Plato's dialogue, the Symposium (part 1) - Introduction to Philosophy

we'll start out at the very start so we've got this word symposium and when you hear the word symposium comes to mind because it means something very different today and they used it back in the time that was writing so yeah okay yeah that's that's that's at the core of getting together the swim is the sin you know that we have that's what happens when you put in front of a PE goes to usually if we talk about a symposium or symposia what are people getting together to do well that's what they did in Plato's time drink but we don't say I I'd like to have a symposium would you stop by my place at six o'clock and bring you know a six pack or you know a bottle of wine you know we don't say stuff like that usually if I invite you to a symposium what am i probably inviting - yeah their leaves would be probably a panel up in front you'll sit out there and chairs sort of like these but they'll be more comfortable it'd be a nicer room and they'll talk about something maybe it's about you know whether we should go to war with Syria you don't have like ten experts maybe three or four experts and each of them will give their their you know their take on it and then maybe they'll argue with each other and they'll feel some questions from the audience there won't be any drinking until the event most likely some people might have flasks that might actually help you get through it some symposia so you might wonder well that doesn't sound anything like what's going on in Plato's sing how did we end up with things where they are today and you know some of them is the long history of his terms symposium Plato changed it in a way because symposium originally means drinking part the getting together and this this word podium we get the word potable from that put on the portable means drinkable like potable water and it comes from the verb to drink so this is a for them to get together and drink wine in some big cups they didn't have beer yeah a few other things and you know what else do people like to do with their drinking did music you notice they have to send away a flute girl who is going to be playing during the thing what else people like to do when they think their experience yeah and they have a big dinner beforehand you can probably imagine they're still gonna have snacks around you know in case anybody gets hungry halfway through the night and they're laying down on couches the Greeks and the Romans also didn't necessarily eat sitting they often they often ate laying down it was more than last kind of thing they're sitting together on the couches you know they're big enough that they can share and they're just hanging out and why aren't they going to do heavy drinking in this this case well that's putting a nice face on it that's not the original origin of it yeah exactly they drank so hard at the celebration the day before because this guy Agathon whose house the symposium was being held that he just won a major contests he is a playwright to use a true tragedy writer so you know maybe you read Aeschylus or Sophocles or Euripides when you were in high school maybe they'll read them here those are Greek tragedies Agathon is coming after those guys he's younger than them and they had contests every year for writing tragedies and putting these tragedies on he wants well so you're in a couple different engines not all these guys are philosophers the only one who is really a professional philosophers Socrates yeah intellectuals yeah that's a good way to put it these are all people who are part of the Greek the Athenian upper class they're their leisured they're able to devote their time to things like writing comedies or in tragedies one of them's a doctor one of them is a legal experts Alcibiades bursts in at the end and he actually comes a general later on now whether what the weather they're drinking hard to sort of validate what they're saying no as a matter of fact once they actually start drinking hard again the party the intellectual stuff is over and it just turns into a fun hangout everything goes there there are some guys at the end of the night still arguing with each other the three last men standing Agathon Aristophanes and Socrates and he's arguing with them about their particular crafts can the same person write comedy like Aristophanes does and tragedy like Agathon does because both of them are specialists and the guy who I actually studied with his suggestion with that is yes and Plato is the person who actually does write both of those in the symposium that's that's a whole different issue so yeah to go back to it they're they're really hungover they drank harder they partied the night before and they're just not up to tells you how much these guys drink they're now up to another night of heavy drinking the thought does not does not move them normally these guys would like to do that and everybody there except for Socrates tends to get drunk Socrates can do whatever he wants and he's not really affected like he's got a weird kind of Constitution now they've also got that doctor there and the doctor does tell them you know it's not really good for you to drink so much I always counsel moderation so they say okay we're not gonna drink what are we gonna do that's why they start coming up with this notion of giving speeches it's not like they said hey let's get together for the book club over here and we're gonna talk about ideas originally it starts up we're gonna we're gonna celebrate we're gonna party and then if we're not gonna drink well how should we fill up the night well let's talk about stuff and what should we talk about then this suggestion comes up let's talk about love why what's what's so important about that I mean people are interested in it right but why do they end up talking because nobody had done it before nobody has given a speech and praise of love people have praised all sorts of other things even down to like talking about different kinds of salted water these are you know the Greeks are into quicking so but nobody up until this point has really told us why love is such a great thing so that's an interesting