Aristophanes and Agathon

1. Aristophanes and Agathon

2. Recap: Lecture 2 • Pausanias’ speech • Introduces distinction • Erastes-erōmenos relation • Voluntary slavery • Eryximachus’ speech • Widens conception of erōs beyond the human (anticipates Diotima’s speech) • Erōs can be ‘felt’ for, and by, non-human objects • Influences: Heraclitus and Empedocles

3. Today’s Lecture • Eudaimonia • Aristophanes’ speech • Analysis of Aristophanes’ speech • Socrates’ elenchus with Agathon interrupted • Agathon’s speech • Analysis of Agathon’s speech • Response to Agathon’s speech

4. Eudaimonia • Means happiness, flourishing, well being • Objective as well as subjective • Two main interpretations: • Consists in a life of pleasure • Consists in a life of virtue (Socrates’ position)

5. Elenchus vs. Oratory • The ethics of cross-examination (elenchus) • Two souls searching for the truth • Why oratory is unethical: • Aims at talking (persuading) a large group, not individuals • Exploiting their ignorance, manipulating their emotions • Power over others

6. Aristophanes’ Speech

7. Aristophanes: “I think people have wholly failed to recognise the power of Love; if they’d grasped this, they’d have built the greatest temples and altars for him, and made the greatest sacrifices. In fact, none of this is done for him, though he deserves it most of all” (189c).

8. Aristophanes: “First of all, you must learn about human nature, and what has happened to it. Long ago, our nature was not the same as it is now but quite different” (189d).

9. Aristophanes: “They were terrible in their strength and vigour; they had great ambitions and made an attack on the gods. The story told by Homer about Aphialtes and Otus, how they tried to climb up to heaven to attack the gods, really refers to them” (190b).

10. Aristophanes: “Since their original nature had been cut in two, each one longed for its own other half and stayed with it” (191a).

11. Invention of sexual intercourse Aristophanes: That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature…each of us is looking for his own matching half” (191d).

12. Aristophanes: “When a lover of boys, or any other type of person, meets that very person who is his other half, he is overwhelmed, to an amazing extent, with affection, concern and love” (192b).

13. Key Passage: Hephaestus Aristophanes: “It’s clear that each of them has some wish in his mind that he can’t articulate; instead, like an oracle, he half-grasps what he wants and obscurely hints at it. Imagine that Hephaestus with his tools stood over them while they were lying together and asked: “What is it, humans, that you want from each other?” If they didn’t know, imagine that he asked next: “Is this what you desire, to be together so completely that you’re never apart from each other night and day? If this is what you desire, I’m prepared to fuse and weld you together, so that the two of you become one” (192b-e).

14. Key Passage: Hephaestus Aristophanes: “Then the two of you would live a shared life, as long as you live, since you are one person; and when you died, you would have a shared death in Hades, as one person instead of two. But see if this is what you long for, and if achieving this state satisfies you.” We know that no one who heard this offer would turn it down and it would become apparent that no one wanted anything else. Everyone would think that what he was hearing now was just what he’d longed for all this time to come together and be fused with the one he loved and become one instead of two. The reason is that this is our original natural state and we used to be whole creatures” (192b-e).

15. Key Passage: Hephaestus Aristophanes: “It’s clear that each of them has some wish in his mind that he can’t articulate; instead, like an oracle, he half-grasps what he wants and obscurely hints at it. Imagine that Hephaestus with his tools stood over them while they were lying together and asked: “What is it, humans, that you want from each other?” If they didn’t know, imagine that he asked next: “Is this what you desire, to be together so completely that you’re never apart from each other night and day? If this is what you desire, I’m prepared to fuse and weld you together, so that the two of you become one. Then the two of you would live a shared life, as long as you live, since you are one person; and when you died, you would have a shared death in Hades, as one person instead of two. But see if this is what you long for, and if achieving this state satisfies you.” We know that no one who heard this offer would turn it down and it would become apparent that no one wanted anything else. Everyone would think that what he was hearing now was just what he’d longed for all this time to come together and be fused with the one he loved and become one instead of two. The reason is that this is our original natural state and we used to be whole creatures” (192b-e).

