Welcome back to the new thing. I'm David Barr with me as always. Is my good friend Alex, how's it going Alex? Hey David, how's it going?
Good. Good. There are fires where you are in Colorado. Yeah, it smells like a barbecue and I thought, oh, there must be some sort of celebration, but instead it's God, at least he has wrath on the corrupt Colorado.
Yeah, they did, but they obviously deserve it. Well, you're in Boulder, right? So you can be sure that. Yeah, well, that's for the corruption lies in the state.
Yeah, certainly. Yeah. Well, it's currently the good people citizens of Fort Collins are the one ones. Setting the fires.
No getting the wrath. Oh, no. All right. Maybe we'll get the worst of it.
Yeah. So today we are talking about probably the most famous work on the nature of love in the Western canon, maybe the most famous, if not consequential investigation into the nature of love, simply. We also have the Bible and you have some things in the east, but really Plato's symposium is kind of what sets the standard and not maybe not the standard, but the jumping off point for a lot of our current understanding and historical understanding of love or arrows, which is the term we'll talk about today. So, Alex, do you want to, why is this text important?
This is the first text of Plato's that we're discussing. Yeah. Do you think, or why are we starting with this one? Well, yeah, I mean, it's it's arguably quite easily Plato's most beautiful work.
It's quite famous. I think for that reason, it's got so many beautiful speeches about arrows, which is, you know, this Greek word for love, but for sort of passionate love, this love of being complete. But, you know, just the fact that it's beautiful, at least on its face, it doesn't seem like a good enough reason. I think there's at least two reasons relevant to political philosophy that we could consider.
The first is Socrates, who's, you know, the first political philosopher, well, what does he know? He only ever claims to have expert knowledge about love or erotic matters. So somehow, arrows has to be related to this distinctive activity. How or why is one question Greg, you want to jump in here?
Just a couple of small points. One is that, well, he also claims to have expert knowledge on how to give funeral arrangements in the dialogue, all the next ones. But the other is I just want to point out for folks, I don't know if you said this or not, but arrows in addition to being love was also a god for the Greeks. I think that's important to note.
So like Venus, right? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah.
And that would be a connection to, I think, the political side of it. And we'll get to that when we get to Socrates' speech, where he overtly questions or, you know, refused, you can even say the divinity of arrows or at least attempts to a second relation, I think between arrows or love. We're just going to use the term arrows, think of love, but kind of the deepest love that longs for completeness or sort of transcending of the human condition even the second connection between that and political philosophy is that in the Republic, Socrates refers to the tyrant as arrows incarnate. It's a harsh condemnation of arrows.
So again, if you want to understand political philosophy, it seems like arrows and it's linked to tyranny. There's a kind of tyrannical figure who comes in at the end, al-subiety. So this is not extrinsic to the symposium. It's not peculiar simply to the Republic.
So if you want to understand this political philosophy is understanding of tyranny, we might want to dove a little deeper into his understanding of arrows. But just to return to the first point I brought up, how it's the most beautiful of Plato's dialogues, I think that actually gets into another aspect of Plato's political philosophy, his act of writing. It's beautiful and it's about the beautiful and it's critical of the love of the beautiful, or at least it submits it to more thorough analysis than lovers are used to submitting it to. So I think insofar as you like beautiful things, you should like the symposium.
And I think the symposium was written for somebody like that and test them on a certain level. And that might show us something about Plato's own practice of political philosophy. Yeah, Greg. So just a couple of things.
One is you mentioned the beautiful over and over again. And obviously that's a theme I'm sure we'll touch on. It's we're coming back to it. But one of the things kind of surprising to me is that the beautiful is not the, at least the explicit subtitle or theme of the work.
It's actually is it on the good Alex? Yeah, it's the good. Yeah. Yeah.
Interestingly enough, the start interrupt this translation that we're using in the University of Chicago press by Seth Benardetti doesn't include the subtitle. Yeah, it does not sound as weird. Yeah, they often don't. It's it's they're really questionable.
I think when you see that the symposium is subtitled, the good who but Plato would do that, right? There's right little arguments you make like that, but oftentimes they leave it out. But the subtitles, which I believe we only do we only get that Greg from Deontrion's lyrics is I think that's where we get it. The subtitles are I believe, you know, more questionable, but still this I think that subtitle is quite revealing because though it is about the beautiful and it's so beautiful and you know, there's there's all these sort of wonderful, you know, enrapturing speeches one after another and it lacks the kind of ugliness of socratic dialectics or criticism still, I think it does ultimately draw you up to the good that ends up being its highest theme record.
Well, I was gonna say, yeah, I mean Socrates, I mean, we'll get to this much later. I guess we're actually going to go through this speech by speech, but he sort of seems to transform or make clear to us how our concern with the beautiful or the noble is actually wrapped up with our concern ultimately for the good. So there is this ascent that takes place. And so to back this up with a dramatic indication early on in the dialogue, when this this sort of laughable student or, you know, lover of Socrates, Aristodemus, he bumps into Socrates, he knows that Socrates is beautiful.
As I said, it's beautiful. I go to a beauty. I'm going to Agathon, this beautiful tragic playwrights house. He also says the good, good at the house and the good on invited.
