Symposium - AIC

Matthew D. Walker
from fully identifying with Apollodorus.
Such distancing is important on account of the Symposium’s dramatic portrayal of Socrates in
a more beautiful, more resourceful, less aporetic mode than elsewhere. Presented with Socrates’ own
beautiful speech and inspiring character, Plato’s readers are always at risk of lowering their aims as
aspiring philosophers. Instead of working through the Symposium and questioning Socrates’ views on
erôs—i.e., instead of approaching the Symposium in a mood of engaged meletê—Plato’s audiences
are at risk of being lulled into merely “rehearsing” the work by reading it passively. They are at risk
of accepting Socrates as a kind of “guru” figure, rather than as a spur to further thinking and progress
of their own. Through his unattractive characterization of Apollodorus, a figure who does accept
Socrates in just this way, Plato reminds his readers of this danger. 23 Plato thereby aims to promote, or
at least not to forestall, his audience’s philosophical progress. 24
Bibliography
Annas, Julia. 1985. “Self-Knowledge in Early Plato.” In Platonic Investigations, ed. Dominic
O’Meara, 111-138. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.
Benardete, Seth, trans. and comm. 2001. Plato’s Symposium. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bury, R.G., ed. and intro., 1909. The Symposium of Plato. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons.
Cooper, John M. ed. 1997. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Corrigan, Kevin and Elena Glazov-Corrigan. 2006. Plato’s Dialectic at Play: Argument, Structure,
and Myth in the Symposium. University Park: Penn State Press.
Denyer, Nicholas, ed. and comm. 2001. Plato: Alcibiades. Cambridge: Cambridge Greek and Latin
Classics.
Halperin, David M. 1992. “Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity,” in Methods of Interpreting Plato and
His Dialogues, ed. James C. Klagge and Nicholas D. Smith (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
supplement): 93-129.
Hunter, Richard. 2004. Plato’s Symposium. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, J.D. 1969. “The Philosopher’s Frenzy.” Mnemosyne 22: 225-230.
Neumann, Harry. 1965. “On the Madness of Plato’s Apollodorus.” Transactions and Proceedings of
the American Philological Association 96: 283-289.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Osborne, Catherine. 1996. Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rowe, Christopher, ed. and trans. 1998. Plato: Symposium. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.
Sayre, Kenneth. 1996. Plato’s Literary Garden: How to Read a Platonic Dialogue. South Bend:
University of Notre Dame Press.
Scott, Gary Alan and William A. Welton. 2008. Erotic Wisdom: Philosophy and Intermediacy in
Plato’s Symposium. Albany: SUNY Press.
Sheffield, Frisbee C. C. 2006. Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
23 Some commentators—e.g., Bury (1909: xvi) and Neumann (1965: 284)—plausibly see Apollodorus as a kind of mask for
Plato himself. If so, I contend, that is not because (as Neumann suggests) Apollodorus is a philosopher. Rather, Apollodorus
represents certain tendencies toward which aspiring philosophers are prone—tendencies toward which Plato believes that
perhaps he too risks falling victim. Accordingly, the presence of Apollodorus serves not only to inoculate Plato’s audience
from these tendencies, but also to provide a kind of self-inoculation for Plato. But such remarks, I allow, are speculative.
24 Acknowledgments tk.
124