Welcome back to the New Thinkery. Tonight's a double header triple header. We recorded earlier in the day a episode on Conrad and about an hour ago, actually, when I sang five minutes ago, we finished an hour long recording of Socrates's speech in the symposium. This is a continuation of Socrates's speech.
So how are you doing? It's a triple header. Yeah, how are you doing, Greg? I'm very tired.
I'm tired too. And Alex? Well, Boolean and lively. I feel great.
I could do this all night. Yeah, I was the posting of baby, but we're talking all night. Yeah, about horny things. And so anyway, he means cows with folks at home.
Good, Lord, man. I went for a run today since I'm going to die soon. I went on the 10.5 mile run. You should say, what are our listeners?
Actually, David was dying. No, no, I'm actually very unhealthy from up. I don't look that unhealthy. It's my book.
We try to encourage not good. Yeah. He's actually on the verge of death. I don't mean to say that.
I apologize. His cholesterol is bad. His heart is really mostly plaque at this point. Can you give us a number?
What do we mean? What was it? I tell you that stuff that my wife gets upset about. One of the things, one of the cholesterol is something, something's high and the other thing's doing just fine.
All right. I'm sorry. I said don't eat that much cheese, but I love cheese with pizza. Yeah.
Well, the way you use cheese, Greg is in the background. Greg's an enabler. Yeah, it's not exactly. I'm on the right side of the line.
You think about having embers relationships with cheese? I don't have anembersality. What's your favorite? What's your favorite cheese for those kinds of purposes?
For eating, Greg? No, no, no, no. Blue cheese. Nice.
I like a blue cheese. With a powerful red. I thought you like a switch. I don't like a Swiss.
I don't like a Swiss. It's like the tamest of all cheeses. I was in neutral as a country. Your looks Swiss.
So today I go on this run. I'm like, but you guys are insinuating going to run. You can't be that unhealthy for a 10 mile run by the way. It's a trot.
No, I'm not down on hell. I mean, yes, I am. Whatever. Yeah.
Anyway, you're on your time. I'm sorry. He's behind it with a hot dog on a fish and bowl. Yeah.
Yeah. And any event I run by this old lady's house and it's my fifth grade Catholic school teacher. She's 80 years old. She's still smoking cigarettes and just she remember laughing at you running by.
Yeah, I was a bad kid. I was bad at Catholic school and kind of an atheist and I was just not. What's that? How old in what grade?
Six through eight. I was one of six. The grade you were an atheist? It was around seventh or eighth.
We had a religion class. Yeah. This is boy taught English but in religion class, we had an ex nun. But once we realized what an ex nun, yeah, yeah, she got married.
So once we realized what marriage entails, you know, up into a certain point before that stops that we realized that she was, you know, she has sex. So she's like an ex nun. But you know, anyway, so I saw my I the religious teacher, what I was just asking who just has leading questions about Christ and stuff. But our English teacher, she remembered me and Mrs.
B. Yeah, I taught I brought up all these stories. So I'll share one story just about how bad that I was. So along with a good friend of mine, Kevin, we convinced the rest of the dopes in our class to meet these uniball pins.
So you start out with pencils and then once you get good at curbs, you guys were expensive. We all got some of the kids, not me. So now the uniball pens, we got to choose a lot of stuff. Yeah.
And, and we convinced them, because you could, if you hit them against the ground, hard enough, they'd explode. And so we convinced all of the boys in our class to smash the uniball pens against the end of the basketball hoop. It's wrong with you. The entire grade got suspended for one day.
Come on. Teach a lesson, except for me. And because you didn't throw a pen, my good friend Kevin Boyle. So we masterminded it.
And so Mrs. B pulls us aside. She goes, I don't know what the hell, how the hell you guys are skating on this, but bar and boil. Like I'm going to be watching you like a hawk for the rest of your time here, et cetera.
And you know, we never got caught with anything. Lauren Boyle. But yeah, I was just skiing. It was, it was bad.
I once got in trouble in eighth grade. I was innocent, actually. I was the victim. I was in fact, actually, pantsing.
And so I was calling my pants around me. This is the true story. My pants around my ankle. I got hauled into the Assistant Principal's office.
And you know, I didn't even feel like I had done anything wrong. I was, as I mentioned, again, the victim of the crime. And she's just, just, you're a terrible kid. She got up and down.
Like just won't stop and find like, it's having no effect. I mean, because I'm legitimately feeling like I've done nothing wrong. And then she says, you're going to be a murderer by the time you're 16. I swear on my life, the assistant principal, my junior high school told me you will be a murderer by the time you're 16.
I was like, that's like two years from now. Like what? Anyway, Greg, I had, I can't remember the name. I wish I did because I had a public school or a private school.
I had the same experience. I had the same exact experience. I mean, maybe that's my private school, the same exact experience. Where kids were singled out for being, once we've had a certain personality, it's like, that's the bad kid.
Those are the atheist jokers. Those are my friends. And this kid's the job was a good kid. I was a nerd.
I was like, yeah, but you, but what I mean to say, Greg, is that there were certain teachers that spoke to students like that. And it's still etched in my mind. Right. Right.
Poison is how they realized the effect they have on people. No, man, it's terrible. I'm glad I was able to have my friends. I'm like, you did this.
That'd be awesome. Greg. That'd be awesome. Anyway, what are we talking about?
Yeah, I was like, yeah, I was like, what is this? For Jake's going to be like 15 minutes before he tears one guy. I wish I had gone to junior high within that's Alex. Alex, pretty much got him.
