Tom Hodgkinson | Plato’s Symposium and the invention of philosophy in Ancient Greece | Idler

[Music] and welcome to the Marx Memorial Library who some about half of you I think have been here before who hasn't been to this building before and have you heard of it before you came no yes so some of you had it's not a well-known landmark in London but I think it should be it's been here the building has been in here since 1720 I was a well school and it's been a sort of center of radical or progressive or left-wing debating and activities at the 19th century Lenin worked upstairs and you could see his coat and his study he edited the spark magazine people like Kropotkin the anarchist came here William Morris came and spoke here and that banner there the immersive associative Society was made by William Morris his own hand and if anyone's read news from nowhere by William Morris he says you know he wakes up in the morning in in the future in this other huge Opia but the night before he leaves the meeting and he goes back to Hampton miss on the London Underground which he calls the stinking vapor path of discontented humanity in about 1880 back from a political meeting so a like thing that the meeting was here and he went down to Farrington the got on the stinking vapor path went back down to Hammersmith and went to his flat and then woke up in this kind of utopian world a hundred years in the future so there's all sorts of stories associated with it and they got these Spanish Civil War banners upstairs you can join it for some 25 pounds a year there's a great thing great institution to support you know they have no money they have like one staff member I think and we like having events here because it's got a lot of charm and it's it's you know a bit institutional but it's sort of fun too and that the full name is the Karl Marx Memorial Library and workers school so that is they also there's something about their aims that fit in with the idols which is that we want to sort of educate and bring people together and discuss ideas so that's what we like renting little also if you're unwaged it's very cheap to rent they have like different not that we run waged well entrepreneurs just another word for being unemployable isn't it but yeah so you have a look at their website and check out their thing I'm sure they'd like your support tonight we're going to be talking about Plato's symposium and this was a a what is called a dialogue which was written in the fourth century BC by Plato about Socrates and a bunch of his mates Plato was younger than Socrates he was taught by Socrates he was an Athenian aristocrat and it was Plato who started the first philosophical school which was called the Academy and this is an actual place you could go to and philosophize and he wasn't the only one he wasn't the only philosopher ancient Greece there were a lot of philosophers in ancient Greece there were the Stoics the Epicureans there was people like Diogenes who lived in the barrel and rejected all convention and it was a sort of philosophical ferment in this really fascinating period and the sort of 4th 5th to 4th centuries BC in ancient Athens and they also held these things called symposiums which means drinking together and they were you could call them a sort of philosophical piss-up so the idea was generally men not always because there was for example that there was a bohemian sort of anarchist philosopher here parkia who was a female philosopher and she floated convention and went to these dinner parties but they were generally sort of male only Affairs like a sort of men's drinking club or something and the men would lie down lie around on couches and they would it was what we called reclining and there'll be entertainment dancing girls flute players and drinking prayers libations and then these men would sit down and have a conversation like a sort of a guided conversation and that this was the suppose iam that Plato writes about that I'm going to tell the story of this evening became very well-known it was like it's a legendary dinner party at a legendary cast of characters all of whom was sort of fairly well-known Athenian wits and philosophers and the dialogue starts so Plato hadn't gone to this thing it has happened many years before he was around perhaps 30 or 40 years and it's got a securest literary device it opens with a guy walking along the street he bumps into another guy and he said well weren't you at that famous dinner party that happened many years ago he said I wasn't but I heard about it from someone else and so you get these kind of layers and layers but through this sort of device that the story is told the scene is a the house of an Athenian called Agathon who's a young poet and he's just won the Poetry Festival and the Greeks had these fantastic huge festivals in ancient Athens 20 30 40 thousand people in the audience you know so they were absolutely massive like much bigger than hey and this is a living breathing part of the culture and you know everyone could go to these things and Agathon threw a party in the middle of this festival to celebrate his victory and he invited a lot of people but word also got around kind of on the grapevine that this party was happening and the the main narrator of the story relates that he was on his way to despotic Athens where he'd been invited and he bumps into Socrates he's wandering along as well now everyone knew if one nation others knew who Socrates was he was absolutely crazy he stood out he was very eccentric he had been a sort of a war hero in early life he had been married twice the second time to girl called damned poppy who was younger