Eros and the Intoxications of Enlightenment: On Plato's Symposium

Notes

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. Thucydides II.41. 2. Thucydides VI.24; cf. Seth Benardete, “On Plato’s Symposium,” in The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 169. 3. Cf. Gary Alan Scott, Plato’s Socrates as Educator (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 133. 4. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 12–13. 5. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 230. CHAPTER ONE 1. Perhaps this is not quite accurate: precisely in showing Apollodorus the radical defectiveness of the human he has instilled in him an impossible longing for something that he does not and cannot understand, but which he dimly perceives to lie beyond what he takes to be the limits of human nature. 2. How the savage Apollodorus is nevertheless appropriately equipped with the nickname “softy” (173d) is made clear precisely in the coincidence of his contempt and his pity. 3. Compare, however, Theaetetus 151c–d. 4. Second Letter 314c. 5. Hesiod, Theogony 120. 6. Cf. Xenophon, Symposium 2.21. 7. Aristodemus insists that Socrates defend himself against the charge that in inviting him to the banquet he is inviting a “worthless” (phaulos) man to the dinner of a wise man (174c). 8. For the dramatic date of the dialogue see Plato, Symposium, C. J. Rowe, ed. and trans. (Warrister, England: Aris and Phillips Ltd., 1998), 129. 9. Plato seems to indicate, therefore, that it was through his effect upon Alcibiades that Socrates most directly and obviously effected the piety of the Athenians. 10. Leo Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, Seth Benardete, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 24. 11. There is an old story according to which the Athenians punished Homer with a fine (Diogenes Laertius, II.5.xxiii). 155 156 NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 12. Of course, the proverb as such (“the good go uninvited to the feasts of the good”) is not even referred to by Homer. It is Socrates who draws the inference that Homer is treating it wantonly. Nevertheless, there is something like this proverb to be found in the Iliad. It is put in the mouth of Menelaus as he and the Achaeans are fighting the Trojans over the body of Patroklos (XVII.254–55). 13. Iliad II.408. He has first alienated Achilles and then invited an all-out mutiny that only the rhetorical power of Odysseus, who temporarily assumes the office of the king, is able to reverse. 14. It is this very fact that has caused his falling out with Achilles: the latter claims to be “the best of the Achaeans” by nature. 15. Iliad XVII.90–105. 16. In the Iliad, at least, Menelaus shows a form of prudence that, on at least one occasion, even Odysseus, “versed in every advantage” (XXIII.709) lacks. 17. Apology of Socrates 18a–d. 18. Athens in her devotion to the beautiful appears as the proper antipode to Jerusalem, whose conflation of the good and the just entails a severe concern for obedience to law that seems to exclude the possibility of philosophy arising as a “native growth” within her midst. 19. Clouds 1375–1482. 20. Though Socrates certainly possesses a psychogogic power of his own, it is one that he employs only in private and upon individuals and that does not move the passions in a similar way as that of the poet. Socrates’ one attempt at persuading a multitude, which is made under the heaviest sort of compulsion, was, after all, not a complete success. 21. Laws 637d, 647e–649b. 22. Laws 650b–652b, 671b–d, 672d. 23. Phaedo 97b–99b. 24. Steven Berg, “Nature, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Aristophanes’ Clouds” in Ancient Philosophy, 18 (1998), 10; cf. Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 49. CHAPTER TWO 1. Cf. Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, 48. 2. Thucydides I.70.6–7. 3. Ibid. V.105. 4. Hesiod, Theogony 120–23. 5. Thucydides II.41–43. 6. Phaedrus 228c, 236e, 242a–b. 7. There is almost universal agreement within the scholarship that Phaedrus has a version of the Alcestis story other than that of Euripides in mind. The evidence for this claim is simply that he seems to recount a conclusion of the drama that is at odds with Euripides’ own. Two considerations argue against this conclusion : on the one hand, Phaedrus, in describing Alcestis as, through her devotion, showing up Admetus’ parents as alien and kindred in name...