philosophical topic and then it rolls on from there let me back up a little bit though one of the things that I want to call your attention to because it shows you the craft work going into this is what we call narrative function now during the night we're going to get speeches and there's really there's a sequence of six so each person is going to take up a block of time and talk about love I also buy these is actually going to talk about his love for Socrates and what kind of a swell guy Socrates is so he's a little bit off topic but that's okay because he crashed the party he wasn't there at the start so we didn't hear all these other speeches these other speeches kind of build off of each other and that's the core of the dialogue but is that where the dialogue begins no starts out with this guy Polydorus talking with somebody else we don't even know some unnamed companion he says yeah I was just talking with Glaucon about this so there's kind of a nesting we've got Apollodorus and mauka by the way koala can display toes brother Malkin shows up in a couple dialogues Plato never puts himself into a dialogue the eye and the dialogue is always somebody else usually Socrates in this case it's Apollodorus and he's telling the story and when did this they actually take place many years before this is the says that happens when we're boys you know glop and you thought this happened laughs we know this happened a long time ago and so we're did Apollodorus hear this from hearing it ultimately from this guy there's the Dimas who then told it to another guy and that guy I told it to Apollodorus and Apollodorus thought things were kind of hazy so he checked into socrates about this so this is sort of like you hearing about something that happened to your family before you were born and then going around to your aunts and uncles and grandparents and great aunts and great uncles and asking did my daddy actually say that because that doesn't sound like him at all or you know how did they meet again what's what's the backstory on this sometimes those things can be kind of surprising camping and then even ever done that in your family you know find out that people had a very different life than you you know come to associate them with well Arista Dimas was actually there now does IRISA Dimas do a lot of talking not much he doesn't give a speech he's a guy who likes to hang out with Socrates all the time yeah and he meets up with Socrates he's not actually invited to the party although it turns out Agathon didn't want to invite him didn't he he just you know didn't know where he was at the time didn't have text messaging or you know like that back then so IRISA Dimas goes along Socrates actually ends up lagging behind because he does what Socrates typically does he gets lost and thought it starts you know trying to work out some sort of puzzle and he stays back there then he finally shows up about halfway through the dinner and things don't get really rolling until Socrates shows up then they they have the you know should we drink some should we not drink yeah and they decide no we're not gonna drink and now what we're gonna do instead is give speeches papers will go first audience then it's supposed to be somebody who doesn't go next who's supposed to go next does anyone remember it actually goes forth he's the comedian Aristophanes and so the doctor Eric's witness this it was next and then Agathon and then Socrates and then and then after that point other people break in they're all drunk I mean Alcibiades was you know stone-cold drunk himself he was delivering his speech he's complaining about it these other people burst in and the the intention of or they're gonna that kind of drink art and they're just gonna talk about stuff like completely goes out the window and everybody's drinking and doing all sorts of stuff and everybody's if it passed out at the end of the night or over at that table the last three guys were talking and you could you know probably slurring their words it's you know the Sun has just come up Socrates then gets up and goes about his business not affected by the rest of the people are probably the worse for wear yeah okay so this is the basic structure now there's something special going on in Socrates speech this is something we want to be attentive to as well how is his speech different than everybody else's because this is really where the climax of the dialogue takes place thank you this way so we have a story within a story what happens when Socrates starts talking after he gets done you know going back and forth or bhagath on the question and answer going from Apollodorus and vulcan to that of his party were you know dropping 20 years going back in time what happens when Socrates starts telling his stories he goes back in time to doesn't at the time of the parties taking place he's a middle-aged man because he's an old man when he dies how is he Sameer how is he when he's telling a story about Yoda he's a young guy like Phaedrus or perhaps pontius Eriksson I guess is probably the ventilation and the phone is pretty young they also buy IDs are young Socrates is saying you know back when I was your age I knew this really brilliant woman she taught me everything about love here's what she actually had to say to me so there's a story within a story within a story that's the narrative structure of this this entire thing sort of mapped out now each one of these characters represents a certain kind of person a certain kind of approach to the big questions about love you're right they're all intellectuals they're all people getting together and they all have different perspectives don't they Phaedrus is a little bit hard to pin down but he's a young guy his his profession his characters not really settle Poisson yes he's the law and order guy he wants to talk about what's you know right and wrong and what ought to be the case and how to tell things apart Erickson because he's a practicing doctor so he knows something about the science of his time and he looks at everything in a sort of scientific medical point of view he uses the terminology of ancient medicine post audience uses the terminology of