than him we think he might have had like two or three children or boys and he sat around annoying people in the marketplace and this is what he called philosophy so he was the one who would say you know why do you need all this stuff I don't need look at look at the marketplace look at all this stuff I don't need he also think that the unexamined life is not worth living and it's actually invented something called philosophy which was the love of wisdom now where's this idea of philosophy coming from it's it's there it's present in this book with symposium and I think that it's such an important book and it's not hard to read there are loads of different translations there's actually a lovely translation by Shelley which he wrote in the early nineteen in in the early 1800s in about 1820 I think because he was in the wood with all the really dry translations that are around so there's tons of translations there's a penguin classics and it's still about 100 pages it's a dialogue is to play essentially and I think it's actually shame that it's not started you know because this is sort of basic about everybody it's sort of cool part of the curriculum I've only only really read it about sort of five or seven years ago and I've read it a few times and each time you read it you find something new so what I'm going to do this evening is to give a sort of brief introduction for about 40 minutes or so to give you a few handles into this book what it's about so that with the idea that afterwards you can go away and read it yourself but you'll be a you'll have had an introduction so it won't be quite say sort of alien that the Latin equivalent for the symposium is with the convivial and we get the word conviviality and it gets lit literally means drinking together and so the idea was that you would have sort of fun and talk nonsense or talk philosophy together now who was there Socrates Agathon cedrus pals Aeneas Eriksson MCUs who's a sort of sent anxious doctor Aristophanes who was the famous comic playwright who wrote the clouds and so on we could take the piss out of people like Socrates there's also a character called dee ultima who will come back to she is a coder she's not at the party but he's alluded to and he was a high priest s now a strange feature of Greek society was that you had these sort of who women they lived in temples and people went to consult them when they had a problem and they were talking riddles some people think that they inhaled some kind of strange vapors there's also an idea they were kind of semi prostitutes of some kind and practice some sort of sex magic but you don't really quite understand but that's so that's who do temir is or was she's only mentioned in this play in in the in this dialogue there's no mention of her anywhere else in any literature academics writing now think that she may have been based on so I just look up this notes I've forgotten her name she Pericles his wife Pericles with the governor of Athens he was the sort of main military sort of ruler and he had this amazing wife who was must have been friends with Socrates because he was also friends with pericles he advised him and a lot of people and he was quite an outstanding woman so if some people think this jiya tumor is based on this other woman this is how its introduced what would the symposium in at the beginning I think it's Apollodorus who the narrator says I'm what were those discussions on love which took place at the party when Agathon who got first prize at the festival Socrates Alcibiades and others met at supper now Alcibiades was a very beautiful young man and had been a war hero something like David Beckham and he was like well known for being a politician for being a war hero and for being incredibly handsome he got to remember this is the race of the gay society they wouldn't have had that word and people were on a kind of a spectrum but these parties were very much mell only Affairs if one knew that Socrates had a kind of a crush on Alcibiades and vice versa and what was very common in those days was for an older man to take a younger man under his wing someone who he really fancied and loved and yes there might have been a sexual relationship the boy was pursued by the older man the parents were fine with this because the man was teaching the younger boy there's a perfectly normal part of Greek society and two of them here Agathon and pours Aeneas are in a long-term relationship so that's important to recognize that this sort of the homosexual is very very common you know and and also sort of what we were called bisexuality so Socrates was married he had children but he also for the clearly fancied men and would possibly sleep with them so but they would love them and maybe not sleep with them so this is kind of the idea of where we get the platonic love it comes from this book and you'll see in the discussions of love that they say love starts sort can start as a sexual attraction and I think materials you become sort of partners and then you move on to a sort of a higher plane which is called something like the ladder of love which we'll come back to it's also really shows you how this the ultimate character whoever he was inspired Socrates actually to invent the science of philosophy which was something new and I mentioned in another talk it means love of wisdom and that means that you don't have wisdom you're moving towards it and Socrates was famous for being self effacing I don't know anything at all let me I have we know nothing I'm not wise and they said he's very wise because he knows that he's not wise so these are the kinds of paradoxes that were around the Sophists were