I was great in junior high. I mean, a Greenwich, probably had a beer in his smoke. I can you believe. You were telling us, I'll tell you one story.
Plus, I'll tell you one story. Black, black, black, and cash from me. I was in my friends class and I went to the bathroom in class and I told this kid, I forget his name. Wouldn't it be funny if we lowered her chair a little bit.
So when you sit down, it's like, well, you know, the old bird scared. So he went and did it. She sat down and started crying. Apparently been in a car accident years before and her back had screwed up.
So the kid got booted from the class. The kid class. And she was out for like a month. And I never like, she was like, who lowered my chair?
I was like, was that good? Was that good? Never came to me? Was that was my idea?
But he did? Yeah. Yeah. That's how I thought of the Uniballs to.
So if if the listeners are still with us, Nick, Jake hasn't deleted the previous 18 minutes of what are we doing? What are we doing today? We're talking about the symposium. Yeah, which symposium.
But it's the podium. We're going to finish our first episode. Oh, on this layer 10th episode on symposium. No, I think this episode eight episode eight, eight or nine.
Yeah. So we have this is our penultimate. I think listeners can know that this is our third episode we've recorded it because like they just spent 20 minutes talking about junior high literal junior high banter, not like our usual metaphor. I want to I want to be clear.
I'm going to tell our producer to cut this out. So no, no, I think it's good for our listeners to know that we do edit out a lot of trash and this won't be added out. We're we're basically, I think still punishable crimes committed during a true. You guys I didn't do anything wrong.
Again, I was the big. Great. Greg, you were a military guy. I thought those kids were out of control.
No, no, this is actually true. So honestly, I'm over overweight Germans and shit, probably the thing, but this was in Colorado, but swear to God, that's the the school I went to was on 2020 for being one of the worst in the entire United States of America. I saw gang fights. I saw knife fights, which was in the news recently again.
That was awful. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, seriously. Which is why I was like, you should be a member like, I'm the one kid here that like I was scared of my own shadow.
So Greg, we have a new sponsor today. I'm very excited about the sponsor because I have a friend. Yeah, really use the product that they offer. Right.
His name starts with a D ends with an avid bar. Right. Look, let's be honest. You know, when it comes to understanding these languages, Greg's, Greg's probably at the peak, I'm second, and then you got David distant distant third.
Yeah, actually, I think he's the fifth most proficient member of the new thinkory in foreign language. It's like, Jake and his girlfriend are producing a perfect couple for me. Yeah, it's a fully yes, but thankfully, the ancient language Institute, ancient language.com can help make your friends better at these ancient languages and therefore relieve your embarrassment at being friends with them at the ancient languages that you can learn to read, listen and speak an ancient language, Latin, ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew, all are available through them. On top of that, they get you reading and speaking on day one.
And they do this by getting rid of the long vocabulary to need to memorize all the grammar charts to need to memorize, but focus on actually learning the language by reading it the way in ancient Greek word, right? Greg, that sounds right to me. And of course, last but not least, there's a happiness guarantee, ancient language Institute, if you are not happy, if you decide that this isn't for you after your first class, they will give you a full refund. So they're confident in their products, we're confident in their products.
If you're interested in learning Latin, ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew, folks, go check out ancient language.com. Yeah, we should say David has no excuse. He's no excuse, right? The fall term is open until August 13th, he is still registered and the classes are flexible.
They're online. He doesn't have to go anywhere. No, he never does anyway. No, he sits at home watching skateboard videos on huge for hours a day.
Just put that down for an hour. That's it, right? That's it. Yeah, just putting the time.
Yeah. H.a. languages.com, ancient language.com, the ancient language Institute, and we think of sponsoring the podcast. Now back to the show.
Back to the show. All right, Alex, give us a raise. Where we are so far. Yeah, so, so this is about Jesus.
We just gave a summary. So later, kind of listeners are coming here this for three weeks. So fire up your loins. So supposing Socrates has decided to go to act on his house.
It's the day after the party from when he won the award. Every's kind of mellow out a little bit. They've sort of had their bender or something. But a few of them are still holding below.
A few of them still got a little something. And they decide they're going to take things a little bit more easy. And so instead of having flute girls, placing music while they're getting boost up, they boot the flute girls and they say, let's have some speeches. And what speeches will they have speeches about arrows.
So they go one by one through speeches of arrows, dangerous gives a speech about arrows positive gives everybody gives a speech about arrows. Phaedrus is it's really actually funny. It's not a praise of the lover but of the beloved because the beloved makes the lover do all these wonderful things, sacrificing their life being virtuous just to get sort of a little something to return. And that's what makes the beloved so good.
Pausanias gives a speech in which he speciously justifies child molestation. Eric Simikus gives a speech. You made that joke a month ago. Which gives a speech.
We made she justifies arrows as some sort of cosmic principle. And therefore he's this wonderful smart, you know, guy as a doctor. And then we get two poets. We get Aristophanes, who is Greg's favorite.
I think Greg says he likes this speech a lot. People do like her stuff. A lot of people it's a really wonderful conscious of arrows or love is a love of another person as your other half who makes you complete. Right.
The Jeremy Gwire speech is great. What we discuss that really like your own wire. Yeah, yeah, and then we get Agathon gives a praise of arrows. But ends up ultimately being a praise of poetry and therefore of the poet showing might be able to make everything really peachy and wonderful and is arrogance on one.
Agathon's part Socrates really picks up on. And I know in the beginning of the speech says I want to make me Agathon and in examining Agathon, he brings out the money, these expectations that arrows is going to make you or I'm sorry, that that this is a bad. Can we just start over? Oh, absolutely.
