PLATO
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- B. 427, d. 348 BCE
- lived almost entirely in Athens
- an associate of Socrates
- founded the Academy in 385; the Academy did not
close its doors until the 6th century CE
- much of Plato's work is composed in dialogue form,
which does not give straightforward analysis like a
treatise; early dialogues present Socrates as the
questioner who "doesn't know"; middle dialogues, such as
the Symposium, evince a shift with the
introduction of a theory of forms, which does provide a
kind of absolute, final answer (though it can be accessed
only indirectly).
- Plato is known for his theory of forms or 'ideas',
the absolute essence that lies behind the material realm.
Human sense perception can perceive only distorted
material "shadows" of the real (the forms); through
philosophy one may attain to a closer apprehension of the
form, but not yet a direct apprehension.
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PEDERASTY
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- "love of boys"; refers to an asymmetrical and
hierarchical relation between an adult man and a
pubescent boy; ideally the relationship, once
established, continued for a period of time during which
the older man conferred on the boy the benefits of his
knowledge, wisdom, and experience in the polis and
the boy granted his older lover sexual favors; in
other words, the relationship was seen as part of the
education and initiation of youths into adult male
society. (Recall from Aristophanes' Clouds the
interest of Better Argument in young boys genitalia.)
- the Greeks conceived of the asymmetricality not in
terms of the gender of the partners (male-female), but in
terms of active and passive roles; hence pederasty refers
to an asymmetrical relation between an older and active
partner,the lover/erastes; and a younger, passive
partner, the beloved/eromenos;
- adult males were expected to be the active partner
(i.e., the one who penetrates); sex with a passive (i.e.,
penetrated) partner of either gender was generally
socially acceptable (excepting, of course, with certain
protected Athenian women such as citizens' wives and
unmarried daughters);
- the relationship between the erastes and
eromenos was frequently valorized as contributing
to the moral and intellectual development of the youth
(e.g., Pausanias in the Symposium); it was also
demonized by some writers as aristocratic excess;
- a pederastic relationship was ordinarily
terminated when the youth came to full maturity (could
sport a beard), at which point he could become the active
partner in a relationship with a younger male. The
evidence about whether married men continued to pursue
relations with boys is mixed, but it is very possible
that they did so. (Men married in classical Athens at
about 30 years of age)
- there is little or no evidence from Greek
antiquity for a concept of homosexuality as sexual
orientation; the norm was something like serial
bisexuality;
- Athenian society generally encouraged the
erastes to pursue a boy to love,
courting him with gifts, etc.;
but nonetheless expected the boy (and his family) to
resist the relationship; the youths were not expected to
enjoy the sexual relation but to finally give sexual
favors in return for the benefits of the mentoring
relationship;
- copulation with citizen boys was usually
intercrural, that is,
penetration was between the boys thighs, not anal;
- religious festivals, the gymnasium, and
symposia were popular places to
pursue youths;
- this is not to say that pederasty was the only
expression of same-sex relations in ancient Greece;
indeed Pausanias--whom Plato (in the Symposium)
has defend long-term same-sex partnerships between
adults--was known to have had a lengthy relationship with
Agathon. Such relations were, however, suspect at best
because of the passivity that would necessarily be
involved.
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< to calendar
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The Symposium
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INTRODUCTION
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- Observe the techniques of distancing the reader
from the "actual" (though they are fictional) events and
speeches:
- Time: the symposium occurred "long ago" in 416
BCE; the account is supposedly provided by a certain
Apollodoros in 406-400 BCE; the dialogue was probably
written between 385-378 BCE.
- Sources: the internal (and external) auditor
hears the speeches only at third remove: the actual
speeches filtered through Aristodemos, who was there,
and filtered again through Apollodoros, who was not
there.
- Speakers>Aristodemos>Apollodorus>Plato>reader
- Pay attention to the gentle but humorous depiction
of Socrates' tendency to become 'lost in thought', so
that he arrives late to the drinking party.
- Since a symposium was not only a place to perform
poetry or speeches about love but was also a place to
pursue erotic attachments, we should pay attention to
exchanges of various kinds between the participants as
well as to the content of the speeches themselves.