the men who went around teaching and charging money for their wisdom and they were called the Wise Ones the Sophists like I would think good like you're the Petersons if it's an example you know someone who profess young men are paying them to help them to get on in the world teach them law and rhetoric and this sort of thing and they would they would make a lot of money so he didn't charge for his philosophizing so he separated himself from the sawfish by saying I'm a fellow sufferer I'm moving towards wisdom now at the beginning I'm just gonna I'm going to quote little bits here and there a little bit that jumped out at me they like talking about philosophy and Apollodorus he's narrating and bumps into this other guy glauco who's some kind of businessman like a hedge fund guy you know there were these people here to have moved corn around cornered markets and so on but he says when I talk of philosophy or listen to other people talking about it in addition to the improvement which I conceive there arises from such conversation because I'm learning something he says I am delighted beyond measure but whenever I hear your discussions about moneyed men and great proprietors I mean I read the FT I find it thoroughly depressing reading all these stories about these sort of billionaires whenever I hear your this your discussions about moneyed men and great proprietors I'm waged down with grief and I just pick that out because of your little thoughts you know that it's really nice to talk about philosophy when we talk about money and rich people it starts it starts making us depressed okay so the story is I think it's Glaucon he's walking down the street and Socrates says he's going to die in the Agathon's at this party and Glaucon says how come we're looking to stay smart because Socrates was known for wearing sandals dressing in rags it's the kind of symbol of his kind of it likely sort of proto certain francis of assisi you know like I'm just gonna wear simple clothes and I got the big beers I'm actually quite ugly and I have a stick and so I don't show off with my clothing because I'm poor you know and that's good but he's actually wearing sandals so maybe wearing sandals normally you go around barefoot and he says well I'm going to approach the house to someone very beautiful Agathon and so it's fitting that I make an effort myself and so that's why I dressed up this evening then so that's the first little point about Socrates say he will change you know he's not called hardcore wearing rags he can't cause the occasion the second thing that we notice about him is that um he had this habit of getting lost in contemplation okay so you'd be walking along with them you look around he's not there and he's just sort of standing staring at something thinking and there was Elvis got Socrates will wait for him and so this was something really common that he did and he apparently went into these trances when he was a small boy and heard voices so this is some sort of peculiarities one of 150 MINIX eccentricities because stand in the same place staring at the ground for hours and hours on end and people when that's got Socrates he's engaged in a very very deep meditation what we have called meditation deep contemplation they call this and then Socrates Teri's at the door so he doesn't even come into that they date they kind of figure they the the men are inside for climbing on the couches they they know that he's arrived but he's like he's seen something and he's like thinking he's just suddenly stopped again and they go okay well whenever whenever he comes in then Socrates does come in Agra form the house says please come and sit next to me you know so that's the high status position on the couch next to Agathon because it's his party and everyone wants to sit next to that Agathon Socrates then sits down next to me and 15a well done for winning the prize your brilliant poets of wonderful poet I wish I was good at something I'm terrible at everything I'm no good at on anything then they recline on their couches and sing hymns and then the wine comes out again this is another important moment because they say okay how much whining we going to drink tonight because I have a massive hangover from last night and Aristophanes says I was one of those also who was drowned in drink last night the flute player is sent away and they all decide not to drink that much because they don't want to get too pissed again because they're still suffering from the night before so that's their plan so we're not gonna drink too much another story says that the biggest drinking small one they drink from small goblets now this doctor who they take the piss out of because he's quite sort of as a doctor I always feel that you know I think the word is Tim Texas and he says okay tonight if we're going to be talking about love that's the discussion and we each have to like a party game we have to give a talk about love and Socrates says with uncharacteristic lack of self-effacement I know nothing on any subject but love so he says I know nothing but I know nothing is there a stock cohesions thing to say uh-oh I don't know anything and that's why we think he's wife but he does say he'd knows something about love so well I wonder what that is so the first guy he sorts with this sort of quite a conventional story about what love is which I'll just skip through he says first there was chaos then there was us and then love was created and love is the eldest of the gods and then he goes on to say if the eldest of the Gods it's a wonderful thing when you know there's love between friends of a husband to a wife a wife to her husband and he tells