Plato's Symposium and Apology: Narration, Wisdom, and Love
This paper examines three interrelated aspects of Plato's Symposium and Apology. It first explores how the Symposium's complex layers of narration function as a literary device that distributes interpretive authority to the reader rather than privileging any single speaker's view of love. It then draws a parallel between the craftsmen's arrogance described in the Apology and Eryximachus's overreach in extending medical expertise to all human and divine matters. Finally, it considers a tension in Socrates himself: while the Apology presents him as a model of acknowledged ignorance, his logically rigorous and somewhat condescending approach to love in the Symposium may undercut that very claim.
- Layered Narration and Interpretive Distance in the Symposium: Complex narration distributes interpretive authority to the reader
- Eryximachus and the Arrogance of Expertise: Medical expertise wrongly extended to all domains of knowledge
- Socratic Wisdom, Logical Rigor, and the Limits of Love: Socrates' logical rigor may contradict his claim of ignorance
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What makes this paper effective
- It draws precise textual connections between two distinct Platonic dialogues, grounding each analytical point in direct quotation.
- It identifies a genuine internal tension — Socrates claiming acknowledged ignorance while deploying condescending logical rigor — without overstating the contradiction.
- The parallel drawn between the Apology's arrogant craftsmen and Eryximachus's overreach is well-observed and demonstrates close reading skill.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative textual analysis across related primary sources. Rather than treating the Symposium or the Apology in isolation, it reads them against each other to generate interpretive insights that neither text would yield alone. This cross-text reasoning is a hallmark of advanced philosophical essay writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into three numbered analytical sections, each addressing a discrete interpretive claim. Section one analyzes narrative structure and its epistemological implications. Section two applies a concept from the Apology (the arrogance of partial expertise) to a character in the Symposium. Section three examines Socrates himself as a potentially self-contradicting figure. Each section integrates quotation, paraphrase, and commentary, moving from textual evidence to interpretive conclusion.
Layered Narration and Interpretive Distance in the Symposium
Plato's use of multiple layers of narration to convey the actual philosophical arguments in the Symposium is so convoluted as to be almost helplessly confusing upon a first read. Apollodorus relates to his present companion that the day before, he was approached by someone who said to him: "I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now, that I might ask you about the speeches in praise of love, which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others, at Agathon's supper. Phoenix, the son of Philip, told another person who told me of them." This complexity seems almost purposefully obfuscating, and could be a way of reminding the reader that anything reported of what someone else said — as Plato is doing with others, and especially with Socrates throughout this work — should be taken with a grain of salt.
On a deeper level, the layers of narration and distance that Plato creates in the Symposium might be meant as a leveler of sorts, giving more equal weight to each of the actual speakers rather than making an obvious statement about which line of reasoning is the most astute or the most correct when it comes to love. Distance and uncertainty place the burden of analysis squarely on the reader.
Eryximachus and the Arrogance of Expertise
In the Apology, Plato has Socrates say of the craftspeople he queried regarding their wisdom: "because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom" — eventually concluding that if he himself is wise, it is only because he understands what he does not know. In the Symposium, Eryximachus waxes philosophic about the nature of love with a scientific certainty derived from his medical knowledge, exhibiting precisely the same type of arrogance: assuming that his area of expertise grants him authority in other fields of knowledge as well, namely love.
If love were indeed a part of the medical and thus purely physical makeup of plants, animals, and human beings, Eryximachus would not be entirely wrong to apply his knowledge to the subject, and medical mechanisms might well be at the heart of the matter. As he goes even further, however — claiming that "in music, in medicine, in all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far as may be, for they are both present," thereby asserting that his knowledge applies to everything human and divine — he exhibits exactly the type of ignorance and foolishness Socrates warned against in the Apology.
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