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PHAEDRUS
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- Eros is the best guide to virtue; the lover
inspired by eros will be inspired to display
courage leading to self sacrifice:
- Three mythological exempla (all flawed
in one respect or another): Alcestis, Orpheus,
Achilles
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PAUSANIAS
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- Distinction between two kinds of love: heavenly
love/Aphrodite and common love/Aphrodite (derived from
two myths about the origin of Aphrodite)
heavenly love
- comes only from the male and pertains
only to men;
- exclusively homosexual (male-male)
- more spiritual;
- not directed toward little boys (from
whom one can derive only sexual gratification)
but toward slightly older youths with whom an
intellectual relationship can be fostered;
- Aim is moral improvement
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common love
- indiscriminately takes male or female
objects
- physical love whose goal is sexual
gratification
- produces regeneration
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- Contemporary (not mythological) exempla:
- Boeotia/Elis: man-boy love is indiscriminately
approved, which show they are not intellectual enough
to think with sophistication about it
- Ionia/Persia: man-boy love is indiscriminately
disapproved, which shows that tyrannical forms of
government can't tolerate deep spiritual bonds
(witness the tyrannicides/lovers Harmodius and
Aristogiton)
- Athens/Sparta: society encourages the
erastes, but puts obstacles in his way and
discourages the eromenos from giving in. Why?
To weed out the merely common love from the
heavenly.
- QUESTION: Do you think Pausanias satisfactorily
accounts for the sexual element in his argument? Put
another way, in his defense of pederasty, does he
adequately integrate the sexual and intellectual
aspects?
- OBSERVE that, while sex with women or with one's
wife is not ruled out, and even affection for a woman is
not ruled out, women are eliminated from these 'higher
forms' of physical/intellectual bonding because of a
pervasive notion that women were intellectually inferior
and thus not capable of the kind of bonding idealized in
man-boy love.
- OBSERVE: Aristophanes has the hiccups during the
final part of Pausanias' speech. What might be the
significance of this?
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ERYXIMACHUS
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- brings the body back into the center of the
discussion (Eryximachus is a physician)
- agrees that there is a noble love and a bad
love:
- health/good is harmony/balance; the good love
causes things to come together in harmony ("I'd
like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. .
."?)
- strife is what causes things to come apart
- QUESTION: Does Eryximachus' abstract speculation
take the ethical aspect of love/pederasty sufficiently
into account? Does he offer physics of love without
metaphysics?
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ARISTOPHANES
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- brings the relationships between individuals back
into focus; shifts from the effects of eros to the
nature of eros.
- Speech is original in two respects
- in its portrayal of reciprocal love between
individual (as opposed to the 'one way' love of
pederasty
- strong 'essential' argument for preferences as
to gender of object of eros
- story of origins that accounts for the human
condition and for the nature of love as 'longing': the
human condition is that we are lacking, that is, we are
separated from another 'half' for which we search until
we find him/her
- the gender of the other half for which humans
search is determined the gender from which each
originated: male/male, female/female, or
female/male
- I point out that this is the only reference in
the Symposium to female desire or to female
same-sex love.
- sets up privation view of love, which Socrates
picks up
- QUESTION: Does Aristophanes' story account for the
institution of pederasty (a kind of serial
bisexuality)?
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AGATHON
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- although Agathon is a tragic poet, the effect of
his speech is comic because of its unrestrained parody of
sophistic style and argument (not to mention use of
double-entendre)
- he proposes to praise Eros first for what he is,
and secondly for his benefits
- Agathon emphasizes aspects of love that relate
most to him: love is delicate, of extraordinary beauty,
and outstanding in virtue
- It is here that Socrates will attack his
speech!
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SOCRATES
DIOTIMA
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- Socrates questions Agathon (199D-201C)
- Example of the Socratic method of
cross-examination (elenchus)
- He gets Agathon to agree that since no one
desires what one already has, eros cannot be
either good or virtuous.
- When Agathon admits he does not know what he
thought he knew, what has Socrates accomplished?!
- Diotima questions Socrates (201D-203B)
- Diotima elicits from Socrates that love is
neither beautiful nor ugly, neither mortal nor
immortal, neither wise nor ignorant, but something in
between
DIOTIMA'S SPEECH
DIOTIMA, priestess of Mantinea, is surely a
fictional character. She functions to keep the
reader yet another step removed from the true form.
As the form cannot be perceived by the senses nor
is it readily accessible, neither is the source of
information about it.
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- Eros is offspring of Poros
(Resource) and Penia (poverty)
- consider the description of Eros in 203
D-E; does he sound a little like. . . . Socrates?
- Eros is in love with what is beautiful;
wisdom is very beautiful; therefore is Eros is a
lover of wisdom (a philosopher).
