Marty Rainer

Rough

Philosophy 1301

April 16, 2010

Symposium

To follow the correct interpretation of Eros would lead to procreation, which endows the

philosophic lover and beloved with a touch of immortality. Socrates seems to endorse a love of the

pursuit of wisdom and offers immortality as a reward for those who create and mold wise offspring. In

order to reach this final assessment of love, Plato arranges the speeches in order to serve as stepping

stones in the reader’s level of understanding. It is for this reason that I chose to compare Phaedrus and

Socrates’s speeches, where Phaedrus’s represents my suppositions upon beginning Plato’s Symposium,

and Socrates’s is my final comprehension.

For starters, Socrates appears to wish for humanity as a whole to cast aside the chains of

oppression that have been wrapped around our conventional definitions of love. Socrates rejects the

romanticization of sexual love and seems instead to value the asexual, all-consuming passion for wisdom

and beauty. This could be considered the philosopher’s search for wisdom, or that which Socrates

contends is the greatest Form of Eros. What makes this an interesting point of contention is that

Socrates seems to wish for the love of wisdom to end up drawing two lovers of wisdom to each other

while pursuing their similar love, which would eventually end up in the procreation of a child. Socrates

goes on to offer the wisdom that such lovers chase as a reward in the form of immortality, gained

vicariously through their children. In doing this he essentially advocates an educated populace that

shuns unintelligent discussion, an admirable position.

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While the Symposium does end on a more correct opinion, don’t discount the first speech just

because of its proximity to Socrates’s. It was included because it hits on a couple of key points that

illuminate our understanding of Eros. For example, Phaedrus states that a young man cannot derive

greater benefit than that from a good lover. This is among the most clear of Socrates’s final musings on

the subject, where he wishes for the populace to be filled with people who find one another in the

pursuit of wisdom. Both of these speeches acknowledge the fact that the greatest benefit is derived

from the union that two good lovers share, good being described as a lover who is philosophic.

Phaedrus gets the ball rolling by laying the groundwork for the final argument by stipulating that

love is not only among the most important of the gods, but that a union of two good lovers is the

greatest benefit that humans can achieve. After all of the speeches are finished, Socrates only has to

tighten a few nuts and bolts and pull everything together into one cohesive answer. He does this by

defining ‘good’ as the pursuit of wisdom, or philosophy, and gives humanity a reward for being ‘good’.

Phaedrus also suggests that love is the strongest bond that a human can hold, and that it carries

the distinct honor of being the most influential in the lives of mortals. He goes on to demonstrate that

an army of lovers, possessing the greatest benefit to themselves, would rather die for one another

instead of retreating and showing their loved one cowardice. The stories recanted served to prove that

love is among the highest valued things to the gods, and set the future tone of the discussion to one of

praise for Eros in its forms. Socrates validates the tone in the Diotima dialogue, where the mysterious

Diotima tells Socrates that one can approach truth though slow and careful ascent. This is obviously

alluding to the structure of Symposium, where Phaedrus lays the ground work and each successive

speaker builds upon his ideas.

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Everything seems to come together perfectly to paint Socrates out to be the model of love.

Plato puts the story together in such a way that the reader is left wondering if Socrates is truly the

embodiment of the emotion we associate with love. He is an admitted lover of wisdom and beauty,

which is ironic considering he is widely reputed to be neither beautiful nor does he consider himself

wise. However, in the Diotima dialogue, Socrates suggests that love is a mediating spirit which moves

between the gods and men, which is the impression that I got from Socrates himself while reading the

previous assignment, the Euthyphro. Socrates seems to exist solely to pursue wisdom and love, but he

does little to transfer that wisdom to his fellow humans. It is as though he simply communicates the

gods’ collective thoughts, without expressly taking one side or the other.