the story of someone called el cestus who died for her husband because she loved him so much that's goods achilles killed Hector in revenge because he loved his friend so much and that's more or less its you know it's sort of fairly sort of conventional encomium about love I suppose the next guy pals Aeneas says okay there are two different sorts of love the earthly and the heavenly so therefore the base lust of love and the higher form of love which I suppose you might call for the platonic and earthly love or lust maybe one because it's selfish it's got you doing you got to sort of get those needs met and you'll do anything to get in the met and if you fall in love with someone only for their body and and their looks obviously there will a Janet that will that will fade and so he's saying bodily love this kind of selfish based love can cause all sorts of problems but the love of the noble disposition is it's almost of a higher plane and could last for your whole life and he said things like this dishonor in being overcome also though they're bad forms of love the love of money or the love of wealth or the love of political power so these are all sort of bad things in this philosophical context they're saying you know say the love of money is something that's bad or the love of wealth or the love of political power next up is Aristophanes he's supposed to go next but he has a yes the hiccups I've got the hiccups and he says well erection MacOS that your doctor either kill my hiccups or go on next and Rick's the macos I don't know whether I'm pronouncing me first correctly Erik Zemeckis and the doctor says well you should hold your breath gargle with water if that doesn't work particularly ordinate nose and make yourself sneeze there are still four news so Aristophanes says well I'll do both I'll follow your advice and I'll be the next one to talk and Erik Zemeckis by the way says you know the body has good and bad love so he talks a little bit about love as well before where Stephanie's so he says they were good and they were good and bad things that the body loves and it's the so task of medicine to distinguish between the two so I suppose you know so taking how when the body loves it but it's bad for you and you know excessive alcohol with all the things that the body likes which it wakes you're good for you and it's that balance that medicine is all about there's good love and evil love on the body must be in harmony must be harmonious and then Aristophanes makes it's not very funny joke yes now my hiccup had gone how it was not gone until I applied your sneezing remedy I wonder whether the harmony of the body has a love of such noises and tickling for I no sooner applied to sneezing than I was cured so this is now Aristophanes speech about love and this is probably the most well known sort of flights of fancy from from their symposium he says originally way way back in the mists of time in primeval times there were three sexes of the planet there was man there was woman and there was this sort of combination hermaphrodite creature and all the people were these sort of bulls and were extremely powerful they had two arms and two legs and two heads so he said the primary old man was round his back of the sides formed a circle and he had four hands and four feet one head with two faces so him looking opposite ways set on a round neck for years to preview members and the remainder to correspond he could walk upright as bendy now backwards or forwards as he pleased and he could also Rolo it's a great pace so these these creatures that rolled all over the world turning on his four hands and four feet 18 all like tumblers jugglers going over and over with their legs in the air when he wanted to run fast so these creatures these sort of four-legged ball type things were rolling around the world and became very powerful and started attacking the gods so the gods like Jesus were worried about their power and Jesus cut them in two as he might divide an egg with the hair he says and so that they will cut in half so they're sort of half as powerful and he said this all the complicated thing about some and this is how different kinds of sexualities came about so he says the male generations in the female ie gave semen in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed and the race might continue or if man came to man to find his other half so this is all about you know we're looking for our other half literally so he subjects it back to that if man was if a man was cut in two he's looking for his other hast if he's looking for another man if man came to man they might be satisfied and rest and go their ways to the business of life so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us reuniting our original nature making one of two and healing the state of man so we're all these sort of half people each of us when separated having one side only like a flatfish if the indenture of a man and he's always looking for his other half men who are a section of that double creature which was called androgynous loveth of women adulterers are generally at this breed and also adulterous women who lost after men the women who are a section of the woman did not care for men but have female companions so there's lesbians gay men and heterosexual men and women they who are a section of the male full of the male and while they are young they hang about men and embrace them they are themselves the boys in use because they have the most manly nature so he's saying that they're sort of gay men of the most manly of all men some people say they're shameless this is not true they did not act from anyone to shame