Welcome back to the new Thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always is my good friend Alex. Pretty how are you? I'm doing well David.
How are you? And well, I'm excited. I want to report we have our first sponsor. Do you hear about this?
No, no. Yeah. It's our first sponsorship deal. The company contacted me last week.
I wanted to keep it between us. They've been listening to our show and I know that we exaggerate these things for listeners that I'm overweight. It's not true, but it's slightly true that you're as bald as a pool queue and that's not true, but it's slightly true and that Greg is old like a hundred years old and that's all true. So adult depends, contacted me and they said, are you interested in first of all, just some free swag?
It's like, well, what's swag from you guys? Yeah, that sounds kind of cool. Like a tote bag. Is it the athletic cut?
I only need the athletic cut. Yeah. And so it's this new, well, as you know, Greg, because you long, long time user of the product, they're thick. They're like an inch thick and then when you go potty, when you go potty, it really balloons.
And so this is for the old man who's still kind of supportive. So they sent us a package and we get $5 an episode, but it's all because of Greg. So how are you doing, Greg? I'm doing great, Joan.
It reminds me of the old joke. You know, what kind of underwear you wear, boxers or briefs depends. Speaking of old people, did you guys hear the story of the last Civil War widow died? Yeah.
Yeah. So this, this, this, she married a 90, 95 year old Civil War veteran. Oh no. She was taking care of him.
She was 17. She was acting as a nurse and he said, well, marry me and that way I will pay you in what's basically a Civil War pension. And so she gets the Civil War pension as long as she's married to him and she just died probably like a hundred or something like that. And it's really, it's pretty incredible.
I mean, to think that she's still getting, I don't know what a Civil War pension is, it's probably like, you know, jars of Alaskas or something like that. But yeah, the last Civil War wife of a Civil War veteran died. I thought that she survived by her husband, Greg McBrayer. Yeah.
She's a five-year-old. He died in 1937 and then she just, you know, but I thought that she never went after the pension. No, she got that pension. She never remarried and she never revealed this.
Listeners, I hope you're still with us. The topic of the show is not Civil War veterans and their spouses tonight. That's a different show, a different episode. What are we talking about tonight?
Arrows. Arrows? Today is Aristophanes speech in Plato's Symposium. This is episode five, I think.
How far? Never. Tink saga on the book. This should be actually wonderful.
It's fine. It's over. It's fine. It's over.
I can halfway understand. Is that a joke, halfway? Anyway, sorry. Yeah.
Have you seen the movie, Headwig in the Angry Inch? No. I think I've asked you guys this. Look it up.
It's probably not your cup of tea, but I think it's a retelling joke. Aristophanes speech, I think. But that's a do a dry means. I've heard that too.
Yeah. What's going on, Alex? Remind us what came before? Yeah.
So this is the fourth speech, right? First we had Phaedrus who spoke from the perspective of the beloved. Then we had Pazaneus who spoke from the perspective of the lover and he created a distinction in arrows between high and low. Eric Simicus next spoke from the perspective of the cosmologist slash doctor.
Well, he's a doctor, but he spoke about the cosmic role of arrows and he also made a distinction between low and high. And now we get Aristophanes who is not supposed to be in this order. He was changed from the original order. He was supposed to speak before Eric Simicus, but he was changed by chance.
He happened to get the hiccups and he had a curious hiccups. Eric Simicus spoke in the meantime. And what was interesting and we comment on there was, well, the whole time Eric Simicus is speaking of the orderliness and beauty of the cosmos and the human body. We have this disorderly bodily function going on in the background.
Aristophanes hiccups and coughs and gargles and all that. And Aristophanes remarks, hey, well, don't you think this is a sign that things aren't really that orderly and beautiful? And it turns out that this is something that Eric Simicus cannot accommodate for. So Aristophanes is a signals a crucial shift.
He is a poet, right? He's very good at speaking in a way that the other speakers have not been. And he also is going to speak about, we could say, the lower end of arrows or where comes from that's maybe not as pretty and as organized and lovely as we expect. I should remark, I was supposed to say this every time, but this is the better daddy translation is what we're using.
And he speaks, starts where? What is it? 189A? Yeah, 189A.
So you mentioned that Aristophanes was supposed to speak before Eric Simicus, but is now speaking afterwards. I think in the last episode, we sort of comically portrayed him hiccuping and then with a large sneeze at the end. And before Aristophanes goes off to his speech, he sort of speaks to Eric Simicus, who says I'm glad you finally stopped hiccuping. And Aristophanes says something that I, you know, I've read this a hundred times probably, but I just caught a joke that I didn't really realize before.