This is so bad. This is so good. Oh, good. No, no, no.
We're 40 minutes in. We're 40 minutes in. And there's one good minute. We're not 40.
One good. Go. This is so good. You're doing it.
Right. So Agathon, I'm trying to keep things afloat here. So I got it out of his system. You got Agathon, I'm done.
No, he's going to do it again because that's what he thinks is funny. But Agathon gives this praise of arrows, ultimately praise the poet ultimately praise himself and it's wonderful. The arrogance of this is that Agathon or arrogance ultimately rests on this presupposition that Agathon is perfectly beautiful, right? Or this sort of wonderful, perfect person?
And Socrates questions that and we kind of went through this a little bit last time, but a couple of things that we brought up that I think are important is first Socrates speech leaves out everything that might be not so beautiful, perhaps even ugly. And he also ranges it in such a way that it's going to be most attractive. And where are we in the text, Alex? Let me let me let me let me let me let me let us out.
So he starts actually, I think with some of the more controversial things. And then finally, at the end, who's this very edifying account of arrows says, giving you perfect virtue and perfect fame and all this sort of stuff. It's ultimately, I think intended to get Agathon to buy into its central conceit, which is that Agathon, if you really want to be famous, you should study philosophy because philosophy understands the truth, you understand the truth about beauty, you could be perfectly beautiful and create beautiful images of virtue. And therefore, you will you will be ultimately famous forever, essentially.
One question, you mentioned this the last episode and I'm persuaded by the devil's advocate here. Why Agathon and not anybody else who's present? Why is this aimed at Agathon above all? Why not Aristophanes or I guess, you know, I'll get fine, not there because he's not serious, not maybe not.
Okay, maybe I'm explaining it to myself, maybe not Phaedraisian same reason, and Paul Sanius of course. But so maybe Aristophanes is the only other serious person, but you can't probably he's not persuadable by my mere speech. Is that? Yeah, so this is a point I had to prepare to talk about, I think it's really important that though he's addressing it to Agathon, I think ultimately the way he's trying to handle Agathon is as a whole is a response to Aristophanes.
So I brought this up last time, we were the time books like 50 episodes ago at this point, when we were talking about Aristophanes speech that Aristophanes says, I want you to hear this and disseminate among people and people kind of react lukewarm to it, but everybody loves Agathon's beautiful speech. Aristophanes says, if you have erotic longings, don't go crazy and make an assault on the gods Agathon, but stick to love of another person. That's the greatest thing that you can do. I think Stock is just saying, yeah, that's good private sort of outlets for arrows in having a family, which is a sort of a risk-defanic theme that works for a lot of people.
It doesn't work for people like Agathon. It certainly doesn't work for people like Alcibiades, which you have to do is push their erotic longing to their ultimate limit, at which point it's a longing not just to be beautiful for this population or for the Greeks, but really for humanity as a whole to be the most perfectly beautiful thing, which means that you have to be truly beautiful and you have to be concerned with the truth. If you can push him in that direction all the way up there, which Socrates often does with, he does it with Alcibiades and Alcibiades, he does it with lysis and lysis, he does it with glaucon in the Republic, pushing them to this extreme. I think what he's trying to do is say Agathon to be perfectly beautiful, you have to engage in philosophy and therefore Aristophanes, your account was inadequate.
This is how you actually temper somebody's ambitions. Don't just push them back into conventionality. You have to address what they've noticed that's kind of pushed them beyond that. So I think it's a multiple layer to speech in that sense.
That's great. There's two parts to this, this sort of, so what's been going on is a quick question about structure. Maybe you'll answer this in the next few weeks, Alex, in what follows. But taking these two Epos New Thinkery episodes together, how do you divide up Socrates's speech, the whole structure, not just what's happening today?
But we can say that for later if it's no, no, no, I think that's good. So it starts, he revises how he wants to incommiate things. That means leading things out and erasing them, seemingly, only include beautiful truths, etc. So he then argues against Agathon to show that heiros is ultimately needy of the things that it's directed towards and therefore is not beautiful and not good.
He goes to the extreme, we talked about that a little bit and says that they're ugly and bad. He says, no, no, it's between Greg, I thought, gave a really nice account of how she exploits this between us and uses it. Socrates asked a series of questions, he says, well, is he agreed to be a great God? What would heiros be if not a God?
A mortal? No, it's a diamond. Well, with what kind of power? Well, it connects us to the good things.
Okay, well, who is his father? And who is his mother? Who is his daddy? And what does he do?
And it's porous and pina? And then he asks, who are the philosophers? Because she ends up arguing that heiros is a philosopher, who are the philosophers if they're neither wise, nor those who lack understanding? And then finally, he comes to this last question, which is, alright, stranger, which is interesting, he identifies her now as not from his homeland.
What you say is fine, if heiros is of this sort of what use is he for human beings? And she now pauses it says, it is this soccer that I shall next try to teach you. And as I as I understand it, from here to the end of his speech, there's a sort of concluding paragraph where he turns back to the people he's talking to from here to the end of the actual sort of account of deotima, he's really just trying to she's really just trying to address this question. Now this question of what use what good is he for human beings to me breaks up into two parts.
And this is a 204 D, right? A D that she starts to address this he acts at the end of C. She first tries to argue that heiros is of wanting the good and wanting it to be yours always, right? Heiros is of the goods being ones own always.