ancient legal endeavors Aristophanes is an actually existing purpose these are all actual people but Aristophanes is somebody who we know about independently because he left behind plays that if you want to you can actually read Aristophanes was one of the Kings of Comedy of his time he was he was one of the people who represented what they call the old comedy and the old comedy was very raw stuff just to give you an idea about how silly some of this was on the stage the actors would get on and they had these you know these comedic masks so you couldn't actually see their face but they also wore giant phalluses that they could walk around while they're talking to it to each other that's kind of a funny image isn't it imagine people now you know you're reading a play you got a picture of people actually talking to each other this way because it was all about like just you know goofy stuff and and they would pick on as opposed to the the new comedy which is more like sitcoms you guys are all familiar with sitcoms you know they started in 50s what are some popular sitcoms today I supposed to drama this or sometimes they call them a situation nowadays you know they're not sketch comedies where the characters are different though the same characters over and over again like one of the ones I did I particularly like a particularly volatile be sunny in philadelphia that's a situation comedy the characters don't develop they don't learn anything it don't change become better people they just do the the stupid things that they tend to do and Max is a particular kind of stupid dennis is a whole different kind of stupid dee is a different caste stupid they do their stupid things and we laugh at it that's kind of shot compared to old comedy old comedy would actually target people you would say you they actually had a part of the play where the actors would step down from the stage take the masks off and go out into the audience and yell at people harangue them politicians other playwrights famous people they would target people Socrates himself is targeted in one of Aristophanes plays called the clouds as being this you know goofy tells everybody everything they want to hear kind of kind of snake oil salesman yeah you had a question you know they're gonna ask if he wrote the clouds because he did yeah yeah and Plato references that in this and a sort of hidden way socrates mentions it at one point he also mentions it later in another dialogue called the apology Plato's is imitating Aristophanes he's putting him into the play and to his own play and he has Aristophanes tell the kind of stories that Aristophanes likes to do you know this big thing about well in the beginning near these round you know four-legged forearm creatures that also you know two sets of reproductive parts and then we messed with the gods and the guides you know cut us right down the middle just like you know cutting up an egg with a hair this is one of those metaphors because that's typical Aristophanes and it's pretty funny when you when you look at it Agathon is what would you think to be the high point of the the dialogue I mean we're here celebrating this guy's triumph his is beating all the other playwrights in this contest now a tragedy was a big production you know this is not comedy or just having you know some laughs and a good time this is supposed to elevate us this was supposed to make us think about big things but our own mortality about the nature of fate and love and you know the right life of the wrong life blindness and and you know perceptiveness all these sorts of you know big picture things and it had to be in particularly elevated language and the the tragedy writer was sort of like not just a writer but also a producer they had to oversee this whole production so he's done that he's going to give a speech that reflects the kind of guy that he is and he's played it as they actually here in the some of the rhetorician some of the orders of his time in Paris gorgeous games Socrates gets up Socrates says I can't give a speech you know I thought it was up to it but then I hear these guys and these are some real talkers I'm not that kind of guy if you want I can do the sort of thing that I do every day you guys all know me I like to ask people questions and we talk about stuff I can do that but I can't do this this you know giving a big worked out articulate speech is that okay with you and they say yeah that's that's fine so what does he do now remember whose party is this daga thoughts right Angus I just gave the best speech what does Socrates do tears it apart turns out a Agathon didn't know what he was talking about that's kind of bad manners isn't it but that that's typical Socrates and Plato is not pulling any punches with this and then inside to tell us this this story about somebody else somebody who's not at the party somebody who's probably died a long time ago the only actual woman philosopher and the story is this person do to mom who nobody knows you know whether she truly existed or not or whether Plato created her as a character but she actually gets the the best lines doesn't she she gets to tell you here's the real story about everything else that these guys was saying it's not completely wrong but it's all pretty one-sided they missed what it's really about and so she tells that story this guy Elsa by a tease I mentioned he eventually becomes a general he is sort of the typical golden boy ancient Athens he's rich good-looking strong bold everybody's in love with him you know everybody wants to either you know be him or sleep with him or be friends with him very undisciplined though he has no control over his appetites in part because everybody gives him what he wants yeah and he ends up having a really tragic end much later on he ends up betraying his city Athens going to Sparta betraying Sparta in part by sleeping with people he's not supposed to sleep with going to Persia which was the traditional enemy of the Greeks so now he's like a double trader and then while he's in Persia even manages to betray that so you know this is sort of foreshadowing in his character and how he acts he tells you when I'm around