Aristophanes after he finished hiccuping says, it has stopped the hiccuping that is, to be sure. Not however, before sneezing has been applied to it. So I wonder at the orderly decency of the body, desiring such noises and gargling as sneezes. From my hiccuping stopped right away as soon as I applied the sneeze to it.
And I realized that I think that Aristophanes is making an erotic joke here actually, that there's kind of, isn't it strange that the body desires weird noises and gargling and weird sort of noises and faces and these kinds of things. And then remind of an old joke that Eddie Murphy made about, pardon me listeners, about people having sex and how the last thing you ever actually want to see is people having sex because they look kind of disgusting actually when they're doing it. So there's this strange way in which the body actually looks quite, I mean, like think about beautiful statues of people, right? They're sort of still, imagine them in the act like with the hiccuping, for example, and then all of a sudden having a massive sneeze, but actually look kind of gross.
I think you heard a hearful for the first time Greg sneezes and hiccup's during sex. Anyway, we should probably remind folks who Aristophanes is. Tell us Greg, who is Aristophanes? Well, you mentioned that he's the God that the three of us pray to.
First of all, he's my right. Most importantly, yeah, he's responsible for the name of our little early God. He's the God of the new thinkery. Yeah, the dog and pony show that we run here, the new thinkery, which comes from the clouds, which we'll talk about in just a moment.
So he's a comic poet. I think that what we're seeing, the first three speeches seem to be grouped together and then the next three speeches seem to be grouped together as far as they seem to be elevated. We seem to be moving up a stage. We're not going to get Aristophanes, the greatest comic poet from Athens, and we're going to get the greatest argument, the greatest philosopher from Athens.
And Agathon, who may not be the greatest trigidian, at least most recently, has won the Oscars or whatever. So he's at least at that moment at the height of tragic fame. And so we get a separation of sorts, the first three speeches and the second three speeches and Aristophanes marks that, I mean, it's almost an incentive scene to me. So he's a comic poet.
And I think in line with that, these three speeches seem more self-aware than the others. The last three were kind of like, they're kind of justifying their own way of life. And I think that could be held true also for Aristophanes and Agathon, but they're a bit more aware of that fact and playing with that fact. Yeah, I think that's right.
I'm going to skip around in our little review run of show order here. But for me, this speech, I think this speech is particularly important because it seems to capture better than any other speech in this dialogue, the phenomenon of love, and the way that almost everybody recognizes it. Right? We're going to get into this moment.
David's going to give us an overview of Aristophanes's speech. But I think when most people speak about, if listeners have been following us and they heard Eric Simic as a speech, I imagine that there weren't a lot of people like, yeah, that is my experience of love. And if there are some phaguses out there, it's fine. Maybe there are people who can sort of identify with them.
That's not really love. It's sort of using your sexual attractiveness to your own private profit. That's also not love. So Aristophanes's speech to me seems to be the most important or the most, I'll even go ahead and say, I think the most beautiful speech in this dialogue, because it seems to capture most fully the human account of what love is, that we're going to find our other half.
If you've seen Jeremy Guire, you complete me or all these, you're going to find your soul mate, all this kind of language, the everyday language that people speak of, what you don't like soul mates, David? No, I just thought that reference was. Which one? Jeremy Guire?
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a popular, it's a popular turn of phrase and this is a very popular speech. Right. Well, let me ask you.
We can all be, you know, high flying cosmopolitan's like you, David. But I think just as a whole, Greg was saying, of all the passages in Plato, this is one of the most famous that people talk about, right? People talk about platonic love, but then people don't really know what that means, aside from you love someone, you don't sleep with them. But when people talk about the most beautiful speeches on love in Plato, people always remember Aristophanes and all sorts of readings about love, because it does speak to the ordinary and most popular understanding of what love is.
Yeah. Can I ask you on Greg a question? Do you guys both find when you teach this text that this is the speech that students respond in a mostly animated way to is this? Do they get the biggest charge out of this speech?
Undoubtedly, in my view, Alex, you the same? Well, unfortunately, one semester I ever go to the same to pause and use the speech. It was really ugly. But yeah, it's really ugly.
Bar was your student. That semester wasn't it? No, I look, this is the one. Yeah, this is the one that I think I can get students, you know, when they're reading Eryxemachus and Pausanias and Phages, they're like, okay, I get it.
I can understand a little bit what's going on there. But this one, right, this speaks to their hopes and their dreams and like what they actually think that they want out of love. I think more of them, the other speeches for me. They want to find their soulmate.
They think that there's someone out there for them. They feel incomplete until they found something. How many weddings have you been to? I mean, mine alone, we got a bunch.
But you go to them and this is the language people use at weddings, right? That's right. Yeah. Just a couple of small points maybe before we move on.
