Symposium - AIC

Reproduction, Immortality, and the Greater Mysteries in Plato’s Symposium
Thomas M. Tuozzo
What is the philosophical import of Socrates’ contribution to the encomia to Love offered at
Agathon’s dinner party in Plato’s Symposium? In this paper I shall offer an answer to this question
which is intended to respond to a trend in recent interpretations of Socrates’ speech in this dialogue.
Scholars have noticed that while what are commonly called “the lesser mysteries” in Diotima’s
teaching put a strong emphasis on immortality through reproduction, the “greater mysteries” make
only one brief mention of immortality. They have accordingly proposed a new interpretation of the
speech: the true culmination of the ascent to the vision of the Beautiful Itself is not, as traditional
readings of the Symposium would have it, 1 a self-reproduction that in some sense comes closest to
true immortality, but is rather simply the beatific experience of that vision itself. The concern with
reproduction and immortality, on this view, is an egoistic distortion of the erotic characteristic of the
lesser mysteries; in the greater mysteries the goal is rightly understood as the selfless contemplation of
the Form itself. 2
The question of whether experience of the Beautiful leads one to engage in some activity of
self-reproduction, or is rather a self-contained experience of contemplation, is a manifestation of a
tension in Plato’s philosophy that also shows up in the question of why the philosopher returns to the
cave in the Republic. The tension lives on in Aristotle’s ethics, as the question of the respective roles
of practical and theoretical activity in the highest form of eudaimonia. In my view, speaking very
broadly, for Plato there is always a connection between the soul’s contemplating the eternal principles
of order, the Forms, and its acting in accordance with those principles in shaping the sensible world.
The soul is not a Form, and never can be; its essential temporality is, in fact, one of the central lessons
of the Symposium. Plato maintains the connection between the contemplative and the active
dimensions of the grasp of the Forms, even as he emphasizes one or the other in different dialogues.
Indeed, traditionally the Phaedo and the Symposium have been seen precisely as complementary
dialogues, stressing, respectively, the other-worldly and this-worldly aspects of knowledge of the
Forms. Recent scholarship has tended to assimilate the Symposium to the one-sided view of the
Phaedo; I hope to contest that tendency here.
It is sound move on the part of recent scholars to avoid conflating what Diotima says about
the lesser and the greater mysteries. Socrates’ account of love is in fact clearly articulated into four
sections; ignoring these articulations and indiscriminately mixing together propositions from
throughout his speech is, I think, a recipe for confusion. The first division in Socrates’ account is that
between Socrates’ dialectical exchange with Agathon (199c3-201c9) and his account of the teachings
of Diotima (201d1-212a7). The latter is itself divided into the teachings she gave him on a number of
occasions (201d1-207a4) and the additional teachings she gave on him on one particular occasion
(whether it was ever repeated or not we are not told) (207a5-212a7). This last, finally, is itself divided
into the account of the lesser (207a5-209a4) and the greater mysteries (209a5-212a7). I shall develop
my interpretation by addressing these sections in turn.
Discussion with Agathon
Socrates’ preliminary discussion with Agathon accomplishes more than it appears to at first glance: it
lays the foundation for the extended discussion of the temporality of the soul in the lesser mysteries.
Love, Socrates argues, has an object; Love in fact desires that object; and since desire is for what one
lacks, Love must lack its object. Before specifying what Love’s object is, Socrates considers a
possible objection to the claim that the desirer lacks what he desires: cannot someone who is strong,
or swift, or healthy, or rich, desire to be so, even while possessing the things that make them strong,
swift, etc.? Indeed they can; so Socrates re-interprets what it means to desire what one lacks: it is to
desire to possess something in the future, which, simply in virtue of being in the future, is not yet
available to one. Socrates explicitly extends this analysis to all cases of desire: even in cases where
one desires what one does not presently have, what one desires is not that one presently have it – as
Socrates might say, whether you desire to have it or not, you simply do not have it, and no desire can
change that – but rather that one have it in the future (200e2-5).
1 For a relatively recent, sophisticated version of the traditional interpretation, see Price.
2 Those offering variants of this interpretation include: Ferrarri (1992, 1994), Rowe (1998), Sheffield (2006), and, most
recently, Obdrzalek (2010).