but because they are valiant and manly and have a manly countenance and they embraced that which is like them so it's seen as extremely manly to love another man it's not effeminate and these when they grow up become our statesmen so um and but that was a good thing because they were look they were they were good at looking after the you know the state I think a lot these men might also have children as a sort of a deity and a wife as well as being attracted to other men so now soften his finishes by saying I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished in each one returned to his primeval nature each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love then our race would be happy it's quite this sort of it sounds absolutely ridiculous and like a joke but it's actually quite a sweet idea in the end and it's extremely progressive because it's as degrees dick generally there's you know they're completely that there was no hint of any sort of you know prejudice against same-sex couples or anything like that so now Agathon who won the Poetry Festival is the young poets he praises the God by the way they use the word eros for love if those authors like I sort of personification eros means love and he's sort of Judea Ross is wonderful he walks not upon the earth nor yet upon the skulls of men which are not so very soft but in the hearts and souls of both gods and men which are of all things the softest it's kind of saying all you need is love I think and he says love is the poet and brings out the poetry and other people when you're in love you start they become poetical so love brings out poetry that's inside you that you didn't know you had animals are created by love because the creatures are loving each other artists are inspired by love to create and make things the arts of medicine archery divination melody the muses metallurgy weaving all are due to love and the love of the beautiful so when you get people like William Morris saying you know we should only love what is beautiful and true and Keats and so on they're hulking back to this sort of idea that was around in ancient Greece in ancient Athens love gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep who stills the winds and bids to suffer asleep the friend of the good the wondrous of wives the amazement of the gods so this is this is some Agathon's you know praise of love isn't love wonderful it's fantastic and I spoke to you has a very very different view and it's quite subtle so Socrates as I said he's self-deprecating he opens with it with his speech and it was like well what Socrates going to says is gonna be amazing when I reflected on the immeasurable inferiority of my own powers I was ready to run away for shame if there had been a possibility of escape he's saying that because I got on Easter Ganga thorn that was just amazing it was just you are a great poet I mean I know way I can it's like saying how do you top you know how do you follow that I'm just gonna run away I mean Wow wasn't that amazing but then he goes on to say that actually this kind of over praise of love is silly he says um well I got I I've made a bit of a mistake here I thought we were talking about love but now I see that the point of this evening was that we should all a tribute to love every species of greatness and glory whether really belonging to him or not without regard to truth or falsehood so actually he's attacking Agathon what Agathon has said because he thinks it's it he gets to say that love is great so he says would you all like to have the truth about love spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time will that be agreeable to you again that's typical Socrates always asking questions ever gave yes that would be great now he says I will ask about love is love is love of something or of nothing that's his first question and Agathon says well obviously of something keep in mind what this is so Socrates and tell me what I want to know whether desire where the love desires that of which love is and does he possess or does he not possess what he loves and desires so if you love and desire something do you were already have and own that and Agathon says well probably not so Socrates says said we love what we lack he and everyone who desires desires that which he has not got already with his future and not present in which he has not and is not under which he is in want are these two sorts of things which love and desire seek yes Socrates so love wants but does not have beauty is that right he says step people say yes that sounds right and then he talks about this d ultima the awesomer of Mantinea a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge who in the days of old he says when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague these visitations of plague were quite common and as in the middle egg if they had all sorts of theories about how they could get rid of them and she offers sacrifice before the coming of the plague delayed the disease by ten years she was my instructor Asst in the art of love and there's possibly a dubler entendre there now yes it's as Asia it's as Phase II who was that who was Pericles lover who an academic writing now thinks that Jocelyn must have been based on Aspasia it was a very sort of amazing beautiful and wise person so but he says love is actually by nature not good or bad so it's ridiculous to say love is great there's this strange story about love is the child of poverty and plenty there was the feast poverty came begging plenty who was the worth for nectar because there was no wine fell asleep and poverty plotted to have a child by plenty lay down at his side and