Welcome back to the New Thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always. It's my good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg?
Don't great David. Good to hear you tonight. You too. And Alex, how are you Alex?
I'm good. How are you? Good. And you've been, I guess, University of Colorado has put a moratorium on in-person classes.
Yeah. In-person classes, an 18 to 22 year olds are not allowed to gather at all. Does that mean they can be arrested on site? I think so.
I think they need a chaperone. There's something like that. Yeah. Which is, I think it's pretty interesting because we have an election coming up and 18 year olds are allowed to vote.
They can't be trusted with basic issues of public health. Yeah. And if they can't congregate, they can't. And if they can't, infantilize worse than 17 year olds.
Some taking else can do what they want. And if they can't, they can't group together. They can't philosophize either. So, you know, these are like us would be disappointed too.
Yeah. They can't have a symposium, which is. I have a feeling there they're lower on the ladder of love. They're giving them credit.
They're still looking for multiple beautiful bodies. I think it's where they are. So today, if you, you know, I'm guessing we will be discussing the sex card. We will be discussing it?
Discussing. Oh, I thought you said we will be discussing. Did I still have a slip? Also, this is the episode title.
So, the very guest. You didn't ask where I was calling in from. Where are you calling in from Greg? Well, the world headquarters of nice people.
OK. It's a passive aggressive question. Yeah. And I'm in my shed.
My brand new finished post office shed. It's beautiful. You guys can see it. A lot of fun.
Yeah. So we can expect a new translation of Xenophon's Hellenica to speak on. This should have expedited that. Yes.
Good. It's only six or four years. You know, before I forget, I want to thank what we'd like to thank Jake, the Cannon, for producing the show. Please follow us on Twitter at the new thinkers.
Email us any questions at the newthinkcreatingmail.com. Doris Kearns Goodwin, if you're listening, we are trying to track you down to have you on to discuss Lincoln's second inaugural. Once again, Doris Kearns Goodwin, we would like to get a hold of you. Also, Norm McDonald, since I'm just asking all the people we want on our wish list.
So if any of our listeners know either Doris Kearns Goodwin. You should get a rabid fans to harass her. Yeah. And in the two.
Oh, five of them, yeah. Yeah. So today, we are, this is the second of a series of discussions on Plato's Symposium. Just a reminder to listeners, the last episode, we discussed the background to the text, everything up into the first speech, given by Phaedris.
We're using Alan Bloom, the translation by Seth Benardetti, with commentary by Alan Bloom and Seth Benardetti. It's the University of Chicago edition. It's a really nice edition, though there are others. I think Focus Library has a nice one too.
So anyway, if you don't have that, or if you are a friend, Chris Hoffman, reading directly of ancient Greek, we are at 178A to 180B, is the staphonist. And he used the manuscripts. He doesn't even go to the edited Oxford classical text. I mean, he's just reading the straight of the pyro.
Yeah. And there's a period of Chris's life, which is someone unaccounted for, where I think that he, he's just off stealing texts in Greece. And so the government of Greece are listening to this. Chris Hoffman, a number of texts in his backyard.
Anyway, so what's going on? This is the second, this is the first speech, or rix. So just to Greg or Alex, help us recap. I think everybody's gathered.
They've dismissed the flute girl. We had a question about why the dismissal was necessary. On Twitter, we can talk about later. Or rix amakis proposes this, not a challenge, but since everybody's hungover, he said, look, let's tamp down the drinking, and instead eulogize.
Hear us. And then he proposes, Phaedrus go first. So why does he do that, Greg? What's kind of set up?
What's going on? Sure. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff. There's something definitely I want to start with, and cover last time.
My bald assertion that the unnamed comrade to whom the stories were coming from. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't slight the baldness. I don't like the assertion. I mean, good assertion.
It means good. I'm potent. Last time I mentioned that I thought the unnamed comrades of whom the symposiums were counted was Anatos. And since we've re-recorded that episode, I'd forgotten to include my biggest piece of evidence the second time.
It was that Anatos was apparently a lover of al-Sebadis according to Plutarch, and had been jilted by him at a different drinking party. And so I suspected that Anatos was curious about the story, because he'd heard that al-Sebadis feature prominently. So just getting us, that's at least scrap. I had some answer, I don't have anything else on this.
Yeah, Greg. Because the story in Plutarch, al-Sebadis doesn't come to his party when he's invited, but comes up later and steals half of his nicest plates. He's drunk, right? Yeah, and Anatos is just happy that he didn't take them all, because he's such a pushover.
That's a weird story. It's a weird story. But Plutarch's life of al-Sebadis is really funny. Yeah, I used to know somebody that would steal at parties.
You go to parties that don't use the person's name. But that person used to have hair? And now it doesn't? No, no, no, no, no, no.
It's nobody. The person who used to have hair doesn't always has things missing from his apartment whenever David Barv is. Yeah, no, it's somebody that neither of you know. But it used to go to parties, people that he didn't like, and would steal pictures from the family on the mantle place, because you can't replace those.
