Lesson 1045, issued 3/4/19 Page 61

PLATO’S BANQUET XXI -- RELATION

Marc Edmund Jones

This lesson is a further consideration of Gorgias up to the

point where Callicles breaks in in turn to say, “Tell me, Chaerephon,
is Socrates in earnest, or is he joking?”, and the revelation of un-
conscious patterning through this section of the Dialogue is in the
unerring intuition of the world’s great souls. Exactly as it has
been pointed out in the prior lesson that Plato can bring the out-
standing figures of the Golden Age of Grecian thought one by one to
the discussion of the root problem of thinking and of the analysis of
life and portray them with the greatest fidelity (even though he could
have but little perspective on them), so now it must be seen that in
doing this he cannot avoid arriving at conclusions or giving implica-
tions that square with the underlying pattern of all thought. Great-
ness in thinking is not in the magnitude of the mental structure but
in the consistent accuracy of its reference or in its relation per se.
Intuition is the power of the mental function of man at a point where
the processes of thinking are wholly lost in the result. It is not
and never can be a rising above the necessity of clear thought or a
getting around a real mental grasp of an issue. The usual attempt of
man to arrive at a clear comprehension of some detail of life is ei-
ther an appeal to tradition or else to the mass idea upon the subject.
Eventually this method is sound but at the moment it may be utterly
false because the lack of perspective may conceal a fatal lack of per-
tinency in the relation or in the parallels taken. Perspective is at
the root of all thought, and perspective is not only pure relation but
is pure relation to self or to one who sees, i.e., the thinker him-
self. If nothing else in the Plato work were worth while, this one
point would justify the five series of lessons. In any issue the ap-
peal of the Sophist is to the gallery or the multitude of witnesses,
but Socrates addresses himself to one witness only in the self of the
individual with whom he is discussing the question. Civilization is
not primarily a democracy, or a social state in which the individual
is made subject to the mass, but in spirit at least is a fellowship in
which each and every individual is approached through an individual
demonstration to him of the values in which he is asked to partici-
pate. The justification of the forcing of the will of a human being,
man or child on the theory that it is for his good is the sophistry of
tyranny. It is a tyranny of the most vicious sort because it is
founded in mind and is unintuitive. Relation to self is the basis of
knowledge, and persuasion of a genuine sort is an appeal to the one
witness or the self addressed. Nothing is worth presentation if it
cannot be made persuasive to the reason or the inner intuition and the
thinking powers of every personality approached, that is, if it cannot
be made reasonable in the experience of every separate personality
taken by itself.
Plato’s Banquet XXI Page 62

The emphasized phase of life’s banquet or the high point of

the present selection from the Dialogue is brought out by a further
development of the extreme individualism fostered by a real grasp of
the concept of relation. A weight of witnesses should not be the ba-
sis of conviction because the result is bondage to the mass mind, but
such a weight is the signature or the sealing and confirmation of good
judgment and right opinion. The greatest individualism is wholly so-
cial because all human values are a matter of interaction among human
souls. They are constituted in self, but expressed and known through
relation with other selves and therefore Socrates would rather suffer
than do injustice or would rather be squared to reality inwardly than
outwardly. Relation to self is seen as the basis of living, and so
the basis of happiness. This is the explanation of the beatitudes in
Christianity, and Plato points out as if in anticipation of them that
only the gentle and good are happy or blessed. If man sets up a
proper relationship to himself his relation to others is social and
spiritual. If he concerns himself first with his relation to others
as did the Sophists, who sought by art and training to gain the upper
hand over their fellows, the result is a false relation to self or a
playing of a game which paradoxically enough is termed selfishness and
self-centeredness although highly ego-eccentric and marking a high de-
gree of false dependence on others.