conceived a baby called love who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful and also he was born on Aphrodite's birthday is Aphrodite's follower as is his parentage so his fortunes okay so just concentrate on what this means he's always poor and anything but tender and fair as many imagine him he's actually rough and squalid he has no shoes he has no house on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven in the streets or what with the walls of houses taking his rest a bit like the bit like Diogenes actually the philosopher he gets to have wandered around semi-naked didn't have a home except in a barrel and so on so that's like his mother poverty he's always in distress wandering around like his father to who he resembled he is always plotting against the fair and good he is bold enterprising strong a mighty hunter always weaving some intrigue or other keen in the pursuit of wisdom fertile in resources a philosopher at all times terrible as an enchanter sorcerer Sophists he is by nature neither mortal nor immortal but alive in flourishing at one moment and dead it's another moment and again alive by his father's nature what is flowing in is always flowing out he's never in want and never in wealth he is an he's between ignorance and knowledge so he's like a sort of halfway house the truth of the matter is is this no God is a no God who's already a God is a philosopher ie a seeker of wisdom because he is already wise and any man who is already wise does not seek after wisdom but also the ignorant don't seek after wisdom if these sort of clever people who seek seek wisdom he was sort of in between so she says if you so this is where the idea of philosophy comes from you're sort of moving towards you you love wisdom you're moving towards it love is just sort of in between the states and that's a wise way to be now she says this is my advice for people beginning used to beautiful forms and fall in love the beautiful things and and then he will seem perceived that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another so this is the idea that there's just sort of an idea of beauty the beauty in every form is the same and when he perceived it he will abate his violent love of the one so you're massively loved if it's one person violently in love like obsessively in love but then he will abate that and and think that's something small he'll become a lover of all beauty so you shouldn't open up from this small love into a sort of a big love this is the ladder that I mentioned so then he will then content to love and tend him and he will search and bring out to birth thoughts which may improve the young and then he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of laws and institutions and he and that personal beauty is just a trifle Socrates was known for being ugly and he will be in love with everything not like a slave not mean and narrow-minded but drawing towards and contemplating the vast seer beauty he will create many fair and Noble thoughts and in his boundless love of wisdom until on that Shore he grows and waxes strong and at last the vision has revealed to him of a single science which is the science of beauty everywhere the love of wisdom or philosophy so this is correlated inventing philosophy and they she says um this is the life that men should leave above all others in the contemplation of beauty a beauty if once wish if you once beheld you would see not to be after the measure of gold and garments and fair boys and used his presence now in trances you you only want to look at them to be with them but what if man had eyes to see the true beauty of the divine beauty which is what I mean pure clear unalloyed there's very mystical statement here for what we beginning of Western philosophy we tend to think is quite sort of rational but this sounds a bit like something more you might expect coming out of a Christian mystical something not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colors and balances of human life holding converse with true beauty simple and divine beholding beauty with the odds of mind he'll be we're be enabled see bring forth realities and bring forth and nourish true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal would that be an ignoble life so that's how Socrates ends with say he's talking about you know it's basically kind of idling the the superior life is the contemplative life and Socrates learned this from the Optima the temple priestess and he's passing it on to his mates at this drinking party then there's a big knocking at the door and who comes in Alcibiades who hasn't been there before completely pissed he sits down next to Agathon and then notices Socrates next to him and becomes jealous and then he says I'm Agathon you must protect me since I became Socrates admirer I've never allowed to speak to any other fair one or even look at them so Socrates is kind of jealous if I do Socrates goes wild with envy and jealousy and that not only abuses me but could hardly keep his hands off me but then he goes on and that's kind of Excel Sibelius goes on in his praise of love to praise Socrates and why he loves Socrates so much and why he's actually unusual and very special an inspiring person who inspired everyone around him and still inspires people today you know two-and-a-half thousand years later he says um first thing he gets everyone to fill up their glasses of wine mr. topkis configures much he like have any effect on him at all and Alcibiades is I've heard I've heard Pericles and the great orators and there were good but I never had any similar feeling my soul was not stirred by them nor was i angry at the thought