Socrates I want to be the best guy that I possibly can but I'm not able to sustain it I'm not able to keep it up but he gives you this really interesting speech about who this guy Socrates is and what is so attractive about this short fat pug-nosed you know balding old guy that all these other people want to hang out with them who by the way is not rich doesn't have any political connections can't set you up with anything we'll drink you know all the wine that you give them and it doesn't you know it doesn't really care about too much when it comes to physical things what's so attractive about this guy that's what we'll get to it yeah so there you have sort of you know in a thumbnail all the things that are going out of the speech now well it's actually zero in this guy's speech babies so faker starts out and oh one thing - I did say I was going to talk about this I'm gonna try to cover this very quickly so these these Greek guys are talking a lot about love and you notice first off a lot of the time they're talking about love between men yeah they don't just mean like you know being being buddies or brawlers they mean that so you know some of the actual sexual relationships and in some cases this is kind of goes to that question about photonic love Plato doesn't go for that sort of thing but he has characters who do in part because a lot of the ancient Greeks did house audience by the way of saying no you shouldn't do that yeah early on in his as well so there's the aspect they didn't see any sort of inherent contradiction between that and say living a married life in part because it was understood that if you were a member of you know especially Athenian society you needed to produce new citizens that was your duty not only to you know say your partner or your wife in the marriage or to your family it was your duty to the estate the society not least because if you actually were a member of the property class you were part of the army the the survival of the city depended on citizens being there and reproducing in every generation so the ancient Greeks didn't see a huge conflict in many case is between what we would call homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships that mean they were all by no I mean they have different temperaments some of them talked about being interested in men so I'm talking about being interest into women the biggest issue that they seem to be concerned about is you know is the person that they're trying to pursue or sleep with the kind of person that they ought to be pursuing so they're very concerned about you know people sleeping with each other's spouses that's a big no-no and again in ancient societies adultery was not just seen as a personal effects it was seen as you know a state defense you were actually undermining society by doing that in ancient Athens women were more or less confined to the home with a few exceptions you noticed eodum as a priestess right working-class women of course had to work outside of the home and slaves you know they had a big slave Society of both male and female slaves none of this applied to them you've got some working girls like the flute girl but for the most part women were confined to to the domestic sphere and so what that meant was that if men were going to have relationships in which they would talk about things like politics or Commerce it was going to have to be with other men so you know and we can we can worry about whether this was you know wrong or unequal or stuff like that I want to put those questions aside to just focus on what things are like so that we can understand the text the other thing we want to think about is this older younger relationship the Greeks depending on which her Greece you're in and different attitudes about love relationships romantic relationships and even sexual relationships between men and younger men or even boys yeah so you see this talked about quite a bit in there you notice that even in this this symposium there's some very different attitudes Express right-ho Sonia says yeah people do that sort of thing but you shouldn't be doing that and he's got kind of a strange justification for it then we'll see did you have a question or were you just oh yeah coz men marry each other in Aitkin Greece or no they could look together as companions if they want to do but no marriage was understood as essentially the relationship that you know binds male and female together produces progeny you could fall in love but that wasn't necessarily expected as a matter of fact you know you might not have that much in common with a person that you marry because a lot of marriages were in fact arranged as relationships between between houses so Socrates had a wife who he put out it he you know she may be very unfairly portrayed by Plato she's portrayed as being very nagging and mean to him and he said that he married her in part because if he could put up with her he could put up with anybody so there's not a lot of love in that relationship I must love me in something like enduring somebody else's BS now on her part she put up with a lot of stuff too you got this guy Socrates who instead of actually working for a living and taking you know what is his parents have handed down to him goes around town just getting in random conversations with people about all sorts of stuff and eventually gets himself killed Esther is all so it wasn't done rose garden for her either so anyway this is all stuff to keep in mind and we're looking at these Greek conceptions of luck I think it's very helpful if we try to transpose a lot of this into categories that were interested in and more familiar with so I think that you know we don't necessarily have to be confined to thinking just of you know older man younger man we can think of this in terms of any struggles that you where there's an older logger and a younger lover you know we can ask ourselves questions like well you know what if somebody who's 14 falls in love with somebody who's 30 you know could that be a good relationship regardless of sex whether they're both man both women male/female you know older older male older female these sort of things can be can