Symposium - AIC

Claudia Luchetti
to establish a just relation to the Divine: by turning (µετέστρεφε, 190e6 and see Resp. VII 518c4-
519a1) herself towards her ὀµφαλός (190e9), seeing simultaneously the cut and its healing, the Soul
of each half becomes aware, in a way that strongly recalls the anamnesis (µνηµεῖον εἶναι τοῦ παλαιοῦ
πάθους, 191a4-5, and see Phaed. 73c1 ff.), both of her resemblance and of the dissimilarity from the
origin, in other words, of the coexistence within herself of One and Not One.
Zeus and Apollo are therefore the first to cooperate, with their dividing and re-unifying, to reform
the pristine Unity, prerequisite to attain the lost µεγίστη εὐδαιµονία, for this Principle and
Source is both One and Duality (ποιῆσαι ἕν ἐκ δυοῖν, 191d2, τετµηµένος…ἐξ ἑνὸς δύο, 191d5, ὥστε
δύο ὄντας ἕνα γεγονέναι, 192e1, ὡς ἕνα ὄντα, e2, ἀντὶ δυοῖν ἕνα εἴναι, e3-4, ἐκ δυοίν εἷς γενέσθαι,
192e8-9).
Seeing the typically demiurgic proposal, directed by Hephaestus to the ψυχαί of the divided
humans, to merge again and to concreate together into a One and Identical (συντῆξαι καὶ συµφυσῆσαι
εἰς τὸ αὐτό, 192d8-e1) the two halves, it is clear that the ἀρχαία φύσις, so recomposed, cannot
coincide anymore with the undefined Unity of the beginning. To achieve it indeed, the intervention of
a God is, once again, unavoidable, and further, this reconjunction could be a sort of grace that not
everyone deserves, but only those who have reached, permanently, at least the degree of Love
between two Souls (from 192b5 on).
It takes root, then, in the demiurgic wisdom of the Divine, the only one sufficiently able to
solve the One in the Many and to take the Multiplicity back to Unity (see Tim. 68d2-d7), the true
cause of the foundations of an erotic Dialectics between subject and object -on the highest level hoped
by Plato, between Soul and Ideas (see also Phaedr. 250c7 ff.)- that flows into their authentic
Unification in the intellectual act.
If the man is nothing but Soul (see Alc. I 130c1-3, Leg. XII 959a4-b7), Plato takes the chance,
through Aristophanes’ mythical tale, to further precise its lack of Self-sufficiency, regarded in its
singularity: the individual psychic unity is just a σύµπβολον ἀνθρώπου (191d4). The true Psyche
results, instead, from the assimilation with the highest object of Love, in which the φιλοσοφία can be
seen as the reciprocal connection, ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ at once, that binds indissolubly (for the
most beautiful and mighty δεσµός, see Tim. 31b8-c4, and Crat. 403a3 ff.) the knowing subject and the
object of knowledge in the common aspiration to the ἀγαθόν.
Everything considered, it is more than just plausible that in Aristophanes’ concept of ἀρχαία
φύσις, reread with the eyes of Socrates and Diotima, are really hiding that primordial synthesis of the
Timaeus between ψυχή and εἴδη, joined together in the Unity of Noesis, and that agathoid reality of
the Republic, immediate creation of the Good, that we can ‘restore’ with the help of the Gods,
achieving our aim: with the words of the Timaeus, a dialogue with which some sections of
Aristophanes’ λόγος should be compared systematically, “the best among the generated beings, from
the best among the intelligible and eternal beings” (τῶν νοητῶν ἀεί τε ὄντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἀρίστη
γενοµένη τῶν γεννηθέντων, 37a1-2).
Bibliography
Editions of the Symposium
Platone, Simposio, introduz. di V. Di Benedetto, traduz. e note di F. Ferrari, 2008 22 , Milano, Rizzoli.
Platone, Simposio, traduz. e commento di M. Nucci, introduz. di B. Centrone, Torino, Einaudi, 2009.
Platone, Simposio, traduz. di G. Calogero, introduz. di A. Taglia, Bari, Laterza, 1996.
The Symposium of Plato. Edited with Introduction, Critical Notes and Commentary by R.G. Bury,
Cambridge, W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1932 2 .
300
*
K. Albert, Mystik und Philosophie, Sankt Augustin, Verlag Hans Richarz, 1986.
W. Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie und ihrer
Wirkungsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 1985.