Plato, Socrates, and Love Oxford Handbooks Online Plato, Socrates, and Love Iakovos Vasiliou The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love Edited by Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts Subject: Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy (Post-Classical) Online Publication Date: Jun 2019 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199395729.013.21 Abstract and Keywords Given the prodigious amount of scholarship on Platonic love, this article explores a differ­ ent question: the nature of Plato’s love for Socrates as expressed in two dialogues, the Symposium and Phaedo, in which Plato depicts Socrates as surrounded by his lovers and disciples. By paying attention to the “outer frames” of the dialogues, that is, the relation­ ship between the text and the reader, it is argued that Plato’s love for Socrates is dis­ played not only in his loving depiction of Socrates but also in Plato’s doing philosophy through the character of Socrates; Plato thereby shows what genuine love for Socrates would be like. Moreover, contrasted with the words and actions of other characters in these dialogues, Plato shows himself to be not just one among many of Socrates’ lovers, but in fact the best. Keywords: Plato, love, Socrates, Symposium, Phaedo, Platonic love Treatments of love in Plato focus on the speeches about erōs (translated as “love,” “pas­ sionate love,” or sometimes “desire”) in the Phaedrus and Symposium, the treatment in the Lysis of philia (which can also be translated as “love” but is often translated “friend­ ship,” in part to distinguish it from erōs), and the remarks about how erōs and sexuality ought to be regulated by society in the Republic and Laws.1 In addition, scholars have re­ flected on how the character Socrates is depicted as a lover, especially of Alcibiades, and also how he is presented as affecting other young men, such as Charmides, Phaedrus, Hippocrates, the boys in the Lysis, and so on. Given the prodigious amount of high-quality work that has been done on the topic of love in Plato,2 this chapter pursues a somewhat different tack. Most readers would grant that we might reasonably assume that Plato himself loved Socrates: for what philosopher, writer, or artist in the entire Western tradi­ tion, of anything like the stature of Plato, ever channeled virtually their entire creative output (in writing, anyway) through one, beloved character, while (almost) never mention­ ing themselves? Furthermore the depiction is, mostly, loving and attractive. I shall argue that in the Symposium but also in the Phaedo, a dialogue not typically considered when Page 1 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love concerned with the issue of love, Plato attempts to present himself, despite his absence as a character within the dialogues, as Socrates’s greatest and most worthy lover. What emerges is some understanding about what Plato thinks proper love for Socrates, a prop­ er philosophical love, would be like. By asking an unorthodox question—what do the Sym­ posium and Phaedo tell us about Plato’s love for Socrates?—the chapter also discusses and expands our appreciation of the function of Diotima’s infamous speech in the Sympo­ sium as well as enables new reflection on a question that has dominated much discussion on Plato and love, generated by Gregory Vlastos. So, let us begin with some background. In “The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato,”3 Vlastos argues that Plato’s account of interpersonal love fails. The lover, on Vlastos’s interpretation of Plato, is solely interested in the beloved insofar as he is a placeholder for beauty; furthermore, the beauty the beloved possesses is repeatable and replaceable in that as a lover finds a superior instan­ tiation of the desired quality in another object, the new object should then become the lover’s new beloved. Finally, loved persons are treated instrumentally, as a means by which the lover can ascend to grasp the Form of Beauty. According to Vlastos, Plato’s ac­ count, as Frisbee Sheffield puts it, “violates our strongest intuitions about love.”4 Martha Nussbaum agrees that the view of love offered by Diotima in the Symposium describes a philosophical erōs that unacceptably diminishes the value of the individual.5 She argues, however, that Vlastos’s account neglects the rest of the dialogue and in par­ ticular the entrance and presence of Alcibiades. Alcibiades embodies and describes pre­ cisely the sort of passionate love for an individual, Socrates, that Vlastos complained was absent on Plato’s (i.e., Diotima’s) account.6 On Nussbaum’s view, Plato presents us know­ ingly, perhaps even agonizingly, with an either/or choice. Plato has Diotima present an ab­ stract, philosophical love of Beauty itself, a love that, as Vlastos understood, transcends any love of an individual but consists instead in philosophical understanding of the high­ est sort. But, Nussbaum emphasizes, Plato’s presentation of Alcibiades displays a desper­ ate, if doomed, love of an incarnate individual, Socrates, with all of Socrates’s unique par­ ticularities. For Nussbaum, this too is love—and Plato understands it as such. So, on her reading, Plato presents us with a choice: should we pursue the philosophical love advo­ cated by Diotima or the earthly, carnal love of an individual pursued by Alcibiades? Ac­ cording to Nussbaum, Plato holds that we cannot pursue both.7 I shall maintain, however, that Plato shows that a person can love an individual both as an individual and as a vehicle through which one seeks philosophical wisdom. What is more, Plato attempts to show that his relationship to Socrates is one of this sort. In Nussbaum’s words, in the course of writing Alcibiades’s speech Plato has written “a story of passion for a unique individual as eloquent as any in literature”8 but this story of a passion for a unique individual is not limited to the pages of Alcibiades’s speech in the Symposium but extends to the multilayered description of Socrates throughout the Platonic corpus, and, in particular, in the two dialogues where he is depicted as surrounded by his lovers and disciples: the Symposium and Phaedo. There is no doubt that Alcibiades stands as an ex­ ample of the failure of Socrates’s persuasive powers, and so, perhaps, as a failure of Socrates’s love. Moreover, Socrates’s relationship to the problematic Alcibiades most Page 2 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love probably played a role in his actual trial and execution for, in part, corrupting the young, as Plato’s readers would be well aware. But Plato presents himself as holding a no less passionate attachment to Socrates the individual, while at the same time, as the best lover of Socrates, understanding that the highest manifestation of that love will include a transcendence of the individual and an erōs for wisdom and its possession. 