16. Aristophanes: “our human race can only achieve happiness if love reaches its conclusion, and each of us finds his loved one and restores his original nature…if we show reverence towards the gods, [Love] will restore us to our original nature, healing us and so giving us perfect happiness” (193c-d).

17. Analysis of Aristophanes’ Speech • Importance of comedy and tragedy • Hephaestus’ speech

18. Comedy and Tragedy • Comedy: • Mocking the human shape • Mocking the act of sexual intercourse • Tragedy: • Man is a deficient being • No guarantee that you’ll find your other half (love is contingent and vulnerable) Relation between comedy and tragedy is an important theme in the Symposium.

19. Aristophanes: “When a lover of boys, or any type of person, meets that very person who is his other half, he is overwhelmed, to an amazing extent, with affection, concern and love” (192b).

20. Comedy and Tragedy • Comedy: • Mocking the human shape • Mocking the act of sexual intercourse • Tragedy: • Man is a deficient being • No guarantee that you’ll find your other half (love is contingent and vulnerable) Relation between comedy and tragedy is an important theme in the Symposium.

21. Hephaestus’ Speech Erōs is the search for primordial wholeness or unity: Aristophanes: “erōs is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness” (192e). • If erōs is the search for your other half, then is erōs designed to cancel itself out? • Does erōs transform into something else? • Is there a sense in which man’s erotic desire transcends the conditions that make it possible?

22. Phaedrus interrupts Socrates Phaedrus: “I enjoy hearing Socrates engaging in discussion, but I must look after the eulogy of Love and extract from each of you a speech as your contribution” (194d).

23. Phaedrus interrupts Socrates Phaedrus: “My dear Agathon, if you answer Socrates’ questions, he won’t care whether we get anywhere with our present project, as long as he’s got a partner for discussion, especially someone attractive” (194d).

24. Agathon: start of Symposium Agathon: “Come and lie down beside me, Socrates, so that, by contact with you, I can share the piece of wisdom that came to you in the porch” (175c-d).

25. Agathon’s Speech

26. Agathon: “I want first of all to say how I should speak, then give my speech. I think that all the previous speakers, instead of praising the god, have congratulated human beings on the good things that come to them from the god. Nobody has spoken about the nature of the god himself who has given us these things” (194e).

27. Agathon: “the right thing is to praise his nature first, and then his gifts” (195a).

28. Agathon: “the ancient saying is right, that like always stays close to like” (195b).

29. Agathon: “Love does no injustice and has none done to him, when dealing with either gods or humans. When Love has anything done to him, it isn’t by force (since Love is never forced). When Love does anything, he doesn’t use force, since everyone consents to all Love’s orders” (196b-c).

30. Agathon: “So it seems to me, Phaedrus, that Love is himself supreme in beauty and excellence and is responsible for similar qualities in others” (197c).

31. Analysis of Agathon’s Speech • Comedy and tragedy (Agathon: tragic poet) • Speech isn’t tragedy (Alcibiades gives the tragic speech) • Importance of the relation between beauty and erōs (omitted from Aristophanes’ speech)

32. Socrates talks with the comic and tragic writers (end of Symposium) Apollodorus: “Aristodemus said he couldn’t remember most of the argument, because he’d missed the start and was half-asleep anyway. But the key point, he said, was that Socrates was pressing them to agree that the same man should be capable of writing both comedy and tragedy, and that anyone who is an expert in writing tragedy must also be an expert in writing comedy” (223d).

33. Importance of soul (psyche) for eros Agathon: “He makes his home in the characters and minds of gods and humans” (195e) Agathon: “Love does not settle on a body or mind or anything that has no bloom or has lost its bloom” (196a-b).