So there's this already this play that Socrates has forcefully made himself good. He's gone to Agathon's house. Agathon's name sounding just like good. And so there's this play already on the beautiful and the good is Socrates actually beautiful.
He had to make himself look that way. Is Agathon actually good? He's a little bit resistant to Socrates teaching about the good. And so already the relationship between these is at play from the very beginning.
So this isn't just a part of Socrates speech. It's in a way built into the very drama itself. Right. Is that fair to say Greg?
Yeah. Why don't we, you know, Greg, yeah. Why don't you give us an overview kind of an outline of the entire tax? I should have said at the outset that this is the first in how many episodes?
84. Yeah. There are how many speeches. Seven.
I can't recall. Well, yeah. Yeah. Six and then seven speeches total.
That's right. There's seven, but there's no way we're doing Socrates in one thing. And then there's that. I don't know if you will see.
So we're going to do a few 30. Yeah. We hope you enjoy it. So this will be a close sustained reading of this of this text.
Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it might be helpful just from the outside, Greg, to give us top line argument in action. Sure.
So yeah, I can do that. So there's just a few things maybe just to step back in further. We already talked about the title that the title is the posy. And so that tells us a little something about the dialogue.
So a symposium and Greek literally means a drinking together. And so this dialogue is sometimes called the banquet or something like this. It's a drinking party, really, although Alex, I think maybe you can. I've had a little bit of this.
You're in about how much drinking actually takes place. Well, one thing I'll point out is is within the dialogue, only one character refers to it as a drinking party. Everybody refers to it as a suduzia, which is a kind of they're just hanging out. You could say it has connotations of sex as well, but it's meant to be something like they're just gathered together and they're at least pulling it back a bit from drinking the night before.
But also bias comes in obviously drunk and he refers to them all as symposias, these people who are drinking together. Now, there is a kind of intoxication involved, maybe fiscal, maybe an intoxication of the soul, but there is that background, I think Plato would agree with you, Greg, that there is some imbibing going on or some some intoxication present of what kind of course is the question. But yeah, the title points to that feature. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, there is drinking that happens. It may not be heavy. Sure.
It may not be heavy. Sure. Yeah. So we've done the title symposium, drinking party, the subtitle on the good so just a brief really bird's-eye view of what this dialogue is.
I guess the first thing to say is this is maybe with the exception of one of their dialogue, the least dialogic of Plato's dialogues that is it's not the typical for listeners, if you've only read maybe a couple of of the dialogue usually it's not for these talking with people, not a series of speeches. So in that regard, this play, this play, this dialogue is the least dialogic, like it doesn't seem like there are people having conversations. There are people places where the conversation breaks in, but so it's a series of speeches, but let me just take a step back. The dialogue takes, I think there are two principal parts.
There's a narrative frame that sort of frames the entire dialogue and then there's an internal dialogue. The external frame is a retelling some years later of a drinking party that happened about 10 years prior. So the external frame is the first part and then the drinking party is the internal part and within that internal part, there are three main parts. There's the pre-party, the party and the post-party, just to keep things very simple.
The pre-party, as Alex already alluded to, is Socrates and one of his young followers headed down to the party. There's a lot of conversation leading up to the party. Socrates takes a bath, which is apparently a notable thing. Apparently he doesn't take baths often.
One of our questions actually in the middle back was about Socrates and baths. You want to jump in and do that or should I just keep with the? I mean, let's just, yeah, let's take it. I think it's an important point, but I think it's an indication that maybe Socrates smells.
Probably didn't smell good. Probably not. Didn't wear shoes. He's probably a little funky.
He's probably about like a patchouli, is that what they call that? Yeah. So there's a few. You know, and bad smells are actually interesting.
They're a theme in the other dials are interesting. The Parmenides. They're as a theme. They're interesting.
Not as a problem. That would be a polite way to first read smells bad. It was also a theme in the Parmenides as well, which is a related dialogue. But anyways, obviously, I think there's obviously connecting with the fact that Socrates is making himself beautiful.
I think that he has to conceal the low in himself and in his own speech, he conceals what might be low in arrows. He says, I'm going to only say the good things. I won't say anything bad. I won't say anything shameful.
I'll just say the high things. And that might also point to is is abstracting from the low in in in man as well by bathing, right? So that sounds not a problem. So two main parts, right?
The narrative frame, which I think we're going to talk about here in just a moment and then the internal story. So the frame is a guy is telling a story about this drinking party within the dream party. There's the pre party, the party and the post party. The bulk of this dialogue, the bulk of this book consists of the party itself where a series of six speakers takes turns giving a eulogy and praise or honor of arrows, love or maybe even the God love six speakers.
At this point, a seventh speaker comes in. Alex already referred to him. Also, bodies are right. Strunk and he gets a drunken and commune of not of arrows, but instead of Socrates, when also by these speech ends, some other drunken revelers jump in and the party proper stops.
Then there's the post party. The guy who's recounting the story to us tells us that the next morning he woke up and Socrates and two of the more impressive guys from the night before, Agathon or Sophones are still talking and they're talking about poetry and in particular the character of tragedy and comedy. So just one more shot at that and then we'll move on. There's a narrative frame that's recounting a story of drinking party and the bulk of that story is a series of six men giving speeches in honor of love.
