Reading Questions for Plato Symposium.

Lecture 1

I. General:

1. For each of the speeches and dialogues ask yourself, perhaps jotting down notes:

- what does the speaker try to achieve

- what reasons do the speakers offer in support of their goals?

- are there things said you disagree with? What are they? What is your opposing opinion?

2. What is the status of the speaker (age, profession, social status and rank, defender of ideology, gender, sexual orientation. Ask yourself how that status is reflected in things said and positions taken.
3. Note the personal relations between the participants (love, friendship, teacher-disciple, competitor, seducer-seduced). Again: Ask yourself how those relations get reflected in and contribute to the content of the speeches.

II. Relating to speeches and sections:

1.Introductory Dialogue:

Think about functions of the framing of the main part. What does a frame do in

a painting? Would the same apply here?

Why present the symposium (what does “symposium” mean?) from the perspective of a two-fold in time and the speeches as being transmitted?

Determine the chain of transmissions: who told what to whom? Who is the “he”

who first told Apollodorus (174A.2)? In whose voice is the subsequent

speech ultimately told to the reader? Is the occasion of the walk to the city

also the situation, in which the text is communicated to us?

What might be the significance of the fact that Apollodorus stylizes himself as

a ‘little Socrates?’

Why does Plato invite Aristodemus along?

What exactly are the purposes of the speaking activity the participants agree upon

(177A.8-177D.6)?

What is an “encomium” (214C.1)?

2.Phaedrus:

Phaedrus praises the god of love.

What does Phaedrus invoke as evidence for the Greatness of eros?

What is the ideal love as it appears through Phaedrus’ examples?

3.Pausanias:

What are the main goals and agendas of his speech? Does he speak to what love is?

Why does he split ‘love’ into two different origins?

How ought one to love, according to Pausanias?

What is a lover allowed to do in spite of the fact that the same comportment would

not be honorable or right outside of love?

Eryximachus:

What is Eryximachus out to show about the role of love in the art of medicine?

What is his basic model of the body and its functioning?

How does he back up his ideas?

Do you discover elements of love in your understanding that are missing from

Eryximachus’ account?

Is Eryximachus discourse useful in helping us to understand what we generally mean

by ‘love’?

Aristophanes:

What is Aristophanes’ leading idea about love and its desires?

Try to figure out the ‘whole’ being, before division, perhaps by drawing it.

Where does his leading idea place sexual/erotic pleasure and reproduction?

At which point, and for which reason(s) do sexual/erotic pleasure and

reproduction come about in Aristophanes’ picture?

Are there reasons to think that his myth articulates truths about love?

(What are those reasons? What are those truths?)

Try to make clear for yourself the different phases of his myth/story.

Does Aristophanes value male homosexuality as higher than heterosexuality

and female homosexuality? (Some of the other speeches do that.)

What are Aristophanes’ ideas about the bond between lovers?

Agathon:

Again: The main ideas in Agathon’s speech?

How does Agathon address ‘Eros’ and what does he ascribe to him?

Make a list of the qualities Agathon attributes to love.

Do you find that ‘Eros’ is what Agathon says he is? Note discrepancies.

Reasons for thinking that Agathon hits it right – reasons for not being convinced?

What is the doubt Socrates expresses concerning Agathon’s speech?

Socrates Questions Agathon:

Note the steps in Socrates argument: How does Socrates show that love is

neither beautiful nor good? (201E.8) Do you find problems in the argument?

What are they?

If Socrates is right, what does that mean for Agathon’s praise of love?