Symposium - AIC

Gabriel Danzig
forth. The only partial exception to this pattern is Charmides, who boasts about his poverty. But here,
too, the explanation is a let-down: his claim that poverty enables him to evade costly levies shows the
high value he places on money and hence makes his original boast that poverty is a good thing look
absurd. He admits freely that he would rather be wealthy. The good-humored speakers in Xenophon
act as if they are engaged in simple boasting, but then reveal themselves to be engaged in self-ridicule.
This self-ridicule is a strategy of self-defense: if I have not really boasted, I am not really
open to attack. Socrates reverses this strategy: he opens with a ludicrous claim – expertise in the art of
procuring – and then explains that it is really a valuable skill. 5 By doing this, Socrates actually makes
and defends a serious boast, thereby exposing himself in principle to attack. But he proves his
possession of the claimed ability by showing himself a master of self-presentation throughout the
composition, even taking the upper hand when losing a beauty contest (5.10). No one attacks
Socrates’ claim, in fear, one may suppose, of his reputation for verbal self-defense, thereby implicitly
recognizing the validity of his claim. 6 In any case, taking no chances, Socrates concludes his
presentation with another unique accomplishment: foisting his disreputable skill onto Antisthenes
(4.61-64). He is the only one who uses his own boast as an opportunity to attack or insult someone
else. Socrates is also unique in the doubly-reflexive manner he speaks. Not only is he, like all
speakers, praising himself, but the skill for which he praises himself is the skill of self-presentation,
which is the very skill which all the speakers, himself included, are attempting to use. 7 By openly
claiming to be doing what everyone is doing surreptitiously he shows himself more honest than they
and at the same time lends his speech a meta-theatrical air. This self-conscious focus on selfpresentation
shows just how central it is to Xenophon’s conception of the speeches at a symposium.
To summarize, it is taken for granted that a speaker at a symposium will boast, and the art of speaking
involves fulfilling this expectation without exposing oneself to the possibility of attack and insult. The
clever self-deprecating humor that is displayed by the speakers serves a self-defensive purpose in
preventing serious attacks. Xenophon highlights the centrality of self-presentation by making
Socrates’ self-presentation focus on his ability at self-presentation. All this goes to show that the
competition at this symposium is not merely over cleverness in rhetorical display or philosophic
insight. Rather the competition concerns the value of the personal qualities one claims to possess.
Participants speaks of the value of wealth, Homeric poetry, beauty, or the power of laughter as a
means of praising themselves. This is self-evident to any participant in a symposium and any reader of
sympotic literature, and is only slightly less obvious in Plato’s Symposium.
Plato’s Symposium
As the comparison with Xenophon suggests, the speakers here do not merely compete in
producing clever, insightful speeches, they also compete in praising themselves for qualities they
possess and in showing implicitly that the lives they lead are enviable. Plato is much heavier in tone
than Xenophon, even in a relatively humorous work like Symposium. There is little of the selfdeprecatory
humor, the self-defensive effort to keep things light, that we find in Xenophon, and
nothing that substantially offsets the serious effort of self-promotion in which the speakers are
engaged. As in Xenophon, the speakers praise themselves by praising the qualities they possess, but
there is an additional layer of indirection: since the nominal topic is eros, everyone must attribute his
own good qualities to the god in order to praise herself. If attributing my qualities to the god is a form
of praise of the god, my qualities must be very good ones indeed.
Commentators have long noted some obvious ways in which some of the speakers craft their
speeches on eros to give praise to themselves. Most obvious are the cases of Eryximachos, Agathon
and Socrates, each of whom creates eros in his own image and in the image of his own art or practice.
But this reflexive, boastful or self-promoting characteristic is common to all the speakers.
Phaedrus
Phaedrus is not usually one of the characters taken to task for self-promotion. Rutherford,
who shows more interest than most in the self-promoting aspect of the speeches, says about Phaedrus
that he has “rather little to say about himself or his native Athens or the company’s emotional lives.”
5 In fact he combined the serious and the ridiculous in his initial comment, where he made a serious face while announcing
his ridiculous profession (3.10). Thus his initial comment already contains the serious-ludicrous combination. Whereas the
other speakers use a simple serious-ridiculous formula, Socrates uses a more complex serious-ridiculous-serious formula.
6 Incidentally, this ability supports Xenophon’s claim that Socrates could have won his trial had he wanted to (Ap. 1-9).
7 This reflexivity seems to be a special Socratic characteristic in Plato as well as Xenophon.
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