There's a seventh speech at the end, also bodies comes in and then this final discussion between the poets and the philosopher. And that's the narrative frame doesn't resume. So that's an outline of the text. I'll just say a few more things maybe before I throw it over to, because I think Alex was going to tell us a little bit about that.
We're going to try and do a little bit tonight of the actual dialogue. Just a few things. One of the title in the case, this is a weird dialogue. Most dialogues are named for someone Socrates is speaking to in our locator.
So the the jam, the Joe, the Bob, right, but Greek names, protector, score, the S fade. Oh, these kinds of things. So this is an atypical. I've already said mention one way in which this is an atypical platonic dialogue.
It's not simply a conversation. It's a series of speeches. It's atypical insofar as the typical platonic dialogue is a name of a person Socrates is speaking with. There are some other ways in which it's atypical.
It's being told 10 years later, second hand, we'll get into that just a little bit. Anything you want to jump in and add there? I would say it's possibly as far as the title is concerned completely unique, right? It's I was trying to think of one that's I can't think I would say I would say I would say I would say I would say I would say the enormous might be the only one that seems similar as far as it's describing an event.
The thing that happens after the laws. I don't know. That would be the same then as like a hippious major hippious minor second alibi. I guess it would be something like that.
But I would say it's named after the event that takes place in it, right? The only possible other that possibly has the same sort of name is the Republic. What about the? Or the regime to which it refers is that of the various interlocutors who arrive at some sort of consensus about just despite having divergent views and concerns at the outset.
What about that? That refers to the speech, right? Wasn't that what we get in the apology? That's the advice.
Yeah, that's a little bit difficult. Let's not get too much into the apology. But certainly it's almost completely unique. I think you're right in saying that.
It's quite divergent. It's a very different. It's closer. Yeah.
What's it usually paired with? I read that dialogues often up there. Okay. Well, I personally prepare it first with the Protagoras.
Obviously, there's a number of similar characters. In fact, all the major speakers in the symposium are present in the Protagoras with the exception of their softonies, or you can say is replaced by Protagoras. Another two dialogues I would relate it to are the Permanities and the Fido. They are the only other dialogues that are related dialogues that are related by somebody other than Socrates.
Socrates occasionally, four times, talks about a conversation he had once before as the lysis, the Republic, the lovers and the comedies. The symposium is related by a Polydorus, the Permanities by a guy named Kefelis and the Fido by Fido. Right? So it's unique in that, in that this is not a conversation that Socrates necessarily wanted to commit to memory or to relate to another or it's not one that was especially important to him, but maybe especially important to other people the way that the Permanities and the Fido are.
Those would be the closest relatives. And then also the Republic by virtue of the arrows relationship. Would you add anything to that, Greg, or does that sound? No, I would have said Taggress.
What's that? No, I would have said Protagoras. That seems like the most obvious pairing. And you said Phaedra too.
No, I didn't put Phaedra. So I think Phaedra is a hippious major obviously on beautiful and beautiful. I mean, I think people often care with the Phaedra, but I mean for me it's more obviously linked to the Protagoras. Yeah.
Yeah. The hippious major is another one where actually my friend Travis asked what's the relationship between the end of the hippies major and the symposium. But that's only obvious if you've been reading the Greek because the last words of the hippies major are I seem to myself to know. And the first words of the symposium are I seem to myself to be not in practice or something like that.
So obviously very related phrases. We don't need to go into that right now. That would be another close. I can't.
I think do this dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe Greg now is a good time to go into the political background.
Give some of that. You got some thoughts on that. Yeah. And Greg, if you could kind of the background as far as we can ascertain during the dramatic political background and then I guess when Plato was writing.
Yeah. But when Plato was writing God, I don't know when Plato was writing. Alex has a nice guess. Feel free to jump in.
I do have some thoughts on the chronology, the political chronology of the dialogue itself. Yeah, it just seems to apologize. That was actually poorly stated up. Yeah.
The reason I think though, the political aspect historically is might be of interest to listeners is because as you mentioned, one of the drinking guests is also buddies. Right. Sure. So I'll talk a little bit about two things to try and set us up.
I'll talk about the very beginning of the dialogue and I'll talk about the political things are going on because I think they're kind of related. I think maybe the opening of the dialogue stresses, at least in my mind, for me, how political this dialogue is seemingly not political dialogue, by the way. It seems to be just these dudes hanging out, drinking, talking about sex and love. But I think that Plato, the way he frames it with his narrative frame reminds us that there's at least tries to maybe remind the reader that there's something deeply political about this dialogue and that there's something deeply political lurking in the background.
So just very simply, this dialogue is taking place during what was called the Peloponnesian War. Basically World War II back in the ancient Greek world. So it's a 27-year-long war. The war begins in 431 BC and ends in 404 BC.
The war is between, principally between Athens, where, of course, Socrates, where does the symposium takes place where Socrates and these other participants are all from. And the war with Sparta. So Sparta and Athens are sort of the chief enemies here. Gosh, I don't even know how to begin here.
So at the beginning. Maybe it might be good to talk about the death of Pericles, where Pericles dies, there's a kind of vacuum of leadership. Also, Bodies is one of the people that eventually fills it in. And then maybe, for the piece of Nisius, would be good?
Yeah. Maybe the way to do it would be to talk a little bit about Elsobody. So Elsobody was, gosh, I left T.G, I have a nice portrait of him in my office. Socrates finds Elsobody's house of Phagia, if you know what Phagia is, this will tell you something about Elsobody's character.
