Symposium - AIC

Nicholas Riegel
problem death poses for love, we shall have to wait for Diotima’s speech in the second tetralogy.
Pausanias presents the antithesis that the effects of love are not always good. Since the effects
of love are not always good, he concludes that there must be two gods of love, or two kinds of love.
But the problem is that we begin to have doubts even about what Pausanias calls the good kind of
love. He argues that in the good kind of love the beloved will be motivated by the desire for virtue
which the older lover can presumably confer. But we are not told what the lover gets from this
relationship. Presumably sexual gratification, but no investigation is made into whether this indeed is
good. Despite this apparent difficulty with his account, Pausanias has provided a definite advance in
the dialectic. The effects of love are not always good. But, again, by concentrating on the effects of
love, Pausanias neglects love’s nature, and thus he misses the central questions of love.
Eryximachus presents the development of Pausanias’ contribution. He deepens our
understanding of the effects of love. Like Diotima in the second tetralogy, Eryximachus focuses on
natures and essences. But unlike Diotima, he focuses on the nature of the effects of love, rather than
on the nature of love itself. The good effect of love consists in agreement (homonoia: 186e;
homologia: 187b) and harmony (harmonia: 187a; sumphonia: 187b). 11 The main thrust of his
argument is to try to connect the good sort of love with the principle of harmony and concord. He
speaks as though love conquers all the discord in the universe, but we are led to wonder whether this
is true. As a doctor Eryximachus must know that at best the good kind of love has a temporary victory
in the universe. Even the healthiest body, where all the opposing elements are maximally harmonized
for the longest time, will eventually succumb to the forces of decay and discord. And we are still left
with no answer to the question: what was it all for? Nevertheless, Eryximachus has provided an
advance over Pausanias. While Pausanias argued that there must be different kinds of love, since love
has bad effects as well as good, he did not investigate the nature of those effects. Eryximachus gives
an answer to the question about the nature of love’s good effects. But as with all the previous
speakers, the ultimate questions concerning love are not answered. And this is because the nature of
love itself has neither been explored nor settled.
Like Alcibiades will in the second tetralogy, Aristophanes does not so much continue the
progression of the dialectic of the first three speeches, as criticize the basic picture of love which lies
beneath the previous speeches in their respective tetralogies. The basic picture of love in the first
tetralogy is that it consists in two people coming together. This is obviously the case with Phaedrus
and Pausanias, but even with Eryximachus, there is no indication that human love has any other
proper object than another person. But, one might well argue, Aristophanes does not paint the picture
of the double-people in order to criticize it; rather, he seems to celebrate it. Here I would say that
Aristophanes’ own humor works against him, and that we need to remember Plato/Socrates’ own
injunction against taking poets as the ultimate authorities on the correct interpretation of their own
works at Apology 22a-c. The way in which Aristophanes’ own comedy works against the conclusion
he draws from it, is precisely the ridiculousness of the imagery of the double-people. Aristophanes
counts heavily on this imagery to raise a laugh, but he does not see that the reason it raises a laugh is
precisely because it takes to the extreme the idea that one person should couple with another. But
Plato may here be highlighting how absurd it looks from a philosophical point of view.
In the end each speech in the First Tetralogy fails because it does not follow a proper
methodology. The speeches describe the effects of before defining love itself. They raise problems
without adequately answering them. We can either worry about these problems, as in the first three
speeches. Or we can laugh about them, as in the last one. But none of the speeches solves the
problems.
IV. THE SECOND, OR PHILOSOPHIC TETRALOGY
The structure of the second tetralogy is like the first. Agathon presents the thesis that love is good;
Socrates presents the antithesis that love is not good; Diotima then develops Socrates’ theme; and
Alcibiades provides a criticism of the picture of love which emerges from the dialectic. The second
tetralogy is “philosophic” because it follows the correct methodology. It begins by investigating
love’s nature rather than its effects. But as we shall see in Acibiades’ speech there is a veiled criticism
11 It should be noted that it is not clear whether the words harmonia or sumphonia mean exactly the same thing as our word
‘harmony’. Some translators have favored ‘attunement’ for the former and ‘concord’ for the latter, e.g. Nehamas and
Woodruff. But I think Eryximachus’ point is clear, both harmonia and sumphonia are kinds of agreement (homologia) and as
such ‘harmony’ is not out of place as a translation in this context. Cf. 187b: ἡ γὰρ ἁρµονία συµφωνία ἐστίν, συµφωνία δὲ
ὁµολογία τις. Cf. also Kenneth James Dover, Plato: Symposium (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1980). 108; Bury, The
Symposium: ad loc.
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