be generalized we're not stuck necessarily with reading it just with what Plato put on the table I find that you know makes the text a bit more more interesting well let's start with this guy favors what's the first thing he says about love great to be in love it's wonderful love is old a lot of us very very very old and you might say well that's a weird way to start why did why does he care about that well you know for ancient people and this still goes for a lot of cultures antiquity is a sign of greatness sign of being closer to the origins of things we often we moderns off intensity value of the old and say the new the new is the best thing you know so for example so much better than my iPhone 3 you know this new iPhone 5 it is faster it could do a lot more stuff when it comes to technology the numeron probably is better but when it comes to some other things because not everything's technology maybe the older really is that time is better the ancient Greeks certainly thought that if you're closer to the origin of things that you're more powerful you're greater dignity you matter you know we we attitude sort of like that you don't think about our monuments and museums and the reverence in which the Constitution is held you know which just can't you know games a bit more people disagreed about what it means but the games a bit more every year doesn't have this long you know ancient past to look back upon and not a must remember of course because we weren't alive even our grandparents there's something to that now he doesn't stop there love is is very old but love is also theories are getting to more substances high is good love it is the best thing of all why I mean money's nice isn't it do you have to decide lover money sometimes money is the better thing to have maybe not for your whole life but certainly in some cases or if you're really hungry food you know I'm really really hungry I don't care if you love me or not I want to eat and if you give me a hamburger I'll be you know I'll be your friend yeah we could run down a whole list of other goods sometimes sleep you know that doesn't last too long you get the idea so what was the place good how do probably know this to be the case well here he makes a kind of argument how do we know loves last good what does love do for us that lets us say this love lets us look at things in a different makes us consciousness over what does favors things I think it makes us conscious let's let's sort of sketch the picture up you've all been infatuated right now I can ask you how do you feel when you're around that person I'll get butterflies in my stomach I'm nervous you know clumsy that sort of thing but what are you really worried about it's not like you know I'm gonna drop my cop and then you know a little coffee will spill I look like a doofus yeah yeah we're concerned with Luverne or the love depending on which side we run a relationship if we're though if we're the one that that is being logged by somebody else then we feel like we have to measure up to that in this case you didn't think about like you know parents and children but he actually says parents you know that that sort of dynamic is not as strong as the love lover dynamic when somebody actually loves us in romantic way we're sort of on our toes we don't want to disappoint them and what if we're infatuated with somebody else but we really don't want to disappoint them we want to appear to be the best person that we are and this leads to a lot of problems on dates doesn't it you know when people have to you know put on a different kind of face than they normally have there's always you know here's here's a common quandary you take your date out to some restaurant and maybe a show in town and now you Castle almost personal now you've got your own you know way of dealing with homeless people already this is panhandling looking for change do you give it to them well if you don't then you look like you're kind of stingy and especially you know you come up with some sort of justification well you don't understand spending on liquor anyway or you know I gave to this guy last week on the other hand if you give in too easily maybe your lover you're the person that you're interested in is going to judge you as being kind of sucker to is too soft too easy here this quantity what should i do what should I do and this can happen for a whole bunch of things the the waiter you know brings the stuff to the table and they're kind of a jerk do you actively normally went to them and maybe say something like hey nice personality where'd you find it you know or did you are you really gracious with that because you want to appear like you're a really nice person to the person that we are you're attracted to and you know this can lead you into a lot of problems Canada because if you add two differently from the person who you really are now you've got this appearance that you've got to keep up all the time when you're with this person and if the things work out you're gonna be with this person the awful lot of the time aren't you have any of you ever seen that I mean we've seen this in shows and movies and things like that you guys have seen this with a life - some of you probably experienced this and then after a while the mass comes down and then you know it can either be like oh I can't believe you're that kind of person see you later or it can be I'm so glad you finally felt like you could confide in me and show me that you actually you know are a slob or what else don't don't complete your work on time or get mean sometimes and tell people OFF they can go a lot of different ways but people are nervous about that people are concerned about the opinion a lover and so this this can actually bring out the best of us can't it I mean is it a bad thing if people who are normally just average or even who you know let's take the low way average when it comes to moral things act like better people because they don't want their their lover to think badly of them what do you think good thing or bad thing yeah if you do something long enough eventually it becomes part of who you are one way of thinking about this you put on the