And then she moves on to this final stage that's a 206 A that she completes that she then has this other argument to that, which is needs of engendering and bringing to birth in the beautiful for some reason are concerned with having the good always leads to concerned with bringing to birth in the beautiful. And then a two or seven a is where I draw a break, because there he says all of these things she used to teach me whenever she made her speeches about erotic so this seems to be a repeated lesson. And then he goes in and says and once she also asked indicating that the next lesson she gave once. Now that to me seems to strike an interesting contrast.
I think soccer's was willing to listen to the first part that I just sort of outlined quite a bit. But the last part I think you heard it once he's like, I don't know about that, right? And that's the more edifying part, I'll say, I will say that this part about engendering and the beautiful soccer is a little less enthusiastic about this than he's about earlier parts. The part when he goes into the stuff about the beautiful about it, generally the beautiful and that's where we get what's often referred to as the ladder of love, where there's a kind of ascent of objects of love starting with one body, maybe multiple bodies.
So I was never get past that and then going all the way up through poetry, etc, all the way up to philosophy is the highest run on this ladder, at which point you finally got what you actually want, which is not love of this particular beautiful person or this particular sort of beautiful practice that's common among the Greeks. But what is beautiful simply in and of itself, the beautiful itself. And this ladder of love is one of the more famous scenes in history of philosophy, right, that people when you guys teach, this is a question, I'll forget, so I'll just ask it now. And then let's just jump into the mean potatoes.
When you and Greg Alex are teaching the symposium, I know that we've mentioned that they're stopping you to speech, speaks to students, but how do they react to the Socrates and the ladder of love? I mean, we can save this for after we're done talking, but I mean, I'm usually I feel like every time I teach this, I'm constantly having to get them to pay attention to the book, even though it's all about man boy love. I mean, it's so sure. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I've had great success teaching us text actually, the air sapphany speech speaks to them greatly. I probably emphasize the man boy love thing a little less than I'm talking about the Socrates speech, because it is by Socrates. So it carries that with it. Sorry, Greg.
Right. No, no, it's fine. I was saying that I think that the power of the air sapphany speech probably attunes them to, that's not the right word, I think it's convinces them that there's something serious here about love. And I wonder if this isn't part of what Plato's object is.
So you get the air sapphany speech, but because everyone knows that Socrates is Plato's hero. So the air sapphany speech speaks to them like, man, that's so good. And it's so perfectly captured. What I think love is, but if Socrates is superior to air stuff, and he's I think that the goodish students are accepted to the possibility that there must be something more correct about Socrates's presentation of this thing than our stuff.
And so I'm not sure they understand it entirely. And I do think that they're the few who do try or very much drawn into this, a sense that Alex has laid out very nicely. But I think they're at least open to the possibility that there's something serious going on here. And the really serious ones sort of become enamored with the idea that there is this idea of the beautiful and that that's what's that's what it's all about up there.
They sort of the messy part, they don't take one body to two bodies. No, no, okay, that's a misstep. But then the next step, right? Practices and these kinds of things in laws.
Okay, right? Now, we're on that now we're actually making some progress, Homer, like Kurigus and so on. Okay, okay, now we're moving up. And I also teach political science students principally.
And so once they see that sort of ambition as a higher level of love, that flatters them in some way. And I think that they're they're like, of course, these paltry people who just want to sex, we want actually, they want to help one person, one have everybody, something like that. So I think they're receptive to that number two. But you're right.
I mean, there's something preposterous about this, just to press a little bit my why I think I like your stuff needs to speech so much more like Socrates, the speech on the face strikes me as really weird, right? Like, so if you're really a passionate lover, which it really gets you going in the end is the abstract conception of some self-substance being that is beautiful itself. I mean, that's so removed from anybody's actual experience of love. That's questionable.
But I think that's why Plato is very intentionally laid the groundwork groundwork for you to be able to take that argument more seriously. That was a really way long when to answer your question. Sorry. I think I think if you show students that when they think something is beautiful, they often try to give reasons for it.
Those reasons are never adequate, right? So if I say, I love my wife, she's beautiful, she's funny, she's smart, she's passionate, blah, blah, blah, blah. And somebody then says, look, at this lady, she's smarter, she's more beautiful, she's I don't want to just I'm not like, scram broad, I got a new lady here, right? I'm not, I'm not immediately replacing her.
So you want to give reasons yet, those reasons are never adequate to the actual experience. But still, this idea that when you judge a beautiful thing, you have some criteria in mind or some kind of idea that you appeal to, I think helps them see that that when you judge a particular thing, you are often stuck with the abstract, even when you're very much, you know, I love and see to have the blinders on as it were. Can I switch gears to the touch or do you guys want to stay on that? We're good.
Okay, so it's one of the things that I find really interesting about Socrates's speech, and it's all recounted as though it's this birefel account of him learning from Dautama, is it 204e? She's been asking him these questions about the beautiful, the beautiful, what is it that people really want to go? I don't know. And she says finally at 204e, what if someone i.e.
me, Dautama changed his query and used the good instead of the beautiful, come then, Socrates, the love of the good things loves, what is he love? Well, that they be his, I said, and what will he who gets the good things have? This, I said, I can answer more adequately, he will be happy. So I just want to point out that in a center, what seems to be the center of the speech between Socrates and Dautama, she changes the terms of the debate substantially.
She takes the beautiful out, which is something we've been talking about for several episodes, and replaces it with the beautiful, they have a conversation and I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry, with the good, and then later on, she switches it back, she puts the beautiful back in. But once we're talking about the good, Socrates can follow along a little more easily. And I think that we mentioned last time that one of the problems with Agathon speech is that he seems to confuse the good with the beautiful. One of the things I think that Dautama sort of shows to Socrates here is that most people confuse the good with beautiful, what by which I think I think she means, most people think they're interested in the beautiful, but what they're really interested in is the good.