I think so we mentioned that Eryxemachus was the comic, probably the most, no, probably probably two. He was the most famous Athenian comic playwright. And he wrote a number of plays. I think he's the only comic playwright who's played, survive and whole for us.
But I'll just point out, too, listeners don't need to know them all. And I think that the clouds and the frogs are two plays of his. They're particularly important for the purposes of understanding the symposium. Strauss points this and his lectures on the symposium.
So I'll just quickly speak about the frogs and I'll let Alex speak about the clouds and why these two plays, among others, seem to be the most important for our purposes today. In the frogs, there's a contest between Euripides and Essulus for the title of best tragic poet. And in that play, he makes Dionysus the God of Wine, the judge of that contest. And ultimately, the way that Dionysus decides which one of the poets is best is by asking them how they feel about house varieties, which is a weird sort of thing.
So, house of vides is the character we'll encounter later in the symposium. So do they believe asks Dionysus that house of vides is participation in politics is salutary or harmful. Euripides is unwilling to accept house of vides and Essulus is willing to accept him. Dionysus crowns Essulus, the winner of the competition of best Trigidian based on his political decision to accept house of vides.
So I only point this out because in the frogs, there's a contest between these two poets regarding who's the best poet, who's most wise, and the decision is made with respect to how they feel about house of vides. House of vides is the character in this dialogue, as I mentioned, he's a character in the frogs. As we saw at the beginning, there was a brief intimation that there are some sort of contests going on in this dialogue for wisdom. Agathon, you may remember, has just won a big prize for being a tragic poet.
When else of vides comes, I don't want to force you to do much, but else of vides will come in quite drunk, which sort of maybe makes him a little bit like the god Dionysus, the god of wine. And he reets Agathon as the wisest of all there. He then decides that maybe Socrates is the wisest. So I think that we've hit on a theme that's going to be really important in symposium if we realize that Erasophanes has written this play called the Frogs, that's one of the things that's going on in symposium is a contest for wisdom.
We mentioned that I think things are on a new plane and they get elevated once we turn from Eric Simikas to Erasophanes and Agathon. And Socrates, and I think one of the main elevations that's happening is a legitimate question of philosophical questions, who best understands the human things? The poets, on one hand, or the philosopher on the other. So is it the comic poet?
Is it the tragic poet? Or is it the philosopher that best understands the phenomenon of love or errors? That's I think the question that's being raised in the background here. Maybe Alex can tell us why the clouds is an important play for our purposes.
Actually, I kind of want to just run away with that for a bit. I mean, I think the clouds is more important for dialogue like the apology, but I do think it matters here, obviously, because Erasophanes is ridiculing Socrates. And one of the payoffs, if you think about that, is that it seems like Erasophanes. It's somewhat jealous of Socrates' wisdom, and yet still critical of how he pursues and or acts that needs to be more attentive to the many.
You can see the same thing is going on in this dialogue where Erasophanes gives a very popular or demotic concern to the debuffs of the many people. He gives an account of errors that appeals to them. And Socrates gives an account that finally situates Eras' philosophic and in relation to poetry at its peak. Not really, bodies are getting concerned in love with another person, it's the lowest form of errors, according to this.
So it's a decidedly unpopular or anti-democratic understanding of errors. Now, what's interesting about that is I think Erasophanes' speech, he says he wants everybody there to hear it and disseminate it, right? And people just kind of shrug it off and move on, whereas Socrates is able to captivate Agathon, right? Who seems like he's not going to be?
Agathon was notoriously promiscuous, right? And so you have this ordinary account of errors is not going to satisfy Agathon, or people like him. And there's some suggestions that that Eras has a higher, higher, has bigger fish to fry, right? Don't you think Agathon jumps in and responds to Socrates' out of philosophic interest?
I take it to be he felt personally to act and try to defend himself. No, no, no, I mean to say that that Erasophanes' speech can't speak to Agathons' errors. He won't be satisfied with mere love of another person. That's not how he's going to find his completeness.
So far as we've seen, right? He really finds his sort of self-affirmation or completeness in the praise of the people. He's kind of cynically excited. We'll get to this when we talk about Agathon, but there's a sense, I think, that while Erasophanes can speak to the many, perhaps, and that's him attending to the necessary power that the people have, this is a theme of the clouds, right, over philosophic or poetic sort of elites or something like that.
Though he can speak to that, he perhaps doesn't really understand the full range in this dialogue of Eras, right, where it applies beyond that. I think he does know it, but I think he doesn't. Exactly. I think his speech can't actually accept or deal with that phenomenon as well as Socrates.
We'll get it way ahead, but that's sort of what I think is at stake with the clouds with respect to this dialogue. You want to talk about the Frogs, but I just want to defend Erasophanes here. I think that I'll try to anyway. I suspect that Erasophanes, I know the interesting question.