So Pericles was the George Washington or the Abraham. Explain for the folks at home, Greg, who is Phagia was. She was a woman of good company. Yeah.
She's somebody that might have been friendly with Nisius over done. I mentioned from that, if you've listened to that episode, go listen, rate, subscribe. Five stars. Anyway, so Elsobody's.
Yeah, sorry, Elsobody's the nephew, by the way, of Pericles, the most famous Athenian general. He's sort of this Lincoln, Washington, like figure. He dies and there's a leadership back, as you mentioned. And Elsobody's kind of emerges and comes to the fore and comes to enormous, enormously successful leader under Athens.
So a few things about him. He's actually, when we'll learn this later, when we turn to his speech, he was a sometimes student of Socrates. There are two dialogues named after him were Socrates tries to teach young Elsobody's the relationship between Socrates and Elsobody's as mentioned also by Sennifen. He became a very successful Admiral, excuse me.
He leads a famous expedition, Elsobody's does. He's notoriously handsome, wealthy, good looking from the proper family line. He's not prepared to raise him because his father had been killed, I think, in the publication more, actually. So he is elected general of the Navy at a very young age.
And he is put in charge of an expedition to triangle concursicially, which is enormous island by the way, vastly underestimated the size of which is vastly underestimated by the Athenians. And Elsobody's, he gets himself in charge. He manages to persuade Athens to sort of invade Cicepies, the ancient Greek historian reports that Athens fell in love with the idea of sailing Cicepies. Again, this word, Arabs, it's a really weird strain usage of it.
So you see that the connection between Plato and Cicepies, there's this erotic connection. Now, so there's a certain problem. I do admire Elsobody's. I love him.
I sort of like posters of him all over my walls in my office. But he's true. My students always joke about it anymore. He's lipstick.
Is this on it? Yeah. What's the feel? A voteary offering before the death of Elsobody's.
So Elsobody is extremely successful military leader. You don't get this so much from Thucydius, but you do see it more in Zenithins work called the Hellenica. But he, right before Athens is about to go sail Cicepies, Elsobody goes out and gets riproied and drunk and defaces some statues to the god Hermes around town. And on the connection of the arrows, I think, you know, at the point, it's important to know that the defacing was kicking the falluses off of.
Again, again, allegedly. Allegedly. Explain for the folks at home what a fallis is. He would have to, yeah, ask Siri.
What Greg doesn't know what that is. I don't know. It's difficult to. He's smooth.
Think about it. Now, yeah, so when I taught this, you know, I teach the students, they sort of like, yeah, I cooked off the falluses and statues who care. I sort of think, okay, now imagine, like something, I think if you try to give them a contemporary analogy, you can see just how serious of a crime this was. I mean, like, imagine, I don't know, McChrystal or Petreus or Shorteskop or somebody going in the facing statues of Jesus and churches around town, right before going up to Envady Rock or something like this.
We would be appalled and we would probably recall him and not want him to be in church. In fact, we didn't recall him. Crystal were saying things that violate our current priorities, I think. And so, and so for far lesser in parties, by the way, I would say.
So at any event, they do, Athens does this. They recall al-Sobaidis and say, look, you've been accused of these crimes. Al-Sobaidis says, I'll stand trial right now. They say, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.
So he leaves and goes on the expedition and then Athens sort of almost immediately sends out ships after him. They tried him in absentia. Yeah. They tried to get him in there.
He would charm the jury or something like that. So he tried when he's gone and then he tried to bring him back and he knew what, you know, oh, God, I can't excuse you. So he decides, you know, what any good decent citizen does. He defected to the enemy, Sparta.
And he, you see what his looks bad for Socrates, by the way. So he defected Sparta. Weiland's part, he says, hey, look, here are the Athenian plans in Sicily and here's how to stop them. So he almost single-handedly, I think, puts Sparta in a position to sort of completely destroy Athens plans to invade Sicily.
So, and by the way, therefore, lose the war. While he's in Sparta, he, he decides that it wouldn't have been nice if my sons were a future king of Sparta. And so he beds the king's wife in Bratus. Who was not sleeping, who was not sleeping with the king because apparently during an earthquake, he ran away, right?
So I think it's from Plutarch, but that's how they knew for sure it was not the king's son, but it's called Bites. So another king of the era is right. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
So now he has to leave Sparta. He's a lead Athens. Yeah, he has to leave Sparta. So where does he go?
Those of you who know your ancient history, he goes to the other arch enemy of Athens, Persia. So he defects to Persia. And from Persia, he advises the Persians on how best to pit the Athenians and Spartans against one other so that they weaken one another and sort of perpetually we can one another. So the Pyg Persia will be the power.
Now for what it's worth. So also Bites is exiled in the year 415. While he's away, there are some of his friends back in Athens who say, you know, he's actually a really good general. We're losing the war.
Things aren't going so well. Let's persuade him to come back. So in 411, so four years later, he comes back at his friends behest, but he says, look, I'll only come back in the condition that you orchestrate in oligarchic coup, overthrow the regime and then I'll come back. So they do and Athens in fact puts in place in oligarchy and also Bites comes back to Athens.