The genius of Plato the writer in his contribution to eter-

nal understanding is evident here in his analysis of this often unsus-
pected bondage to outer things or pitiable but common human selfish-
ness. That thing is ignoble, he points out, which is aimed at care-
less pleasure or at an indulgence of the senses for other than a clear
relation to the center of selfhood. The individual’s surrender to
the mass in doing what others are doing, or seeking to do what the
most fortunate among others seem particularly to be typified in doing,
is pleasure of this false and soul-destroying sort. As a spoiled
child will cry for a toy only to drop it and cry for the next one when
the prior objective has been gained, seeing value only in that which
can be taken away from the agency which has given it value rather than
possessing that relation to self which can create and does create val-
ue at will, so humanity when lacking spiritual centricity or relation
will tear itself to pieces in idle questing. Leaders in life, Socra-
tes cleverly observes, do what they think best and not what they will,
and as so bound to outer things or working consciously with an ulteri-
or view, can only lead man into bondage. Real leadership is free, or
individual, and it carries all men with it because no effort is made
to carry any man along. It possesses true relation or true self-
awareness.

The social contribution of the work of Plato at this point

is made in his further analysis of rhetoric as the habit of bold and
ready wit, or a mere knowing how to handle men by taking advantage of
the various sudden changes in fashions of thought and of point of
Plato’s Banquet XXI Page 63

view. Rhetoric is flattery, Socrates says, and proceeds to demon-

strate this. By trading on the weakness of man it builds itself to
its own downfall because its reality is this weakness and its motive
is ulterior and of the nature of bondage per se. Thus even in Pla-
to’s time the fallacy of modern practical psychology is clearly seen
and discounted. An insight into the ideal elements of society is af-
forded by the analysis of flattery through the fourfold scheme of oc-
cultism or by showing that even cookery is flattery on the lowest
plane of man’s hunger or is a winning of him to exterior allegiances
through careless pleasures, that is, pleasures without permanent tie
to center or pleasures raised above social or true-self interests.
There are four arts, Socrates explains, or two for the body and two
for the soul. Flattery has four similitudes to be watched. In oth-
er words, all values of life set up relations to outer ephemeralities
in which self may lose itself.

The personal application of Plato’s approach to the problem

of social being, or the essential relationships of men among them-
selves through the concept of relation, is here seen in the fact that
rhetoric properly is an experience. Others are not convinced ideally
by the false pleasures of selfishness but by the fellowship or the en-
during delights in any sharing of real values. The sidelight on the
ideal personality as now made manifest in the Dialogue is the new con-
ception that comes of freedom in the light of the achievement of rela-
tion in self. Polus is distressed that he cannot use as many words
as he wishes in the free state of Athens, but relation is a condition
of conduct and he can only use those that he can bring into relation
to his hearer.

SUGGESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND APPLICATION

(1) What is intuition? Who has this power? How does Plato exem-
plify the real power of intuition? What makes thinking great?
What power does it have that is often misinterpreted as great-
ness?
(2) How do you account for Plato’s unerring intuition? Why is per-
spective necessary to clear thinking? What is relation as the
concept? What makes Socrates’ method completely satisfying as
compared with that of the Sophists?
(3) When alone is persuasion justified? Why is the greatest indi-
vidualism wholly social? How is this accomplished? What is
the only true basis of happiness?
(4) What is the requirement and the result of all interaction?
Where must relation begin? What happens to the individual or
the group that lacks the ability to relate itself properly?
What distinguishes the good from the bad leaders in life?
(5) Where must all values be established? How will you make them
stick? How is real leadership shown and measured? When does
rhetoric lead to its own downfall? How does rhetoric function
as experience? What is the result of true relation of self?
Lesson 1046, issued 3/11/19 Page 64