of my own slavish States which is what Socrates did he sort of made you question all your received opinions and then he also makes exact this is what I've suffered at the hands of this flute playing satire she calls him now did they did did they or did they not sleep together l stupidly decided to pursue Socrates and he played some tricks on him to try and get him to go to bed with him nothing works and he said the second time still in pursuance of my design he invited him out to dinner and with the hope that something else would happen I went on conversing far into the night and when he wanted to go away I pretended that the hour was late and he had better remain well I think it's a bit late to fit danger so what are you just a here we don't form at all so he lay down on the couch next to me the same on which he had sucked and there was no one but ourselves sleeping in the apartment and this may be told without shame but what follows I could hardly tell you if I was sober but he was so superior to my solicitation so contemptuous of could contemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty we should I thought it was pretty good I mean you know he said I I kind of slightly ironic like well I do have my admirers I'm not you know I'm known as a beautiful person and you should be a judge at the haughty virtue of Socrates nothing happened in the morning when I woke I rose as from the couch of a father or an elder brother even though that he'd actually got under the same cloak with him and he said and I embraced this monster all night or something like that and he was like so happy to be holding this awful Socrates character in his arms but nothing actually happened it was just like a father and a son this is what he claims Socrates his wife Sam tippy thought there was much more going on and LCB LCF beardies made Socrates a seedcake one day which he took home and she said what's that from he said there was cake that Alcibiades named for me and wherefore he flew into a jealous rage and stamped her feet all over it he also used to pour water over his head when he came in late after one of these piss-ups and then there's to be these also tells the story when they were a battle together I think it gave the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War he tells all these stories of Socrates going into a trance one morning Socrates was thinking about something but he could not resolve he would not give it up but continued thinking from early dawn until noon there he stood fixed in thought and at noon attention was drawn to him and the rumour ran through the wandering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something everything at the break of day and then he was wounded and he said that he would not leave me but he rescued me and my arms and he ought to have received the prize of valor which the generals wanted to confer on me and I told me say right now my guess coming to the end here this is it's a discussion of love these men have to give their sort of speeches and praise of love most didn't give something sort of fairly conventional Socrates comes in with this really sort of quite an odd idea and this is the birth really a philosophy as an idea and then his kind of semi lover or friends or something Alcibiades bursting completely drunk make someone get more drunk you remember at the beginning they said we're not going to drink that much they will completely give it up this idea by now and and then at this point more more revelers breaking that gatecrashers don't turn up I don't know what time it was four or five in the morning and the whole room sort of filled with all this kind of revelry and this is the last paragraph of the it's a sort of fun and light it's one of the great sort of is the great philosophical text it's the foundation of all philosophy and it's just likes to laugh and it's all about drinking and falling over getting drunk and sex and you know so arrastre dima said that Erickson McCarthy dress and others went away so they they left at they're calling you at night he fell asleep and took a good rest he was awakened towards daybreak by the crowing of and when he awoke the others were either asleep or had gone away they remained Socrates Aristophanes and Agathon who was still drinking and they were drinking out of a large goblet which they were passing around Socrates was discoursing to them philosophizing eres de Dimas was only half awake and didn't really hear much of what they were talking about he remembers Socrates telling the others that they had to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same as the keys to tragedy the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also so he's like Melissa living in there so he's still arguing if if he hasn't drawn kind of thing and sort of beating these people into submission yeah you know he was killed by the Athenian estate then he had to drink the hemlock because they found him like sort of too annoying the the Keith thing yes they were quite drowsy so let's go yeah yeah whatever you know you're right whatever and and then our Stephanies fell asleep and then the the day was already turning Agathon fell asleep who's still awake Socrates as if nothing has happened he's drunk all night he's out drunk everybody and he gets walks out of this party and rose to depart at the Lyceum he took a bath and passed a day as usual in the evening he retired to rest at his own home and there concludes Plato's symposium thank you [Applause] you

Channel: Idler

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Id: ootrROIaL1U

Length: 43min 27sec (2607 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020