mask and keep the mask on long enough and pretty soon that'll become your face because that's become the real you maybe movies about that - no way you know the ennobling effect this guy over here usually it's more guys in movies isn't it then then women although it's starting to become a little bit more even sometimes we have once or it doesn't work out or not like bridesmaids favorites favorite movies great movie now he comes up with something really interesting this proposal that probably couldn't really work in any sort of military even back in the ancient Greeks time or in our time but it's an interesting idea imagine an army or any sort of military force composed entirely of people who are in love with each other and therefore are all trying to look good in the eyes of their lovers they would be unstoppable compared to other sort of things that motivate people like save money a lot of people do fighting for money you know fighting for money is not going to buy you an awful lot of loyalty because at a certain point you know things start to get really tough somebody say well it's great to have money but I don't want to die good luck to risk you know going into lightly death just just for the money and even fear I mean you know you can force people to go out and fight but have a certain point they'll they'll turn around should you instead family connections you know pride honor all these sorts of things but not as powerful less you as a motivator faders things as love as this foursome of love and it's kind of an interesting idea to think about you know could you actually have something like this how would that work I mean when each person be in love with each other person I suppose that'd be the best way but now how would you pull off something like yeah come let's come up with some sort of drugs everybody they're all on something like a some weird mix of ecstasy and maybe something else that makes you aggressive because ecstasy tends to make people just kind of touchy-feely I don't know I I don't think that we have to worry about whether this could actually work because where is he going with this love makes us willing to sacrifice even our life somebody who truly loves is willing to make what we call the ultimate sacrifice and he brings up some really interesting examples from Greek mythology he brings up let's take the one that who the failure personal Morpheus how many dinner herd of horses not nothing that not you know from some animate there he was musician such a great musician that when he would play stones would stop rolling down tail to listen to him and all the animals would come around totally still and pay attention to what he was so you're sort of like the first rock star at this time yeah later on me actually that's good rock star life because after he loses his wife he's just followed around by these women music eventually tear him to pieces not a good answer his wife dies Uranus and he loves her but he loves life a bit too much as well he goes down to Hades to get her back and the story is getting you know left out he doesn't go by himself he takes Hercules with them he has evolved heard of Hercules right the ultimate strong man in Greece so he takes Hercules down there to hell with them and Hercules makes a big mess out of everything and so it's fine you can have her back but they pull a trick out because he went down into hell alive he didn't die to go they give them just a facsimile a shadow and as she was going up eventually he turns around and she's like receding back in there he those who are not willing to sacrifice everything for love aren't worthy of getting their love back when their love has died now elke Estes is a whole different ball game and all justice is a woman whose husband that may just is told and I don't remember the whole backstory on this he's told you're gonna die here's a curse you're gonna die unless you can get somebody else to take your place now imagine you were in that sort of situations the first people he goes to her his parents they says look I'm gonna die unless one of you is willing to die for me mom dad what do you think they're like yeah he's like you know you're old already I'm I'm in the prime of my life and you know I am your kid can't you find somebody else can't you ask someone maybe it's even worse off that that's because we only have a little bit of life left where we want to have that life so now he's you know really on quandary and his wife steps up and she says I'll do this you're gonna have to take care of the kids and maybe we should talk a little in the play maybe we should talk a little bit about what you're going to whether you get marry again after me but I'll do it and Euripides play about this and it's quite good things don't turn out well in every given great tragedies but she's honored and why because she is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of her love that shows how strong a motivation love this the third example that he has is Achilles how many of you seen the movie Troy maybe not too many I mean it's better to read The Iliad than just to watch the movie but it's not a bad movie and in the Iliad Achilles is in love with petroglyphs and petrópolis is actually older than Achilles now Achilles is the best warrior that the Greeks have and they have like a whole stable of great warriors Ajax Odysseus Agamemnon himself is no slouch tell them on and they're fighting against these Trojans and the way they fight as a girl they stab each other with you know Spears or swords or things like this was very brutal and Achilles is ticked off at Agamemnon because the Agamemnon took this was woman that we eat out as a captive I think her name is Bruce takes her back if you kill he's like I'm not fighting for you Agamemnon is the commander in chief so what you know what happens well their best guy is out it's just like when you're you know if you have a sports team the first string quarterback isn't there or the best linebacker isn't playing what happens things don't go that well right the Greeks are getting trounced so if the Tropico stakes Achilles armor puts it on well I'll go out there you know I'll go out there don't look