Symposium or Drinking Party (Focus Philosophical Library) by Plato

Author:Plato [Plato]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781585108558
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2017-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

A Comic Arrival

A funny thing happens when Aristodemus arrives at Agathon’s house. The door is wide open—like Agathon’s spirit of easygoing hospitality. A household slave brings him directly to the dining room, where all the guests are reclining on couches. Agathon warmly invites Aristodemus (“Best Demos or People”) to join them, explains (not very convincingly) why he didn’t invite him yesterday, and asks why he’s not bringing his master. Then comes the funny part: Aristodemus wheels around, thinking that Socrates is right behind him, and realizes—he’s not there! A flustered Aristodemus then explains that he’s not the one who was bringing Socrates: it’s the other way around.91

The comedy of arrival continues when a servant reports that the eccentric Socrates is standing in the neighbor’s porch and not responding when called. Agathon wants to compel Socrates to come in, but Aristodemus stops him, explaining that for Socrates this is normal behavior (175B). The explanation points to a major theme in the Symposium: the odd ways of the philosopher, who sometimes unaccountably stops to think and seems to go off into his own world.92 This is indeed a cause for wonder. But it’s also a reproach to mere mortals, especially ambitious ones {65} like Alcibiades, who are bent on moving forward with no thought about where they’re going.

In his own good time, Socrates arrives. Agathon invites him to lie down by him, so that the “wise thing” Socrates gained on the porch might flow into him through physical contact. If only it were that easy, says Socrates. If only wisdom flowed like water from the fuller into the emptier. But it doesn’t work like that: wisdom isn’t a fluid body, and all the touching in the world won’t make anybody wise. If wisdom did flow, then Socrates would be the one who benefited from the wisdom Agathon showed when his poetic speech revealed itself gloriously in the theater of Dionysus. Agathon picks up on the sarcasm (apparently he’s used to it) and calls Socrates a hybristês, an “insolent mocker” (175E). He playfully keeps up the quarrel between poetry and philosophy with a juridical image: later Socrates and Agathon will plead their case about who’s the wiser, with the wine-god Dionysus as judge.93

A Sober Doctor Prescribes an Erotic Theme

After the banter between philosopher and poet (there’s a lot of banter in the Symposium), the company finishes dinner. Libations are poured and all the other customary things observed, including a chant to the god. Then they turn to what is supposed to happen at a symposium—heavy drinking (176A). At this point in Plato’s drama we meet, one by one, the characters (other than Socrates and Agathon) who will praise Eros: first Pausanias, then Aristophanes, Eryximachus and Phaedrus.

Pausanias is the first to counsel moderation. Since they’re horribly hungover from yesterday’s binge, he urges that they ease up on the drinking. Aristophanes heartily agrees. The exchange highlights the company’s not-so-virtuous reason for being moderate: avoidance of pain brought on by recent self-indulgence. It’s a bodily reason suited to a doctor’s view of life.

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