Now he doesn't literally step foot back in Athens until 407. This is important as we get to the narrative frame here in just a moment. So he's gone. House of Bites has gone from Athens from 415 to 407.
By the way, he then gets exiled again and roughly 406. So at any event, I'll try and tie this to the very beginning of the symposium. So why is all that history important? I'll take two sort of major points.
One is there's this huge war that basically destroys Athens in the background that's behind all this. Is there a link between behind this discussion of love, this discussion of the gods and Athenian imperialism? Maybe, maybe not. And then secondly, just to tie it more directly to the narrative frame, when we try to think about when is this dialogue happening, a lot of hinges on where else Bites is.
At the very beginning of the symposium, this guy, Paul Doris, is recounting a story about a party he heard from someone else. And someone asked him, oh, was it just the other day? And Paul Doris says, no, no, it wasn't. What are you talking about yesterday?
No, no, no. It was 10 years ago. And so why would someone make the mistake that something that was just yesterday was 10 years ago? This is a big time gap.
Well, what I'm trying to argue is that that big time gap can be explained by when else Bites was gone, when he was exiled, and when he came back. And so the narrative frame, the narrative frame seems to happen around 407, 406 after else Bites has actually come back to Athens. So the external frame, which we'll talk about here, is between a Paul Doris and an unnamed comrade. And it turns out there are actually several of them, happens in 406 or 407.
And they're telling a story about a party that happened nearly 10 years prior in four, what do I have? 416. 416, that's what I think. Yeah.
And we know that date. Yeah, 416, that's right. And we know that date because the party is celebrating when Agathon won basically the Academy Award for Best Strategy. So we know for sure the internal party happens in 416, and the narrative frame happens some 789 years later in 406, 407.
Now, why is that important? I should probably stop talking some point. No, no, it's great. It tells me the story, Socrates is not recounting the story.
The Republic is this huge dialogue, 10 books, and Socrates reports it the very next day. He wants it known what he's just said. This dialogue, it sure seems like we're not telling this story until 10 years later. I wonder therefore, or it makes me think that maybe there's some stuff going on here that Socrates might not be so happy to have broadcast allowed.
And so there's some smoke here. I suspect that there's some sort of, let me just back up one more step. So Apollodores is telling a story, yes. Apollodores is the one who's recounting us the symposium.
He's heard this story from another guy, an Aristodemus, who was at the party with Socrates. Apollodores has just told the story yesterday to a guy named Glaucon. I suspect this is the same Glaucon from another dialogue called the Republic. And he's now telling it to an unnamed comrade, but as I just mentioned, there's some other folks as well.
So Apollodores is telling the story second hand for the second time. So there are all of these layers between the internal party and the actual retelling of what happened. So details get missed. I just mentioned that they're very beginning.
There are seven speeches that are recounted. We do get a pretty strong indication that there were more than seven speeches given and that Aristodemus is only reporting the ones that he thought were worthy of retelling. That's right. And so we're getting a very partial view of what's going on.
And I think Apollodores probably wants to talk about the character of Apollodores and Aristodemus and how their character probably might shape. Let me ask the question. Sure. Really quick, Alex.
Sorry about that. Greg, you said you didn't, you suspect that Socrates may not have wanted the events that transpired that evening would count. If it's true that just he sure seems to expose himself fairly seriously by having the conversation in the first place in front of six other people. More if you're indicating that there are others that give speeches that just aren't recounted is correct.
So I don't, how are you squaring that? Maybe that's a good question. I don't know if I've got a great answer. I mean, it's a semi-private event and these are kind of the elite.
And so maybe Socrates feels a little more comfortable speaking. I mean, look, all of us, we speak, I mean, look, the three of us forgot sake, if we publish what we actually said at the end of our recordings, like there's no, like those are some I public, right? Somebody could record them and somebody could sort of broadcast those and we would be really upset. So I think maybe his guard was down a little bit.
I do wonder if when this party happens, this is right at the time when Athens itself has become very moderate and very tolerant of all kinds of different things and to become more imperial and more unleashing desires. So maybe he thought that there was greater freedom. I suspect that he thinks in that 10 intervening years there was less freedom. Yeah, you and Alex will have to go into why.
Sorry, Alex, go on. Yeah, let me tell you, first of all, Greg, I've recorded all those conversations and I'll use them to blackmail you. I know you have. I'm planning to use them to take your firstborn to hide my own shameful infertility.
But to put a final point, I think on everything Greg said, to address David's question, right? Socrates associated with Alcibi's when Alcibi's was very young. This is the earliest conversation of the mature Socrates we've that Plato gives us that relationship for a number of reasons, largely Alcibi's ambition and his dependence on the praise of the people led to a very fraught relationship or a very kind of fraught outcome. Now that association was already reputed to be notorious.
Alcibi's thing goes on and there's other features we find about later on in the supposing that Alcibi has tried to get Socrates this great military award, right? The sort of great, great honor for his excellence of battle. So you know, Alcibi's is already, you know, pumping Socrates up to the highest civic levels, at least as far as military virtues concerned. So this is already a very weird relationship that's very notorious in people's minds and it's mocked by Aristophanes early on in Socrates's career.
Alcibi's goes on to do all the crazy things that Greg says and people are looking for who did it and they're going to say Socrates. Now David, you're right that Socrates, why did he go in there in the first place? Well, he had no idea Alcibi's was going to be there. Nobody had any idea.