21.1. Methodology: Inner and Outer Frames This thesis might seem to be a nonstarter: How could the texts of the Symposium and Phaedo speak to Plato’s love for Socrates, given that Plato himself, of all the lovers of Socrates, is absent in them?9 Despite initial appearances, however, we can make consid­ erable headway toward understanding not only Plato’s love for Socrates but also how Pla­ to thinks Socrates ought to be loved, and so what genuine love for Socrates is like. Of course this argument is based on readings of the dialogues. The phrase “Plato’s love for Socrates” is used only as shorthand for what we can understand from the text about its authorial attitude toward the character Socrates; I am certainly not trying to pretend to some sort of psychological insight into the mind of Plato or Socrates, the historical fig­ ures. That said, I am accepting as historical facts that Plato wrote the dialogues and that his contemporary readers or hearers (if they were read aloud or acted out) knew that he did. We need to keep in mind that the dialogues were not circulated anonymously; Plato was a well-known figure in fourth-century Athens and the founder of a well-known school, the Academy. Thus, despite the fact that Plato the author is “hidden” from us within the dialogues, Plato, the person and author, was not hidden to his contemporaries. The signif­ icance of this is that it justifies, one might even say demands, our asking what the point is of Plato presenting the dialogues as he does. To investigate Plato’s love of Socrates, the chapter employs a distinction made elsewhere between the “inner” and “outer” frames of the dialogue.10 The distinction itself is not complex (nor even especially original): the “inner frame” simply refers to the one or more conversations among the interlocutors depicted in the dialogue, while the “outer frame” refers to the relationship between the text and the reader (or hearer). It is important to pay close attention to and think critically about the relationship between the inner and outer frames in the Symposium and Phaedo, in order to reflect on what the outer frame says about Plato’s love of Socrates and his view about what would constitute genuine love of him. Although one starting point is that Socrates’s presence in every dialogue (except the Laws) is in itself evidence of Plato’s love, there are clearly many other lovers and devotees of Socrates: in fact, the two dialogues that are the focus here—the Symposium and Phaedo—depict more than any others Socrates surrounded by large groups of his lovers and disciples. While the Symposium is notorious as a source for investigation into Plato’s conception of erōs, the Phaedo, so far as I know, is not discussed in this regard. And yet if our topic is lovers of Socrates, then it ought to be quite interesting to think about, from the perspective of the outer frame, how Plato chooses to depict the circles of Socrates’s lovers and what he may be saying about them and the way they conduct them­ selves with him. After all, as focus on the outer frame reminds one, Plato is the writer of Page 3 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love all the speeches in the Symposium, including Alcibiades’s, and including the entire narra­ tion of that most hysterical Socratic, Apollodorus, who is the only character other than Socrates to be part of both the Phaedo (where he does not speak, but only weeps) and the Symposium (where he narrates the entire account, discussed below). In fact, the dramatic date of the outermost inner frame of each dialogue is very similar, most likely taking place a few months on either side of Socrates’s execution.11 Of course the main narra­ tions of the dialogues take place in very different atmospheres (party vs. prison) and oc­ cur at different times (416 vs. 399); correspondingly, each dialogue presents lovers and devotees of Socrates from different generations. Finally, one upshot of this chapter will be to reveal how present Plato turns out to be in these dialogues despite his ubiquitous and notorious absence. Apart from three wellknown references,12 Plato always remains the absent author behind the text. But, as em­ phasized above, it was as plain to his contemporaries that Plato was the author of the Phaedo and Symposium as it was that Sophocles composed the Oedipus Rex and Aristo­ phanes The Clouds. While absence is often thought of as a sort of hiding, perhaps from fear of exposure or shame, or perhaps a self-effacement out of humility or epistemic cau­ tion, I shall argue that in Plato’s case his absence is part of an arrogant and strong-willed self-assertion, particularly in the Symposium and Phaedo, insofar as these two dialogues surround Socrates with his lovers and disciples. By removing himself from these dia­ logues, Plato distances himself but also puts himself above and beyond the reach of Socrates’s other lovers, thereby positioning himself uniquely in his own love for and un­ derstanding of Socrates. Before plunging into the details, let me provide very briefly a more concrete sense of the particulars of the argument. Each dialogue depicts and generates an attitude in the read­ er/hearer—erotic frustration in the Symposium and mournful anxiety in the Phaedo—that stands in marked contrast to the philosophically enlightened positions argued for in each dialogue, which instead generate satisfaction, knowledge, self-sufficiency, and happiness. The frustration and anxiety of Socrates’s depicted lovers, as well as of Plato’s readers, are generated by their failure to love Socrates correctly and to understand what loving him correctly would be like. Plato, by writing the dialogues, shows that he is neither frus­ trated nor grieving. Plato displays his own love for Socrates by transforming Socrates in­ to a philosophical ideal and by demonstrating his, Plato’s, own enactment of that ideal by placing the philosophical views he, Plato, takes to be true (or at least worthy of serious philosophical attention)13 into the mouth of the character Socrates. En route, of course, he paints a loving portrait and memorial to Socrates the idiosyncratic individual. 21.2. The Symposium and Frustration: The Reader’s Desire to Know In Diotima’s story, Eros, the child of Poros, son of Metis and Penia, “always lives together with need ” (203d3). Erotic need, as well as the associated erotic frustration when that need goes unfilled, are themes in the dialogue, considered from the perspective of both Page 4 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love the inner and the outer frames. At its most sensible, basic level, erotic frustration is sexu­ al frustration, as Alcibiades vividly describes in one of the most notorious depictions of sexual frustration in western literature (217e–219e). In its more Platonic incarnation, erotic frustration occurs when one cannot get the knowledge and wisdom one seeks and wants. From the perspective of the outer frame, the reader’s frustration begins with her desire to know and understand exactly what was said and done at this fantastic dinner party. Scholars have not missed the baroque and particularly complex opening of the Sympo­ sium.14 We readers “witness” a fourth-hand, fifth-telling account of the heart of the dia­ logue, namely Diotima’s speech: Levels of telling (first-hand, etc.)*Number of Times Told;* Relative Dates* OUTER FRAME: [Witness fourth-hand] Plato/textReader [witness 5th telling] INNER FRAMES: [Fourth-hand] Apollodorus [2nd telling]toFriend [5th telling; most recent] [Fourth-hand] Apollodorus [1st telling]toGlaucon [4th telling; 2nd most recent] [Third-hand] AristodemustoApollodorus [3rd telling; 3rd most recent] [Second-hand] SocratestoSymposium participants [2nd telling; 4th most recent] [First-hand] DiotimatoSocrates [1st telling; oldest date] *All three of these numberings—level of telling, number of times, and relative re­ centness—are relative to the oldest, most inner conversation, that of Socrates and Diotima. Relative to the symposium itself, of course, we must “subtract” one level. Add to this that the “fifth telling” occurs sometime between 406 and 400 (with most scholars preferring a later date), while the dramatic date of the symposium itself is fixed at 416; Diotima’s alleged discussion with Socrates is thus presented as even earlier.15 So there is about 10- to 15-year lapse between the event and the present narration of it. To make matters worse, right before the speeches begin, Apollodorus tells his interlocu­ tor that Aristodemus could not remember everything that was said and that he, Apol­ lodorus, cannot remember everything that Aristodemus told him (178a). But, Apollodorus says, “what he [Aristodemus] remembered best, and the people who seemed to me to say Page 5 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love something worth remembering—I’ll tell you the speech each of these gave” (178a3–4, Rowe trans.). There is initially one potential check on these faulty memories, but ulti­ mately it disturbs more than it assures. At 173b3–6, Apollodorus says that he went over “some