Philip Krinks

A reflection on Remembrance. In 1940 Dick Howard turned the bombing of Coventry Cathedral into an opportunity for commitment 'to build a kinder, more Christ-like world'. The Community of the Cross of Nails became a movement of peace and reconciliation workers across the world. In the words of Miroslav Volf, memory can be 'the bridge between adversaries' (The End of Memory). The work of memory, although difficult, is a way in which judgement can 'run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream'.

Plato's Symposium contains two accounts of eros which explicitly aim to reach a telos. The first is the technocratic account of the doctor Eryximachus, who seeks an exhaustive account of eros, common to all things with a physical nature. For him medical techne can create an orderly erotic harmony; while religion is defined as the curing of disorderly eros. Against this Socrates recounts the priestess Diotima finding a telos, not in technical exhaustiveness, but in a

Read theologically, Plato's Symposium is an exercise in doxology: how Eros is to be praised. Pausanias observes that, since Eros is not one, a unitary praise will be inadequate. Proposing a focus on praxis, he classifies erotic praxes, and praises one, in a synthesis of contemporary convention, sophistic rationality, social responsibility and polytheistic fidelity. Against this Socrates praises erotic praxis as one of a plurality of desires mediating between mortals and an otherwise transcendent good. Desire which is specifically erotic involves a praxis of (pro)creation through attention to beauty. In this praxis mortals participate in immortality and the divine. Pausanias' praise is seriously offered. However, lacking a participatory element, it delivers an underwhelming doxology, making Eros at best an instrument of a sophistically constructed virtue ethic to which his polytheism is ambiguously connected. It is the philosophical theology of Socrates, which, praising Eros as a mediator enabling participation in the divine realm, and offering itself as an analogous form of mediation, is able to be consummated liturgically.

The objective of this short paper is to re-examine the early speakers’ reflections on method. I argue that each early speaker adopts an explicit methodological focus for his speech, which responds to his predecessors’ focuses. The early speakers thereby collectively and progressively generate a methodology for praising erōs. This connection and progression between the early speeches gives them a tighter relation to one another, and the dialogue a greater degree of unity, than might otherwise appear.

For Phaedrus, the method for praising erōs is to focus on what it causes (Section II); for Pausanias, on erōs as a praxis (Section III); for Eryximachus, the praise should be complete, reach the telos (Section IV); for Aristophanes, a praise should do justice to the power of erōs (Section V); for Agathon, to the intrinsic character of erōs.

I also make the observation, as a corollary (Section VII), that it is these five methodological focuses which then structure Socrates’ speech.

The consensus, that Plato's Symposium is only loosely unified, with the early speeches of little interest and the speech of Alcibiades an appendix, is to be rejected. Instead, the dialogue forms a complex, unified reflection on what it is for a human being to progress and on the kind of completion to be found in human life. -- The call to praise erōs unifies the first six speeches: in the context of contemporary attacks, erōs stands in need of defence. These speeches demonstrate the availability of defences, individually coherent, but mutually inconsistent, each expressing a view of the human condition. Each speech also reflects on methodology, progressively modifying encomiastic convention. Phaedrus commits to showing eros causes virtue, but a further principle is found necessary by each symposiast: specificity, completeness, understanding power, and praising characteristics directly, respectively. -- Socrates finds truth also necessary, but lacking in that apparently progressive sequence of defences. He follows the others' principles but in reverse order, turning things literally back to front. Socrates shows how erōs leads to acts which yield a reputation for virtue in the eyes of others, and so immortality. But he then says that such virtue is a false semblance, unless someone experiences a progressive development in her own life, forming a conception of absolute beauty. How such a person looks in the eyes of others is not said. -- Alcibiades' praise of Socrates is no less a defence, since Socrates was no less under attack. Alcibiades unwittingly answers the question how Socrates looked in the eyes of others. His method, images for the sake of truth, creates a partial defence of Socrates. Alcibiades competes with Plato's whole creation, revealed as a competing set of images for the sake of a different tmth, about Socrates and about erōs.