Symposium - AIC

Jens Kristian Larsen
from his speech.
Once Phaedrus has finished the first part of his speech, which praises eros by claiming that it
is oldest among the gods, he delivers, from 178c2-179b3, an account of how eros serves us as a guide
for acquiring virtue and happiness. The first thing to note is that Phaedrus claims that eros is the cause
of the greatest goods for both lover and beloved, since the greatest good for a beloved is to have a
good or useful lover and the greatest good for a lover is to have a beloved (178c3-5). More precisely,
eros, according to Phaedrus, implants “that which should guide human beings who are going to live
nobly throughout their lives” more beautifully than anything else (178c5-d1), and it implants this in
lover and beloved alike. This means that Phaedrus, in contrast to most of the other encomiasts, regards
an erotic relation as reciprocal. According to a traditional understanding of the paiderastic relation, in
accordance with which most speakers at Agathon’s symposium analyse the erotic relation, the
beloved, the eromenos, was – at least ideally – to acquire virtue through the educative effort of the
lover, whereas the lover, the erastes, was to receive sexual gratification. As regards the acquisition of
education and virtue, it was thus a one-way relation; the lover was supposedly already good, wise and
virtuous. 4 According to Phaedrus, however, eros installs a guide for living nobly or beautifully – and
that means in accordance with virtue (cf. 179a8) – in lover and beloved alike.
This power residing in eros is due to the fact that it, at least according to Phaedrus, makes us
feel shame at doing shameful things and gives us ambition – or love of honour, that is philotimia – as
regards the noble things (178d2). That we should fear performing base acts and make it a point of
honour to do noble deeds is of course a traditional view of what it means to live virtuously that we
find in many Greek poets. 5 All the same, it is interesting that Phaedrus claims that love makes us
follow this ideal because it makes us fear how we will look in the eyes of our lover or beloved,
respectively, if we fail to live up to it. It is this aspect of the erotic relation that installs a drive for
virtue in human beings much better than family or publically bestowed honours could do (cf. 178c6-
7). 6 This implies that, even if Phaedrus’ ideals are borrowed from tradition, a fact that could seem to
inscribe Phaedrus in the conventionality of the public sphere, he envisages the virtuous life as a life
that – at least potentially – transcends this sphere and its values, since it is centred on how we appear
to our loved ones, not to others in general.
This nonconventional dimension also comes to the fore when Phaedrus, at 179a7-9, sums up
the good effects of eros with the following words: “there is no one so bad that, once the god Eros had
entered him, he would not be directed toward virtue – to the point where he is like one who is best by
nature”, that is fysis. As is pointed out by Kevin Corrigan and Elena Glazov-Corrigan, the claim that
eros installs a striving in us to become like – homoios – the one who is by nature best, is “reminiscent
of the Platonic homoiôsis theô”, 7 that is, the ideal to become as like god as is humanly possible. This
platonic notion, which is introduced in both the Theaetetus and the Laws as a contrast to the
Protagorean doctrine that man is the measure (cf. Tht. 176a-177c in contrast to 166e-167c and Lg.
716c-d, 906a-b), is – among other things – meant to point out that there is a natural standard for
excellence and happiness independent of human convention or tradition, that is nomos. When
Phaedrus states that eros makes us like what is by nature – physei – best, the same ideal of a nonconventional
standard seems to be in play.
Of course, Phaedrus does not attempt to give any conceptual clarification of virtue or nature,
nor does he deliver any argumentative justification for the claim that eros makes us strive for the best.
In this respect one may thus say that he is far removed from philosophy. All the same, I think that a
good part of his tradition-bound understanding of eros gains a philosophical justification in the speech
of Diotima. So let us now turn briefly to this speech, before we finally return to Phaedrus’ and
Alcibiades’ conflicting interpretations of philotimia.
Diotima’s speech can roughly be divided into three parts. 8 The first (201d1-204c) contains
Diotima’s clarification of the nature of eros. A second part, running from 204c9-209e4, then focuses
on the effects of eros in general and goes on to elaborate these effects from the perspective of
4 For a discussion, see L. Brisson, ”Agathon, Pausanias, and Diotima in Plato’s Symposium” in Plato’s Symposium – Issues
in Interpretation and Reception, ed. J. Lesher, D. Nails and F. Sheffield, Wahington DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006,
233-235.
5 For a discussion of thi s, see C. Pietsch, ”Die Rede des Phaidros (178a6-180b8)” in Platon. Symposion – Klassiker
Auslegen 39, hg. Christoph Horn, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012, 42.
6 T. L. Cooksey, Plato’s Symposium – A reader’s guide, Continuum, 2010, 37.
7 Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan, op. cit., 53.
8 An interesting discussion of the relation between these parts and the genre of encomium can be found in K. Ågotnes, “”
(2013) who in contrast to my interpretation claims that the Symposium as such “leaves us with one strong message: we shall
not love honour”, p. 59.
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