You guys have to break, I think that you guys have to. Can I clarify this point a little bit? Yeah, yeah. Socrates was asked why you want the beautiful thing.
I was going to continue on. Go for it. No, I just want to make sure we keep bringing it to a five a eventually. That's all.
Yeah. So when Socrates is asked, what do people who want the beautiful things? They said, well, they want them to be theirs, right? You want to be yours.
Well, what do you get if you get the beautiful things? He can't even fathom an answer, right? And there's two reasons people can't fathom answers. They just think the beautiful things are sufficient in themselves, but he doesn't say that he didn't say, well, he'll be happy if he gets them, right?
You know, when he's asked what is the good in the mean, well, riches and offices and all that sort of stuff, he's got a very clear sense that if I get beautiful, wonderful things, I'm going to be so happy. Socrates, however, is resistant to that ways asked about the good, he's very clear. If I want to be happy, I have to be good, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, no, when he gets when she changes the query, she when she says, what about the love of the good things? He's like, well, this, I know, you get the good, you're happy, which I think speaks to the fact that he's so quick to tear down arrows.
As soon as he heard the argument and so willing to accept that he's not beautiful or good, that Socrates, it seems is way more serious about the good, and I think less receptive to the beautiful than Agathon is, it's Socrates has to present this this disposition in a way that's beautiful. And the way in which that's beautified or the secretical is beautified is in this last stage of the speech, as you say, Greg, when she returns, the beautiful, I just shift to you. Good. Let's just say, I think that's what's sticking out little for sure.
But most people who are primarily concerned with the beautiful, they, I think the implication is what they don't understand about themselves is that they're actually interested in the good, or they're interested in the beautiful because they believe that the beautiful is good. And what do they believe they'll get from the thing? Socrates makes clear here happiness. And why do you want to be happy?
Well, there's, I mean, that's a stupid question, because that's an answer that seems to be final, right? We all agree that you why you want to be happy is a silly question, because the answers itself, that's what we all want. I think now, even this, so this shows a kind of universal agreement, we all want to be happy. But it still admits of some disagreements, as far as well, we all want to be happy, but we don't define happiness in the same way.
So it appears to be moving in a sort of showing us that we're all in the same page direction, but then under doesn't even as it sort of puts it together for this word. I shouldn't say for words, what I say that too much. And also, I would just say that for me, the most species thing here is identifying the good with happiness. Why?
Why? Well, it's perfectly conceivable to me that some people might live the best possible life available to them. And it would be a good life, which I think means it has been actually a possible life. And you'd not be happy in this in any kind of, what do you mean?
Well, I can imagine people who are in a really horrible situation who given the opportunities that before them do exactly what would be best for them. And they live fundamentally better than they could in any other possible situation, get not necessarily be happy. I think there's a sneaky thing that happens when people identify living the good life with being happy. It could actually involve so long a few tough pills, you know, but in any case, let's go back to the text.
Sure. Well, again, just to a five a when when Socrates and I are talking about the good as opposed to the beautiful, we go back to something that Socrates and I touched on earlier that the people what they want is for the good to be there, excuse me, they want the good things to be theirs always. So again, there's this this connection to the perpetual possession of the good things what people want is always to possess these things. I don't know where we go from here, but again, I don't know.
The divinity of arrows has been raised several times. And Socrates has at least twice now brought up this idea of possessing the beautiful or the good forever. And so what we want is for things we are always and so there's this this conception that are our conceptions of the beautiful or the good are tied up with our own conceptions of our own immortality. We want to be able to live forever.
And therefore, we have these hopes that arrows or other gods will be able to help make that possible for us. So should we should talk about the bit about poetry and arrows what one constant before we do I guess this one last thing there is the gods seem to supply. So humans aren't satisfied with the possession of good things for a definite period of time. We want the good things for an indefinite period of time.
And the thing that bridges that gap between definite and indefinite seems to be the gods that at least strikes me as one of the main implications at 205A for why we want why arrows are so central here. But yeah, so please go ahead and switch to poetry. Yeah, so Socrates goes on to say this is I think a customer freeing through the speech and something she's slowly preparing for is this notion that arrows is used used in a kind of synecdoche, right? Where I don't know what that word means.
The word means I was just about to explain what things are coming in the word means when you name the whole you identify the whole of something with a part of it, right? So poetry is a good example. Poises in Greek, which just what means poetry in English is what we translate as poetry literally means something like making. But in Greek it meant specifically poetry writing poetry, ethics or tragedies, whatever they are writing writing poems.
And yet it also could mean in certain situations just making anything at all. Similarly, arrows is used in a kind of narrow way or as a synecdoche says, we detach from arrows to certain kind of arrows. Where are you wearing? Sorry, at 205B.
So finally, we detach from arrows a certain kind of arrows and give it the name arrows and posing upon it the name of the whole. While in other cases, we employ several different names. And what does he mean? He says, well, we talk about arrows of another person, we say, that's really love.
But well, what about something like philosophy, right? What about any other kind of love that could be addressed as that as a sort of arrows? And in pushing that direction, he sort of or DT, I should say, opens up the word to a wider range of interpretations away from this narrow interpretation towards a sort of larger one. This is what connects it to the lot of love that arrows means we can speak of arrows in these different ways, six different ways, by the way.
Yeah, and we start and we start from the most immediate and obvious one, right? And this is where maybe I think Greg, you should jump in here, but this is where she then connects it to this, there was Stefanica count, which is an obvious example. I mean, some people say, Oh, who is the team? Really?