parts (ἔνια)” of Aristodemus’s account with Socrates and that Socrates agreed that they were as Aristodemus said. The language makes clear however that Socrates does not himself relate any part of the story to Apollodorus independently; he just confirms that it was as “that guy (ἐκεῖνος)” related. But we readers, if not the businessman being ad­ dressed, would very much like to know which parts, exactly, were verified. Was it the philosophically crucial account of Diotima, Socrates’s refutation of Agathon, Alcibiades’s entrance and speech? There is no subsequent hint. We only know that Aristodemus could not remember “some other speeches” that took place between Phaedrus’s and Pausanias’s (180c; cf. 200d) and that he was too sleepy at the very end to follow Socrates’s argument with Agathon and Aristophanes that authors ought to be able to write both comedy and tragedy (223d). This elaborate distancing from the account, with its accompanying serious doubts about the accuracy of what we hear, generates substantial challenges and frustrations for the reader. Everyone who hears Diotima’s speech, in both the inner and outer frames, grasps that it is the philosophical center of the dialogue. As she is about to embark on the “high­ er mysteries,” she warns Socrates that he may not be able to follow her but suggests that he try the best he can to understand, for now she is going to explain the ultimate goals and deeds of love (210a, 210e): “the purpose of these rites, which is the final and greatest mystery” (210a). If Socrates may not be able to follow, it surely must be intense stuff. What could titillate our philosophical erōs more than this? We want the details of the as­ cent, we desperately want to understand exactly what the steps are and how they work— as the abundant scholarship attests.16 A definitive account, however, continually eludes us: for one thing, the account of the steps of the ascent from 210a to 210e does not even match the simple recap in 211c–d just a Stephanus page later. For example, the step of loving souls, between loving bodies and loving customs or practices, is completely omit­ ted in the latter description. Why? An oversight in only one Stephanus page? Or is this one of the parts that Aristodemus or Apollodorus misremembered or forgot, or neglected to verify with Socrates? Moreover, if the “higher mysteries” are too difficult for Socrates to follow, what are the chances that the forgetful Aristodemus or Apollodorus—not the most intellectually sophis­ ticated figures in the dialogues—are relating it to us correctly? We are stymied right at the most important part of the dialogue. From the perspective of the outer frame, then, we can appreciate that just as the text creates the desire to know precisely how the as­ cent works, at the same time it thwarts and frustrates that desire. Within the inner frame, Alcibiades’s entrance, of course, is what prevents further discussion or elaboration of Socrates’s (Diotima’s) account. Aristophanes is even trying to respond to Socrates’s ac­ count of his own speech when Alcibiades and his retinue burst in (212c). Given Socrates’s own questioning of Agathon, it is reasonable to think that those present might have ques­ tioned Socrates further about the account. But further discussion is impossible, for of course Alcibiades, his drunkenness aside, has not even heard it. So readers are left frus­ Page 6 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love trated in their desire to learn further details and are forced instead to listen to a story by Alcibiades of erotic frustration of a different, if related, sort (insofar as Alcibiades too wants Socrates’s wisdom). 21.3. Socrates at the Symposium and in the Symposium Readers are frustrated too in their desire to know Socrates. Who is the Socrates of the Symposium?17 This section argues that Plato depicts Socrates in three different ways within the dialogue. 21.3.1. Socrates as Eros It has escaped few that Diotima’s description of Eros—needy, barefoot, “far from beauti­ ful and delicate,” seeking wisdom, a philosopher, a daimonion, between god and human— fits a very familiar Platonic portrait of Socrates.18 In the first place, he is always poor, and far from being delicate and beautiful (ἁπαλός τε καὶ καλός) (as most people think he is).19 Instead, he is tough and shriveled and shoeless and homeless, always lying on the dirt without a bed, sleep­ ing at people’s door-steps and in roadsides under the sky, having his mother’s na­ ture, always living with need. But on his father’s side he is a schemer after the beautiful and the good; he is brave, ready for action (ἴτης), and intense, an awe­ some hunter, always weaving snares, resourceful in pursuit of intelligence, a lover of wisdom through all his life, a genius with enchantments, potions, and clever pleadings. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal [ … ] Love is never com­ pletely without resources nor is he ever rich. He is in between wisdom and igno­ rance as well. In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise already loves wisdom; on the other hand, no one who is ignorant will love wisdom either or want to become wise. For what’s especially difficult about being ignorant is that you are content with yourself, even though you’re neither beautiful and good nor intelligent (καλὸν κἀγαθὸν μηδὲ φρόνιμον). If you don’t think you need anything, of course you won’t want what you don’t think you need. (203c6–204a7; Nehamas and Woodruff, modified) Apollodorus early on refers to the obsessed Aristodemus as “one of the worst cases of the time” and describes him as always going about barefoot, in imitation of Socrates (173b3). Alcibiades will later call Socrates daimonios (219c1), as though between mortal and im­ mortal, and also describe him as barefoot even on a winter campaign (220b5). The discus­ sion of the genuine lover of wisdom is a succinct characterization of the elenctic project as carried out by Socrates in the so-called early dialogues, where he takes someone un­ aware of his own ignorance, and so content, and at least attempts to show him that he does not know what he thinks knows (e.g., Euthyphro or Meno). It fits as well with Page 7 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love Socrates’s own self-characterization as not knowing and his search for someone wiser than himself in the Apology (19c, 20c, 21b–23b). 21.3.2. Socrates as a Beauty What is striking, however, is not just how well it fits the Socrates of other dialogues and of the interlocutors’ descriptions, but also how the barefoot, unattractive, searching-forwisdom Socrates fails to fit the Socrates of the Symposium. Readers learn that on this oc­ casion Socrates is neither barefoot nor “far from beautiful and delicate”: he is bathed and dressed up in “fine sandals” (τὰς βλαύτας ὑποδεδεμένον) (174a3–4). Aristodemus asks where he is going, given that he has made himself “so beautiful (οὕτω καλὸς)” (174a5). Socrates replies that he is on his way to Agathon’s: “so that’s why I’ve beautified myself, so that I am a beautiful man to a beautiful man” (ταῦτα δὴ ἐκαλλωπισάμην, ἵνα καλὸς παρὰ καλὸν ἴω) (174a8–9). From the perspective of the outer frame, why does Plato bother having Socrates dress up and claim that he is making himself beautiful?20 It could be just for comedic effect, but it is difficult to accept this given the overwhelming importance of “the beautiful” in the dia­ logue to come. It is not as though Aristodemus says simply that Socrates looks nice, and Socrates thanks him. There is instead a detailed discussion of Socrates’s new appearance as kalos and Aristodemus’s desire for an explanation of it. According to Diotima’s ac­ count, if Socrates is (at least now, on this occasion) beautiful, then he cannot be Eros, but would instead be the object of Eros. She says: On the basis of what you say, I conclude that you thought Love was being loved, rather than being a lover. I think that’s why Love struck you as beautiful in every