SYMPOSIUM

Dates related to Platos life:

427 BC: Plato born in Athens to a prominent political family.
416: A symposium takes place in Agathons house to celebrate his winning a drama
contest at the festival of Lenaia, dedicated to Dionysus. Plato would have been 11 years
old.
399: Socrates is executed by the city of Athens for misleading the youth.
399-387: Plato leaves Athens in disgust at its political system and travels east.
387: Plato establishes a school outside the walls of Athens, in the grove of Akademos,
dedicated to Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. (origin academic).
387: Symposium written/begun by Plato
367: Plato travels to Syracuse in Sicily to teach the prince Dionysius II. Gets embroiled in
political intrigues and returns to Athens.
347: Plato dies.
529 AD: Christian emperor Justinian abolishes The Platonic Academy since it allegedly
misled students by disseminating pagan knowledge.
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Symposium Characters
(In order of appearance)
In the Frame-Narrative:
Apollodorus: Follower of Socrates, relates the symposium speeches he heard about as a
child.
Glaucon: Man who accosts Apollodorus to ask about the symposium speeches. A
Businessman.
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Aristodemus: a follower of Socrates who is invited by him to the symposium, relates the
symposium speeches to Apollodorus.
The narrative of the speeches is Aristodemus relating the symposium speeches to
Apollodorus who relates them to Glaucon, the businessman.
In the Speeches:
1.Phaedrus
2.Pausanius
3.Eryximachus
4.Aristophanes
5.Agathon
6.Socrates
7.Diotima, in absentia
8.Alcibiades
Summary of Speeches:
Phaedrus: A fellow-student of Platos and a follower of Socrates. First speech: The
ancient ancestry of Eros, male lovers, the ennobling power of love, an army of lovers
would be the most invincible since every lover would want to show his best and most
courageious self to his lover. Compare this to the arguments put forth by the American
army about why homosexuality would undermine morale!!
Pausanius: Agathons older lover (Erastes). Nothing is known of him outside The
Symposium. Speech: Love is not a unitary thing, but there are two diferent kinds of love:
Common vs. Divine, personifed as Uranian and Pandemic Aphrodite. The Sociology of
love, and the Athenian custom of erastes and eromenos: an older elite man (erastes)
pursuing the young elite boy (eromenos); the mutual attraction should be intellectual
and not just physical. Love is the force through which an intellectually vibrant and
democratic society trains its younger members by apprenticing them to older, and
hopefully more wiser ones.
Eryximachus: Doctor, pedantic; proposes not to drink seriously, to send the fute girl
away and talk on Eros since Phaedrus has complained that no one has composed
encomia to him. Speech on the need for moderation in love.
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Aristophanes: circa 450-385 BC. Greek dramatist remembered for his comedies, such as
Clouds. Speech on the genesis of love in 3 original human sexes cut in half by Zeus as
punishment for wild behavior; the subsequent search by incomplete humans for their
lost half is love. love is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness.
Agathon: Greek dramatist and poet who won frst prize for the tragedy contest in 416
BC and gave the party at which speeches were given in honor of Eros. Younger lover
(Eromenos) of Pausanius. None of his tragedies survive. Speech: Love is young, sensitive,
fuid, cannot abide force or compulsion, he is courageous. His is the most fowery
speech, as Socrates is quick to point out.
Socrates: Begins his speech by disproving Agathons points. Proves that Eros is needy
and lacking in beauty. Proceeds to reporting the teachings of Diotima, the only female
character in The Symposium.
Diotima of Mantinea: (In absentia): Fault in logic: if a thing is not A it has to be Ba
thing can be a mixture of A and B. For example, Love is neither fully human nor fully
divine, neither fully wise not fully ignorant. Loves ancestry: Son of Poverty and
Resource. He is at once needy and resourceful. Love is the desire to have the good
forever. Function of love is the perpetuation of beauty: both physical perpetuation and,
more importantly, intellectual perpetuation, such as giving birth to new and good ideas.
This perpetuation is the closest humans can come to being immortal. What kind of a
man perpetuates intellectually? Diotima concedes that poets may; does Soccrates
concede this? What is his reaction to Agathons speech?
Loves Ladder (Scala Amoris 210 a): The love of the individual is only instrumental
towards achieving a larger goalto glimpse the Beauty of which the beloved (eromenos)
is only one individual instance. Metaphor: We may initially love an individual light-
bulb for its shape and form; but then we graduate onto the realization that what makes
the bulb beautiful and useful is the light it houses (temporarily), and seeing this quality
of light in all other bulbs, but also in candles, lamps, torches and fashlights. The
individual lighbulb then loses its urgent appeal. Similarly, with the love of a human
being one begins by initially appreciating the beauty of the eromenos (or erastes), and
then graduates on to the recognition that what makes him attractive is the constellation
of virtues which are housed in himagain temporarily, for he is mortal. What this frees
one up to do is to concentrate on the good qualities which are also housed in others,
these qualities are eternal.
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Alcibiades: circa 450-404 BC. Charismatic Athenian politician and general who fought
in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) between Athens and Sparta. Speech about his
intense attraction to Socrates. This is an inversion of the usual pattern in that here we
have a young man being attracted to and pursuing an older man. What are his
motivations? How does this speech function within the larger argument of The
Symposium? Do we believe what Alcibiades is saying about being attracted to Socrates
wisdom?
Technical terms:
Frame narrative: A larger narrative that introduces and sits like a frame around the
kernel of the main narrative in a text. Thus, the kernel, or the very heart of The
Symposium is the six speeches by Phaedrus to Socrates. Sitting as a frame around these is
the dialogue between Apollodorus and Glaucon who meet accidentally and start talking
about the speeches given in 416 BC at Agathons house. We, as the readers access the 6
symposium speeches through this frame narrative of the banter between Apollodorus
and Glaucon. One could say that Socrates introductory speech is a frame around his
reported speech of Diotima.
Encomium: A formal speech in praise of someone or something. (Encomium to salt,
low taxes, public health care). Synonym: Eulogy.
Conventional rhetorical form of an Encomium:
1.The origin, genealogy and noble birth of the subject.
2.Good Physical qualities: strength and beauty
3.Good Psychological Qualities: Wisdom, Justice, Courage
4.Habits and way of life
Achievements, especially as contrasted with others
Eros vs. Philia (Amor vs. Caritas; Ishq vs. Muhabbat)
Eros: passionate love involving sex
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Philia: Afection, as one might have for ones city, country, family members.
Eromenos vs. Erastes
Eromenos: A young, elite Greek boy who is pursued by an older man and submits to
his attentions by occasionally allowing kissing and intercrural sex, but ideally does not
allow himself to be penetrated.
Erastes: An older, elite Greek man who pursues a youger man and lavishes attention on
him.
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CLOSE READING OF A TEXT
Close Reading is a strategy for interpretation that helps you get more out of reading
any literary text. This is, therefore, a strategy that you can use proftably in any
Humanities or Social Science course. Close reading is the attentive reading of short
passages of a text by noting: word use, sentence structure, tone, recurring patterns,
closure, and the overall arguments of a text.
One can do a close reading of either a section of a text, or the full textultimately one
has to put the passage within the context of the whole text. In other words, even if your
task is the close reading of a passage within a text, you still have to read the entire text.
In doing a close reading you have to begin with several assumptions: frst, that the
author of the text has intentionally used certain words, images or structures--and not
accidentally or mistakenly. It is then your job as a close-reader to explain why the author
has made the choice he or she did.
The second assumption of a critical reader is that the characters within the text may not
necessarily express the authors argument or point-of-view. One has to draw a distinction
between the characters point-of-view and the authors. A character in a text may, for
example, insist that love is the key to happiness, but the author may be trying to argue
the very opposite of this, by showing how misguided that character is.
The third assumption is that a literary text cannot be read straightforwardly as a refection of
social reality, like you might read a newspaper report of an accident. Authors writing literary
texts are absolutely free to present a highly idealized or sanitized version of an event;
they may invert the actual course of events altogether, or they may address an actual
event by presenting it metaphorically in the guise of an entirely fantastic scenario. These
are just some of the many possibilities.
Steps in close reading
First, read the entire text through without stopping.
Second, re-read the text. With a pencil in hand
Make short notes in the margin about the following issues

