Symposium - AIC

Carolina Araujo
his alleged incapacity rest on his supposition of a conquest, of achieving a definitive internal divine
state which would infallibly cause success in actions and speeches, and not as an exercise. If he is not
to conquer this kind of excellence, Alcibiades feels slighted and charges Socrates of hubris (214d3;
219c5-6). Confronted with Socrates’ concept of Eros, Alcibiades is the first to realize that he is unable
to love, that loving is too difficult a task for a human being; it involves dealing with what is beyond
control.
What is offered here is the sketch of an argument that would require more than a whole book.
The aim is obviously to seize the occasion for a dialogue about agency in the Symposium, egoistically
aiming to benefit myself from the audience’s objections. What I claim is that the narrative in the
Symposium transfigures Eros as a cause of action. What was at first a force greater than human, a
divine cause of human accomplishments, has proved to demand control, internal or external, through
laws, knowledge or piety. Socrates claims that this control can be replaced by aspiration and instead
of inspiration he suggests constant exercise, the heaviest of tasks, condemned by those unable to
properly love, but not by Plato.
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