way (πάγκαλος): because the lovable [what deserves to be loved] is what is really beautiful and graceful and perfect and highly blessed. (204c1–5, Nehamas/ Woodruff, modified) In the deliberate attention that the text gives to Socrates’s beautification,21 readers are invited in hindsight to think about Socrates in light of Diotima’s account. According to what are sometimes called “the lower mysteries,” those who are pregnant in soul give birth in the presence of beauty to logoi “about virtue—the qualities a virtuous man should have and the customary activities in which he should engage” (209c, Nehamas and Woodruff). If there ever were a crowd assembled who would count as pregnant in soul, this cast of characters would be it.22 Although the speechifying this evening is allegedly triggered by overdrinking on the previous evening (176a–e), it seems clearly to be an in­ sufficient explanation, for Aristophanes and Agathon both end the evening at dawn, hav­ ing drunk once again prodigious amounts. Rather, the relevant difference seems to be the presence of the beautiful (and beautified) Socrates (besides Aristodemus, he is the only newcomer before Alcibiades and his retinue arrive), in front of whom the others, drunk or sober, are moved to “give birth” to their own logoi. The speeches of the Symposium thus become an illustration of the very account of love given within it, with “pregnant” men giving forth logoi in the presence of beauty (i.e., Socrates). From the perspective of the Page 8 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love outer frame, it is Plato who produces the logos that is the Symposium itself, and this too was presumably inspired by the “presence” of the beautiful Socrates—despite its novel philosophical content (I will come back to this point.). 21.3.3. Socrates the Enlightened There is also a third characterization of Socrates in the Symposium, which further dis­ tances him from Diotima’s description of Eros as a seeker after wisdom. As the group is settling on the topic of praising love, Socrates says, “How could I vote ‘No,’ I who deny that I know anything other than erotic matters (ὃς οὐδέν φημι ἄλλο ἐπίστασθαι ἢ τὰ ἐρωτικά)?” (177d7–8). As one who understands erotics, Socrates is neither Eros the Needy nor Socrates the beloved, but a third Socrates: One who has achieved wisdom, and so, in theory at least, could lead others.23 The first piece of evidence for this enlightened Socrates comes early on, when Socrates lags behind Aristodemus on the way to the party, “applying his mind somehow to himself (ἑαυτῷ πως προσέχοντα τὸν νοῦν)” (174d5). Translators gloss this in a number of ways,24 but the language may suggest, oddly, that he is applying his thinking to himself.25 Applying one’s mind to oneself sounds a lot like contemplation, contemplation of one’s own understanding. Socrates remains on the neighbor’s porch, unmoving. He will not en­ ter Agathon’s house even after a slave reports that he has called him in. Agathon labels this behavior “strange” (atopon) (175a10), foreshadowing (and confirming) Alcibiades’s later description of Socrates’s atopia (221d2). Agathon insists that Socrates be brought in, but Aristodemus objects, saying that this is a habit of Socrates and that he ought to be left alone (175a–b). Despite Agathon wanting to call again for him “many times” (pollakis), Socrates finally enters on his own midway through the meal. Agathon then says: Come here and recline beside me, Socrates, so that I too by touching you can get the piece of wisdom (ἵνα καὶ τοῦ σοφοῦ ἁπτόμενός σου ἀπολαύσω), which came to you on the porch. For it is clear that you found it and that you have it; for you would not have come away before [you got it] (δῆλον γὰρ ὅτι ηὗρες αὐτὸ καὶ ἔχεις· οὐ γὰρ ἂν προαπέστης). (175c7–d2) Socrates of course denies that wisdom can be passed on simply through contact, but then imagines that if it were the case, he would then be the beneficiary of Agathon’s “abun­ dant” (pollē) and “fine” (kalē) wisdom (175e2), compared with his own “base” (phaulē) and “disputable” (amphisbētēsimos) kind.26 Nevertheless, Socrates is depicted as having achieved something and he does not deny achieving the wisdom Agathon attributes to him. This incident also confirms Alcibiades’s own reference to Socrates’s similar experi­ ence while on campaign in Potidaea (220c–d), and thus corroborates Alcibiades’s claim. If Socrates is not contemplating—and in a self-sufficient way, so unlike the question-and-an­ swer, dialectical Socrates readers are accustomed to27—one must ask what else he could be doing. Indeed, Socrates’s motionlessness, being in a state of stasis, fits well with Diotima’s description of someone who has grasped the Form of Beauty (211d–e):28 Page 9 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love And there in life, Socrates, my friend, [ … ] there if anywhere should a person live his life, beholding that Beauty. If you once see that, it won’t occur to you to mea­ sure beauty by gold or clothing or beautiful boys and youths—who, if you see them now, strike you out of your senses, and make you, you and many others, eager to look at the boys [you love] and be with them forever (ὁρῶντες τὰ παιδικὰ καὶ συνόντες ἀεὶ αὐτοῖς), if there were any way to do that, forgetting food and drink, everything but looking at them and being with them (ἀλλὰ θεᾶσθαι μόνον καὶ συνεῖναι). But how would it be, in our view, if someone got to see the Beautiful it­ self, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form? Do you think, she said, it would be a poor life for a human being to look there (ἐκεῖσε βλέποντος) and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it (καὶ ἐκεῖνο ᾧ δεῖ θεωμένου καὶ συνόντος αὐτῷ)? (211d1–212a2, Nehamas/ Woodruff, modified) The lover’s fantasy is simply “to gaze and be with” beautiful boys—forgetting food and drink and doing nothing else. The analogy then works by suggesting that if one wants to do nothing but gaze at and be with beautiful boys, just imagine how satisfying and selfsufficient simply gazing at and being with the Form of Beauty would be. As a (potential) contemplator of the Forms, Socrates is transformed, becoming more like the Forms: un­ changing, impervious, self-sufficient, in need of nothing, and so on.29 In fact this passage describes quite accurately what Socrates is actually like prior to entering Agathon’s house: he forgets food (he arrives halfway through dinner), forgets drink, and of course forgets the beautiful Agathon, for whom he has made himself beautiful;30 all of these are put on hold for the sake of his contemplation.31 In his speech, Alcibiades too depicts this third Socrates: wise, enlightened, impervious to the things that effect ordinary people, such as cold, hunger, exhaustion, drunkenness, and so forth (220a–b). Alcibiades’s own account is, unbeknownst to him, confirmed (as has been noted) by the action in the dialogue itself. He declares (or, perhaps better, threat­ ens) that he will tell the whole truth about Socrates (214e); the confirmation of many fea­ tures of his account within the dialogue, however, shows that he is not simply drunkenly and fancifully exaggerating Socrates’s abilities because of his love. Everyone already knows that Socrates can drink or not—it makes no difference to him (as mentioned early on at 176c). His imperviousness to alcohol and lack of sleep is displayed again at the very end of the dialogue, when Socrates leaves the passed-out Aristophanes and Agathon at dawn, gets up and goes about his day as usual, only going to bed the next evening; the same behavior Alcibiades’s describes after Socrates’s all-night episode of contemplation (220c–d). And of course, Socrates notoriously displays remarkable temperance: an admit­ ted lover of beautiful men, he remains unmoved by Alcibiades climbing into his bed and embracing him. Through this depiction of Socrates as sage, Plato kindles from the outer frame the erotic desire of the reader to gain Socrates’s wisdom (just as for Agathon and Alcibiades in the inner frame) simply by “touching” him. Plato then frustrates his readers, just as Socrates frustrates Alcibiades.32 On the assumption, however, that the philosophi­ cal doctrines are Plato’s own, Plato himself experiences no similar frustration: indeed, the Page 10 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love Symposium is itself the manifestation of his philosophical activity and, at the same time, his love of Socrates. 