PLATO’S BANQUET XXII -- QUANTITY

Marc Edmund Jones

This lesson is a further consideration of Gorgias up to the

point where Socrates says, “Then I will proceed, and ask whether you
also agree with me, and whether you think that I spoke the truth when
I further said to Gorgias and Polus that cookery in my opinion is only
an experience, and not an art at all...,” and the revelation of uncon-
scious patterning through this section of the Dialogue is in the ca-
pacity of the mind with proper underlying perspective to adhere to
center and important principle even when as in the case of Socrates
here there is no conscious attempt to organize or pattern any of the
conclusions reached in a discussion wholly devoid of real purpose.
Socrates has wished to sit at the feet of Gorgias and to be regaled
with the skill of the great Sophist. Instead the argument has become
everybody’s property and has been caught up in the disinclination of
man to go deep in life, or his inclination to turn rather to every
sort of triviality in the hope of finding an answer to this and that
problem of life without any real expenditure of self. Callicles has
replaced Polus in the role of adversary of Socrates, and with the host
taking things in his own hands the consideration has become rather in-
tensely personal. Callicles is intent on finding justification and
satisfaction through his own place in Athenian society, or his own
conduct and policies. In this Plato holds up the ruling classes of
all ages to a fine analysis that leaves them somehow pitifully thin
and inadequate. There can be no appeal to the mass or the crowd of
witnesses of the preceding lesson because the mass of humanity are in-
ert and more earnest in preserving a status quo than in contributing
to anything that might make unknown demands on them. Plato here em-
phasizes one of his favorite doctrines, in a symbolical representation
that touches truth with an odd inner bite, and points out that conven-
tion is the invention of weak men and that law is for the purpose of
binding the strong and preventing them from capturing everything worth
while in life. The contrast between the weak majority and the strong
minority is at the base of the most recurrent sophistry of history, or
the justification of might makes right and that possession is nine
points of the law, but it is not this that Plato has in mind. The
conventionalized mass is a drag on initiative, and a drag not so much
due to weakness as to lack of understanding. There is a power in
pure quantity which Socrates touches in the demand of his whole life
that clear-thinking be brought to the man of everyday and that the
false ideas of a self-perpetuating leadership must be exposed by means
of the education of the mass. Plato therefore does not build to a
releasing of the existing strong minority to prey upon mankind, nor
does he advocate the substitution of another strong minority for the
dominance of man (even in the Republic where the symbol of the rule by
Plato’s Banquet XXII Page 65

philosophers might seem to be just this, if taken too literally), but

instead he drives consistently for the upliftment of the mass or quan-
tity into the reality of ideas and concepts or of ideals and patterns
where strength and weakness merge into reality.

The emphasized phase of life’s banquet or the high point of

the present selection from the Dialogue is brought out by the running
riot of Socrates in the argument. The issue is not the dominance of
the class represented by Callicles and his kind, nor any suppressing
of the mass of Athenians, but rather the easy acceptance by Greeks of
all classes of the ideas and concepts of life making the social situa-
tion possible. The individual who today is an aristocrat tomorrow
may be a lowly worker and today’s slave may be tomorrow’s master, as
is true in every age, but the ideas that make society a dispropor-
tioned organism are the same no matter what individuals or groups rise
or fall. The false ideas are products of words taken for their own
sake or of catch phrases and idle slogans. Socrates is anarchistic
in the discussion because there is nothing of more than superficial
significance in anything brought out by his opponents. He is playing
with words to show the hollowness of words and to indicate that words
of themselves achieve nothing and go nowhere. If there is any truth
in life’s banquet at all it is that the inner or spiritual elements of
human association are real--friendship, love, regard for the rights of
common humanity, willingness to subordinate self to the civic good,
and so on--and this is a quantity representative properly of the whole
substance of man and of his invisible being and fellowship in which
all of him gains social existence and through it manifests higher re-
ality.

The genius of Plato the writer in his contribution to eter-

nal understanding is evident here in his indictment of the so-called
thinking classes or the intelligentsia of every great period of histo-
ry. Callicles remarks that he has regarded it as effeminate to con-
tinue the study of philosophy after a certain age and implies that af-
ter all it is worldly experience, that is, being just as Callicles is,
which is the criterion of social values. Actually this is the soph-
istry of justification. Further study and especially adult study
make real demands on the mind and are interruptive to pleasure, he
claims, and if an individual has obtained his place in life why should
he not proceed to enjoy it. Callicles is delighted to continue the
discussion so long as the consideration of abstractions is concerned,
but he protests when the argument is brought down to food, clothes and
the practical issues of personal being. Thus it may be seen that
thinking is almost never employed among men commonly as a means to
self-development or self-preparation for greater social service but
instead is used for this justification or for a maintenance at all
costs whenever self-interest is touched of the status of things as
they are or as they at least already have promised to be.