- Thus she turns the lover from a purveyor into a
pursuer of wisdom
- Love is wanting to possess the good forever
(206A)
- cp. Socrates' ethics, namely, that he has no
concept of humans knowingly loving, pursuing, or doing
evil, since for him, to know good is to love good and
therefore will always lead to doing good.
- The REAL object of love is not just the good, but
giving birth in beauty (206E), which is, at heart, a
desire for immortality:
- Men who are pregnant in body turn to women and
give birth to children (209A)
- Men who are pregnant in soul turn to youths who
are beautiful in body and soul; when they come
together, the lover gives birth to virtuous acts (209
B-C)
ÄÆNÀ! - The LADDER OF LOVE 210A (note progress from
individual and zpecific to general and transcendent):
- start by loving one beautiful body (and
begetting beautiful ideas): What is this? Pederasty;
on the lowest rung of the ladder; compare to
Pausanias.
- generalize from one beautiful body to all
beautiful bodies, and love all beautiful bodies
- step up to loving the blauty of another's soul,
Äò4*! and, accordingly, regard the beauty of bodies as a
thing of no importance (note dualism of body and soul:
leave behind love of one to love the other)
- love the beauty of a whole sea of knowledge
- 210E: all of a sudden you will catch sight of
something wonderfully beautiful in its nature, which
is the rehson for all the lower steps on the ladder:
gaze on the eternal and pure Form of Beauty. (read 211
A-E very carefully for the concept of the Form)
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What problem or question is Plato's theory of
forms a response or answer to?
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ALCIBIADES
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- comes in to the party, as he says,
"plastered."
- Alcibiades the quintessential example of physical
beauty and lack of self-discipline; represents the
physical side of passion.
- So, as suddenly as the philosopher sees the
) Form of Beauty, the physical down at the bottom rung
ìš.§# comes crashing in. This should raise the question of
what a philosopher does. . .
- Alcibiades' speech in praise of Socrates:
- What are Socrates' effects on Alcibiades?
- What is Socrates' like (his nature)?
- Socrates is)pregnant (like Silenus statues) in
soul
- But Socrates is 'deceptive', for he presents
himself as a lover, but you (i.e., Alcibiades!) end up
loving and pursuing him yourself.
- Note that when Alcibiades offers Socrates an
exchange--physical love for metaphysical wisdom (the
ideal of pederasty, after all)--Socrates rejects it
bechuse he would get the worst part of the
bargain.
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EPILOGUE
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- Thinking back over the whole ff the Symposium,
what do you think is the relation of the final discussion
(whether or not the same writer can write both tragedy
and comedy) to the dialogue you have just read?
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Sample Essay
Questions
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Discuss the following quotation. Contextualize it
(work, author, speaker, place in the work) and discuss its
significance for representations of pederasty in the work (2
paragraphs for quiz; 3-5 for final exam):
"I
think," I said,"you're the only worthy lover I have ever
had--and yet, look how shy you are with me! Well, here's how
I look at it. It would be really stupid not to give you
anything you want: you can have me, my belongings, anything
my friends might have. Nothing is more important to me than
becoming the best man I can be, and no one can help me more
than you to reach that aim. With a man like you, in fact,
I'd be much more ashamed of what wise people would say if I
did not take you as my lover, than I would of what
all the others, in their foolishness, would say if I
did."
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Discuss the following quotation. Contextualize it
(work, author, speakers, place in the work) and discuss its
significance for Plato's depiction of Socrates' method
and/or concept of wisdom (2 paragraphs for quiz;3-5 for
final exam):
"So, if something needs beauty
and has no beauty at all, would you still say that it is
beautiful?"
"Certainly not!"
"Then do you still agree that
Love is beautiful, if those things are so?"
"It turns out, I didn't know
what I was talking about in that speech."
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
""As for me, Socrates," he
said,"I am unable to challenge you. Let it be as you
say."
""Then it's the truth, my
beloved_______, that you are unable to challenge," he said.
"It is not hard at all to challenge Socrates."
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Discuss the following quotation. Contextualize it
(work, author, speaker, place in the work) and discuss its
significance for the development of one of the major themes
in the work (2 paragraphs for quiz; 3-5 for final exam):
"This then is the source of our
desire to love each other. Love is born into every human
being; it calls back the halves of our original nature
together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound
of human nature. Each of us, then, is a 'matching half' of a
human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two
out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that
matches him."
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