And I don't know what made me think of that. OK. Well, I think there wasn't your friend would be. I never had that person over at the house.
Because I was just so parent. I just thought it was such an evil thing. What do I always thought about it? Well, a little secret when I was in high school, I used to take from people's houses, the thing next to the stover, you put dirty spoons, thinking that would be extremely annoying to try to find.
But I think the trick Plutarch's lesson would be, you can do that out in the open if it's your lover. That's right. You're taking it from. Take different questions.
Right. The other point, you asked a really good question last time, David, uncharacteristically, about why Socrates would criticize arrows. I have to think about that. I was thinking, well, arrows is, if a teacher says early on, and this is going to the passage that we're going to discuss, that nobody hams arrows.
There's no Homeric hams arrows. It's not like saying Zeus is not to say arrows is a faculty. And I think Socrates critique of arrows, even though it robs it of divinity, does have a kind of exalted place in human life. So it seems like a low risk way to kind of massage the issue.
Also, keep in mind how important arrows is for a socratic philosophy. But maybe this is getting into the passage. Maybe Greg could jump in here and give the summary of what we're doing. Yeah, maybe it'd be worthwhile to just remind listeners where we are, what we're doing.
As David said, we're going to do a series of episodes on the symposium. And so this is the second one. And the first one we tackled what was called the narrative frame, what we were calling the narrative frame. It's a conversation between a lover of Socrates named Paul Doris and an unnamed comrade and perhaps some others.
And the unnamed comrade is asking about a story, about a party that Socrates and some others attended some years prior. And Paul Doris is super eager to relate that party. We then talked about, so then within the story of his symposium, we then talked about Socrates bringing his friend Aristoedemus to the house. So now, Socrates has two lovers of Paul Doris and the narrative frame and the Aristoedemus in the interior story.
Going to the house of the tragic poet Agathon, who's just one, the equivalent of the Oscars or something like that. And we talked a little bit about their conversation. We talked about how Aristoedemus is uninvited, but Socrates gets him to come along. We briefly mentioned that Socrates has a, he needs to have a little think.
And so he says to Aristoedemus, come on without me. Aristoedemus shows up. Agathon very gracefully mentions that he'd been looking for him the day prior to invite him. And then the sort of interior begins.
There's some jokes, actually shows up, and there's some jokes about where he's going to sit, et cetera. Eric Simikus, who there'd been a party the previous night also. And apparently he's a little, what you call it, hung over. Is that what the kids call these days?
Toedown? Anyhow, he doesn't want to drink a lot. And so he proposes, is that right? No.
He's a, so he doesn't want to drink. He proposes giving speeches and said, you had a good question, David, which I'm going to dodge, I don't know the answer. But I'll just set a couple of other things up. And then we'll try to address your question.
I bet Alex probably has a good answer. So Eric Simikus says, dancing girl, please go away. Let's not get too ready tonight. And instead, let's give speeches.
The writers have even given speeches for salt. Surely we can eulogize or give an antonium for arrows lover to go. I think we did touch on this last time. But one thing before we get to Phaedra's speech, I think is really important is actually, I'm positive Alex.
We mentioned this last time that Socrates says that he has scientific or expert knowledge of love or arrows. I think it's really important. And I would put it together with perhaps what Socrates was most famous for having said, that he knows that he knows nothing. And so somehow Socrates' profession of ignorance has to be put together with his profession of knowledge of love.
Maybe those are somehow deeply related, or maybe not, maybe I'll make too much of it. In any event, Eric Simikus succeeds in persuading them that they're going to give speeches on behalf of love. And Phaedra's begins. And you asked a very good question.
I'm going to pass on it. Why does Eric Simikus want to praise love? And why does he send the dancing girl away Alex? Any thoughts on it?
Well, the first question I think is a little bit easier already wants to praise love because the beautiful young Phaedra's, who wants people to do it, turns out Phaedra's has been bothering him that nobody does this. And so he sees an opportunity to introduce this, perhaps gratify Phaedra's. There's a playful illusion to this. He calls Phaedra's the father of the argument, which makes you wonder who's the mother?
Well, insofar as he's implanted the idea in Eric Simikus' head, I think Eric Simikus is the generating a womanist. But there's a kind of gratification going on. Stay with us listeners. Stay with us.
About the flu girl, I the only way I can make sense of that is by just. And this is a Twitter question. I didn't know. Yeah, who asks this thing was Bruce Hunt?
Is that it? Or something I'll find. Yeah, I'll find out. But I mean, the best I can do is to make sense of it as to connect it to something else.
So they dismiss the flu girl saying, oh, you can go entertain the women folk, right? The men are here to speak. They were going to make speeches, right? But music is for women.
That's a more feat thing to do. So they're kind of getting down to business. That's why Addisist, or Ferndadisist. Oh, Addisist, yeah.
Yeah. So and that's obviously a bit of a joke, right? Deetima comes in. So women do come back in very importantly.
