At the famous symposium at Agathon’s house, Eryximachus recounted a complaint made to him frequently by one of the other attendees, Phaedrus. He was bored with scholarly volumes dedicated to Heracles, salt and other Greek divinities. “How could people pay attention to such trifles,” the radiant, aristocratic boy frequently asked, according to Eryximachus, “and never, not even once, write a proper hymn to Love (Erôs)?” (Symposium, 177d)
It was a valid question, well asked. And while the other guests proved sympathetic, at least one understood the subtext. “How could I vote ‘No’,” Socrates replied, speaking to Eryximachus’ motion, “when the only thing I say I understand is the art of love?” (Ibid.) Notwithstanding the apparent contradiction between this self-account and others given by the wisest man of Athens, there was at least one other topic Socrates understood with certainty: what Phaedrus wanted. And what Phaedrus wanted was to hear Socrates speak about love.
He wasn’t the only one. Of course, there was also Alcibiades — but more importantly, there was Plato, who recorded Socrates’ words, so that they might “continue to signify just that same thing forever.” (Phaedrus, 275d) Words, after all, do not change. But paradoxically, this is why Socrates’ speeches about love roam “everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it.” (Phaedrus, 275e) And, as Plato goes on to explain, this is why his (Socrates’? Plato’s) discourse “produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as an human can be.” (Phaedrus, 277a)
These words have proved prophetic — and they present modern readers with a number of mysteries. Self-evidently, Plato’s discourses on love are marked by the Ancient Greek patriarchal family and corresponding civic and religious institutions which denied rights and recognition to women. By a similar token, Plato’s aristocratic ethos seems to overdetermine his account of the soul, which valorises restraint and self-discipline, while his recourse to Greek religion and myth — despite its irony and ambiguity — is difficult to reconcile with the anti-metaphysical turn in modern philosophy. Nevertheless, we can discover in his account of Eros as a third, transcendent term that emerges in the relation between two lovers a startlingly modern theory of love. To do so requires us to examine the gulf that separates us from Ancient Greek culture and philosophy. By re-reading Plato speculatively — that is, by historicising his philosophy and re-cognizing its conceptuality in light of feminist thought, Lacanian psychoanalysis, modern poetics and modern philosophies of love — we can discover a Plato that lives by virtue of the non-identity and non-closure of his meaning. In short, if we encounter Plato aporetically and in light of our own standpoint, it will be argued that a third term appears: Eros the Absolute.
This five-week series will begin with two lectures on Plato’s Symposium. In week three, guest lecturer Jonathan McCoy will consider Jacques Lacan’s famous Seminar VIII and its reading of the Symposium. For the last two lectures, we will turn to Plato’s Phaedrus. While the focus will be on close reading, we will draw on commentaries and related texts by Stanley Rosen, Luce Irigaray, Anne Carson and others.
Week One — The Symposium
In Week One, we will begin to explore Plato’s most famous work dedicated to love, The Symposium. The lecture will cover the first part of The Symposium, up to the beginning of Socrates’ speech. In addition to the philosophies of love presented by speakers other than Socrates, we will consider the historical, cultural and religious background to Plato’s work, as well as its position with respect to his other writing.
Primary Reading:
- Plato, “The Symposium” in Complete Works, ed., John M. Cooper (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 457-484.
Secondary Reading:
- Rosen, Stanley, Plato’s Symposium, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
Other secondary readings TBC.
Week Two — The Symposium
Week Two will consider Socrates’ speech in The Symposium. We will undertake a close reading of the text, paying attention to the metaphysical, mythic, aesthetic and literary elements of the philosophy of love presented. We will also consider Diotima of Mantinea — who was she and why does Socrates’ devote his time to recounting her speech on love?
Primary Reading:
- Plato, “The Symposium” in Complete Works, ed., John M. Cooper (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 484-505.
Secondary Reading:
- Luce Irigaray, “Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato’s Symposium, Diotima’s Speech”, trans. Eleanor H. Kuykendall in Hypatia, (Winter, 1989, Vol. 3. No. 3, pp. 32-44)
- Nancy Evans, “Diotima and Demeter as Mystagogues in Plato’s Symposium”, in Hypatia (Spring, 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 1-27)
- Other secondary readings TBC.
Week Three — Lacan on The Symposium
Presented by guest lecturer Jonathan McCoy.
Lacan's commentary on The Symposium is given in sessions II-XI of Seminar VIII, Transference. We will refer to material from many of these sessions, but the primary reading this week is session VIII, “From Epistéme to Mythous”; this is representative of Lacan's approach to Plato's text, and treats a number of topics that will be significant for our discussion. We will also use session I, “In the Beginning Was Love”, in order to consider Plato's significance for Lacan's teaching more generally.
Primary Reading:
- J. Lacan, 'From Epistéme to Mythous' in Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), pp. 110-124.
Secondary Reading
- J. Lacan, 'In the Beginning Was Love' in Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), pp. 3-16.
Week Four — The Phaedrus
Week Four’s lecture will turn to The Phaedrus, among the most mystic and inspired of Plato’s dialogues. In addition to the philosophy of love presented, we will consider the cosmological, mythic, psychagogic and poetic elements of the text. What is divine madness and why does Plato hold that it is superior to man-made sanity?
Primary Reading
- Plato, “The Phaedrus” in Complete Works, ed., John M. Cooper (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 506-529.
Secondary Reading
- Selections from Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet, (Surrey: Princeton University Press, 1986).
Week Five — The Phaedrus
Week Five will conclude our reading of The Phaedrus. We will examine the second half of the text, beginning with the allegory of the chariot. We will consider Plato’s comments on rhetoric, writing, philosophy and the soul while asking the question: how can a philosophical text remain true despite the passage of almost two and a half millennia?
Primary Reading
- Plato, “The Phaedrus” in Complete Works, ed., John M. Cooper (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 529-556.
Secondary Reading
- Selections from Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet, (Surrey: Princeton University Press, 1986).
SPECIAL EVENT: A Symposium on Love
All enrolled attendees are invited to a symposium on love, to be held one week after the conclusion of this course (venue TBC — there will be wine.)
Interested symposiasts are invited to give a short contribution on the theme of love. This may consist of a speech, a poem or other performance. Further mysteries associated with this event will be revealed to initiates in due course.