The Symposium and Socrates

“Tell me the truth about Love”: W. H. Auden, 1938 (Faber and Faber 1998)

Sometimes he appears genial and jocular, at other times ironic and mordantly critical; then again he becomes intense and utterly serious. Throughout, Socrates appears invulnerable, and a contrast may be drawn between the invulnerability of Agathon, who has no doubts because he has no insight, and that of Socrates, who is invulnerable because he knows the limits of his knowledge and constantly patrols the boundaries of his ignorance. The portrayal of Socrates is completely consistent throughout the Symposium in this respect at least: his single-minded pursuit of something which lies beyond that rational frontier.

The clue to what that ‘something’ might be is given in Alcibiades’ passing reference to the Silenus figures, which might have been like present-day Matryoshka dolls (221d8). Certainly Symposium can be seen as having an analogously nested structure of wrappers. The outer layers consist of a series of interlocutors; there follows a sequence of 7 speeches, with, at the centre, first of all Socrates the sceptical inquirer and then Diotima’s speech as related by Socrates the mystic. A suitable way of presenting a mystery: wrapped in a series of seven enigmatic veils. But the meaning of Alcibiades’ remark is plain: Socrates can be appreciated at several different levels. [The proposal by Peters (1976) quoted by Rowe (p. 206, note to 215a8 – b1) that technical aspects of sculpture might have had a bearing on Plato’s thought is intriguing – it had already occurred to me that the theory of Forms might relate to the use of molds in sculpture, bearing in mind the fact that Pheidias’ work on the Parthenon, including the relief friezes, as well as his statue of Zeus at Olympia, were all new at that time, and must have had a stunning impact on all contemporary creative thought.]

Thus the portrayal of Socrates changes at each level in the Symposium, as different layers of ideas about eros are addressed. At the beginning (174a5), as he and Aristodemus stroll off to Agathon’s, S. is genial, jocular, articulate and playful. He stretches the rules (174a4: “What about going …. without an invitation?) and he misquotes the classics, bending Homer to his whim (174b5). “Normal” life is subordinate to his inner dialogue, as he tarries deep in thought (174d7).

Socrates the dealer of double-edged eulogy emerges as he ironically praises Agathon (175e1-175e7). No more Mr. entirely nice guy at this point, and he turns the heat up rather more in praising (198a11) and subsequently (199b8 – 201c9) “demolishing Agathon” (Rowe: Introduction, p. 9, 4.4). Even so, the ever-present sense of humour in his remarks makes it clear that his approach is not meant to wound, only to instruct, or at least to lead people towards drawing better conclusions for themselves.

The layers seem to commence from a consideration of what interests the party guests most, ie sex, which in the context of the time and culture tended to paederasty. It may be that Socrates and Plato were as clear as we are about the fact that whatever may have been the noble aspects of educational love in the higher echelons of society, there would have been a corresponding degree of misuse of power and position for sexual ends at all other levels, with an enormous burden of suffering carried by individuals whose stories will never be written. Being a man of these times and that culture, Socrates partakes to a degree of all the levels now described; he admires beautiful young men, but in his case this only leads his thoughts to higher things. The first two speakers invoke the deities, and this too is fine with Socrates, but for him,
rational thought leads to more sophisticated explanations for eros. Eryximachus searches for a universal principle of attraction, and in so doing creates a reasonable attempt at unifying everything from physiology to music. We pass to a consideration of how logic and rationality misapplied can result in grotesque explanations, as exemplified jestingly by Aristophanes (189 – 193d6), and then to Agathon’s solipsistic narcissism (194e4 – 197e8) which seems to represent a kind of desperate turning away from unsatisfactory rational explanations altogether. At this point Socrates cuts through the Gorgianic tangle first by taking logic as far as it will go (199b8 – 201c9), and then boot-strapping the discussion to a very different level, simultaneously adopting a new persona: Diotima (201d1 – 212a7).

Socrates the impervious to wine is constant throughout the Symposium, (214a4, 220a3 – 201e7), and one wonders if this is simply one of those heroic stereotypical attributes which have hardened the livers of hard characters from Homer to Hemingway. Alternatively, perhaps this ability to drink without getting drunk has a symbolic meaning, along the lines of Nietzsche’s suggestion that Socrates was radically unsusceptible to Dionysiac influences and ways of experiencing the world, as opposed to those of Apollo (see The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche WF, tr. Speirs RC, p. 69: in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Ed. Geuss R and Speirs R, Cambridge University Press, 1999). And then again, Diotima was the priestess of Apollo at Mantinea (a city in Arcadia), and although modern commentators including W. Hamilton (Penguin Books, 1951), C. J. Gill (RF, p xxviii). Paxton MRH (Tutorial Notes, 21/7/06, p.2) and Rowe (Introduction, p4, 2.5) seem compelled by tradition to assume she was probably a fictional character, I respectfully beg to entertain a different hypothesis. A photograph of a stele dedicated to her can be seen at:

http://www.losttrails.com/pages/Hproject/Mantinea/Mantinea11.html

Perhaps more convincingly, when Socrates quotes Diotima’s advanced teachings, (209e5 – 212a7) the text takes on the feel of a verbatim account. Here is a palpable disjunction from any of the previous shapes and forms of Socrates, and it enables Plato to pursue his systematic thesis into realms beyond the levels attempted in previous speeches. Her words, via Socrates, sound as if they were heard at first hand, and they read as if they were spoken by a practitioner who passionately believed in what she was saying.

What Plato is describing through the proxy of Socrates / Diotima, whatever its local cultural connotations, can be taken directly from the Greek text as a realistic description of what we know as meditation, at a level which produces feelings of meaningfulness, changes in the sensation of body-image, and disengagement from bodily concerns. The kind of methods and experiences D. is describing would be not uncommon in a reasonably advanced practitioner of meditation, and would correspond with ideas which we know were current in the Far East at the time. This idea is partly supported by Hamilton (The Symposium, Penguin Books 1951, Introduction: p. 26).

It is entirely feasible that such influences could have been communicated to the Greek-speaking world via Asia Minor. It’s a long way from “the correct way of boy-loving” (211b6); but through eros we reach compassion (211c3), and from there, detachment (“contemplation of beauty itself”: 211d3). Diotima, though, knows that the sensation of meaningfulness goes beyond philosophy, and I suspect that although he transmits the concept, Plato himself was not quite ready to plunge back into irrationality.

After the mysterious andante, the vigorous scherzo: Alcibiades provides the closure which is both psychologically and structurally necessary at the end of the work, and in doing so provides a different insight, this time into Socrates the inspiring genius (221d3) and Socrates the impervious to seduction (219c7), money (219e2), physical discomfort (220b1) and danger (220d7). And so the work ends with Socrates, after drinking all night, “spending the day as he did any other” (223d8): perhaps the first example of a ‘fade’ in all the long history of media studies!

© Donnie Ross 2012