Certainly, generation becomes very, very important, much later in Socrates' speech. I'd also just appoint to another thing about it last time. Only two people refer to this dialogue as a symposium, health of bodies and Plato. So the rest of the characters seem to think they're just hanging out as soon as they are.
But in Lucis sense, just kind of a gathering. But perhaps there is a kind of intoxication or kind of musicality behind it. Poetry, obviously, is a big theme here. But everybody's kind of taken with themselves a bit in this.
So I would just say that maybe it's an ironic dismissal. The flu girl's gone, but the sort of pleasant self-forgetting is not. Is this a dumb question? It's bothered me for years with this dialogue.
But just drawing on my own experience, when one is hung over, it's the last thing I want to do is philosophize. So I just don't understand that. Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question.
I guess they are still drinking, right? I don't think they think they're philosophizing. OK. But usually, so this kind of contest, I'm thinking now specifically about, say, graduate school, or what the three of us would do if we were to get together, people would drink.
And then we would start talking philosophy. And then as the night wears on, we may be given over to these grand eloquent speeches. I'm trying not to do one another. But this is not like the talk of a hung over crowd.
I don't know. No, imagine being maybe at a gathering with all these well-regarded and kind of illustrious Athenians. These are like the cream of the crop of Athens. So maybe if you were hanging out with these types, this is what they would do.
This is a different kind of crowd, maybe. Yeah. Maybe that's the simple answer. I'll accept that.
But maybe Greg can give us just about the choice of the speech. There is already in this beginning part an element of gratification. Eric Simic is maybe gratifying, Phaedris. And Phaedris in turn has just said, I will submit to you, Eric Simic is because you're a doctor.
Right? So I submit to your order. So there's a little bit of a playful of the authority of science and the authority of what a beloved might demand of you. So I think those two elements are certainly going to come back later.
So maybe that's kind of a playful introduction there. But the fact of that remains that though people speak of arrows and maybe give them a high place, like key seated and premedities do in Phaedris' speech, there isn't a lot of hinting of arrows. And that's kind of odd fact. And they want to correct for that, sort of correct for, pasting discussions or failures of the poets in the past.
Yeah, and I guess before we launch into the substance of what Phaedris' eulogy is constant appeal to the Floridians, it's a lot of them. Greg or Alex, can you tell us a little bit about, I mean, Phaedris has the honor of having a platonic dialogue named after him. So that's the way he stands out from not all of the crowd, but he has the kind of visibility in the platonic corpus that others eulogizing don't have. So Greg, I mean, I'm not asking, say, to tie the dialogue that goes by his name to you.
I'm not, don't tie the Phaedris' symposium, but we know about Phaedris. How does he appear in the dialogue named after him? I guess one of the things, like as you mentioned, yeah, he's in the Phaedris. He appears to be a beloved.
He's thought to be good looking. Alex should correct anything that I say that he takes issue whether it's wrong. I would say as we read this dialogue, just for lack of better word, the symposium, there are all these dichotomies, right? The people who can't drink.
The people who are lovers, which means they're sort of pursuing someone else and those who are the beloved, which means they're the pursued. Young versus old. Phaedris actually occurs, I think last time we mentioned a possible companion dialogue to this at the Patagoras. And Phaedris is in the Patagoras, where he seems to be a very young man, sort of teenagers and like that.
So here in the symposium, he said to be young too, but this would have been 10 to 15 years later. And so he's, I mean, he's still young, but he would have been what, late 20s, something like that, which seems a little odd. I don't know if we want to say that some of their late 20s. I guess I want to say that some of their late 20s is young, but maybe you guys don't think of that, John.
We'll see in just a moment what kind of guy he is. He seems to me to be, we all know this type, right? Sort of very pretty type, the type that people love. And a certain kind of personality sort of develops.
These people who are impressed by themselves, I think they're beautiful, that have others sort of heap praise and onto them. I guess that's about all I have, Alex. I don't know what you. Yeah, I mean, one thing I'd add is that he appears in both dialogues to be a kind of a literary guy, right?
He's kind of go ahead. He doesn't seem very good at reading though. I mean, his quotations aren't very thoughtful. I mean, just as a quotation of Hesiod on arrows, he leaves out the next line, which is about deceptivaruses and how it makes your thoughts go awry.
You know, it's the same thing with Parmenides as well. So he seems to be kind of taking with quotes or sort of interesting speeches, but not necessarily delving that deeply into him. He's certainly like that in the phages. I actually think there that was intentional.
As the beloved, he doesn't want to highlight the fact that his lovers might not be in their right mind when they do their love tricks for him. That could be the case, yeah. Well, then he'd be suppressing all the letters. That's an interesting thought.
I mean, we can say that when we get to it. I can go and get a little bit of a refill on him. One more thought just on the phages dialogue. There's kind of three dollars I think that fit together on love and beauty.
