“Symposium” by Plato (translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff)

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.

“Phaedrus” by Plato (translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff)

This dialogue begins with a discourse on love, with Phaedrus recounting a speech by Lysias about love’s defects, then Socrates responding with a speech of his own. The dialogue then moves to a discussion on the merits and truths of oratory and writing, in general, before concluding. As Phaedrus recounts, “Lysias argues that it is better to give your favors to someone who does not love you than to someone who does.” Socrates’ speech meanders before getting to the theme of love. First he suggests, “each of us is ruled by two principles which we follow wherever they lead: one is our inborn desire for pleasures, the other is our acquired judgement that pursues what is best…. Now when judgement is in control and leads us by reasoning toward what is best, that sort of self-control is called ‘being in your right mind’; but when desire takes command in us and drags us without reasoning toward pleasure, then its command is known as ‘outrageousness’.” Socrates then goes on to define love, specifically, “the unreasoning desire that overpowers a person’s considered impulse to do right and is driven to take pleasure in beauty, its force reinforced by its kindred desires for beauty in human bodies—this desire, all-conquering in its forceful drive, takes its name from the words for force (rhome) and is called eros.” Socrates goes on to describe the blinding nature of being in love, “it [the soul] forgets mother and brothers and friends entirely and doesn’t care at all if it loses its wealth through neglect. And as for proper and decorous behavior, in which it used to take pride, the soul despises the whole business. Why, it is even willing to sleep like a slave, anywhere, as near to the object of its longing as it is allowed to get! That is because in addition to its reverence for one who has such beauty, the soul has discovered that the boy is the only doctor for all that terrible pain. This is the experience we humans call love.” However, Socrates points out that madness is sometimes beneficial to the soul, but only when provided by the gods. “In fact the best things we have come from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god…. If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses’ madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.” It is left as questionable if madness is too high a price for the soul to pay, whether in poetry or in love.

Phaedrus and Socrates shift gears towards the end of their dialogue and begin to discuss the merits of rhetoric. Socrates responds that rhetoric is useless and empty without a firm basis in philosophy. “The reason they [orators] cannot define rhetoric is that they are ignorant of dialectic. It is their ignorance that makes them think they have discovered what rhetoric is when they have mastered only what it is necessary to learn as preliminaries…. We need to determine the nature of something—of the body in medicine, of the soul in rhetoric. Otherwise, all we’ll have will be an empirical and artless practice.” Socrates goes on to emphasize that true knowledge cannot be written down in permanence. First, Socrates channels the spirit of Ammon-Ra speaking to Thoth, the inventor and god of writing, “You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention [of writing] will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” Then Socrates, in his own voice, goes on to state that written philosophy cannot truly teach those who are still ignorant. “Those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that writing can yield results that are clear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant…. Otherwise, how could they possibly think that words written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?” Plato, through Socrates, seems to be warning us to take his own dialogues with a grain of salt. Are his own writings, as well, only valuable to those with a previous understanding of their obscure truths? Socrates does seem to caution about the spreading of philosophy to the uninitiated, only through the written word. “When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not.” Socrates ends this dialogue by recapping the basic foundations one needs to first master, before being able to speak wisely. “First, you must know the truth concerning everything you are speaking or writing about; you must learn how to define each thing in itself; and, having defined it, you must know how to divide it into kinds until you reach something indivisible. Second, you must understand the nature of the soul, along the same lines; you must determine which kind of speech is appropriate to each kind of soul, prepare and arrange your speech accordingly, and offer a complex and elaborate speech to a complex soul and a simple speech to a simple one. Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully, to the extent that its nature allows it to be used that way, either in order to teach or in order to persuade.”

“Ion” by Plato (translated by Paul Woodruff)

This is a short dialogue between Socrates and Ion, a rhapsode (a reciter of the poetry of Homer), on his profession, the nature of poetry, mastery of knowledge, and divine inspiration. Socrates asserts, “You are powerless to speak about Homer on the basis of knowledge or mastery. Because if your ability came by mastery, you would be able to speak about all the other poets as well. Look, there is an art to poetry as a whole…. That’s not a subject you have mastered—speaking well about Homer; it’s a divine power that moves you…. The Muse makes some people inspired herself, and then through those who are inspired a chain of other enthusiasts is suspended. You know, none of the epic poets, if they’re good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems…. For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect in his possession he will always lack the power to make poetry or sing prophecy.” One must remember what Socrates has already said about poets, and Homer in particular, corrupting the well-ordered city-state in “Republic” and “Phaedrus” through their madness as opposed to philosophers. Socrates also cannot help but to get in one little dig at Ion, contrasting himself, “As for me, I say nothing but the truth, as you’d expect from an ordinary man.”