The social contribution of the work of Plato at this point

is made in incidental tribute to real soul quantity or that element in
Plato’s Banquet XXII Page 66

the inner being which contributes to rather than fights against the
social well-being of man. Knowledge, good-will and outspokenness are
the marks of a soul wholly tested in spiritual values. These are in-
dications of the soul centered in itself and not in the things it has
drawn to the self or wishes to draw to the self. An insight into the
ideal elements of society is afforded by the fact that the soul in-
wardly and subconsciously will always follow itself, so that the men-
tally-sustained, false-idea-actuated individual no matter how he may
turn to selfish interests will at the end defeat himself. Humanity
always follows its loves, Socrates correctly indicates, and therefore
the work for the elevation of humanity must begin with the loves of
humanity. The love of Socrates is primarily philosophy, he says, and
in this he unconsciously explains his magnificent place in history.
And if the words of the soul are an echo of the inner state of the
soul as he claims, his are pure intuition or the echo of philosophy
just as those of the Sophists are pure quibbling or the echo of an
empty mind and heard devoid of human quantity.

The personal application of Plato’s approach to the problem

of social being, or the essential relationships of men among them-
selves through the concept of quantity, is here seen in the fact that
these men who refuse touch with reality find everything upside down
and cannot conceive that Socrates is in earnest. The sidelight on
the ideal personality as now made manifest in the Dialogue is the hol-
lowness of the Epicurean point of view (and before Epicurus, inci-
dentally) when it is brought into contrast with the pure quantity of
character as illustrated in Socrates.

SUGGESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND APPLICATION

(1) What has quantity to do with inertia? Why is the conventional

mass a drag upon initiative? What power that comes from quanti-
ty does Socrates wish to see realized? What does Plato consist-
ently advocate?
(2) Why do the masses hate change? How is it possible to appeal to
them? What always seems to be the weakness of the masses and of
the ruling classes? What is the weakness of convention in any
form?
(3) If humanity is to be elevated where must the work begin? How
may the greatest and the shallowest thinkers be contrasted?
What is the quantity that is the basis of discussion here?
(4) What was Plato’s attitude toward leisure? Why should the seek-
er, like Socrates, be anarchistic? Why does Plato indict the
intelligentsia? What is wrong about the sophistry of justifica-
tion?
(5) Of what does real soul quantity consist? What is meant by the
statements that humanity always follows its loves and the soul
will always follow itself? What is the effect of these state-
ments? What is the quantity of character which Socrates so aply
illustrates?
Lesson 1047, issued 3/18/19 Page 67

PLATO’S BANQUET XXIII -- QUALITY

Marc Edmund Jones

This lesson is a further consideration of Gorgias on to the

end of the Dialogue, and the revelation of unconscious patterning
through this section of it is in the rounding out of the purpose of
the discussion as it is subconsciously rather than objectively di-
rected. Perhaps most unique of all the doctrines of Plato as these
may be deduced and extracted from his writings (and as they may be
stated fairly if the whole of the Dialogues are taken into account
without either the elevation or rejection of any of them in toto and
without assuming too great a development of his mind and so a conse-
quent lack of unity of inner or eternal understanding between the ear-
ly and late productions) is that all action wittingly or unwittingly
is the creature of its end. This is the pull concept of the universe
as contrasted with the conventional cause-and-effect or push concept
of conventional modern science and scientific philosophy. The teleo-
logical point of view becomes objectionable when it is merely the re-
verse of the usual cause-and-effect point of view and sees everything
in terms of an ultimate end as a result of humanity’s persistent ef-
fort to find unity in the cosmos but sees this unity as remote from
self and devoid of quality in a justification of man’s destructive in-
stinct for avoiding responsibility. Action and so all love is to be
analyzed properly in terms of its immediate purpose, and in this Dia-
logue Socrates makes the distinction conveniently as between art and
flattery with the former directed to enduring standards and the latter
becoming a surrender to the immediate moment and situation. It is a
pity that as great a real poet as Plato should be as genuine an enemy
of poets, but like all truly gifted writers he is writing for his own
age alone and probably without the slightest suspicion that he will
come down in history. In his day poetry was an idle and empty thing,
perhaps catering more than any other flattery to the smugness of the
intelligentsia who discussed the world and its affairs and permitted
the social structure to crash in upon them. Flute-playing and orato-
ry, akin to our jazz-bands and current politics, came in for no less a
deserved scorn. These things were but for the moment, and they were
false because they drew in rather than expanded the boundary of the
moment. The Gorgias sees with rare acumen that famous men are no
standard of real values per se. In Plato’s time the outstanding
names of individuals were not used for the endorsement of cigarettes
or advertised products, but the willingness of the individual in some
preferred position of society to make almost any compromise and to re-
sort consistently to flattery rather than to the art of living is the
real indictment of the people who in Plato’s time made ruin of the
golden age of Greece.
Plato’s Banquet XXIII Page 68