21.4. Inner and Outer Frames in the Phaedo Early in the Phaedo Socrates defends the claim that anyone who is a genuine philosopher welcomes death; indeed, the proper practice of philosophy is a practice for death (“any­ one you see who is vexed that he is going to die is not a philosopher but a lover of the body,” 68b8–c1). Just as the Symposium itself exemplifies many aspects of its central ac­ counts, not only Diotima’s but also Alcibiades’s, so too does the account in the Phaedo get dramatized within the Phaedo, which heightens the tension with respect to the outer frame. Hanging over the Phaedo is a general concern about how Socrates’s disciples (and, from the outer frame, Plato’s readers) are to go on after the death of their master, and in particular how they are to go on philosophizing. This problem has more severe ramifica­ tions than its intellectual cast may make it first appear. Socrates argues that philosophy is a purification ritual that is necessary for the possibility of avoiding a grim postmortem fate and for instead joining the “company of the gods” (cf. 69c–d). Proper philosophizing consists in noetic grasp of the Forms. But, as Simmias remarks in a passage discussed further in what follows, by tomorrow there will be no one left who can give an account of such things (76b). No wonder everyone weeps at the end of the dialogue. As Phaedo says, they weep in large part for themselves at being deprived of “such a friend,” who is also “like a father” (cf. 116a; 117c). But applying the philosophical account of the Phaedo to the drama, Socrates is much more than a father or friend; he is, quite literally, the key to their salvation. Without him, there may be no prospect of true philosophizing and without philosophy there is no prospect of salvation: whoever arrives in Hades unpurified and uninitiated (i.e., without practicing philosophy) shall not dwell with the gods but “wallow in the muck (ἐν βορβόρῳ κείσεται)” (69c6). While this worry extends to Socrates’s com­ panions, from the perspective of the inner frame it explicitly does not extend to Socrates, for he says: “it’s to be among them [i.e., those who have practiced philosophy correctly] that I myself have striven, in every way I could, neglecting nothing during my life within my power” (69d3–4, Gallop trans.). Moreover, from the perspective of the outer frame, while the reader ought perhaps to worry about herself, apparently she need not worry about Plato, for, as the reader sees in the many arguments that follow—concerning the Forms, their role as aitiai, consideration of kinds of aitiai, essential versus nonessential properties of a thing, and consideration of change quite generally—Plato is certainly engaged in doing philosophy. Through the writ­ ing of the Phaedo and the philosophical issues it addresses, Plato makes it plain that he has gone on to do philosophy and to occupy himself with philosophy and truth, transform­ ing and moving beyond the sensible character Socrates (as he did in the Symposium). Page 11 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love 21.5. The Historicity of the Phaedo Turning to the Phaedo makes considering the historicity of the dialogues urgent for an in­ vestigation into Plato’s love of Socrates in a way so far ignored. Contemporary scholars agree that in the Phaedo and Symposium Plato puts his own views into the mouth of the character Socrates. No commentator in almost the last seventy years (so far as I know) has worried about the ramifications of such a position for the interpretation of the Phaedo in particular. Here is where the historiography of the historicity of the Phaedo becomes fascinatingly relevant. I suspect that the now universal rejection of the historicity of the Phaedo, adamantly supported by no less superb Plato scholars than John Burnet and A. E. Taylor in the first half of the twentieth century, inadvertently causes the perspective of the outer frame to be largely buried as a topic for serious critical attention. Let us turn to the passage in the Phaedo from the Recollection Argument that exemplifies the issue in question: “If a man knows things, can he give an account of what he knows or not?” “He must certainly be able to do so, Socrates,” he [Simmias] said. “And does it seem to you that everyone can give an account about the things we were just discussing [i.e., the Forms]?” “I would indeed wish it were so!” said Simmias, “But I am rather much more afraid that by this time tomorrow there will no longer be any human being who can do this worthily (ἀξίως).” (76b5–12). It can seem perfectly plain what this aside means within the context of the dialogue: to­ morrow Socrates will be dead, and he is the only human being who can give an adequate account of the Forms. In 1911, however, John Burnet, defending the view that the Phaedo accurately portrays pretty much what the historical Socrates actually said during his final hours, comments as follows: “It seems to me that, if Plato originated the theory, he could not possibly have put this statement into the mouth of Simmias.”33 R. Hackforth in 1952, one of the chief debunkers of Burnet’s belief in the historical accuracy of the Phaedo, re­ sponds: “But Simmias is speaking within the framework of the whole dialogue, and con­ formably to its assumptions. Throughout the dialogues Socrates is the exponent of a theo­ ry of Forms, and there is nothing unnatural in Simmias’s present remark that he is unri­ valled at expounding and applying it.”34 We can understand what Hackforth means: “con­ formably to its assumptions” means “from within the perspective of the inner frame.” Within the fictional narrative of the dialogue, Socrates is the expounder of the Theory of Forms and will be dead tomorrow; thus there is “nothing unnatural” in Simmias’s remark. From the perspective of the outer frame, however, if we deny that this is what Socrates actually said, then the claim is obviously, painfully false. For if the transcendent Forms are Plato’s own theory and simply put into the mouth of Socrates the character, as every­ one now holds, then there obviously will be someone who can give an account of the Forms: Plato himself, the author of the dialogue. Socrates’s death, then, is not what it seems to his companions. Page 12 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love While we need not agree with Burnet that the only resolution of this oddness is to ascribe historical accuracy to the Phaedo, the subsequent tradition of rejecting the Burnet posi­ tion and with it the idea that there is anything “unnatural” going on—Plato puts his own views in the mouth of Socrates, end of story—misses a profound aspect of the meaning of Simmias’s remark. What has Burnet upset is how unbelievably outrageous this move is on Plato’s part, if we deny that this is what the historical Socrates actually said. For Plato is taking this most moving, historical, and sad moment of his beloved teacher’s and master’s life and entirely (or at least, largely) fictionalizing what he actually said, which, as Burnet emphasizes, Plato was in a position to know, and inserting in its place his own philosophical views. It is one thing, perhaps, to compose a dialogue like the Symposium, whose main action allegedly takes place when Plato is about ten (as any reader would know) and then, after the epistemological hedging of the nested sets of retellings of re­ memberings (as discussed above), to insert some Platonic views into the mouth of Socrates—and even then only at one further remove, through the