We haven't done Socrates' speech yet, but you're right that, at least in Socrates' speech, you get these higher planes of eros that rise above the level of common everyday love. I wonder if Erasophanes wouldn't respond that that sublimation or that re-channelling has actually surpassed the phenomenon and it's no longer what we would understand by love anymore. Maybe just what we're getting at, you mentioned the democratic aspect of it. Maybe that's the tension between a sort of aristocratic or elite understanding of what love is and a democratic understanding of what love is, as you mentioned.
You did say I thought you wanted to say something about the Frogs, which by the way has one of the best lines in all of comic... Give it to us, poetry. I can't quite correct. I'm sure he'll be able to correct me.
I know how that even is supposed to sound like a frog. Yeah, that's all he uses sound. Yeah, I mean about the Frogs, I think you did a great job with it. I do think this contest is quite interesting with respect to Elsobites.
Just on the point about Erasophanes' speech, he says this is at the beginning, this is at 180B. I shall try to initiate you into his power and you will be the teachers of everyone else. He has this kind of vision of how it's going to spread and then it's just kind of Erasophanes' like, oh, that was very good. After Agathon's speech, everybody applauds after Socrates, about half applaud half don't.
So there's a sense that though Erasophanes' speech is powerful and people really do hit on it, for the people there, whether it's a decade or kind of improperly sublimated notion of Eras, still it's a phenomenon one has to deal with or cope with politically, especially when you talk about its form in somebody like Elsobites. See, I thought that the less enthusiastic response to Erasophanes was due to the fact that despite being a comic poet, and he mentioned subtle times, don't laugh, this isn't funny. I took their response to be muted because it's a depressing account of love. It's actually quite tragic, strikes me.
So in other words, they need Agathon over the top praise of love to be, we're at a party dude, why are you trying to kill all the buzz? Isn't that? Erasymically, I said, but yeah, I wonder, can you name a single person perhaps Pazaneas, who would be content with an account of Eras' love of your other half or love of your own? That's, I mean, we can leave that as an open question to return to when we get to Socrates' speech.
But point taken, it does, even though it's kind of funny on its surface, there is some really dark depressing undertones. Which is a curious sort of thing, right, that Plato put into the mouth of a very famous comic poet, an account of love that's actually quite dark. Where are you laughing? And we'll see this where we get to Agathon.
It's going to be the reverse, right? We're in the mouth of a tragic poet. We get somewhat cynical and almost nihilistic, in my opinion, but it's ultimately, I think, very comic at the bottom. But maybe since we're getting into the speech, maybe David should give us an overview of what's going on in this.
I'll try to get her. It's, there's so many little facts I always mess this up. But I was thinking, so Erasophanes, he tells this myth. If you've ever played, have you guys played the game Sonic the Hedgehog?
Remember that when we were young? Yeah. So there was a boss at the end of Sonic the Hedgehog, who was this spherical shaped, spherical shaped man named Robotnik or the Eggman. Do you guys remember playing him?
That was after my time. I was more of an Atari guy. Yeah. Well, I believe.
Anyway. I kind of wanted those hoops with a stick. Yeah. He chased the shadow.
It's, it's, it's, so Erasophanes tells this story where a long, long time ago there were three sexes. There were males, females, and then androgynous. And people, these creatures kind of were like spherical shaped beings. They had four, what was it?
Four sets of arms and four sets of legs. Four arms, four legs. Four arms, four legs. If they ran around all crazy, they could speed up and go really, really fast.
And then they would tumble, right? And they would tumble. So it's like it just reminded me of this video game boss. And the gods Zeus worried that they would eventually, that they were getting strong enough to, to overthrow the gods.
And so, you're going to act with prudence. He split the people. He split these spherical shaped beings in two. Zeus.
Zeus did. Right? Yeah. No, I don't think you mentioned Zeus.
And I forgot the, I always forget the genitals, but they also had genitals and they were on the outside, right? Like pointing away. They're pointing down and they got to be popped back up. Right.
It's really, really bizarre. Yeah. So the details are really important. And so I apologize.
Basically what, what Erasophanes is driving out of, we've already discussed is when these creatures are split in two, they long for their other half. And so they wander around the world aimlessly and lonely, trying to find their other half to kind of reunite the flesh. And the other reason I should say this may or may not be important is Zeus didn't want to destroy these beings because he was hooked on the, he was hooked on the smack. And he still wanted, right?
Like he still wanted, he's even beings to, or these beings to offer, to give offerings, to still praise the gods and pray to the gods. Because he could have just as easily, like with, I guess the titans he buries underground, right? He'd be in his own 80s or something like this. He could have destroyed these things and not had any problems, but Zeus just cleaves them in half.
