Plato\'s Symposium One May Gauge

¶ … Plato's Symposium

One may gauge the seriousness of Plato's Symposium from the title itself, which means literally "drinking party." Of course, like all drinking parties there is bound to be absurdity mixed with philosophy -- but the overall mood is light and the atmosphere celebratory. For these reasons, it is appropriate that the theme of the Symposium is love, for if there is one subject that captures the ethereal, the whimsical, the effervescent, and the practical all at once it is eros. This paper will show how "love" is examined in Symposium in such a way that we might suggest just as Socrates states that "to the feasts of the good unbidden go" (172) (before he drops off "in a fit of abstraction") so too does love follow love. Or, in other words: Plato uses his characters as tools to give several accounts of love and show its true meaning as a search for enlightenment and betterment of oneself. (Dialogue is a process and the true meaning of love gets reflected in the way characters offer several accounts of what love is -- a search for enlightenment.) The thesis of this paper, then, is that everyone's concept of love is different -- but each is related as part of total chimera of "love": each idea, just like each speech, flows into one another, and Socrates sums it up best -- love is concerned with obtaining the eternal good: in other words, love (in man) follows love (in abstraction).

To further explain our thesis that love (in man) follows love (in the abstract), let us look at the example with which we have begun. Socrates is on his way to a banquet (Agathon's -- a fine man, as Socrates describes him -- for which reason Socrates himself is dressed finely, as Aristodemus observes). Socrates, beloved of Plato, is on his way to dine with one that is beloved of himself -- and on his way he meets another who is both lover and beloved and is subsequently invited to join. Upon arriving, Aristodemus is in fact welcomed by Agathon (though not personally invited, Aristodemus is assured by Agathon that he actually did go out looking for him to extend the invitation). So we see how love, represented by Agathon, draws love -- or we might say that love, as represented by Aristodemus, follows love (represented by Socrates). In either case like knows like, and love follows love just as good follows good -- which is implicit in Socrates' opening proverb. Here we see a literal representation of our thesis.

The idea that love follows love, however, is extended by the very structure of the Symposium: each guest gives a speech about the nature of love. Love is the theme of the evening, and, literally, love follows love in speech after speech.

However, to understand the nature of the idea that love (in man) follows love (in the abstract), we must examine the ways in which each of the men at the symposium represent love. By examining their beliefs we will make clearer our thesis: In Phaedrus' discourse we learn that Love is in fact "the eldest of the gods," a point that signifies Love as a seed -- or as a font from which all things have flowed. Love is a source and giver of life and may be understood as a river that follows after itself. For this reason "love will make men dare to die for their beloved" because even against Love death is no match (178). Love according to Phaedrus is the source of the superlative, a point which foreshadows Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. Love, in other words, according to Phaedrus, is a kind of ideal that leads men on to noble actions (such as the sacrifice of oneself for something beloved). Love in man spurs him to reach for Love in the Abstract.

Pausanias sets about adding to what Phaedrus has stated, suggesting the truth of our thesis, that love does indeed follow love: Love is like one big circle, with all things being connected and all things flowing into one another. This is essentially what Pausanias appears to assert when he speaks of Aphrodite as one Love and another which is called "common" -- two loves that are connected yet separate, which pour forth from the same source, yet diverge like streams off a river -- yet, ultimately that all run into the same ocean: love follows love just like the waters follow one another to the sea. Pausanias illustrates this point by comparing sexual love with heavenly love -- but even Eryximachus finds this comparison to be insufficient and thus he begins the final of the first three "serious" discussions of love, which will promptly end when Aristophanes begins his speech. Nonetheless Eryximachus proves our thesis when he alludes to "the course of the seasons" and "the harmonious love of one another" and how all things "blend in temperance and harmony" (186). Here, we understand Love as a principle underlying all the world and uniting all things in one harmonious semblance. Love follows love just as the seasons follow one another, just as there exists a kind of harmony in all of nature. This harmony draws and excites men to raise themselves up to a higher mode of being: thus, love in man (or nature) is a means of striving for love (in the abstract).

Aristophanes, of course, arrives at our thesis from a different direction: he begins his discourse by mocking Eryximahcus's speech on harmony -- for Aristophanes is of a nature that is fine-tuned to observe the human tendency toward disharmony (as his earlier hiccups shows). Aristophanes begins by stating that no one has ever truly understood Love -- and here he is perfectly true. Even though we say that love follows love, it is a rough and serious way of speaking that falls more in line with the first three serious speakers. It says nothing of the humorous side of nature that is partly composed of bile. Aristophanes, the great comedic playwright, alleviates the symposium of its heaviness by insisting that Love is comical in a way and impressively variant. He does not obliterate our thesis, but rather reinforces it by broadening our vision of love and man: love in man is not whole (as Aristophanes shows with his story of the division between man and woman) and therefore he must strive to find his wholeness in love (in the abstract): love follows love.

This comedy is picked up in a dialogue that immediately follows between Agathon and Socrates. Agathon assumes a pious air by insisting that he "would rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts" -- and so he attempts a poetic discourse on the fine attributes of Love. Love, Agathon claims "is young and also tender" (195). It is, in other words, the embodiment of everything that is good in the world. Love is the inspiration for all good deeds and is the motive and reason for good actions. Love produces love.

Socrates expands upon Agathon's discourse by questionsing Agathon on the nature of Love. Socrates states that it cannot be summed up as simply as Agathon suggests -- but Socrates does not lead us to alter our thesis in any way. Indeed, Agathon's discourse serves as a springboard for Socrates: so Socrates follows Agathon, and his understanding of Love builds on Agathon's -- just as each speech has built upon the one before it.