It's a hippies major. We know last time the last words of the hippies major, the same as the first words of the symposium. It's kind of indication one comes out to the other. Hippies is not self-reflective enough, and symposium is a bit more self-reflective.
And then I think the phages at least conceptually if not also temporally comes after this. In as much as phages and Socrates share a kind of distinctive feature, they're both seem to be more beloveds than anything else. Socrates pursues youths, but he seems more to be the object of love and they both kind of stand outside of Arizona and look at it a little bit from the outside at least. And so both are a bit taken or interested in the way in which love leads people to do things that are against their parent initial self-interest or can lead to a no-blink behavior.
So I think there's an important link between the two of them, but yeah, that's about all I have on phages. So yeah, maybe great now you can go into the structure of the speech or something. I mean, just I think that for listeners, one stumbling block may be, as I'm listening to you guys talk, the oddness of the language that we're using, but we don't speak in these categories. It's not commonplace to describe the girl boy you're chasing after it's your beloved.
The love it is the guy you're crushing on, right? I don't know, maybe that's not very good. No, it's fine. Is that better?
Yeah. Now it's crushing. I can't sit in the wall of pitching Wu in my day, my friend. Pitching Wu.
To your main stage. To your main stage. Good gracious, Greg. Is that the one who was the one who was the one who?
They caught the Wu. I've never heard that you're putting us on. I'm not putting you on. We courted.
Were you necked? Did you neck on? I don't know, I was only like after a very long time. Yeah.
You haven't noticed in all movies make love means to just make an advance. That's right. You'll see movies from the 40s. They go to, you made love to me last night.
I'm like, I missed that scene. What happened in the hell? It just meant something completely different. Well, I like in old movies how the sexual act, it's like they kiss him and the screen goes dark and then you're like, okay, I know what's going on.
That's kind of how it happens for me. What happens in your shed in your own time is none of our business. So you want to, and then to speak maybe that would help. Do you want to watch?
It's an outline of favorite of speech. It's very simple. Yeah. Yeah.
What's we're just talking about. Maybe the reason we're cutting up so much is because it's two pages basically. We're doing a really short part of the symposium and the phages of speeches about roughly two pages. It's speech falls into these three pieces.
The first is just these three pillars of authority. Then you get his argument and then you get three examples meant to sort of illustrate his argument. The three appeals to authority, two of the three are really important. Greek figures.
So, can you see the Greek poet, author of works and days and also Theogony and Parmenides, the priest of Christ philosopher. Or whom I've clicked on the dialogue is named. I think you know that dialogue fairly well. Alex.
I hope so. Otherwise I should be laughed out of the business. In a way, I do agree, Greg, that at first you, one reads the speech and you think the fetus is kind of dumb. And if you're really reading it, trying to extract philosophically what's going on, there's not a lot.
It's like this appeal to the ancestral and kind of what you should call it. But what he's saying, I think, is reminiscent. I think of how arrows might commonly be eulogized by any tongue, dick or hairy on the street. Like it does make sense, this appeal to the ancestral.
To at least begin in this manner. Right? Like these speeches have to begin somewhere. I think just begin to specifically, it would have bogged down the discussion.
So in a way, I think the question for me is what incision point, I mean, what the way that, what does Phaedrus's speech open up, and this will be the subject of later episodes, but by beginning, by Plato beginning in this manner with this speech, right? What does this allow him to do for the rest of the dialogue? If that makes sense. Sure.
I mean, Alex should jump in here. But to me, one of the main themes, I think Alex addressed it in the last episode that Socrates is being ready for a kind of battle, perhaps. And if it's a battle, it's a battle with the poets, and this is a contest for wisdom. So who's more wise Socrates or on one hand, or Agton or Erysophan, on the other hand, the two poets?
Well, here in the very first speech, you have this very serious question that's going to recur that's raised by Phaedrus. I don't even think intentionally for us were. Right? He quotes a poet and then he quotes a philosopher.
And he quotes them as though they were agreeing because they more or less agree. They both agree that he was one of the first gods. But that apparent agreement actually masks potentially a much deeper agreement. Everyone says that Eros was in fact the first god, and the other says that he was the second or third or the second god created, which would be a pretty significant difference first, you know, as that Wilferm, who was the first or last.
And so that's a big difference there between Eros being first or second. And so I think to Alex's point that Phaedrus doesn't seem to understand fully the implications of his quotations, but he does set this up. I mean, look, he's the informenities. And these are fundamentally different understandings of the cosmos, it seems to me.
Was the beginning chaotic or was the beginning harmonious? I think so. One thing I'd add to that. So chaos in Hesiod's Greek seems to mean something like...
Maybe we should read the quote first time. Yeah, so Hesiod says chaos first of all came to be then thereafter, and that's just the 160th line, then it says then thereafter a broad-breasted earth, always the safe seat of all and Eros. The fourth god then is Tartarus just to be clear because there's four gods. One comes to be which is chaos, which actually means in Hesiod something closer to like a chasm or a gap that's the way it's used between what ends up being between earth and Tartarus.
