that. We kind of glossed over and it's small, but when he praises the beauty of aros, he points to a few qualities, right?

That's the youngest. Well, Socrates is not young, Socrates is old, right? He's also tender, he softness and he goes to the softness, which means those who have hair, not those who just have bare skulls. Well, Socrates is bald, right?

Somebody who supple in his looks, youngest and tender, and therefore has sort of soft and supple and in their bloom, right? Socrates is... Alex just pinched his own cheek for those who can't see this. That was fantastic.

Go ahead, keep going. That's just for you, Greg, and that's supposed to reveal that. So, all of the... Now, this seems very small, this seems very small.

Oh, he's just... He's making jokes as a soccer defense, calling him ugly and old and everything like that. But it's quite funny because it means that he's seen through Socrates attempt to make himself beautiful, right? Socrates, you took a bath and you put on some shoes, but that's like putting lipstick on a pig.

You're still a gross ugly bald old man, right? Who's well past his bloom? But I love you anyway. Hey, Alex.

I think that's an interesting part of this, right? Hey, Alex. Yeah. You're still handsome.

Thank you, Greg. Just because you're bald. It's okay. No, I think that was very good.

I like that a lot. You've... You've got to let your main self sit so that the people can see how wicked you are. I get a lot of guff for making fun of you for being old, and I could have gone after you were being old, but Greg, I'm not going to do that.

I was just trying to get out of my mind. You're age is punishing yourself. Look, you've got me to take this egg on speech much more seriously than the last several times I've read it. So I appreciate that.

You've drawn out some things that I think I probably glossed over too quickly. Good. Good. Yeah.

And hopefully you readers are listeners are enjoying. David hates this. David hates covering the symposium. He laughed actually.

He went and made himself a milkshake in here. I'm here. I'm in here. Oh, he's back.

There he is. Yeah. Yeah. He does he's just an inch didn't love.

No, I was I whatever. You remind me the one thing I had had no contribution to make so that the one question I had somebody began to answer the beginning is, remind me again, why Socrates decides to use Agathon speech as the incision point. I mean, I know that they're talking into but like he engages with this speech also. Yeah, I think it's because he on the one hand praises eros while subtly undermining it.

Right. And I think he knows that he can press Agathon. It's similar to what he does with Protagoras. Protagoras, you know, seems to want to present himself as the sort of grand architect of human, you know, political affairs, keeping everything in order above and beyond the gods.

And this is, you know, Protagoras' high exalted place in political things and Socrates presses him and shows him that, though there are confusions we can run into about the virtues, there are certain agreements that we make and certain expectations that we have. And he brings that out of Protagoras. I think he can do the same thing with Agathon, showing that his atheism is not well-won. He has not earned it, right?

It's, you know, if we are open to the question of whether or not there are gods, we need to be very careful in asking that question considering it and not run too quickly to the side of atheism, right? And Agathon is done. He's the youngest member of this drinking party, right? I don't think so.

I think Phaedrus would be younger, right? I thought, I don't know, I guess I don't know who would be younger. I thought that the speech indicates that Agathon was... There's a good question for us to look up and answer maybe for next time.

Well, I know that in my little chart here, I don't have exact pages, but I will say there's six and then seven speakers. Aristodemus is young, Phaedrus is young, Pausani's is old, Eric Simic is as old, Aristophanes is old, Agathon is young, Socrates is old, and Elsibites is young. So I at least have them divided into classes in that way. So yet, you're right that Agathon and Phaedrus are both young, along with Elsibites and Aristodemus.

I do think Plato's playing with this distinction between the young and the old, you want to say something on that? We got a little extra time, so he might as well. I guess what I'll say is one small thing when I talk about this old and young thing, there's a new phenomenon. I think it's since the boomers have sort of grown up, you know, that people have grown up after me.

There are now romantic comedies where everyone is elderly, and I can't... Have you guys seen anything? I can't stand this new... This is not a movie that existed prior to the last time.

It's not like a hallmark channel kind of... No, no, no, like where Jack Nicholson is like the romantic guy. I mean, I'm not exactly... I am Keaton, who's a very good looking woman for her.

They're like, no, no, no, no. I don't want to see... You don't call women old ever, Greg. I...

Speaking of love between the old and the young Greg, it's well known that your wife is very, very hummed, right? She just had a birthday, actually. Oh, yeah. How old is she now?

She's... She's... I don't know. I am.

Don't respond to that either. I am. I'm old, man. You're not old.

She helped me with your iPad. She helps me with all kinds of stuff. Greg's in a rascal. So is David, but for different reasons.

That's true. That's true. I can tell you, living in Ohio, I will tell you the last one where I was showing the walk. But the first time in my life, I was like, I see...

I get wild people move to Florida. I get it. I just... So like, it's awful.

I can't see myself doing this another five years, 10 years. I mean, I felt that way when I was living in Chicago. Oh, gosh. I mean, it's insane.

But old people live there in the Midwest. I guess. Enjoy showing this now. I think it's good exercise.

Yeah, you're young. Yeah. Do you see yourself doing it at 65? I can see it, maybe.

We'll see how you hold up. No. No. That's when you have money.

I think this is enough. We're trying to fill time now. We'll talk. Well, thank you for tuning in to the new Thinkery.

Hey, next is gonna be good. Now, we get to Socrates. I mean, we'll spend the probably a few episodes on soccer. Yeah, at least two.

What? We have to, David, it's long. It's quite far the longest, right? And so good.

I've got many parts. We can do it in two, I think. We can do it in two. This you guys are messing with me now.

This is never gonna end. How long have you said it's never ending? Well, we're... It was long after the infinite, David.

That's true. To read it, supposing it, erotically, you must read it infinitely. You know, let's just cleave each other in half the hug. Hey, it's spring.

It's March. It's about to be, you know, the equinox, whatever they have. So, go out and love. This is spring is loving the year.