And he threatens to cut them in half again so they hop on one leg, right? With like one eye, one nostril. Yeah. It's nightmare fuel for children.
Yeah. Which gives it, I mean, it's horrific. It's a very surgical account of heiros, right? But it's also very funny because you imagine tumbling and then you imagine hopping on one foot.
But in the background, there's themes of divine punishment, of, you know, human punishment. And I imagine it's like a Mr. Potato Head of genitals also. You don't know where things are pointing.
It's bizarre. Other gods have to get involved to correct kind of zuses. Bizarre surgery is impromptu surgery, right? How is this right?
So interestingly, he's beginning to speak by saying heiros is the most philanthropic or benevolent or something like that. God, he doesn't use that adjective to describe Zeus who cuts us in half, only likes our sacrifices and honors and threatens to like what does he split us like an egg? Is that what they do it again? Right?
So we'd be hopping around on one leg. Yeah, that's right. So Zeus comes off looking kind of bad, I'd say. Yeah.
There's a couple inconsistencies in this method I find really interesting from the get go. So first of all, he says they cut us in half because we tried to attack the gods as though this is supposed to then direct us towards one another. But then he suggests that we might still try to attack the gods anyways, so that we'd have to be cut again in punishment. So we have to stay pious.
The speech is meant to incur piety. But it suggests that the round people, at least as regards their psychology of wanting to overthrow the gods are really not fundamentally different from the half people, such as we are, right? So that's one little thing. And a little indication of this is that as his example of this assault on the god, he cites the attack of Ephialtes and Otis.
And he says, well, what Homer says about Ephialtes and Otis? That's crucial because the Ephialtes and Otis myth is given in book five of Homer's Iliad. And there they're used as an example for Deomedes attacking Apollo, right? Deomedes is already a half egg person, right?
He's a normal person like us. So again, I suggest in that what Aristotle is most concerned with is pushing back against this heuristic ambition that human beings can have and doing so by instilling a kind of fear of the gods into human beings. And so as funny and maybe as dark as this passage is, he's ultimately trying as a poet to use divine punishment. This is just goes to Greg's point that Zeus isn't that nice and very punitive, right?
He's very, very concerned with preserving order and keeping human beings at their sub, you know, divine, all too human and weak level and letting them know their weakness, right? I have a question for you guys. Reading this myth, it struck me that this is the fourth or fifth, I mean, the fourth or fifth account of the fourth account Greg's holding up is Greg, that's not the finger that represents the number four anyway, the music. Well, like the people, Greg has four middle fingers.
The fourth account of a myth or the origins of Eros, is there something impious about the conversation where there's so many competing foundations, or is this just kind of a very normal, is this particular speech in Fias or is what not this? Yeah, well, it's not that they can't agree where Eros comes from on the way to kind of talk about Eros in a uniform fashion. Something that's, you know, not a great question. I guess what I would say is there's a kind of loose looseness with piety, maybe that there's there not, it's not, remember the course of the Greeks were polytheia.
So it's not nearly as orthodox as we are, but there is, I think you're right, there is a, there's a little bit of impiety going on, but only a little bit, I would say, but connected to what you just said, maybe I'll amplify what you said and point out the, I'll amplify the impious character of what Eros often is saying. Eros often seems to be connecting human piety to human incompleteness, right? That the only reason that we are pious in the region that we worship the gods is because we're, we become aware of our human vulnerability or human incompleteness, right? And so if we were whole, if we were complete, that we wouldn't need the gods, I think, I think that that's one of the most special things.
Well, that's good. So they think that, yeah, that would be a lesson we should keep hidden. Yeah. And you know, it seems as though our piety, at least with respect to Zeus is, is born a fear.
It's not love, right? No, and in fact, love of another person seems like a kind of consolation price. It almost seems, I'll even simplify. Yeah, that's, that's really, it almost seems also like love is a way to recapture something that God, Zeus doesn't want us to have completeness, that is, in other words, that God's prefer incomplete human beings because they'll pray to them and honor them and give them sacrifices.
So even trying to find your soulmate is a way to try and get away from the punishment of Zeus as it were, right? And so let me try this in a slightly different way. I can't remember how much of this I'm getting from other things I've read, but to the degree that you can become complete or whole with another person, all I need is love, John Lennon's all you need is love, right? John Lennon, the Beatles, and these things.
Then you don't need anything else. And ostensibly that would include the gods. And so there's a way in which when you come together with another human being, you're trying to overcome your own mortality, it would seem. And if the gods, if what the gods want is for humans to die because then to be aware of that death, love seems to be a kind of forgetting one's own mortality and it's an attempt to overcome one's mortality.