And Eros seems to be a principle of unity there. But I think in keeping with the chaos is the fact that Hesiod just begins that chaos came to be. We don't know from what? We don't know if it even has a cause.
It doesn't seem like there's an intelligible cause to things. But then when you go to Parmenides, first of all, a device eros. And the word for device there is related to the word for mind, one of the words for mind in Greek, natus. And so there's a strong sense that there's an intelligible reason that Eros is introduced there.
So I think that would be one version of the deeper disagreement would be whether the generation of things is spontaneous and irrational and inexplicable or whether it's actually rational. Just a little key on this for Parmenides at least, that they're kind of two parts of the poem. One starts with a chariot driven by Thumos by angry spiritedness and the second part has Eros at the center. And what seems to be at stake is whether there's any kind of rational order to things behind it all.
And so this is really central to Parmenides thought, I think is to what extent our passions, erotic or passionate concern for justice, have any outlet in the larger order of things. Well, they're just simply misguided. These are the big big questions that features is not attuned to. Even if these are tuned to the problem of Eros as you were suggesting earlier Greg.
And I just amplified that too. So I just piggybacking on what you said, maybe just a slightly different spin on it. Is the world governed by willful gods who are not bound in any way? Or is the whole intelligible?
Right? I mean, that seems to be a fundamental part of between them as well. Maybe I didn't summarize that so well. And just to suggest that this is not arbitrary.
Aristotle ends up making the same point about Hesiod in metaphysics beta. He seems to be attuned to a big problem of whether imperishable things can have some sort of, whether gods can come out of nothing or what origin they might have, whether the universe is eternal or not, which is essentially what's at stake here. How do you think it's come to be? Well, at its rational or not.
Maybe we should move past this point too. So yeah, just very quickly then. So the highlight, someone who recognizes that these are the two fundamental alternatives, but stresses their harmony and doesn't do the fundamental tension between them. Yeah.
So another odd thing that points forward to Eryximicus here, just with this opening part is that here we see Eros having a place within, let's say, theology and a place within cosmology. And then it immediately switches to not the whole of all things, but to the political, how Eros has a really important function within politics and really primarily just within war. Right? And but any kind of noble sacrifice, Eros is crucially important.
Eryximicus is going to give Eros a really strong psychological, sorry, cosmological place. So Phages is kind of touching on that, but then leaving it aside, it seems like, like I think David suggested, this was just a kind of appeal to authority and appeal to antiquity in a way, but then also now speaking from his perspective as a beloved, what is Eros doing that he thinks is remarkable in the sort of context of ordinary human life, where we're recognizable, phenomenon of Eros. And specifically, Alex, you mean that he moves from philosophically something general to the specific examples of say Achilles, Achilles, or Phias, is that what you're talking about? Yeah, shift.
Yeah, and it would suggest to me that he's not altogether aware of what exactly he's just tapped into. And for listeners, can you describe what's going on? The shift, Alex, specifically, I guess, with Achilles, he gives the example of Patrick Lee's and their love. Yeah.
So the next stage of the speech and Greg, jump in here if you have something. So are you dividing the speech into two three parts? Three parts. Yeah.
So the first part is these quotes are these authorities. He's the impermanities of his allows. We briefly mentioned, you're not talking about that. I was surprised that the third person he quotes is not Herodotus.
It's someone we don't really know very much about. I don't know if this is worth falling on, but it seems like, I mean, this guy, I mean, who's a lattice was an historian of sorts prior to Herodotus, and maybe not as impressive. I don't know what to make of it. Maybe if you want to move on to the next point, go ahead.
Well, just on that, that's sort of probably the biggest kind of quasi-historical figure before Herodotus is Hecateus and Herodotus mentions him a couple of times. But coming out of like, he sees mythic genealogies, you started getting stricter genealogies that weren't so much concerned with the gods, but really trying to lay out the, you know, where people came from and growing out of this somehow almost miraculously, Herodotus is histories, which do characteristically go many years back, but are focused on far more ordinary things and less, I don't know what the word is, but less high-falutin things, right? He's just trying to talk about how people live, right, as opposed to gods. Yeah, or how the crocodile made peace with the bird that hangs out on his nose.
Just normal stuff like that is what Herodotus is all about. That's fair. That's fair. There's some bizarre things in there.
Those four women in the temple. My favorite is if you go really out above Scythia, there's gold in the desert, but to get the gold, you have to bring three camels because you'll get chased by giant camel eating ants. Oh, yeah. You have to let one go so that they can eat the camel, but that is really nice gold out there.
Yeah, yeah. I believe all of that, actually. The answer to the size of dogs or something like that, they're pretty big. Yeah.
Anyways, should we come into the argument? Go to the argument, Alex. Greg, what do you want? Got something on this?
I don't really have anything to do. Sure. So I'll just jump to his summary, then. This is around what?