Alcibi doesn't hear that speech by the way that he gives here. That's very important as well. That's important too. Yeah, especially since I think Socrates' speech will get to this later, Socrates' speech is in many ways a kind of summary of his education of Alcibi, he's in many ambitious things that he can use.
But then Alcibi's comes in and Socrates has no control over this and he comes in and gives this incredible speech about how Socrates has permanently tortured his soul and made him, you know, have to turn to the people for praise and driven to, you know, to some extent to his ambitions. So I think why does Socrates not want to get this out? Well, it's horribly damning evidence, right? But at least, you know, for a casual listener and this comrade who we don't know, I think Greg has some really good insights on how the comrade might be anautists and maybe can share those.
I think the, at least at the surface level is absolutely clear. This comrade is, could be anybody and that's bad for Socrates. That's how his reputation goes, you know, down the toilet. And that's what gets him his conviction eventually is association with people like Alcibi, I think first and foremost, right?
Can I ask you and Greg to, there's something I wanted to get out of, not out of the way. There's something I wanted to say to as an enticement early on in this conversation. And that's, we've already hinted at it, but what's so subversive without giving away the farm of the... You want me to do this?
Algae, you want to do it. You said the quiet part out. Wait, what's this is a subversive dialogue, right? I mean, it is.
And we'll unfold that slowly and maybe not totally completely or wives will leave us. So you want to hand it this as you want? Whatever you're comfortable with, but explain what's subversive about the symposium. This isn't, you know, at first people could be mistaken.
Oh, this is just a dialogue about the nature of love and its contours. You know, but it's not, it's a little bit darker than that. Yeah, let me, I'll do this in a roundabout way. And I think I'll try to answer your question, not fully because I do want to try and unpack it and unfold it as it arrives.
So, so I was just mentioned that I suspect, so this dialogue is told by Apollodora, Apollodora, is a huge fan of Socrates, and, but it's told to an unnamed comrade. Now, who is this comrade? No idea, we don't know. And I could never publish a paper where I make the following assertion.
Well, at least I could put it in as a, you know, something I suspected, but not something I proved. So who's the comrade? What do we know about the comrade? We know that he's rich, we know that he's a money maker and we know a couple of other things.
And so as I reflected on this, I just wondered aloud to myself whether or not this unnamed comrade is a man named Anatis. Now, Anatis, if you've read the apology, Anatis is one of Socrates's three chief accusers. And so I suspect that Anatis heard Apollodora tell this story, and this is one of the reasons that Socrates is charged. Now, so here's what I'm saying, in other words, it's possible that this dialogue, the symposium, presents Socrates acting out the crime for which he was accused and convicted in the apology.
Is that enough of a teaser or do you need more than that, David? That's good. Remind the folks of what the crime is. They're too too, okay.
Okay, so twin charges. So twin charges, right? Very good. And one of the charges for which Socrates was convicted and executed was corrupting the youth.
And I think that here in the symposium, I think one could easily say this dialogue shows before your very eyes a student showing us how Socrates corrupted him. But more important probably would be that Socrates was accused of impiety. And I would say that this dialogue, more than any other dialogue, maybe Alex, because he's stronger in some of the dialogues than we can run. I think this dialogue, more than any other dialogue, confirms before our eyes, Socrates is impiety.
Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. Look, the heiress is not like Zeus, right? But he's still God.
And that's still quite important. There's other examples of Socratic and Pine. I think the Euthofro is a great example where he's just like, I don't believe anything, you know, that the post- That's a very good point. That's absolutely an accusation.
So, yeah. I think the charge of making new God seems to me most of all to apply maybe to the Republic. Not just that he doesn't believe in the Gods of the city, but I think all this talk about forms, especially. Well, you get that here too, right?
Yeah, yeah. You get that here too. But the actual replacement of the Gods of the city with some sort of new deities, I think the Republic is a pretty good candidate for what that's worth. Before we move on, there's just one small bit about this.
So, this is kind of still on the same subject. So, I suspect that Satchis would not have wanted this conversation told to if this antist-like person for its worth. So, by contrast, the dialogue that Alex rightfully I think paired this dialogue with, the Protagoras, in that dialogue, there's another narrative frame. It's somebody narrating to an unnamed comrade a story.
But it was Socrates narrating the story. So he does want this story, retold. And he's retelling it to a comrade about whom we learn that he's a somewhat gossipy fellow. So, the Protagoras, the internal dialogue of the Protagoras seems to be a story that Socrates wants broadcast out around the world.
He wants people telling that story. Well, he sure does have a softness, right? He makes the protagonist look like a fool. And he saves the young.
Is it Hippocrates? Yeah, he defends traditional morality. He defends traditional piety. He defeats the corruptor of the youth.
He prevents Hippocrates from becoming corrupted. And for what is worth, Protagoras is one of the most well-renowned public intellectuals. And Satchis beats him up, right? So, it'd be like me beating up Mike Tyson.
If that were, it will not happen, please God, don't ever. But if I were to fight him and beat him, I would you bet your ass, I would want people known to know what that's happening. That's true. Yeah.
Yeah, I think he goes in there with that intention. So we should probably pivot here and get into maybe some of the substance of the dialogue. Well, the text. We're going to talk about Apollodorus a little bit.