I'm going to use a Bruce Springsteen line that I once heard in this context. I want to die with you, Wendy, in the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss, right? Like there's something about love that we think we can start. It's a great song.
You're like Thunder Road. It's a great song. Anyway, the idea is that love can somehow conquer all even death. Alex wants to jump in.
I think you're getting at something really important. I love this feature of this speech because it shows something I think really dark and perhaps even true about arrows, which is that it is born of this awareness. I mean, think about what makes love so meaningful, so amazing. You're only around for a short time and yet you're giving yourself over completely to another person.
That's amazing. This is why God's can't be erotic. There's an interesting joke in the Alien on this effect where a speech that Paris gives of love to Helen and is somewhat moving, but then Zeus gives a similar speech to Hera where he just lists all the romances he's had and you realize God's can't be romantic. They just kind of go from fling to fling.
But Zeus is still married. I don't understand. That's a great marriage. But anyways, to get to the point though is that, and this is maybe an irony to call it heroes philanthropic because if love is born of a fear of death and an acknowledgement of your own mortality and what love is the desire to transcend that, acknowledge it and transcend that and achieve some greater wholeness and maybe even permanence, I'll die to die kissing you forever or whatever that line was Greg, then it seems like at bottom heiros is actually somewhat misanthropic.
No? I mean, that it's born of a, and this is I think one of the tragic sides of it depends. If you could get this wholeness that you want, you would not be yourself anymore. Right?
You would cease to be human in the way that you were originally human. You'll know better than I, but it was Prometheus bound, one of the gifts that the gods that Prometheus apparently stole was hope. And so I don't know, it could be philanthropic to give human beings a pleasing, charming illusion. But if the desire, correct me if I'm wrong, because they lose yourself, no, because if the desire is to get out of that condition into a new condition and your prior condition was being human, then becoming fulfilled in whole as the circle person, this monster, really, that's that's no longer, maybe those things are human in some important sense.
I mean, they are mortal, it seems like, but it does seem like on some level that's a desire to cease to be what you are, right? That I'm low to overcome your sort of poor mortal self. Sure, but I'm not sure that lovers are aware of that. I mean, it's a kind of self-forgiving.
Yeah. And so therefore, I mean, I understand and I agree what you're saying, but that's because you're a secret of truth. But it could be understood as philanthropic of what you mean is like humans are in this really god-awful condition. And at least I'll give them something to sort of entertain themselves with for a while, something to ease the pain, something to give them hope, something to be on.
Even there you show your own sort of decadent love of truth because if you go up to a lover, if you go up to a lover and say, don't you find your beloved entertaining and a nice consolation? That's not right. You have to believe that it's really. Yeah, no, you've got to believe it.
Yeah, but I think this is where it's tragic. I mean, it always gets so dark and maybe that's why nobody applauds like Cheese, man. Yeah. So I got another song.
It's called If We Were Vampires by Jason Isabella. It's a fantastic song. It's your point about how God's can't love. And it's basically, it's a beautiful song and it's basically if we were immortal then our time together wouldn't be as beautiful and it wouldn't be as precious.
It's really, I highly recommend it. There's a new movie I just saw with Andy Samberg. Did you guys see this? No.
He's stuck in some time loop where he lives every day. He can't die. He's like a groundhog day-style movie. And basically he has to choose between mortality and love or immortality and meaningless repetitions.
Yeah. I have another song that reminds me of this passage. No, no. Yeah, the lyrics are, but hey, pretty girl, I'm feeling you.
The way you do the things you do. Remind me of my Lexus Coupe. That's why I'm all up in your grill trying to get you to a hotel. You must be a football coach the way you got me playing the field.
So baby, give me that too. I'm going to keep that beat beat. Sorry, it's by the usher. Yeah, no.
No. Sorry. Oh, that guy. Can you believe about that name, please?
If you guys have a Google on YouTube, can you Google on YouTube? There's a hilarious kind of moving French cartoon, actually. It's in French, but it's a cartoon retelling of the Aristophanes. It's quite good.
I highly recommend it. It's interesting. It's a French one. Yeah, the French one.
Did I say that? Yeah, for some reason, after watching it seems so French to me because it is kind of playful, but then also very dark. Very dark. Right?
There's something to figure out. Yeah, there's always smoking cigarettes. Can I make another weirdie? I want to circle back a moment.
But David, in his summary of the myth, mentioned that these globular human beings who are sort of powerful and quickly and assault, they try to overtake the gods. I mean, maybe it's obvious to point these things out. Some listeners will see or hear echoes of the Bible here, right? That somehow humans can get you brisk and powerful and think they don't need gods.