The emphasized phase of life’s banquet or the high point of

the present selection from the Dialogue is brought out by its revela-
tion of the emptiness of the life of social flattery and of the thin-
ness of the lives of the majority of the famous as these are viewed as
such by their own contemporaries. Socrates points out that the ty-
rant (meaning the man who has pulled himself to an eminence and pro-
poses to stay there at any cost) hates both his superiors and inferi-
ors. He fears his superiors because he is jealous of them, mistrusts
them and cannot handle them with any sureness, and his inferiors be-
cause he despises them and sees in them the reflection of his weak-
nesses which he knows subconsciously if not otherwise. Here is the
great trap in conscious existence for those who cannot bring them-
selves to attempt to live the life that counts. The tyrant is wholly
restricted in his closer companionship and in almost every casual as-
sociation to those of his own kind. This supports and sustains him
as he is, and principally as he is in superficial things. Growth is
the most fundamental of all human needs (the cleanest and most satis-
factory way to identify the so-called sex instinct as the need for
offspring of self) and the tyrant cannot grow. He is crystallized in
his own lack of real end-in-selfhood or in dedication of life to high-
er things. Those who are like him can only do him evil by making him
more like himself than ever and consequently not to be punished (and
so brought back to the larger ends of the inner life) is far worse
than to do injustice. This curious way in which Socrates presents
the point shows that the only true way to the enlargement of the pull
of life is the path of discipline or self-direction in the light of
the largest possible ideal or love of the self. It must be a self-
direction which is never slackened, always remaining an art and never
becoming a flattery.

The genius of Plato the writer in his contribution to eter-

nal understanding is evident here in illustration of this all-vital
point in the person of Callicles. The host of these philosophers
puts the matter in so many words. “I do not wish to be improved,” he
protests. His song of self-satisfaction is so typical of all that is
at the root of the troubles of humanity that the Gorgias may truly be
said to be one of Plato’s most significant Dialogues, even if superfi-
cially one of the least satisfactory either for reading or study.
All humanity is typified in this intellectual and so often unsuspected
smugness. Humanity is seen lacking in quality or in end. The
greatest need of humanity is seen to be its freeing from the delusion
of flattery and its inspiring to the arts of life. The greatest of
all art is that which leads to the improvement of mankind.

The social contribution of the work of Plato at this point

is made in his clever summary of these points in the figure of the
judgment of mankind at the Grecian equivalent of the last day. At
first man was to be judged with his clothes on, that is, in and
through all his opinions and encrustations of superficial values in
living the conventional life of flattery. But at length it is seen
Plato’s Banquet XXIII Page 69

that man must be divested of all his literal and psychological gar-
ments and be seen as he is himself. Quality is to be in terms of the
values of all humanity, and judgment is to be on the basis of man’s
naked rapport with quality or inward and eternal selfhood. An in-
sight into the ideal elements of society is afforded by the ironic
manner in which Plato reveals the lack of real end or purpose in man-
kind. As superb as his myth of the judgment is his figure of the
sea-pilot, whose fee is small because he is not sure of the worth of
the salvation involved in the delivery of his passengers to the oppo-
site shore. The first need of the individual is to gain a real sense
of the value of the end in his own life, so that he is willing to pay
an adequate price (give consciousness and surrender direction to it
adequately) and to make evident discrimination between the bads and
the goods in his own life-situation.