Like, she must have been historical person. Like he sticks in her mouth, a critique of Erasophanes, as though she said 205E. Yes, it's 205E to two six. And so she anticipated this night decades on now that she was a prophet from Prophetown is as pregnant, right?
So maybe we should understand. But I mean, if you're if you want any other sign that this is like a contrivance, a political drive, and some science, I just like to clear one. Well, and then it to a way she refutes Eric Simikas, and then it to a way to eat eat, she refutes Phaedrus and then Pausanias. And she'd already said something about Agathon at the beginning.
And I think Agathon comes up a little bit again right there. But yeah, so yeah, she goes through methodically all the previous speeches. So it's pretty obviously made up. And I think the probably the thinker who gets this, I guess later, but I'll just know this out there.
I think the previous speaker with whom Socrates speech has the most affinity might be Phaedrus in so far, I think that's right. He clearly subordinates the lover to the thing love. Now for Phaedrus, realize this and the thing loved is a particular person. So he's subject to critique on those grounds.
Yet he seems as somebody who's beloved to recognize the lover is great. I'm great. I'm the one who's people of here. Right?
So I think that all of the speeches in a way are partially what's the best way says, even Eric Simikas, the speech, I would say has something in common with Socrates's speech in a way. So there's a way in which Socrates's speech figures out what's correct in the previous speeches and amplifies. And so right. I mean, Eric Simikas thinks that it's a sort of science of love.
It's wrong if you understand science in sort of narrow specialist kind of way. But it's right if you think of Eris as sort of a knowledge, I mean, it's actually says right. He's an expert. He possesses science of love.
And so there is a way in which I would say Socrates picks up what's good in all these speeches. But you want to pick up the rejection of Aristophanes. This is at 205 around DDE and following. He says, look, so Aristophanes just remind ourselves, it said that love is for basically love of one's own that what you want is your other half, right?
The chair and the choir, you complete me, right? But Socrates points out, well, it's not actually. In fact, we know that people are willing to cut off their arms if they're gangrenous or if you have cancer, you cut it out. And so there's a very simple but pretty clear rejection of Aristophanes's point.
But no, to what extent it applies to your love as well, the beloved becomes cancerous. You cut him or her off as well. But yeah, this is evidence from Socrates, one of you that we don't simply love what is our own. We love what is good in our own.
And so I think that that's an important distinction. If it's our own, but it's bad, we're willing to get rid of it, I think. It might take extreme circumstances like the words you give, but it's a very real phenomenon. And I think this is this happens in one could imagine it with a spouse, for example, right?
Like all of a sudden, the spouse gets into drugs or something, the pharius or really dispense gobs of money on cheese. And you decide it's time to divorce this person because they've just gone to stream. Or she has an erroneous reading of the symposium, which is given. Yeah, there's a, I think it's one of, you know, you replayed all and see Socrates and all these arguments are so such labyrinths and they're just so tricky.
And then, you know, every now and then you still across when you're like, well, yeah, that's just true. That's just decisive. And this is I think one of the right, like, you're not going to convince Agathon that his lover, Zanius, is actually good. There's something ridiculous about him on his face.
And Agathon is also, he's tasted some far more, you know, he's gone involved with some far more interesting beauties like fame, right? Pausenius is not going to do that. Comparing the two to one other, if he had to choose, he'll choose the one and low and behold, when Al-Sebai's comes in, Pausenius is an afterthought, he's all over Al-Sebai's. That's his, that's his real interest, right?
That's really how the historical Agathon actually was. So I think this is decisive to say that, look, Eristophanes, people want to linger away from what's their own. We know that what's your own is not simply sufficient, we know it can sometimes seem bad. And people are going to want to go beyond it.
You need to take a bad inclination very seriously. I think it's what he's saying to Eristophanes. And I'm going to show you in the speech how you take that seriously or how you address that inclination. Right.
I mean, just what is strong and powerful that Eristophanes is a speech that was that there is this very strong human inclination of view, what is your own is what is good. But and so actually shows you know, in these extreme cases, we can show you that that's not true. It's looking pull you back from that view. Yeah.
One of the things as we move just through the text around 207A, Socrates points to how deeply erotic people want to reproduce in some kind of a way. And I'm using reproduced not just in the sexual way, which is a big part of it, but that what people want people who have this sort of deep longing in their souls, try to produce something in the world. They try to replicate themselves or what's impressive about themselves in a meaningful way. So the most obvious and basic way that people try to reproduce themselves is literally through reproduction.
So you make a child. But Socrates points out that this is actually one of the lower ways that people can try to reproduce themselves. There are more sophisticated ways in artists can leave behind a painting, right? This is a higher conception of birthing in the beautiful.
Alex has already mentioned that we've gone through this ladder of love that there are these six different possibilities, but they're the artists, right? He mentions Homer and Hesiod by name as people who are poets of the highest world who tried to reproduce. There are law givers. I think that's extremely important as well.
He mentions like Kuragas and so on in that context. So he was interesting to me, the first time I read this, what was so strange to me is that he likens Homer and Hesiod on one hand, the poets and like Kuragas and so on, on the other, the statesmen to people who are pregnant or people who are really, really desirous of making some kind of an imprint in the world. And so I hate to use a Freudian term. But what it sounds like is going on here is that people are sublimating their erotic longings into some higher sort of expression of that longing.
And that the lowest I suspect that it's lowest because it's most common, the most common way people express this longing for living after death is in having children. And there are higher expressions of that. Now, here's the proof that Homer that you know, running a poem is somehow more meaningful to having a child. I'm not sure I believe this appears at least the proof.