I see echoes of the Tower of Babel for us. We're here because we're so powerful, we can kind of build ourselves up and make an ascent into the sky in the gods and that the gods are there for us and how afraid of human power was worth. I recommend to anybody who's interested in the connection between the creation myth and Genesis and the Aristophanes speech, my advisor, Ronna Berger, is a wonderful essay on it. Email the new thing, or I'll send it to you.
Can I introduce one thing that I always find kind of peculiar here is... There's a kind of suggestion of reproduction. They plant in the earth. Yet reproduction is not really the aim of arrows.
I might always go here. Let's hear it out. The aim of arrows is to be fused with your beloved, which is interesting. The only other time that word is used in the symposium is by Pazaneas.
He wants to be fused with his beloved as well. One thinks this maybe speaks especially as somebody like Pazaneas. But there's a consistent kind of abstraction, fairly consistent abstraction from arrows and having children, right? The connection between the two, which becomes huge in Socrates speech.
I want to underscore that. But a really striking moment of this is when he talks about how they cut the people in half. He says they sewed up their belly and then they tied it off like a purse string. That's the belly button.
He says, oh, the belly button is a reminder of your ancient affliction that you've been cut from the one to whom you originally could join. But the belly button is a reminder of the one to whom you were conjoined was your mother. It's an interesting part where you realize, oh, and I think somebody once remarked that maybe the closest one comes to one of these circle people is pregnant women. The sense of completeness says, but there's a weird fact of the matter that he's pointing to what's really the umbilical cord as though it's a sign of your other half.
It suggests, I think that, well, this is not as ordered as it seems, right? A mother can have many children. But also that, well, what about arrows which seeks to find its fulfillment, not really in being with another, but in making another person or making new people, producing somebody who maybe looks like you. You're going to make me reas-, you're going to make me talk about this, aren't you?
Okay. All right. So here we go. So I think if you take Aristophanes speech to its conclusion.
Georgia stuff. I know. Where we're going. You mentioned this, right?
So your connection actually is to your mother. So your connection is, and like the whole point of Aristophanes speech is that you're interested in your other self. Like is drawn to like in some way, like what you want, I don't know, at least in some way. Maybe at least part of this, I'm going to mess this up right now.
Sorry. So the masculine, the most one's feel affection for what is to like, like to themselves. So there's this weird way that you want your other half. So you want your completion.
And so there's a way in which the logical conclusion of this would be a kind of incest or self-love or something like this, it would seem. And so, and let me make this take us even a step further. I don't know if I can, I'm still trying to think this out, but there is a way in which there's the desire for human appropriation is a weird kind of way that you try to extend yourself. And you guys, I mean, David has kids, Alex has one on the way.
And there's a way in which that child is a sign of your arrows, I would say. I mean, that's even controversial, I suppose. I have a question. Greg, I mean, that's not a wrong.
No, no, no, no. I think Greg is trying to say that the highest form of arrows on his reading is having a child with your mother. I'm saying that Aristophanes is a huge excuse. Okay, here we go splitting his.
I'm going to split you like zoo split a cob egg. Go ahead, David. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
I mean, you guys, am I wrong? I do think there's something to that right there. If you want to have your other half of there's something incestuous here. Yeah, I don't want to do it.
The labor point, you might be walked on the streets on time and you see couples where you asked yourself is that brother and sister or a couple, right? I don't do that. That's how I do that. I know when I come on.
No, you're right. In the south, you're from, you're probably right. I do that with people and their dogs. My mind goes somewhere totally dark.
Wait a minute. What's going on there? But that's just a young straight shooter. I'm just, what he's pointing out here is that there are people who are attracted to people who are attracted to the same thing.
And what's interesting is you see couples where they look completely different, but then you see couples where they could easily be mistaken for siblings. Why is that so funny? I think this is kind of... You realize anybody that's listening to this now is going to be thinking about all their partners that they've ever had and they're like, oh my God, that's my sibling.
All right. Well, you know, I'm sorry to say this will be my last episode as a member of the New Thinkery. After the erotic excursions, Greg and David have taken us down. Hey, Alex, what's your view?
Do you think Kristen looks like you or not at all? Not at all. Thank God. I don't know.
She has a full head of hair. That's a way to pop corn pops. I have a question that's serious. Good, good, good.
Let's do this. Come on, I'm serious. He puts such a heavy... It's such an interesting speech.
Why does he put this speech in the mouth of Aristophanes? Have you guys come to any people who play it? Why does Plato let Aristophanes have this? That's right.
That's right. Well, generally, Aristophanes tends to do it in his plays and Greg's better at this than me, but this is my general sense. He pushes towards the private life, right? Away from the new thing, away from a heuristic higher ambitions and he sees satisfaction can be be had by having a family, sleeping with your wife, eat some food, have a drink, whatever.
