Questions on Plato's Symposium

Directions: Answer these questions on a separate piece of paper. Please number your answers. Only typed answers will be accepted.

1. What is your first impression of Socrates? How does that impression affect the way you understand him later in the dialogue?

2. How does the doctor, Eryximachus set the topic and the tone for the discussion to follow?

3. Phaedrus' speech comes first - summarize the points that Phaedrus makes. To what extent does he do justice to the topic?

4. Pausanias follows with his view of love. What distinctions does he introduce concerning love? How does he view friendship, and why is it so important to him? For example, what does politics have to do with friendship between an older and a younger man?

5. Now we move to the physician Erixymachus' speech. How does Erixymachus compare love between a man and woman with male/male companionship? What does political life have to do with the latter kind of companionship, according to him? How does Erixymachus' status as a doctor affect his view of love or friendship and its uses?

6. Aristophanes the comic poet follows. What, according to him, is the origin and nature of love? What is its purpose with respect to the individual? How does he ultimately view relationships between men and women? What value does he accord to friendship between two men? A structural question: how does Aristophanes' manner of proceeding provide some relief from the kinds of speeches we have been hearing so far?

7. What is Agathon's criticism of the speeches preceding his own? What, according to him, is the true nature of the god Love or "Eros"? How does the structure and crafting of Agathon's speech mark him off from the others?

8. Socrates begins his turn by questioning Agathon. What point is he driving at in his questioning? That is, what has been the problem or problems with all the preceding speeches? How is Socrates' manner of interrogating Agathon characteristic of him, if you have read other Platonic dialogues?

9. Socrates proceeds by ascribing what he says to the woman Diotima of Mantinea, who seems to be an expert in matters of love and prophecy.

a) Why does it matter that Love isn't a god, but is instead a "spirit"?

b) What is the "object" of love in its most general sense?

c) How does Diotima use the term "procreation," and why is it a central term with regard to the purpose of love?

d) Why, according to Socrates, does Diotima argue that love between males produces better "offspring"?

10. Alcibiades enters just after Socrates concludes his speech. What effect does his entrance have upon the dialogue thus far? How does Alcibiades praise Socrates? How might one interpret Alcibiades' characterization of Socrates, and even Alcibiades' presence in the text generally, as more than comic relief? How might they be significant with regard to the various things that have been said about love's nature and purpose?

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