What was the name of Homer's poem or poems, the Odyssey, the other name of Homer's children, I don't know, what were the name of Socrates is also the battle of fronin' lace. Obviously, yeah, is this might take us too far field. But Alex, do you remember a text exchange you and I had a few months ago about reproduction and DNA having war? Oh, yeah, with having children that look like you?
Yeah, this is so fast. I really enjoyed this conversation. I don't know if this is taking us too far a field. But like, what we were dwelling on was the possibility that sort of you're, there's something in you.
This is the crowd. I think that there's this deep erotic desire to leave something behind that is like you. And so you come together with another human being, naturally enough. But what we thought about was that the nice version of this is you marry some sweet girl, you have a baby, it looks someone like you or you're both very happy.
But what we started thinking about was actually what's going on is when you when you this is the dark version of this. So you guys would have kids. I'm sorry. Is that you're when you're having when you're having when you're having reproductive, when you're producing another child with another human being, you actually they're just a vessel.
And what you want is for your DNA to conquer their DNA because what you want to believe behind is a reproduction of you and not in not her. It's your her and not you. So we were texting about this. I was bringing up two passages in he said, where he talks about what happens if people are unjust, he says, children don't look like their parents.
And it'll later says, your child will look like the father, which is weird. And why is that you don't want to look like your wife to she not you want yourself to look like you. It's interesting. I just had a daughter a couple months ago, three months ago.
And she's gone from looking a little bit like me to to more like Kristen, which frankly, I don't want to daughter that looks like me, that's going to be a real mess for her in her life. I think I I think I translate well into into being a female. But you know, my and I've heard things like as people have said, you know, she looks more like Kristen, sorry, Alex, as though like, I really, really need her to look like mine. So everybody's like, a kind of thoughtful guy being a thoughtful guy.
So I imagine what you would be most interested in is if she had similar intellectual interests to you. Right. And so that would be another way that you can see your mark behind. That's an interesting thing you bring up this is so hard to feel.
But actually, it's totally relevant. Yeah. One of the things that's been going with our wife is I don't really like young children. I like kind of when they get to be 15 or 16, they actually have interests in the world and opinions and stuff like that.
Of course, like Los Angeles. Yeah. So I like when they actually get sort of invested in have real interest, you can actually have a real conversation up until then, they're like telling you they're dumb dreams about green monsters and like the pickle said hello to me. I'm like, I should have already, David's nodding his head, he knows exactly.
Oh, yes. But no, but there's a there's a sort of different connection you can have to your children that has less to do with. But to go back to your point, the visual on real quick on that point, we move on. Sorry.
If that's right, then it doesn't have to be a biological child, in which case, the impression that Plato leaves behind on or the story that actually is behind on Socrates is more important than the one that's actually left behind on his biological children. So sorry, I mean, there's that that great passage in Xenophon, right? Where he tested son and son just as an adequate son. I was like, well, I'll go talk to somebody else if I work on you anymore.
Right? Right. Yeah. So I said this in class, by the way, once, and my students got so I could tell they were visibly disturbed.
I was like, I had this good kid in my class, a man young man, I like a lot of kids like, what if my kid turns out to be a schlub? Like, why should I put my kid to this guy? Like, he's like, he's smart, he's charming, he's, you know, he's never just appalled that I would prefer someone else's kid to my own. Yeah, I said that in a class once I was like, I was bringing up some point about like people who are good over ones that are just yours, somehow connected to you.
And this kid was so shot, he was like, Oh, damn, Professor Stains, sorry. No, they don't like that. Jake's not blessed. Why would the field floor and feel like you don't have to do that?
So now one thing we're leaving out to return to what we're actually talking about the point of reproduction is that we are mortal and we need a partake of the immortal. And the way we do that is we need to reproduce. Now, I'm even behind something like yourself. Yeah, that looks like you and thinks like you.
So look at how many babies that people stick like a Trump or Biden ones on and say, Oh, look, my baby thinks that doesn't the baby can't even stop itself. It doesn't have actual well formed opinions. You're just trying to make something that looks like you and thinks like you so that you can feel good with dying, right? So I mean, that kind of thing is ridiculous, right?
So great. I guess I'd get a return that president. Yeah, my wife isn't happy when I dress our baby in a magus shirt and put it in a Trump mini truck. Right.
So now I suggested that because this part of the speech, we're now into the second part of the speech is only given once that maybe Socrates was not that keen on it. Okay. And there's other evidence, but you have to then say, well, Socrates is a pretty receptive to argument. Are there any serious argument in flaws?
And for me, the crucial argument argument in a flaw comes at 208 B to C. The team asserts do not be amazed concludes, I should say, do not be amazed if everything honors by nature, its own offshoot, which is to say that your child is sort of like an offshoot, the word is apple, blah, snam, I agree, which is literally the shoot in a plant is a word that's used with plants. For it is for the sake of immortality that the zeal and arrows attends everything. So we are inclined to honor our offspring because in some way they resemble us or they're preserving ourselves, you then jump down to see.
And he says, she says bring up honor again, if you are willing to glance at human beings love of honor, you would be amazed at their irrationality, unless you understand what I've said, and reflect how uncanny their disposition is made by their love of renown. And they're setting up immortal fame for eternity. Now, when I honor my child, I love my child because it resembles me, it's because it's reproducing me. But the person who loves honor as an Achilles, a codrus, a soul and whatever, they want to be the thing honored, which means I hear the offspring.