178 C to D. So he's given his three-pills to authority. And now he's talking about, he's praising love and what's it good for? And it seems to be good for inspiring in the lover something like a kind of virtue that the lover wants to sort of be impressive in the eyes of his beloved, in the eyes of his father, Tom Rass, but especially his beloved.
And so this is around 179 A to B. Insofar as love seems to inspire in people something like virtue, this makes them similar to the one who is best by nature. And so, can you get some examples? I want to give examples about how his whole argument is that you're willing to sacrifice anything for your loved and you're going to go beyond.
You'll never do anything shameful in the eyes of your beloved. And therefore, it's good. I guess I would like to read just a section here at 178 C. And Phaedrus says, as he he eros is the oldest.
So he's saying he's the oldest guy. We have him as the cause of the greatest good. So we're going to a greater good for someone to have from youth onward than a good lover and for a lover of a loved. I only point out that, Saturday, I know he's your intellectual godfather, but the good lover there, I think, obscures what's going on just a little bit because the Greek actually implies that he's some of the lovers useful.
And so I think that here, what kind of a person is Phaedrus? I think Plato's trying to give us six accounts of different kinds of people, different human types. And what about Phaedrus? He's really good looking and people love him in particular, Eric Simicus loves him.
And I think what you're seeing here is a little bit of his soul being revealed to us. What he likes about love is that it's kind of useful for him. I think we have a type that Kanye taught us all about so many years ago in his imminent wisdom, gold diggers. There's something to Phaedrus.
There's something to Phaedrus that he realizes that it's useful to have people in love with you. They'll do all kinds of things for you. They'll even risk their life for you. And I think he's impressed by that.
But I think he's also a little bit of my impression, a little bit like what's wrong with these things. They don't think they're willing to risk their lives and die for me. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, it's had a lover. She walked 500 miles for me and then 500 more. And I said, that's too many miles. All right, guys.
You know, there's a kind of mundane kind of ordinary, you know, we all have friends who they fall in love and they all of a sudden like everything that the person they're in love with it to get the band's t-shirt. This is a very middle school thing, but they start watching the same shows. They change all their interests. The whole personality changes.
So I think one of the interesting and a problematic features of his account also is that, okay, the lover wants the beloved. So in order to make the beloved love him back, he starts adopting things that the lover actually loves. You know, so it's like me, you know, if I want my wife to like me, I'll put on a Greg McBrayer mask or something because that's her true love. But you know, you know, and so there's an attempt to become loved by means of something else.
And so, and this often happens between lovers and beloved. They make them stand to a higher standard. Woody Allen's movie, Love and Dies. The whole plot of the movie, he finally gets the girl.
It's his cousin, but he gets the girl and then she says, well, I won't love you unless you kill Napoleon. And he's like, I had to kill Napoleon. And then he dies as a result. And she's like, I love you forever.
And he's like, well, you know, a fact that that does for me now, right? Because I'm dead. But that's exactly the problem here is that he says, oh, well, you rather die than be seen doing anything shameful. Well, if all that's really inclining this lover is to have the beloved love them back, then that is kind of off the table.
So I think there's something inadequate, even for making sense of noble self sacrifice. I think there's something a little bit missing, which is that I think the lover also really wants to be that thing, right? That they actually do want that. They start to love that thing, precisely because this person loves that.
So which I think is interesting, maybe very important, transformative quality of the arrows, which is that you might not be interested in being noble and battle, but maybe people you care about or you really find admirable, they want to. And so you adopt that for yourself, which is I think a deeper sort of arrows that points to maybe a higher standard that morality might be dependent, not just useful as the age of the age of the age of the age of the age of the age of the age of the age. There's another part that I kind of want to track on in historians that if you're in love, you'll never do anything shameful for the sake of your beloved or you don't want to be seen. My own experience was actually people behave quite shameless sometimes in pursuit of love.
In fact, this might be when people do some of the most more ridiculous things, like standing out outside of a girl's window, holding a boombox, playing what's that song anyway? You know what I'm talking about. You guys know what I'm talking about. California love?
No, no, no. That's it. That's it. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
We were promising our listeners some stories about cats. Anyway, I guess my point is that he thinks that only in ogling, it only leads you to do these things and you're never doing anything shameful. And I would just venture to say that we actually see people do certain assets all the time. I mean, during the pandemic, I've watched nothing but Jerry's bringer shows and it seems to be filled with stories of people who do just the most shameful things for their beloved.
And I think this is Socrates' contradict. This actually directly on that point, he says people sleep outside of the ancient Greek version of holding a boombox. He's just sleep on the porch outside of your beloved's house. It's cusic in your eyes.
Is that it? Anyway, but that's the Socratic example. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think there's a good count on example to that. Obviously, he has this effect if it's probably dead real. Peter Gabriel, that's right. But you know, Eros is also very personal.
You know, it's not nearly political and it can be co-opted to a political end and he's right about that. But it obviously has a personal or selfish aspect to it at times that can lead you to kind of flat all conventions, right? And do all sorts of atrocious things for the sake of a beloved. But one thing I think that's very important about his speech is that, you know, because he's writing from this perspective of the beloved, he's a bit more critical.
