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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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).
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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
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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.
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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,
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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
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