That's a crucial mistake. I'm no longer so the fiction of the parent is in a way less ridiculous than the fiction of the sort of deceived lover of honor in that, you know, we my child might believe what I actually believe it might look like what I am, the lover of honor who's out in the political sphere, ultimately has to become beloved to the parent in other words. So you become a parent of the people who are honoring you in creating this poem or find this thing. And that for me, I think shows, I think might even indicate Socrates.
And I'll just say this, between this shift, I didn't know this Socrates calls her a perfect softest, right? What is the sophistry here? The sophistry is that in order to affirm my existence, by creating something like me, I actually become the offspring and deny my existence, right? Deny my individuality I'm trying to preserve.
And arrows here, I think takes a strange turn, and doesn't seem as erotic, right? In the same sense, at least. I think that's right. He's like the perfect softest, but I want to come back to that later.
That's right. But there is a way in which these honor loving types are deeply erotic. The thing that seems to unite them is a sense or a longing for mortality, right? Why do you have kids?
It's to it's so that you can have something to live on after you die. Why do you found a city? Why do you write the iliad or Macbeth, right? In part, it seems to be driven by a love of honor or a strong desire for immortality to leave something behind long after you're gone.
But there's a way a pre existing sort of material that you have to deal with, right? Or generations or opportunity that you have to do. So Homer writes the iliad, but obviously drawing on pre existing stories. So in a way, but in a way, Homer has achieved any mortality that you or I will never achieve or David, right?
Well, certainly not David. By the way, somebody pointed out to me, I was sort of mentioned by ambivalence about children and someone mentioned me, you know, if you don't have a baby, you'll be the first living being, not like the first McBrayer, not like the first human being, you'll be the first being that didn't reproduce in your line, going back to little baby amoebas, really terrified me. In your line, but that's a prejudicial way of putting it, right? It's kind of weird, though.
I mean, it's really easy to have kids here, they're for you. Rares with which nobody wished to be produced that have gone anonymous. That's a big one. But I want to push back on that a little bit.
Oh, please do. More immortal, right? Well, these figures, it's a bigger speech. Yeah, that we will be and I'm not sure.
I don't need to push back on the fact that they're dead. But I want to push back and say that a person who becomes immortal through the honor of those, through the honor of others, in some sense, has to be beholden to them. This is going back all the way to the beginning when Agathon was saying, why is that not true of children or grandchildren or great grandchildren? Why is the same not true?
I mean, like, I don't know who might be. I mean, I can name my great grandparents, but I can't name my great-great-grandparents. And so why isn't why is the same problem there in biological reproduction? Like, if I'm going to have my ideas, I'm going to connect with my mortality-wiping kids and the kids and then like, who knows?
I mean, they're not going to know me. I don't know them. I don't mean there's some small evidence right? Like, I've read hair in my beard.
You guys probably can't see it. It looks great. But like, that's probably some distance relative whose DNA is like, I conquered this one little follicle. Fantastic.
Right? But like, I don't know who that is. Yeah, I don't want to get into the subject of the DNA in your beard. But I mean, I think you're right.
I think you're right. I think you're right that ultimately there's the immortality, quote unquote, to be had through children is not an anyway, sure. And it's in fact, in some ways, less sure. But I will say this, that when you have a child, there's a way in which it's you, that when you are trying to guide it pre-existing people.
So Penelope is more you than the Iliad is Homer, is what you're saying. Or I would say, yeah, Penelope is more me than I would say, something like, I don't know, we'll see what goes on with her. But there's more there's more sense that she comes from me than a sense that Abraham Lincoln, who was, you know, basically compelled by circumstance to lead as people in some way that that's genuinely who he is in some way. No, I don't know.
I mean, I may be wrong with this, but I do, I do think there's still a fundamental logical difficulty going from I honor my own offspring to therefore I love honor, which is to say to being honored, sure. Going for the way, what you want is your children and grandchild and great, grandchildren to honor you, too, though, right? I mean, that's what people want. Can I see questions or I did something I've reflected on a lot and I don't have an input answer to, but I've heard some answers that might be satisfied.
Why do you think Socrates had kids? I mean, because just for us, it's always struck me as he should not have had kids. That strikes me as not in keeping with what I understand as Socrates. What's the command by law?
That's what I've heard. But I've seen no evidence of that anywhere. But yeah, I've heard that. I didn't know he had kids.
Got three. What are their names? What do you mean, Billy and a little Davey? That was a good Athenian.
Little Davey bar. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Should we jump to the ladder? Let's do it. Do the ladder. Two things.
We need to cover the ladder and the mail bag. And then there's one point at the end of the speech that went emphasize. Great. You want to do that?
You got that? Me? Let me see if I can pull the passage here. But there's six steps to the ladder of love.
Oh, gosh, can I do this off the top of my head? There's one body to two bodies. So sorry. So the ladder of love is I'm sorry.
I should back up before we get into the actual details. So as you mentioned, this speech seems to be tailored to someone like an Agathon who he's going to take him from a conventional bodily understanding of love or honor and try and try to bring him to something that looks like an image of philosophic love of the beautiful itself. That's a gross omodo. And I think there are problems that but in any event, so there are steps from basic love to this higher love.
And the steps are as recounted at 210 A, the lovers in love with a single body, right? The next step is strange enough, not just many bodies, but from one body to all bodies. The next step one realizes is that actually souls are more beautiful than bodies. And so I should love souls.
So the third step is souls. The next step is you realize, well, actually, there are things that produce this good orderliness in people and that's pursuits and laws. So that's the fourth step. So one body, two bodies, souls, pursuits and laws, fifth sciences, there are sort of things that help us to understand something, the beauty of science, helps us to understand the beautiful.