But stay to the household, right? So that means laughing at all these sort of higher ambitions. So what's the conclusion of this? Be pious, fall in love.
That's the best it's going to be for you, right? And I think that's a... That makes sense in Aristophanes. I don't know, Greg, maybe you've ever thought of this.
Yeah, I don't want to contradict that. I think that's very likely. I'll just say another possibility that is maybe compatible or maybe complex. I think Plato suspects that Aristophanes may have been wise.
And so he gives him this great honor of presenting a sort of very impressive account of love. I suspect that Plato thinks that Aristophanes was superior in wisdom to the tragic poets for what it's worth. Yeah, I thought it was an honorable book. Sorry, go on, Greg.
Yeah, no, that's right. Go on. No, that was my read too. It's that he gave him a pride of place.
There's some story which I'm sure is apocryphal that Plato slept with a copy of Aristophanes' pin or something like that. And the other thing you can do, I think, stress one's this out. If you go through the characters in the symposium, you can pair couples, right? So-and-so is a lover of so-and-so.
And the only person without a lover or a beloved is Aristophanes, which then raises the question, well, who is the lover of Aristophanes and the only answers is Plato at that point. So Plato would have been a lover of Aristophanes. It's interesting. One more detail, though, as exalted and as, you know, as-I mean, it is a great honor to put this speech in Aristophanes.
There are certain questions that we're left with, right? Of course. What's the relationship between Aristophanes and Reproduction when I just wrote up? What's the relationship between Eros and Ambition, right?
Will the ambitious be satisfied with this sort of Eros? And three, is there a form of Eros that's not so depressing when you tease it out, right? Can Eros actually make you happy on someone? No.
But it is something you want to ask. And so far, there's a range of other erotic longings or outlets. From notes to Eros. But two points in response.
One is that because also bodies arrives, Aristophanes' speech becomes the central speech in the entire dialogue. And two, I do think you're right that there are these loose ends in Aristophanes' speech, but Plato does the same thing regularly with Socrates. Socrates will use bad arguments and those bad arguments point to a deeper truth. So it's possible that this tragic presentation of love that Aristophanes is presenting does actually point to these other things.
So just one small example is you mentioned Ambition. He does talk about the one type of the three original types, the masculine type that is more drawn to politics. So he does seem to be pointing to the sort of higher or other accounts of arrows as well. And I think he's good, right?
Yeah. He accomplishes that as well. He's perfectly aware. Yeah.
And I do think that it doesn't seem like Aristophanes really gets, especially some of this tragic stuff, really gets at some, you know, less than beautiful aspects of arrows, which Socrates says I'm going to abstract from those things. So there's a sense that maybe he's more in agreement with the Aristophanes than it seems. And you push Socrates account, you do reach some similar conclusions, even on these higher levels that Aristophanes alludes to but doesn't make thematic in his account. I think that's good.
I think we're getting close to time. Do you want to read just the conclusion of his speech? I think it's kind of beautiful. It points to this sort of tragic versus comic, I think, understanding what he's doing.
I'm at 193 C to D. And I'll just point out if we didn't mention this, we should usually mention this that we're doing the better-deddie translation. Aristophanes says, for whatever the case may be with them, I'm referring to all men and women, all men and women, our race, the human race, would be happy if we were to bring our love to a consummate end and each of us were to get his own favorite on his return to his ancient nature. And if this is the best, it must necessarily be the case that in present circumstances, that which is closest to it is the best.
And that is to get a favorite whose nature is twice taste. And where we to him, the God who is the cause of this, we would just leave him arrows. We should just leave him arrows who at the present time benefits us the most by leading us to what is our own. And in the future, he offers the greatest hopes while we offer piety to the gods to restore us to our ancient nature and by his healing, make us blessed and happy.
All of the conditionals in that, I think, point to the tragic character of his speech, right? That we would be happy if all these things were to come to pass. But it is still nevertheless, I think, a beautiful kind of speech at the end. And so uncharacteristic.
So I got to go. I got to go see how my wifey should probably end this up. I'd like to hug both of you. I'd like to hug Alex's wife.
Do we want to take any questions? Do we have a We can stop at this. The last episode of the new. Is that it?
Are we good? I think that's it. Thank you for joining us. The new Thinkery.
Like us. Follow us on Twitter at the new thinkery emails at the new thinkery at gmail.com. And don't forget that. Don't want to us is your cleaved half come and give us a hug if you see us.
Don't do that. Don't hug me. COVID. David, you're going to get over by cutlets.
I don't know what that means. I mean, take care everybody. Everybody. No, no, no.
Don't hug me. COVID. David, you're going to get over by cutlets. I don't know what that means.
Take care everybody. All right, everybody. All right.