He sees that there's something confusing here or something with wondering over puzzling over that Eros is not just simply this wonderful, good thing. Well, wonders whether the reason he was just according to me now, maybe the reason he kept bothering Eros, Eryximicus about this is that, you know, we're nobody praises Eros. There must be something that's so wonderful about it. Maybe that's maybe Eryximicus misinterpreted.
But he seems to think there's something interesting and very useful about it, but also something very odd. Yeah. So I'm not sure exactly. It does seem to be associated with a deep kind of pain or can in any event.
Yeah. Deep longing. So it's just that's like a deep thirst or deep hunger is kind of painful. And the more you hunger or the more you thirst, the more satisfying it is.
Yeah. And that regard, I don't know why you're creating anything like that. Well, whatever you associate Eros with pain, I think of David Barr, but we don't do his personal activities. We haven't even gotten the dirtiest speech and we're already having problems.
No, we're so, yeah, we're done for it. Alex, I'd like to hear from you, talk to me about David was asking about this just one ago. So we've got the three appeals to authority. We've kind of got the arguments.
And then we have the three examples which are not unambiguous in my understanding. Yeah. I struggle with these. You guys have any thoughts on any of them?
It's not like David has thoughts on maybe the Achilles example. I have one thought on Orpheus that just because it connects to what I said just now. So just very quickly, it's three examples of people who were willing to undertake trials for the second ever loved. Is that a simple?
Yeah. Okay. So of the three examples, the middle one Orpheus, he's interesting because he's kind of the weakest example he admits. And the weakness is that well, he actually doesn't risk his life.
He tries to go to Hades alive and to get his wife back, right? He would die. And as the story goes right, he's granted to bring her back, but he can't look at her until he's out. And then he at the last minute he turns around.
And which is interesting because he's talking about you don't want to be seen by the beloved. And here, well, you want to see the beloved and he's not willing to risk his life because at the end of the day, Eros love does on some level want gratification here and now especially a sexual desire, which seems to be in the address his mind. And Orpheus kind of, I think gives him the lie to the other examples saying, I don't want to die, right? I want my wife back.
You know, I want to have I want to have my beloved, but I'm of this world. This is a worldly desire for me, right? Which is I think one of the difficulties with this account is that he can't make sense of the fact that, well, if you die, you can't be reciprocated. You don't get the beloved.
I guess the thing I wanted we're getting closer to the end of our time. We're not quite there yet. Can I bring up something that confused me about the very end of the speech? Alex or did you regret wish to say something further?
No, no, no. It's the last line. This is how I assert that Aros is the oldest, most honorable, and most competent of the gods with regard to the acquisition of virtue and happiness by human beings, both when living and dead. This is a tremendous conclusion for the capacity of evidence.
Like, adding things in, like the most, Aros is the most competent of the gods. I don't even know what the hell that means to be a competent god. Maybe I might have missed something in the speech. What gets me is the idea of having happiness when you're dead.
No, no, right, right. No, no, no. I'm not aware of the gods. I think it's...
Say that again, Greg. You're not aware. How old the acquisition of virtue was the other thing that stood out? Yeah, when you're dead.
Sorry if I'm cutting out. Sorry if I'm cutting out. No, when you're dead. And I...
So it's this... I don't know if you guys have a dramatic account of why he concludes. This is a tremendous note to conclude on, given the lack of evidence. So I'll just say to break this up a little bit, competent of the gods with regard to the acquisition of virtue and happiness, ignoring that human beings are dead.
That makes sense on a certain level because he's saying that Aros leads the lover to model the virtues in order to win the love of the beloved in return, right? It's the band's t-shirt that you put on so that the girl you have a crush on likes you back. It's the one living in dead part that's wrong. And it makes me think, and I haven't thought about this at all, but going back to what you were saying earlier, Greg, about these quotes that there is this question of the role of the gods.
And if this is to work out, if Aros is to be ultimately satisfying to the lover, even when dead that they're going to be content and Woody Allen in that movie, right? He's like a ghost. That's floating by. And then he dances away with death at the end.
If this is to be actually satisfying, don't you need something like an afterlife or gods? Who will reward this sort of behavior that you could be happy even when dead? There's a lot of mention of Hades. I don't think this is completely baseless.
No, I think you're absolutely right. I would say it in general. And this will become clear in Socrates' speech, while even Aristotle needs a speech, how connected it. I can't believe it.
I can't believe it. Our thoughts on our hopes and beliefs and desires for love are connected with our hopes and desires about death and the afterlife and gods. And it's going to be deeply connected. Okay, but moving forward, maybe because we've got a little extra time after Phaedris' speech, they leave out, it's said that a few speeches are left out, right?
Before that too, he says that there's a demon's didn't record every speech. Didn't remember every speech. And they're going in a circle. Yeah, they're going in a circle.
