Ramsey

Andrew Ramsey
Seminar instructor: Kaia Scott
LBST 111 F21N01/02
September 17, 2022

Seminar Note 2

The Speech of Eryximachus. Page 20-24

The tail end of paragraph 186C and the beginning of paragraph 186d contains a fascinating take
on love that I’d not considered before. Medicine is Love.
“Everything sound and healthy in the body must be encouraged and gratified; that is precisly the object
of medicine. Conversely, whatever is unhealthy and unsound must be frustrated and rebuffed:that’s
what it means to be an expert in medicine.” 186C
“In short, medicine is simply the science of the effects of Love on repletion and depletion of the body.”

Eryximachus holds, as an extension of his medical education that love and medicine are
inextricably linked. A balance between opposites, “They are, of course, those that are most opposed to
one another, as hot is to cold, bitter to sweet, wet to dry, cases like those.” This view of love from a
medical standpoint as the medicine of his day would have been based on balancing the four humors.

Eryximachus goes on to speak of musical harmony and rhythm in comparison to medicine nd

thusly also to love. “Music, like medicine, creates agreement by producing concord and love between
these various opposites. Music is therefore simply the science of the effects of Love on rhythm and
harmony.” 187C

Like many medical professionals he’ll brag about being a medical professional any chance he
gets and ties his understanding of other fields back to his expertise. “I hope you will forgive my giving
pride of place of my own profession.” 186C. I’m not condemning Eryximachus for his career or pride
there of, I just think it’s neat when people from another time as just as human as we are. More than two
thousand years and physicians are the same as they ever were.

Nehamas, Alexander and Woodruff, Paul. Plato Symposium. Hackett Publishing Company,
Inc.Publisher, 1989.
Word Count: 286