device of “Diotima.” But it is quite another matter to insert your own philosophical theories into the mouth of your teacher, depicted as surrounded by his weeping disciples, on the very day of his execu­ tion. Burnet writes: Whatever Plato may or may not have done in other dialogues—and I say nothing here about that—I cannot bring myself to believe that he falsified the story of his master’s last hours on earth by using him as a mere mouthpiece for novel doc­ trines of his own. That would have been an offence against good taste and an out­ rage on all natural piety; for if Plato did this thing, he must have done it deliber­ ately. There can be no question here of unconscious development; he must have known quite well whether Socrates held these doctrines or not. I confess that I should regard the Phaedo as little better than a heartless mystification if half the things commonly believed it about it were true.35 To put it more bluntly, Burnet is asking, “How could Plato do this to the man he loved?” And so, Burnet sweeps the possibility away by taking refuge in the idea, which we all now acknowledge to be unsupportable, that what the Phaedo reports is actually what Socrates (basically) did say on his final day in prison. The contemporary universal scholarly rejec­ tion of the historicity of the Phaedo does not adequately come to grips, however, with Burnet’s worry about the outrageous effrontery of the resulting position. 21.6. Plato on Loving Socrates This section argues instead that Plato is not committing an outrage against the memory of his master, but in fact showing what it would be to love him truly, as he does in the Symposium. It is no surprise that the form the love takes appears to us, in at least one of its aspects, as an outrageous and even somewhat impious appropriation when faced frankly. But this is a truly philosophical love, where love of Socrates the philosopher is the same as loving philosophy and truth. Again, as with the Symposium, when we reflect from the perspective of the outer frame we can see the views presented in the dialogue repre­ Page 13 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love sented in the unfolding of the drama. According to the Phaedo, the genuine philosopher, whom Socrates earnestly hopes to be, is the one whose soul will be released from the wheel of reincarnation and live with the gods in eternal contemplation of the Forms. While Socrates’s soul, as immortal, continues to exist, nothing about the individual Socrates—the irascible, lovable, heroic man described by Alcibiades, the character that plays with Phaedo’s curls (89a–b), and so on—will be left. The consolation that the Phaedo provides with its arguments (assuming one is persuaded by them) is a very philosophical consolation. If we join Socrates in Platonic heaven, we will not get to chat about the trial or see his snub nose, we will simply be disembodied minds in eternal contemplation of the incorporeal, intelligible Forms. Now for whom does that sound satisfying or consoling? Well, for the genuine philosopher. Similarly, what kind of love (and what kind of lover) re­ places what Socrates actually said, hours before his execution, with doctrines that the au­ thor, so far as he can tell, takes to be true or closer to the truth,36 but which he knows (and knows his readers will know) are not Socrates’s own? Plato is showing that that is what a philosophical love and a genuinely philosophical lover would be like. Moreover, when Plato explicitly calls attention to his absence, he signals that although he is not “ac­ tually” present—that is, not part of the inner frame of the dialogue, since he is “out sick” (59b)—he is really all-present as a philosopher insofar as he is continuing the activi­ ty of philosophy just as the character Socrates tells those “actually” present to do: [ … ] if you are persuaded by me, you will give little thought to Socrates, but much more to the truth: if I seem to you to say something true, you should agree, but if not, oppose it with every argument [ … ]. (91a7–c6; Grube, modified) Given the assumption that the philosophy we are getting and have gotten is Plato’s, we can see that he transforms his love for Socrates into the love of wisdom, manifested in the philosophical doctrines expressed in the dialogue. He cares about logos and truth by car­ ing about the man, albeit now transformed as a Platonic ideal. Far from being vexed at “upsetting” Socrates or his memory, Plato, although absent, shows himself as best exem­ plifying the very practice he is describing and attributing to Socrates.37 At the same time, recalling the discussion of the Symposium, he is memorializing the particular, sensible Socrates through the act of writing the dialogues. We can think of the dialogues them­ selves as products generated by Plato at the level of the “lower mysteries” (in the terms of the Symposium), similar to the productions of Homer and Solon, but of course, going beyond them insofar as they are aware of themselves as merely lower mysteries. Never­ theless, for all the lofty philosophical abstraction of “Platonism,” Plato remains a philoso­ pher very concerned with the sensible world of particulars.38 Indeed it is sensible particu­ lars that both begin the philosophical ascent of the “higher mysteries” in the Symposium and that trigger “recollection” of the Forms in the Phaedo. And of course the sensible par­ ticular that triggers Plato’s own philosophizing is Socrates. Richard Kraut argues that we should not read the higher mysteries as one in which the objects of love at the lower lev­ els are no longer loved as one moves up the ladder of ascent.39 My argument fits well with such a view and explains further why Nussbaum is incorrect in thinking that Plato presents Alcibiades’s love, as love of an individual, and the philosophical love of Beauty praised by Diotima as two disjuncts in an exclusive disjunction. While there is little doubt Page 14 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love that Plato thinks that the way that Alcibiades loved the individual Socrates was deeply flawed, it is not the fact that it was aimed at an individual that is the problem, but the fact that it never ascended any further. If Alcibiades had understood Socrates and how to love him properly, which Plato is showing that he himself did, Alcibiades might have retained his love and appreciation of Socrates the individual, but also worked through him to pur­ sue wisdom. As Socrates drinks the poison at the end of the Phaedo,40 Phaedo describes everyone as dissolving into tears. Socrates must order his companions to control themselves: “What are you doing, you strange/amazing people (Οἳα ποιεῖτε, ὦ θαυμάσιοι?) [This is why I sent away the women … ]. Come on, be quiet and control yourselves (ἀλλ᾽ἡσυχίαν τε ἄγετε καὶ καρτερεῖτε)” (117d7 … e2). These are the last words—a reprimand to control themselves—that Socrates says to his beloved friends.41 Calling them amazing or surpris­ ing, thaumasioi,42 indicates perhaps his own (and Plato's own) surprise and disappoint­ ment at their reaction. Were they to have been genuinely convinced of his arguments and so were they genuine philosophers, as he apparently has been, they would have reacted differently. By absenting himself from the Phaedo, while using the character “Socrates” to present elements of his own philosophical thinking, Plato allies himself far more closely with Socrates in his commitment to truth and philosophy than any of the companions he depicts as “actually” present.43 With his absence Plato avoids this embodied, grieving mo­ ment and replaces his presence with the dialogue itself, that is, with an exercise of his soul. I have attempted to show that Platonic love, or at least Plato’s love of Socrates, is even stranger than has been thought: it is not love of an abstract Form of Beauty (or the Good) that ignores the individual, but a love that retains the individual in a transformed way, providing immortality for a sensible image of Socrates, the character in the dia­ logues, while also allowing (Plato’s) philosophy to continue through it. Plato provides a vivid description of the man—his body, looks, actions, and behavior—but also uses this character as a vehicle to pursue philosophy and truth. So while Simmias and Cebes, Phae­ do and Crito, and the others weep around Socrates’s corpse, Plato, the best of all of the lovers of Socrates, like the enlightened Socrates he depicts, is already gone—Socrates to the afterlife and, he expects, to the contemplation of Forms and the company of the gods; Plato to philosophy.44 Bibliography Benitez, R. “The Moral of the Story: On Fables and Philosophy in Plato’s Symposium.” In Reading, Interpreting, Experiencing: An Inter-Cultural Journey into Greek Letters, edited by M. Tsianakis, G. Couvalis, and M. Palaktsoglou, 1–14. Special Issue of Modern Greek Studies (Australia and New Zealand), 2015. Burnet, John. Plato: Phaedo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911. Bury, R. G. The Symposium of Plato. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932. Page 15 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love Destrée, P., and Z. Giannopoulou, eds. Plato’s Symposium: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Dover, K. J. Plato: Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Ferrari, G. R. F. “Platonic Love.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut, 248–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Gallop, David. Plato: Phaedo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Hackforth, R. Plato’s Phaedo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952. Halperin, D. “Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity.” In Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues, edited by James C. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith, 93–129. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Suppl. vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Howatson, M. C., and F. Sheffield, eds. Plato: The Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Hunter, Richard. Plato’s Symposium. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Irwin, Terence. Plato’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kraut, Richard. “Plato on Love.” In The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Gail Fine, 286–310. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 2002), 314 and 323 Nehamas, Alexander. “The Symposium.” In Virtues of Authenticity, 303–315. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Nehamas, Alexander, and P. Woodruff. Plato: Symposium. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 1989. Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Patterson, Richard. “The Ascent Passage in Plato’s Symposium.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 7 (1991): 193–214. Reeve, C. D. C. “Plato on Friendship and Eros.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2016 ed., edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2016/entries/plato-friendship/. Rowe, C. J. Plato: Symposium. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1998. Sheffield, Frisbee. Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Page 16 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love Sheffield, Frisbee. “The Symposium and Platonic Ethics: Plato, Vlastos, and a Misguided Debate.” Phronesis 57, no. 2 (2012): 117–141. Vlastos, G. “The Individual as Object of Love in Plato’s Dialogues.” In Platonic Studies, 2nd ed., 1–34. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. Whiting, Jennifer. “Love: Self-Propagation, Self-Preservation, or Ekstasis?” Canadian Jour­ nal of Philosophy 43, no. 4 (2013): 403–429. Reprinted in her First, Second, and Other Selves, 194–222. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Notes: (1.) In the words of Richard Kraut, “Plato on Love,” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 286–310, at 287: “the heart of his [Plato’s] theory of intimacy, affection, and sexuality lies in those speeches [in the Phaedrus and Symposium].” (2.) See the Bibliography and subsequent notes. (3.) In his Platonic Studies, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 3– 42. Frisbee Sheffield, “The Symposium and Platonic Ethics: Plato, Vlastos, and a Misguid­ ed Debate,” Phronesis 57, no. 2 (2012): 117–141, at 118, claims that debate about the in­ terpersonal love as presented by Vlastos “has completely dominated interpretation of the Symposium” and argues that this single-minded focus has caused scholars to miss the sig­ nificance of the dialogue for Plato’s broader ethical views. (4.) Sheffield, “Symposium,” 120. (5.) Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philoso­ phy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), ch. 6. (6.) See Nussbaum, Fragility, 167, 197. (7.) Nussbaum, Fragility, 198–199. Kraut, “Love,” 301–302, defends a view that, contrary to Vlastos, the account of love in Diotima’s speech leaves room for and includes love of an individual as an individual. (8.) Nussbaum, Fragility,167. (9.) “Lover” here is not being used in the Greek sense of erastēs as opposed to erōmenos; it just means someone who loves and is devoted to Socrates, as are many (but by no means all or even most) characters in the dialogues. Moreover, it includes those who are not lovers of Socrates in a narrower sense, like Alcibiades, but also more broadly lovers, friends, and followers, such as all of those present in the Phaedo. (10.) See Iakovos Vasiliou, “Conditional Irony in the Socratic Dialogues,” Classical Quar­ terly 49, no. 2 (1999): 456–472, and “Socrates’ Reverse Irony,” Classical Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2002): 220–230, in connection with understanding and interpreting Socratic irony. Page 17 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love (11.) See Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press, 2002), 314 and 323. (12.) Apology 34a2, 38b7; Phaedo 59b10. (13.) This caveat is to allow room for readers who interpret Plato more aporetically than doctrinally. (14.) See, for example, Richard Hunter, Plato’s Symposium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 20–29, and Zina Giannopoulou, “Narrative Temporalities and Models of De­ sire,” in Plato’s Symposium: A Critical Guide, ed. P. Destrée and Z. Giannopoulou (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 9–27. (15.) According to Socrates, she held off the plague from Athens “for ten years,” which occurred in 430. (16.) For example, Kraut, “Love,” 296, lists a series of questions about the ascent that “we wish Diotima had answered;” see also 297–298, where Kraut offers his account of the ascent based on what Diotima “implies” or never says. Hunter, Symposium, 93, remarks that how one moves up steps of higher mysteries is “very thin on details.” Scholars offer accounts nonetheless, of course: see, as a sample, Terence Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 18; Richard Patterson, “The Ascent Passage in Plato’s Symposium,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 7 (1991: 193–214; and Frisbee Sheffield, Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). (17.) This question is broached in Alexander Nehamas’s introduction to Alexander Ne­ hamas and Paul Woodruff, Plato: Symposium (Indianapolis: Hackett Press, 1989), xxiii–xv, reprinted in Alexander Nehamas, “The Symposium,” in his Virtues of Authenticity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 303–315, at 312–314. (18.) See, e.g., Nehamas, “Symposium,” 312. (19.) It is hard not to read this an explicit jab at Agathon, who (195c–196a) spends consid­ erable time claiming that Eros is young, delicate, and beautiful, as commentators note. This perhaps adds to the evidence that Diotima is a fiction. (20.) Few scholars make anything of this passage except to remark that, just as Aristode­ mus himself says, Socrates’s dressing up is a rare event. C. D. C. Reeve, in “Plato on Friendship and