So this is a wrap. So this sounds like a drag. I mean, it just sounds like a drag. It's just reclining.
You're hung over. Some of the people, the speeches, you don't aren't even recorded because they were terrible. So, yeah. Well, not of interest to him.
So I'll just point out one thing. So he said that Phaedris made some such speech. So this is kind of a paraphrase, which is maybe the boldness of the conclusion comes out. And after Phaedris, there were some others that he scarcely could recall.
He passed them over and told the Puzane's the speech. Now, we know Aristodemus is sitting next to Eric Simikis, right? And there's a kind of weird thing that we never hear what Aristodemus said. He's in the circle.
So he's missing without drawing attention to the fact that he's mixing. Now, there's a, when we get to Eric Simikis and Aristophanes, there's a weird thing about order. Aristophanes is supposed to speak before, but he gets the hiccups. So Eric Simikis goes next.
So they skip one, then they go back to Aristophanes and they do the skip over Aristodemus, which is Aristodemus leaves himself out because Socrates' speech kind of exposes his own as kind of dumb. I'll say either way, Aristodemus is negligible. I think that's important of inclusion to bring in these primarily useful as a kind of intermediary or a diamond who's communicating the speeches of these great figures down to us mere mortals. Yeah, we will, when this all concludes, have to attack, can't recall if we talked about it in the last episode.
Give some account of why we suspect Plato uses him the way he does, instead of just reporting it. Look, can either of you, Greg, you in particular recall how Xenophon sets up his version of the symposium? Is it with these caveats? Now, it's a tale told kind of twice over.
No, it's actually Alex and I are reading it with some friends right now. And lovers are just normal friends. It's a mixed group. Ooh.
I love it, mostly. I like it. So in stark contrast, Plato's symposium where you get zero evidence of what all Xenophon stresses in the opening lines that he was present at the symposium at the future counting. He sort of inserts himself very conspicuously into his account of a different drinking party.
Oh, it's different. Yeah, it's not the same drinking party. Oh, okay. And in some ways it appears to be a much less even lame or part of this.
I think it actually is a little more amusing. I think Socrates lets his hair down a little bit more so to speak. He might even get a little drunk. David would have liked it.
There's drinking. There's a little dancing. You know, it's everything David expects. They do not send the flu girls away.
I don't know. Should we go to the mailbag? We had a pretty sparse mailbag. Everybody thought we were just reading the Phaedrus.
Ooh, that's not helpful. No, it's not. And it's a poor reflection on the intelligence of our audience. I'm sorry to say.
Can I also, but just pass on him by the way. So Xenophon stresses that he was at this party, but the internal evidence is that he would have been either like four or eight years old. And so he probably was not at the dreamy party that he says to them. He's a mature eight year old who's always kind of able to handle it.
Old is. We have a couple questions from Bruce Hunt. He says, is there a fine distinction between love and honor? At first, honors aren't as good as love.
But when he says love is good because it arouses honorable ambition and the potential for being exceptionally shamed, which interesting. I think it relates to what we were saying earlier where it seems like he tries to make arrows sport into the useful or the good as of the useful. And finally, it seems like it doesn't work. It does actually make sense of noble self sacrifice, which requires some higher principle.
Might be the gods, ultimately. But honor would be maybe one thing. One small point, sorry to go by, but Socrates and Xenophon, suppose he actually makes a similar con reduction of the good to the useful. It's not exactly the same, but it's very close.
So strange coincidence, maybe. Do we have, I think we have another one. We asked one by the Addisist earlier. Addisist.
We have an impossible question by Mr. Cleveland. I think we talked about that though. What is the significance of the dispute between Hesioda Parmenides at 178B, the metaphysics alpha four, who is right?
How do you know? I can't answer the last two, obviously, but I think we know the- Oh, just making appeal to the ancestral Alex. Yeah. Well, Hesioda is the older, so he holds the same.
Then again, Hesioda himself says that his music might tell lies like the truth. Only evidence he has that he ever saw the music as all of staff, like a chef and stuff. It's like meeting up this lighter and saying, I saw him views. Don't you see?
They gave me this lighter. That's a big thing. He said he never rubbed another man's rhubarb. That's right.
That's in the works and days. What were you going to say Greg? I don't know. Nothing.
Thomas is an interesting rephrasing of this. He says, what does Phaedra think the significance of this dispute is, why does he think Parmenides is right? Well, I mean, he's studying with Parmenides because it's intelligible. That makes sense because Eros offers him a kind of tangible good, right?
But then he's confused because there's also this other thing to death. I don't know. That's it. Are we done?
We have a lot of stuff. So we'll meet again and we'll meet again and do who's next to Eros Thomas. He's the most devoted and kindest listener. He is our most devoted fan.
He is high. He is smart. He's smart. I'm just saying we don't know what he does on that Harley as he rides to middle America.
That's the end of the show. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and listen. Tell your grandmas about the new thing. Thank you, everyone.