Dragon symposium
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Plato’s Symposium
Instructor: Seth David Halvorson, Ph.D.
The Dragon Academy, Toronto, ON [1]
This damaged drawing shows, under ultraviolet light, Rubens' labeling of the left figure as Alcibiades, the center one as Plato (who would have been in his early teens at the dramatic date of the Symposium), and the balding figure as Socrates. For a detailed analysis, see Elizabeth McGrath, "The Drunken Alcibiades: Rubens' Picture of Plato's Symposium," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, v.46 (1983), 228-235; E. McGrath, Rubens, v.1 p.98, v.2 p.61 (London: Harvey Miller, 1997). [2]
This seminar has three main goals in the study of Plato’s Symposium. Our first goal is to make sure we have a solid understanding of the content of the speeches. This should be accomplished by grasping the historical context of the work, the connections between the characters, and the development of the themes of love, beauty, and desire (via the different analytical approaches of the speakers). Our second goal is for us to appreciate and understand Symposium’s metaphors of renewal and reproduction. In order to give proper attention to how “lover” and “beloved” perform in the text, and also prevent discussions from focusing on sex (which many often want to do), we have a third goal. We should be able to understand the Symposium as a discussion of the functions that frustration, fulfillment, and completeness serve in love and life. I also expect that through discussion we will appreciate the humor and artistry of Symposium. Recognizing that the work can occasion many different lines of inquiry, we will focus on a few key themes and concepts.
Dynamics
Prior to class discussion we will spend some time introducing the historical context of Symposium. The focus of the first part of the seminar will be to reconstruct the central claims of the speeches, reading and analyzing them as we proceed throughout the seminar sessions.
We will address the following dynamics:
- student-teacher
- lover-beloved
- shame-honor
- young-old
- beautiful-ugly
- drunk-sober
- emotional-rational
- human-divine
In discussion, we will examine each speech in detail, in order of presentation, and attend to the passages where the dynamics are explicit, implicit, or both.
To begin discussion on a secure footing, we will start on the speeches by Phaedrus and Pausanias and examine them from the vantage point of the dynamics of shame-honor and human-divine.
PART I ASSINGMENT: At the conclusion of session one, each student will be assigned one of the first five speeches and will write a three-page critical reconstruction of its central claim. The student should analyze the speech’s account of love from the vantage point of one of the dynamics mentioned in class discussion. It is likely that a student will come up with an additional dynamic not addressed in class. If that proves to be the case, students can analyze the speech from the lens of their choosing, after consultation.
Desire, Frustration, and Fulfillment
Our work of the second half of our seminar will build on the writing assignment and focus on the purposes that renewal and reproduction serve in the later speeches of the text. We now will have the dynamics from the first half of the seminar on the board, yet we will add new categories:
- part-whole
- object-subject
- frustration-fulfillment
A session (or more) will begin by examining Aristophanes’ view that love is the pursuit of wholeness, and connecting that view with the speeches of Alcibadies, Agathon, and Socrates.
Because each speech describes the union between the subject and object of desire and also draws out the consequences of such a union, our seminar will interrogate the possible meanings of 206c-207a, “all of us are pregnant.”
Our discussion questions in Part II will include:
- If the desire to reproduce can be said to motivate the production of artistic works and ethical and legal norms, how do the concepts of renewal, reproduction, and frustration configure in the speeches and relationships between Diotima, Socrates, and Alcibiades?
- What is renewed or reproduced and how do the aforementioned dynamics add to our understanding of love and humanity?
- If the goal of love is to commune with the ideal form of beauty, then who understands love best—Socrates or Alcibiades?
- Discussion will conclude with a summation of the tragic and comic dimensions of the Symposium.
- PART II ASSINGMENT
- Students will be asked to revisit their first paper in light of the discussion in the second session. In re-structuring your argument to address the later speeches, you will write an additional two to three pages comparing the initial views of love with those outlined in the later part of the text, and explore how later speeches reify, advance, or invert previous dynamics expressed in the text, from the vantage point of our contemporary time.
- EVALUATION
- ESSAYS, DRAFTS AND REVISIONS WELCOME: 60%
CLASS PARTICIPATION: 30%
QUIZ(ES): 10%
ONLINE RESOURCES:
Plato, From StudyPlace Plato
The Jowett Translation: [3]
Gill Translation, [4]
Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University [5]
University of Chicago Greek-English Lexicon: [6]
The Ancient City of Athens [7]
Except where