The personal application of Plato’s approach to the problem

of social being or the essential relationships of men among them-
selves, through the concept of quality is here seen in the analysis of
personal happiness as the result of the proper direction of all inter-
ests to a proper end. Pleasure is only justified to man’s inner self
when it is for the sake of love or a good of some real sort, and the
man who shapes everything to real value or real ends is temperate and
therefore happy. The sidelight on the ideal personality as now made
manifest in the Dialogue is the summary of the bad political shepherds
who were the curse of Plato’s time as they are of the modern age.
Callicles is not condemned because of anything undesirable in his per-
sonal nature as taken in its usual social environment but because his
life after all is a flattery and not an art. His end is not toward
the inward tie or the eternal verity of the transformed soul.

SUGGESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND APPLICATION

(1) What is the most unique of Plato’s doctrines? How does an anal-
ysis of action lead to art as opposed to flattery? How do you
account for Plato’s attitude toward poetry?
(2) What was the real indictment of Plato's age? What do you think
of the possibility of applying this indictment to our own age?
What prototype of the tyrant might we analyze today as Socrates
and Plato did the tyrant of their day? What was and is his
weakness?
(3) Upon what is quality based? How do you cultivate it? What is
the chief weakness for the failure of such people as tyrants?
What is the only real method of growth?
(4) Of what interest to us today is Callicles? In what two ways may
the seeker express the fundamental need of humanity? What is
quality and how is it to be acquired?
(5) What is the requirement of a temperate man? What are his re-
wards? What does any individual need above all? How does per-
sonal happiness come? Why must the Callicles of every age be
condemned?
Lesson 1048, issued 3/25/19 Page 70

PLATO’S BANQUET XXIV -- SCIENCE

Marc Edmund Jones

This lesson is a consideration of Parmenides to the point

where Aristoteles says, “I am the one you mean, Parmenides--for I am
the youngest and at your service--ask, and I will answer,” and the
revelation of unconscious patterning through this section of the Dia-
logue is in the final shaping of life’s banquet in terms of the under-
lying ideas or ideals of living. The fact that the end of an analy-
sis of love and friendship should be the purest and finest example of
metaphysical thinking in the history of man is no more than proper
revelation of the course of all individual growth into values. The
physical world is the basis of reality, but reality itself must trans-
cend physical things and find itself in the substance of higher con-
sciousness or in the realm that Plato has given to man in a tangible
way through his contribution of the concept of soul. The present se-
ries of lessons must close with the realization that science, philoso-
phy and religion in order have their foundation and being in the tran-
scendental realizations of man. Life’s banquet is not for the sake
of the physical food that gives it manifest being and focus but for
the relationships set up between men or in that in which soul per se
moves, gains consciousness and runs its fitting course. The Dialogue
gives special emphasis to the interchange between men, as this is nec-
essary for human fellowship, by the literary device so familiar in
Plato or the frame of a narrative related at a subsequent time by some
one present at the actual discussion. Socrates is here revealed as a
young man just beginning his quest for knowledge, and the principal
characters are the famous philosophers, Parmenides and Zeno (not the
less outstanding but more familiar Zeno who founded the Stoic school
of thought). Parmenides is regarded by Plato as perhaps the greatest
of all thinkers known to him, and there is no question but that he is
the spiritual father of both Plato and Hegel or the two men who more
than any other philosophers have influenced the world in a vital way
through their power to shape the ideas of man and to establish an ide-
alism of the sort which would have immediate and practical value in
life’s banquet. Although Aristotle is the actual founder of logic,
and has given man the name as well as the form of metaphysics, yet in
all fairness it must be stated that these are really owed to Parmeni-
des who in this sense is the actual if remote father of all science
and all organized development by man of a practical and workable
knowledge of the world in which he lives. Parmenides carried his
contribution no further than first groping thoughts or first realiza-
tions of principle, but Plato correctly estimates and states his im-
portance. In this Dialogue, therefore, there is not only the sound-
est criticism of all metaphysical thinking that the ancient world pro-
duced but also a real statement and anticipation of all that can be
Plato’s Banquet XXIV Page 71

said and in modern times has been said of the faults in Plato’s doc-
trine of ideas. In Plato is the unique phenomenon of a man not only
able to bring the world’s thinking to its greatest point of achieve-
ment, but also to press on beyond himself and to present the best and
soundest of all criticism of his own work as more than two millennia
would be required to shape and state this finally. The characters
and circumstances of the Dialogue are of interest in a closer study of
Plato’s life but the substance of the Dialogue is in its analysis of
the metaphysical principles of being, and the lessons must confine
themselves to these. The point of view is expressed in the advice
given the youthful Socrates by Parmenides that he consider an opinion
formed until its negation had been subjected to thorough criticism.
This is the real foundation of modern science, and of today’s achieve-
ments of man.