Yeah, I want to say this. Okay, good. So this is the dialogue. The subtitle is the good, but it's ostensibly about love.
It's a bunch of speeches about love. It's about lovers and their beloveds and their relationship between them told from the beloved standpoint to the lovers standpoint, so on and so forth. But it actually opens up with two lovers, Aristodemus and Apollodorus, lovers of Socrates, and the very different kinds of lovers. I think the manner in which their lovers is pretty interesting.
So to start with Apollodorus, who's the guy who tells the whole story. His love is kind of self negating. He's really a little bit nuts. I mean, he's called crazy.
He's also called softy. I think as he kind of gives into his passions. Though the conference doesn't seem to understand that. He kind of believes himself.
This is what I mean by self-ligating. He believes himself and everyone except Socrates is horrible. Right? It's either just miserable or pitiful.
The only person good is Socrates. And we see this sometimes with people who are in love. They hold up their beloved and they look at themselves as beneath them and everybody else has beneath them. And this is, I think, one possible reaction.
I don't think that's a question for you. Sure. I think I asked you about this before. I don't remember what you said.
I've very bad memory. Apollodorus. We've talked about half a dozen more episodes now. We talked about how political philosophy helps us.
We think to understand types, certain human types, and understand what's going on in the soul of humans. I have trouble understanding the psychology of somebody who thinks that they're entirely worthless and that someone else is the only person. Is there something I just don't see what's going on in the soul of the world? Have you seen Wainsworld?
Greg? That's maybe you're a little too old for that. No, I didn't watch that was Kid Stuff Man. But you remember when Wain and Garth, they would see some beautiful woman, what they would say.
Yeah, we're not worthy. I thought he was issuing. No, there's two. There's the string, and then there's the word now worthy.
But I think it's similar to that. Apollodorus sees Socrates. He says he's amazing. He follows him around, but he's not worthy.
And nobody's worthy of him, really. And the logical conclusion of this is that when Socrates dies and Apollodorus is there, we find out at the end that he's actually been crying the whole time. How Aristophanes is hickering throughout the Eryximakas, the speech. Likewise, in the background, we have to imagine that there's this guy weeping because he's lost his one and only.
Socrates is utterly unique. He's individual. I think that's a strong con, so that's very self negating, right? We're all so low and Socrates is the only one who's high.
Aristodemus, who's another lover of Socrates, he's the one who actually goes with Socrates to this bank winner, the symposium, he has a kind of self-transforming arrows. He wants to become that which he loves. He has an ideal and he tries to actualize it in himself. He dresses like Socrates.
He behaves like Socrates. He seems in Xenophon, you can correct me, Greg, if I'm wrong here, but he seems in Xenophon to be aping a kind of crude or vulgar atheism that he seems to think Socrates pushes him away from that. He gives, yes, that's right. So, he doesn't want him to be a sort of simple minded atheist.
He gives actually in the memorabilia what's called the argument from design. It's the first account we have in Western history, Western literature of the argument from design. Can I ask one small question about the nickname? So, let me just wrap up that point though, right?
So, Apollodores deifies the beloved and therefore negates himself. Aristodemus humanizes the beloved and therefore doesn't believe in the god and the gods again transform himself. I think there's a sort of theological dimension to heiros, or the present here. Sorry, Greg, I cut you off.
No, it's just a small question. Are there other examples of students of Socrates having nicknames? This actually does bear on something I'm trying to figure out in another text. Is it just Apollodores or other ones?
Perfect. That's what I thought. That's what he was actually talking about. There are symphonies though, maybe.
I'm not sure if that's in Plato, but certainly he's portrayed oddly in the dialogue. I'll connect this just to show that this, so there's two aspects of arrows. One's kind of, I would call it conjunctive. One's destructive.
One assumes you can become the beloved and sort of transform. The other sort of assumes there is no gulf and therefore there's a separation. This actually echoes a bit, Agathon and El-Sebaidis. Agathon also is sort of attracted to Socrates, not as foolishly, but he wants his wisdom.
He wants to become like Socrates. Socrates tells the story about how he became who he is and he's telling it to Agathon as though this is how you can become like me. Then there's El-Sebaidis who sees himself as too low to be like Socrates and so frees him because he just can't bear it. He's too much for him.
Almost hiding his face before this god. I would even go so far as to say Socrates' definition of arrows. He defines arrows generally as a kind of seeing and being with, seeing at a distance but then clutching or being close. Again, a sort of conjunction and a disjunction.
All that is to say is that these lovers at the beginning of the dialogue over Stademus and the Pauladors seem to resemble or personify two aspects of arrow sort of love, a kind of a desire to be with and to transform in a sense of one's own lotus that can be part of this erotic longing. That's sort of my way of going into the dialogue. Maybe we want to look now a little bit beyond this. What do you mean?
Yeah, so that's sort of the introductory part. Do we want to go into how they get to the actual party? Yeah, yeah, we have about 10 minutes left. Let's do it.
Yeah. So one thing I would bring up here and I already mentioned this beautiful and the good part. That beautiful, I go to a beauty and the good go to the house of the good. Uninvited this word good again, being almost exactly the same as Agathon's name.