like Achilles put in you know an appearance and what happens he goes out there he's got some water Hector Kelson Hector is the great warrior on the Trojan side so Achilles finds us out and Achilles this shows you how much he loved petroglyphs he goes out and kills Hector I many mutilates Hector's body that is his dad actually has to come and beg for him to let it go because Achilles is so so angry now so actually in some ways it's not the best story but what his papers getting at Achilles Achilles could have lived forever he was half God not his mother's side so if he didn't go out and avenge Petropolis or do other crazy things along those lines he could live forever so he chose to give up his potential immortality for her death yeah and he did this why is he being so honored she is the more beautiful one he is the braver one he's the stronger one he's the one who should be loved more instead he is willing to show love in battle in Valerie interesting kind of kind of ideas you know something to think about these are very ancient and kind of dramatic examples what would be examples from our own time you go and try to rescue the person who's drowning even though it might result in you dying if you love them what do you even think about it what do you have to think about it now if you truly love them right or what if they need a kidney it's not going to necessarily kill you but it sure makes life tougher to only have one of them do you provide it to them if you love them again do you need to think about it these are the sort of examples I think we can relate to do you put yourself in place of the the other who's gotten themselves into a sticky situation that's probably going to be painful and take their place because you you love them those are the sort of things Phaedrus is talking about let's look briefly now at puffs on mrs. house audience is going to say that's nice favors but remember when I ask you a little bit earlier does love always bring out the best in us what would you say what are some ways that you've seen in real life that love does not necessarily bring out the best of us when people like murder their ex-lovers or something like that jealousy oh yeah stalkers right and jealousy itself even if you're in a relationship he doesn't talk much about this but the jealousy is a big problem isn't it what else sometimes we don't always mean the same thing by love doing don't people sometimes say I love you to try to get something out of other people I mean they may feel like they kind of love them at the time what do they really want yeah I want to get they want to get late they want to - you know get sometimes you know any any warm body will work right so I love good there's that old old song you can't be with the one you love love the one you're with some people that's what it means and so how Sonia says there is good luck and then there's bad luck she ties us in with a whole story about Aphrodite and whether after that is heavenly or earthly so there there were actually several different origin stories for Aphrodite in one she's produced through sexual reproduction you know gods get together and they arrive kids a lot of the gods came about that way in another she comes from who knows the the primal sky God one of the guys who's there at the very beginning who were announced and gay earth and a whole bunch of kids those are the Titans and Kronos is the one who becomes the king of the gods by who else was a bad guy he was very you know crazy he'll do anything he's like super barbaric and Kronos to actually cast rates up and because that's one way to make sure that you know he's not going to mess with anybody anymore and she or he throws his stuff into the ocean and Aphrodite comes out of the waves that's what Aphrodite comes from when Sonic's is saying from heaven born that's that's what she actually that's what he actually hints about her so you've got this contrast and he ties it in with like this one being entirely and this one is sort of indiscriminately male and female what is he after in that the real difference between these has to do with this being about the soul and this being about the body so the soul or the intellect and this this brings up that issue of platonic love coming up earlier what is it that we want from the body first we you know we see physical beauty and we're attracted and then what we want is sexual satisfaction see a beautiful body we want to sleep with it yeah that's a body body body beauty service yeah my writing is getting worse and worse as I get older to probably look at it might be some neurological thing anyway in any case there's a difference between the body and the soul and if the notion of the soul turns you know think about personality you know that which is within and only comes out how do you see a person's personality through their reactions through their words through their attitudes bodies really easy to see the body can be made beautiful pretty pretty easily to Kanton makeup you know it's one way of doing that clothing you know clothing that actually fits well makes a big difference working out exercise all those sorts of things beautify the body what if you want to beautify your soul that's hard to do isn't it it's a bit tougher to change your if your personality and some people have good personalities and other people you know frankly I mean you know this to be the case some people don't have good personalities right you wouldn't want to be with them relationship long-term they might be nice to look at but you know they're not they're not honest or generous or you know they're they're actually cowardly various vices so puffs Sonia says we need to distinguish between these two a lot of times when love comes into disrepute he says when people look at it I say love is a bad thing they're thinking about this and this isn't even a nearly bad it's just sort of random because the body is is something superficial and it can change very quickly and people who are just into things for this they're not looking at the you know the bigger picture the more important phenomenon the core of the person people who are interested in this they're more likely to have