The emphasized phase of life’s banquet or the high point of

the present selection from the Dialogue is brought out by the intro-
duction of the paradox as a typically Greek means to the end suggested
by Parmenides. Zeno’s paradoxes puzzle Socrates at first because
they are all for the purpose of disproving the Many, while Parmenides
teaches the One as the only true and enduring reality, but Zeno e x-
plains to the young seeker that he is seeking to protect his master by
anticipating any and all attacks upon the doctrine of the One (through
a proof of the Many) by destroying all such possible proofs.

The genius of Plato the writer in his contribution to eter-

nal understanding is here evident in the procedure of Socrates in the
light of the point of view of these Eleatic philosophers. Not at all
daunted, the young man carries the discussion promptly into the realm
of ideas and queries the reality of the conflict between the One and
the Many in the transcendent world of pure values. After all the
conflicting or paradoxical elements are idea. The body is a One so-
cially and a Many in its organism. Is it not possible, therefore,
that all problems and contradictions of the tangible world will disap-
pear in the realm of soul? If, says Socrates, you can show me an ab-
solute like becoming an absolute unlike, that indeed would be a won-
der. Are not conflicting thoughts unified in the object thought
about? Is not--to bring the matter down in terms of modern reflec-
tion--the difficulty entirely one of thought and mental conception?

The social contribution of the work of Plato at this point

is made in his establishment of this great dilemma of thinking beyond
thought, and the realization is clear although seldom seen by the stu-
dents of Plato that it is not thinking as such but living itself which
transcending living as the living has been known in an older idea.
When one idea is divided in details or analyzed it sets up a new idea
which includes it and its details, and its real analysis is made im-
possible. No idea can be shown to be existent apart from things.
The dependence of thought on language and experience is the first
Plato’s Banquet XXIV Page 72

essential lesson for the student of philosophy to learn. And this is

science, beautifully implicit throughout Plato’s work. An insight
into the ideal elements of society is afforded by the manner in which
the general and the particulars are mutually interdependent and co-
operate consistently to form a new idea as the master genius of Hegel
demonstrated to the modern world when Kant became lost in his own
Zenoesque or Eleatic paradoxes. Therefore the problems of idealism
as such become the proper approach to life, and to this Plato’s ban-
quet gives the answer in love and friendship or in values that are at
once objective and subjective and that lift matter to spirit and in-
carnate soul in experience and personal relation simultaneously.

The personal application of Plato’s approach to the prob-

lem of social being, or the essential relationships of men among them-
selves through the concept of science, is here seen in the practical
consideration that if ideas are thought a thinker is required and that
life actually therefore lies in the hands of its individuality. If
conversely ideas are a pattern given from above, then there is an in-
finite recession of giver and individuality is destroyed as thought
cancels itself. Actually ideas are the servants and not masters of
man. The sidelight on the ideal personality as now made manifest in
the Dialogue is the realization of the absolute nature of selfhood.
If ideas are in man they cannot be absolute. If they are outside man
they are related to each other by man and so are not absolute. Man
therefore can have no knowledge of the absolute, and by the same token
an Absolute can have no knowledge of him. The definite catching and
holding of selfhood is therefore real existence.

SUGGESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND APPLICATION

(1) How does the final shaping of life’s banquet begin? Why? By
what progression does reality find itself? What is the purpose
of life’s banquet?
(2) What is a favorite literary device of Plato? What is the world
importance of Parmenides as presented by Plato? How does Plato
show him as presenting the foundation of modern science?
(3) What device is introduced by Plato through Zeno to further devel-
op the ideas of Parmenides? What procedure in resolving con-
flict does Socrates use? Why is it vital for any thinker to un-
derstand this?
(4) What is thinking beyond thought? Why is it a dilemma? What is
the proper approach to life? How does Plato’s Banquet help us
to understand this?
(5) What is the relation of the thinker and the idea? How can rela-
tionship be established between man and the absolute?