Eros,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2016 ed., ed. Ed­ ward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/plato-friendship/, 9, claims that Socrates’s dressing up, in contrast with Aristodemus’s more typical “Socratic” outfit, is a way that Plato makes the “complexity of Socrates” (with beautiful insides and ugly outsides) dramatically present. (21.) Readers also get an instance of mimetic behavior: Socrates must beautify to go to Agathon the beauty. Mimetic behavior will be relevant to the third characterization of Page 18 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love Socrates “as enlightened”; see what follows and Republic 6, 500c, for the idea that the philosopher who consorts with the Forms will make himself like them. (22.) In particular this is a crowd that could produce the products of the lower mysteries: plays, poetry, and so forth, not, of course, attain the goal of the “higher mysteries,” which is to grasp the Form of Beauty/the Fine. (23.) This will be an important connection with the Phaedo. One aspect of this “third” Socrates is that he is distinguished by his knowledge and to some extent his actions, which are taken to stem from that understanding (e.g., imperviousness to cold, hunger, drink, sexual temptation, trance-like contemplative states), but not his sensible look. The Phaedo will describe the philosopher as one who is indifferent to the body and its desires; see what follows. See too Hunter, Symposium, 90: “In the Symposium [in contrast to his midwifery role in the Theaetetus] Socrates himself, so we are here to understand, is ‘pregnant,’ and it is Socrates who is the prime example of the philosopher en route to that vision of Beauty which makes life worth living.” (24.) For example: “turning his thoughts inward” (K. J. Dover, Plato: Symposium [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980]), “wrapped up somehow in his own thoughts” (C. J. Rowe, Plato: Symposium [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1998]), “began to think about something, lost himself in thought” (Nehamas and Woodruff, Symposium), “he became absorbed in his own thoughts” (M. C. Howatson and F. Sheffield, eds., Plato: The Symposium [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008]). (25.) The dative typically functions as the indirect object of prosechonta ton noun. In the midst of laying out the “higher mysteries” just before she gives an account of the Form of Beauty, Diotima tells Socrates: “Try to apply your mind to me as best you can (πειρῶ δέ μοι τὸν νοῦν προσέχειν)” (210e1–2). Of course, as the interlocutor of Diotima, readers witness Socrates as one wishing to obtain the knowledge he lacks. Insofar as readers see Socrates as himself presenting the account of Diotima, he is acting like a knower/guide to others. (26.) Rowe, Symposium, 33, comments that this is an “elegant version” of Socrates’s typi­ cal disavowal of knowledge, but I am less sure. As Rowe himself adds in a parenthesis, Socrates, as we have seen, is about to declare that he does know ta erōtika, in marked contrast with a disavowal. Furthermore, Socrates’s extolling of Agathon’s wisdom, “as verified by 30,000 Greeks,” smacks of eirōneia, as Agathon recognizes in his response —“You’re being hubristic!” (ὑβριστὴς εἶ, 175e7). One among many confirmations, as we shall see in what follows, of the veracity of what Alcibiades says (215b7). (27.) And that is also seen in the Symposium in, for example, Socrates’s cross-examina­ tion of Agathon (198d–201c) and in the narrated conversation with Diotima. (28.) See Iakovos Vasiliou, “Plato, Forms, and Moral Motivation,” in Oxford Studies in An­ cient Philosophy, 49 (2015): 37–70. Page 19 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love (29.) Think of the Republic where the knower of Forms will wish to make himself most like them in the contemplation of them: “Rather, he [the philosopher] looks at and contem­ plates things that are arranged and always in the same condition, that neither do nor suf­ fer injustice to one another, but are all in order (kosmôi) and according to logos, he imi­ tates them and tries to become as like them as he can” (500b–c). See, too, the perfectly happy contemplator in Aristotle, as the most “self-sufficient” of all (NE X.7, 1177a27– 1177b1). (30.) This imperviousness to the demands of the sensible world by the contemplating Socrates is also part of Alcibiades’s later account of the similar episode at Potidaea (220c–d). (31.) John Burnet, Plato: Phaedo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), xlvii–xlviii: “The soul of the man who stood transfixed for twenty-four hours in the camp at Potidaea is surely the soul to which we must look for a psychological explanation of the beatific vi­ sion described in the Phaedrus. On what else could his thoughts have been concentrated during that day and night? Surely not on the things he discusses in the Memorabilia?” (32.) One need not think that Plato depicts Socrates as having absolutely and definitively achieved knowledge of the Form of the Beauty, whatever that would entail, but one should not therefore discount the repeated descriptions of him as someone enlightened, possessed of wisdom, and, for want of a better word, superhuman; the bravest, wisest, and most temperate person any of these characters have ever seen. (33.) Burnet, Phaedo, ad loc. (34.) R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1952), 72, n. 3. (35.) Burnet, Phaedo, xi–xii. (36.) Or, if one wishes to read Plato more aporetically, at least views that Plato thinks are worth serious philosophical examination. (37.) Think of Aristotle’s memorable remarks from the opening of Nicomachean Ethics I.6, when he turns to criticize the Form of the Good: “Presumably, though, we had better ex­ amine the universal good, and puzzle out what is meant in speaking of it. This sort of in­ quiry is, to be sure, unwelcome to us, because those who introduced the Forms were friends of ours; still, it presumably seems better, indeed only right, to destroy even what is close to us if that is the way to preserve truth. We must especially do this as philoso­ phers; for though we love both the truth and our friends, reverence is due to the truth first.” (1096a11–17, Irwin trans.). Perhaps Aristotle is thinking of Plato as setting this ex­ ample first in his relationship with Socrates? (38.) Despite their justified preference for remaining as philosophical contemplators, the Philosophers-Kings in the Republic have a moral duty to serve as rulers in the Kallipolis, Page 20 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019 Plato, Socrates, and Love which requires fifteen years of training at the application of their knowledge of Forms to the sensible world; see Vasiliou, “Forms.” (39.) Kraut, “Love,” 301–302. (40.) Recall the enlightened Socrates we witness and hear about in the Symposium; at the end of the Phaedo he is on display as well: Socrates “took [the cup of poison] very calmly, [ … ] without trembling, or his changing either color or countenance” (117b3–5) and, af­ ter a short prayer, “pressed the cup to his lips and drank it down with good humor and easily” (117c4–5). (41.) Of course, telling Crito “we owe a cock to Asclepius” are his much-interpreted final words. (42.) This is how Simmias reacts to the mention of Forms—as amazing—early on at 74b1. (43.) If one connects this thought with the claims the dialogue makes about post-mortem prospects, Plato’s absence will be the key to his salvation, while Socrates’s present com­ panions may well be, without Socrates, doomed “to wallow in the muck” (69c). (44.) This chapter has greatly benefited from comments by Rick Benitez, Yarran Hominh, Adriana Renero, Nancy Worman, and James Zetzel and audiences at the Columbia Univer­ sity Seminar Series in Classical Civilization and the University of Sydney. Iakovos Vasiliou Department of Philosophy, The Graduate Center, CUNY Page 21 of 21 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 June 2019