relationships that are going to last for a very long time and notice too with this sort of relationship this is the platonic relationship it's not about sex it's not about getting off it's not about satisfying a desire it's about a developing intimacy with the person I need to dance well can't you have both would that be nice and pulse Onix listen simple how if they have both which you know it's kind of a sad thing but then that's where he is with that what else does he tell us about about this he tells us that there ought to be a war there ought to be a law in Athens that rules out acting on this sort of thing with young boys now we could think about this in terms of young people in general why and you know in our time we would usually say stuff like well they're a young person they can't give consent right or you know there's something perverse about the older person wanting to be with you know people who are quite young maybe not fully developed there's something a little bit off about something skeevy he says well that's all fine and good but really the big problem is until somebody starts to develop their soul and their soul shows you got no idea what kind of person there somebody might be quite attractive at 12 but you know you have no idea whether they're gonna be a good person or a bad person so it's better not to you know have that sort of affection directed at them at all you know somebody like y'all somebody's it'd be a good case in point maybe else by these would have been a better guy if he hadn't been so good-looking if people that you know not said such nice things to have given him gifts when he was when he was younger yeah he says some a few other things says what kind of people are likely to ignore this well people who are motivated by this kind of love they're just looking for a warm body that happens to look nice fits their aesthetic they're their type they don't care whether the person is a good person and it's probably not going to be that lasting of a relationship because once they actually get what they want now suddenly you know they've got a meeting the next day all these sort of excuses that you see in movies right now he also talks about Greek city-states and it's funny because it's sort of like a Goldilocks thing you know too hot to cold just right Athens is just right in some parts of Greece the rural parts all they know is this sort of thing because they're not very bright and the lovers are allowed to do anything that they like and basically it sounds like you know rape is allowed which which is not a good thing right in Persia in places that are under the Parisian yoke they're at the other extreme they rule that sort of thing out Persians by the way were for the most part monotheists and probably had a lot more in common religiously with Judaism than they did with the ancient Greeks which might be one reason why you know this sort of thing was coming up in any case the Greeks saw it as the Persians just didn't like freedom and if you can keep people from forming attachments they'll be okay with tyranny in Athens we've got this weird hodgepodge of things yeah on the one hand it looks like it's okay to be having you know older younger relationships on the other hand it looks like it's it's not why well you know we let lovers get away with all sorts of stuff and nothing about our own society if somebody can plead being in love don't we sometimes excuse asinine behavior that they engage in so this is something you know that cuts across cultures on the other hand this is something also quite interesting think about very permissive behave and now think about whether if you were a parent you would want your kid think stuff and stuff like that like there's great interviews with people who are making porn for example and you know ask them so would you let your daughter be in one of your flicks they're like god no and then you're like what I think you're all about freedom and everything goes and it's all a ok nobody's getting hurt well yeah this is my my kid so there's conflicting attitudes right there's there's some sort of ambiguity there well science has an answer for that he says look if you can stick with this sort of thing let it say okay the younger person can be involved with an older person in this sort of relationship it's not going to be sexual it's going to be one more like a mentoring relationship the younger person is hoping to learn something in the process to become a better person to acquire virtue and wisdom if it's this sort of thing then we should actually rule that out we should we should not allow that to take place between mature people and immature people because it's probably going to be bad for them well bad for both of them and that's why we have this weird ambivalence in Athenian law and we have someone almost sort of ambivalences like that in our own society when we start thinking about should older people be involved in romantic relationships with much younger people when it's an issue of maturity you know it's very different to say should a 30 year old be involved with a 14 year old and should a 40 year old be involved with the 25 year old in the second case hopefully they're both mature right more willing to say yeah that kids understand that the 30 year old in the 14 year old maybe there really is a an issue there unless it's going to be something that's not sexual that's not and it's not like well we're not gonna have sex right now but you know you turn 18 because that would still be this if it's this sort of thing this can develop and today a lifelong friendship

Channel: Gregory B. Sadler

Views: 29,219

Rating: 4.83391 out of 5

Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Student, College, University, Sadler, Symposium (Book), Philosophy (Professional Field), Plato (Author), Greek, Classical, Ancient Greece (Art Period/Movement), Drinking, Sex, Sexual Desire, Lust, Attraction, Love, Lovers, Socrates, Pausanius, Phaedrus, Agathon, Romance, Military, Sacrifice, Good and Evil, Aphrodite, Dialogue, Structure, Party, Tragedy, Comedy, Introduction

Id: I0_NZt9fOLQ

Length: 62min 22sec (3742 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2013