I think one other aspect that we haven't mentioned is the kind of mercenary backdrop. That quote from Homer, the good go to the house of the good. Uninvited, it refers on the one hand to this passage in the Odyssey where Menelaus goes to his brother, Agamemnon's tent. And I think the reason he's saying it dramatically, obviously, is saying, hey, look, look, Aristodemus, and you're not invited, but you're a good guy.
You can go there. It's kind of laughable. Aristodemus is a joke compared to Agathon. Agathon's gracious and accepts him.
But then Socrates says, oh, Homer already butchered this line because Menelaus is inferior to Agamemnon's. Ignoring thereby, I think, the familial relationship. Obviously the good, only the good go to the house of the good uninivited but so do relatives, right? I'll never go to the White House, even though I would venture far superior to some of the president's less than admirable family members.
So I think it's abstracting, he's showing that he's abstracting there, abstracting there from the love of your own, right? The familial love. Great. He hasn't the present.
One Emmy. So it is actually like Agathon's house. Is that right? Has anyone Emmy?
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, maybe I guess he is quite excellent. Yeah. Sorry.
I just want to point out, sorry, just for a word, I mean, you're mentioning his quoting Homer. Like, you know, for me in the mind of a normal person, I sort of think when they hear Homer, that would be the, not the modern day equivalent, but maybe the used to be equivalent of quoting the Bible. Is that fair? I mean, yeah.
In a way, yeah. I think Plato also means to import the dramatic connections, right? So Socrates silence about love of one's own. He actually ends up obscuring from that explicitly in his speech.
So this is a kind of foreshadowing. Another line he quotes from Homer is, you know, as everybody said, well, the two of us going together will go to Agathon's house. The strange thing about that line is that it's actually Odysseus and Deomedes raiding the camp of the Phoenicians during, I think it's book 10 of the ileans called the Night Raid. The infamous Night Raid takes place in the dead of night.
It's the most shameful act of war, but it's quite mercenary is quite effective. Is Socrates actually going into battle? I think that's an important question we want to ask. To back up this suspicion, sorry, Greg, you were going to jump in here?
No, I was just going to say with whom? What do you be going into battle? Do you think? Possibly the poets, right?
That would be the first guess, right? There's nothing I said. Did I catch you right that you were saying that Socrates was less than straightforward in his quoting of the passage? Absolutely.
He's quoting a kind of playfully it looks at, but when you try to actually give an account of why would he say this, there's important, you know, details about human psychology being pointed to. Yeah. That's just an explicit accusation in Zenithin that Socrates intentionally distorted the quotations from Homer. He's even given the worst possible interpretation.
Yeah. And I think you also want to back up any sort of suspicion. So the question, you know, the suspicion that when he quotes this line, the good go to the house of the good, the feast of the good, uninvited, you know, he's, you know, you say, okay, well, he's obscuring from level one's own loan to hold later in the text. He doesn't do that.
So there's a sort of early foreshadow that's a bit later, likewise the kind of mercenary military side of it. Well, Socrates immediately goes very quiet and stands still and he falls behind to restedee was sort of, you know, arrives alone. We later in the dialogue here about this. And what do we hear there?
I also, but he says he did the same thing in battle. So it's not going into battle. There seems to be a kind of suggestion. Another detail to support that is that the virtue of courage for Plato and Aristotle is in some way related to the passion of the most or spiritedness or anger, or kind of spirited aggression or defensiveness.
Is Socrates motivated by the most serious? Do you want to somehow play in this dialogue? Well, the argument from obstruction is never mentioned in the dialogue. So perhaps it is somehow silently present in the background in this.
What's this argument from abstraction business? Well, the argument would be that precisely the thing that's motivating the drama, right, that's sort of quietly in the background is the thing that won't be mentioned, right? So if you take the hippiest major, which is about the beautiful, heuris is never mentioned to people of point of the size. We are that a dialogue on the beautiful, which is so much associated with love and heuris and Plato, that heuris is never mentioned.
Why can that be? It turns out, well, hippies is quite unerotic in his character. Likewise, why would the most or spirited aggression be here? Well, because there's a kind of lightness to it, but there's also a very deep battle, right?
A battle between philosophy and poetry that's dramatically played out to the very end. So that's never thematized precisely because the subject matter is them having it out and not the issue of their having it out or of that quarrel. It's just the enacting of the quarrel itself, the dramatization of the quarrel itself. Do you want to say anything about it?
A sacrifice certainly gets to jump on. I mean, this is a battle. His enemies have been significantly weakened thanks to the events of the night before. They're all soaked with boots, right?
They're like half nodding off. Don't they all nod off with the exception of two people by the end of the dialogue? Yeah, but then they nod off as well. But not thought of, yeah.
Yeah. Nietzsche makes a big deal about the end of the symposium. He calls him, he's kind of lulling them to sleep as the great erotic he calls. Socrates always, I mean, he never fights fair.
I mean, in the Gorgias, he, Gorgias has just given this big long speech. He's mentioned that he's tired, right? He sort of traps the protagonists into speaking openly about things that he was trying to keep hidden in private. I mean, he's always, I mean, this is just a proforma.
I mean, this is just a standard operating procedure, right? For Socrates? Yeah, but you know what's interesting is if he wins the battle, he certainly seems to lose the war on some account. He gets put to death, right?