Plato's Erotic Thought: The Tree of the Unknown (review)

This book is an attempt to discover the origin and object of Eros in Plato's Symposium, Lysis, and Phaedrus. It contains no bibliography and only two citations of modern scholarship. Geier does not compare his views to those of other scholars, and he does not show any awareness that his claims are contestable. This is the book's most serious failing. For this reason, the only people likely to read it profitably are scholars who feel an intellectual obligation to situate their arguments in the context of existing scholarship and who will thus be required to take this book into account in writing their own.

The book begins with a prologue in which Geier relates a mystical revelation generated by staring into a fireless fireplace. Chapter 1 sets up the main problem of the book, and chapters 2-4 take the form of running commentaries on the three dialogues. A fifth chapter (for its justification, see page 66) contains a numbered series of 137 musings, word games, and gnomic utterances that leave one with the impression that this book is not so much about Plato as it is about Plato's influence on the author. And that is a very different sort of book, with a very different audience.

In chapter 1, Geier considers the interchange between Socrates and Agathon in Symposium. Geier argues first, that, after several restatements of his request, Socrates asks Agathon not to speak "about" Love but actually to "speak Love" and that Agathon successfully does so, and second, that Love stands "beside" Agathon as long as he "remembers whatever" and assists him in his learning but departs from him once he forgets this indefinite but very real object. I do not find this argument compelling; unfortunately, it is the occasion for the rest of the book. Geier then discusses the relationship between Love and its object, the Beloved. He closes by arguing that there is no good account of the birth of Love in Symposium because Love does not truly arise during that dialogue. This sets up the problem for the rest of the book: under what circumstances does Love arise, and what is its object?

Although chapters 2-4 offer a number of thought-provoking comments on the dialogues, Geier's style, which leans heavily on scare quotes and parentheses, coined words with multiple hyphens, and expressive italics, could well be off-putting to some readers. More importantly, there are three major problems in the argumentation: (1) there is a good deal of questionable philological exegesis offered in support of dubious allegorical extensions of Plato's text; (2) Geier advances his argument by reiterating and recapitulating (e.g., "as we have seen") assertions that were originally unsupported (e.g., "it seems that"; "this suggests that"), forcing the reader's consent through tedious repetition; and (3) in constructing an argument about absence Geier often relies on the absence of evidence. Plato's failure to mention X is thus seen as proof both that X exists and that X is important to Plato.

Chapter 2 addresses the question of why Love does not arise in Symposium. Here Geier covers familiar ground, showing how each speech at the party represents an advance over the previous one. One of Geier's emphases here is on doubles, dualities, and reconcilable and irreconcilable splits: pairs of speeches, paired individuals (and individuals who refuse to be paired), two Loves, split loves, the two halves of the dialogue, the split between body and soul, Socrates' attempt to heal the split between love of body and love of soul, and so on. This seems a useful way to approach the dialogue, and Geier convincingly relates the structure of the dialogue to its underlying ideas. Also valuable are his discussions of the comic narrator and of comic interludes...