Symposium - AIC

Alcibiades’ Refutation of Socrates
Edward C. Halper
Close examinations of individual arguments in Plato’s dialogues usually ignore the dramatic elements,
and studies of the characters and the drama of the dialogues often pass over the arguments. This
paper argues, first, that Plato includes the speech of the Alcibiades in the Symposium as a kind of
dramatic refutation of Socrates’ (or rather Diotima’s) argument that love is rooted in a universal desire
to possess the good and necessarily results in an ascent of the ladder of loves (to the level of which
one is capable) and in a “giving birth in beauty.” Alciabias serves as a counter-example. More than
that, though, the paper argues that the extraordinary insight into Socrates that Alcibiades displays
helps the reader grasp Diotima’s mistake—indeed, the contradiction—that is inherent in her account
and that that must be Plato’s intention. Third, I suggest that Plato provides an anticipatory refutation
of Gregory Vlastos’s famous paper: he included Alcibiades in the Symposium in order to illustrate the
disastrous consequences of taking an individual as the object of love. Finally, although Alcibiades
undermines Socrates’ speech, there is an important sense in which he also affirms it. If this analysis
or something like it is correct, the Symposium uses its dramatic action and descriptive passages to
further its argument.
I
Although it has been little discussed in the literature, one striking and pervasive detail of Socrates’
long encomium to love is the necessity it ascribes to the actions of the lover. 1 He must (δεῖ) begin by
pursuing beautiful bodies, love one body and, then, come to see that the beauty in any one is akin to
that of another body; and he must (δεῖ) thereafter pursue the beautiful form in all bodies and despise
any one body (210a-b). Then, he must grasp that the beauty of the soul is more honorable
(τιµιώτερον) than that of bodies, and, in consequence, the lover must care for the soul of the beloved.
Inasmuch as all souls can be beautiful, the lover will seek to make other souls better and so “be forced
to consider beauty in customs and laws” (ἀναγκασθῇ αὖ θεάσασθαι τὸ ἐν τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύµασι καὶ τοῖς
νόµοις καλόν—210c3-4) and from there to ascend to love of knowledge. Most of the verbs in this
passage are infinitives governed by δεῖ. According to this account the lover is forced to ascend to the
pursuit of higher objects.
There is a qualification here. The ascent must occur only if love “leads rightly” (210a4-7).
We can surmise that love does not lead rightly if the lover is unable to grasp that the higher levels are
more beautiful or if he does not pursue them for some other reason. If the right conditions are not
present, the lover’s ascent can be frustrated; but if those conditions are present, it is necessary. What
accounts for this necessity?
Socrates’ speech in the Symposium does not have the logical tightness of his arguments
elsewhere, but I think we can answer the question. Indeed, I think the parts of this speech fit nicely
together if we understand the speech to be aiming to show this very necessity. In its fanciful
beginning, Socrates declares that love is not a god, but the offspring of Resource and Need. Just what
is it that the lover needs? The lover needs the Good, but so does everyone else. To distinguish the
lover from the non-lover, Diotima claims that the lover generates in the beautiful. 2 She reasons that
because the lover wants to possess the Good forever (206a), he creates, insofar as he can, something
that persists. (Wanting to possess what is beautiful [204d, 211c-d], the lover makes beautiful things
or himself becomes beautiful.) Thus, animal life is sustained indefinitely by the creation of offspring,
whereas acts of virtue and noble speeches bring a person immortal fame.
We can appreciate the significance of this reasoning by recognizing how implausible it is on
the surface. The Good is eternal, of course, and it is human to want to possess it forever. Why,
though, would one suppose that possessing eternity or some semblance of it would bring one closer to
possessing the Good? Diotima’s account recalls the Demiurge of the Timaeus, and it is equally
problematic. Seeking to imitate the forms, the Demiurge fashions a cosmos that is, so far as possible,
1 Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 179, notices “all these ‘must’s,” and proposes that they represent a felt
need to diminish unbearable sexual tension. There is no textual evidence for this claim, nor is there any textual ground to
think that the ascent has a “negative motivation,” namely, to escape from physical contact. Rather, the lover’s positive
desire for Beauty draws him upwards. Desire and “tension” must continue inasmuch as they motivate the climb.
2 This account reverses the metaphor of the Theaetetus where it is the beloved who gives birth (150a-151d, esp. 151a).