This semi-drunken dinner party is perhaps Plato’s most famous dialogue. All the guests speak on the theme of love and Socrates gets the last word, at least before a fall-down drunk Alcibiades stumbles into the party. Socrates begins by relating the words of a woman, Diotima, who has taught him the true meaning of love. He relates that she said, “Those who love wisdom fall in between those two extremes [of being wise and ignorant]. And Love is one of them, because he is in love with what is beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom and, as such, is in between being wise and ignorant.” She continues speaking to Socrates, “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: because it is what is really beautiful and graceful that deserves to be loved, and this is perfect and highly blessed; but being a lover takes a different form.” Love has two parts- the object being loved and the lover. One has attained its perfection and one is still striving.
Diotima also speaks of life having a continuity without necessarily a connectedness in a similar vein to Derrick Parfit. She states, “Even while each living thing is said to be alive and to be the same—as a person is said to be the same from childhood till he turns into an old man—even then he never consists of the same things, though he is called the same, but he is always being renewed and in other respects passing away, in his hair and flesh and bones and blood and his entire body. And it’s not just in his body, but in his soul, too, for none of his manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, or fears ever remains the same.” We might seem to be the same person, but we are continually changing, while maintaining some continuity with our previous selves.
When Alcibiades makes his speech he talks about the man he wishes he was. He says, “All that matters is just what I most neglect…. The moment I leave [Socrates’] side, I go back to my old ways: I cave in to my desire to please the crowd…. I’m doing nothing about my way of life, though I have already agreed with him that I should.” As Agnes Callard has stated, Alcibiades aspires to be a different man. His moral compass is in the process of changing. He is fighting to become a better man, but he cannot let go of his lust for fame and public glory.
Finally, Alcibiades praises the unique wisdom of Socrates. He states, “If you were to listen to his arguments, at first they’d strike you as totally ridiculous; they’re clothed in words as course as the hides worn by the most vulgar satyrs. He’s always going on about pack asses, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, or tanners; he’s always making the same tired old points in the same tired old words. If you are foolish, or simply unfamiliar with him, you’d find it impossible not to laugh at his arguments. But if you see them when they open up like the statues [of Silenus], if you go behind their surface, you’ll realize that no other arguments make any sense. They’re truly worthy of a god, bursting with figures of virtue inside. They’re of great—no, of the greatest—importance for anyone who wants to become a truly good man.” True praise for the esoteric philosophy of Socrates.
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