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Questions in Close Reading
Diction:
If there are unfamiliar words, look them up in the dictionary.
A word often has multiple meanings. Write down all the meanings of a word.
Are familiar words used in strange, unconventional ways?
Syntax:
Are the sentences constructed in unusual ways?
Is the subject clear? Whos doing an action or saying something?
Is the object clear? Whos being acted upon or spoken to?
Are the sentences long and fowing, short and choppy, complex or simple?
If a sentence has strange syntax, put it in modern conversational English.
Structure: Repetitions, Patterns, Symmetry:
Do things happen in patterns? Like one, two, and then, boomthe punchline?
Are there sets of actions, words or events that can be grouped together?
Do certain images keep recurring: sparks, embers, smoke, fames?
Shifts and Changes:
Does the pattern change at some pointabruptly, gradually?
Does the diction and the syntax change at that same point?
These points of transition are important, mark them with a pencil.
Literal vs. Metaphorical
Is a particular word used literally or metaphorically?
Would it make sense to take a word literally or do we have to interpret it
metaphorically and symbolically?
Closure:
Does the text feel resolved? Has the action come full circle, loose threads tied up?
If not, what would be needed to tie up the loose threads?
What questions are you left with at the end of an open-ended text?
Expect some unresolved answers.
At this point also you should be able to point to specifc paragraphs and lines in
supporting your answers. You should, for example, be able to say: In the third
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paragraph on page 99, the author suddenly shifts tone and stops talking in the
voice of the main character and starts talking in the voice of an animal.
Questions About The Arguments in a Text
The Argument
Every text contains an argument for a position, as well as against a position.
Every text asks the reader to buy into this argument.
Is the author expressing his argument through a character, or through a contrast
with the characters point of view?
Literary and religious texts seldom lay out the argument in plain sight.
Academic articles and reports usually do, which is why theyre easier to read.
Your last job as a close reader is to identify the arguments hidden in the text.
Your next job is to wrestle with the argumentyou dont have to buy it.
You could simply agree or disagree with the argument, but how boring!
Wrestle with the argument, ask how it could be made more convincing.

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