More than a year ago i decided to start reading philosophy and bought a copy of Republic. Reading it gave me a perspective not just on philosophy but also on classical works. The much needed context from the note section, the works mentioned by Plato that are now lost to us, the difficulty and ambiguity of the translation, the Greek culture and history preceding Plato, the Socratic Question, the historiography of rediscovering the works of Plato and discerning them from the pseudo-platonica. There are many other subjects to mention and I've only explored the aforementioned at a surface level. Before Plato I also read the works of Homer then later Mythology by Edith Hamilton as well as The Presocratics to give me some prerequisite knowledge to understand the Greek culture at the time. After finishing Republic for the first time I took a break with philosophy until I could finish the last courses of my program and take my exam. Once finished I ritualistically sold my old math books and spent the money on The Complete Works of Plato. After university I got the idea that reading and analysing his works would be a good way to sharpen my writing skills, hence this blog. There is no universal consensus on the order of Plato's dialogues, chronological or pedagogical. So I've taken to different orders and read all (non-Pseduo-Platonic) works that can be put before Republic.

Now it is time to go return to where I started and reread Republic with my much greater knowledge of Plato and Ancient Greece together with my improved analytical ability. I am reading the Oxford edition and will be following the authors argumentative division of the dialogue instead of the traditional division based on scroll length limitations.

Lysias speech is about telling a boy that it's better to be in a relationship with a non-lover than a lover. The difference between the lover and non-lover can be likened to the vulgar and heavenly love distinctions in Symposium, with one being a love for the body while the other is for the soul. Here however the heavenly love is not called a love.

Phaedrus is a big fan of a speech by Lysias, he has gotten the text and is memorising it. Lysias speech argues to a boy that it is better to be in a relation with someone that does not love you than someone who does. Like vulgar and heavenly love from Symposium, but love for one's soul is not called love. The speech lists multiple faults of the lover. The lover will move on when desire dies, will want returns on what is given, will hold their next love grander than the ex. The lovesick are irrational unlike the non-lovers which will join your company rationally. If you only choose your partner among those in love with you it will leave a smaller group with a likelier worse selection than the group including those who don't love you. The desire of the lover will bring them to act shamefully and whenever you go outside people will think you just shamefully completed the act of desire. None of this is brought with the non-lover. The jealousy of the lover will have them isolate and denigrate the loved to strengthen their hold on them, while the non-lover will want the loved to meet people better than them and dislike those who does not want to be their friend. Lovers will sing endless praises the flatter the loved no matter how true they are while the non-lover will tell the truth. There can be no equality with the needful such as the lover, like inviting a beggar to dinner they will be do anything to get what they need. But if you give your favors to those not in need it will be on equal ground, such as the non-lover.

Socrates praises Lysias speech ironically at first, but deems it bad and repetitive. Socrates first speech starts by laying out its purpose and goals. It will investigate whether it is better to be with a lover or a non-lover. First it identifies that love is a desire and puts forward a mental model. We are jointly ruled by desire and judgement which can either be in opposition or unison. The best results come from judgement being in charge of us. When desire, eros, rules it is called outrage and gives a worse outcome. Here the subjects, people ruled by judgement and desire, have been defined and now the benefits and harms of them will be discussed. The lover will want pleasure from the loved and want them to be inferior and defect. If not already the case they will make them so and so they cannot refuse their requests. The lover will want to cut out anyone in the way of their desires such as parents or friends of the loved. Their mad jealousy will make them unbearable company and their obsession disgusting. Once love leaves the lover will change, now that judgement rules them they will break old promises. Socrates speech makes many of the same points as Lysias but is more structured.

As Socrates prepares to leave his divine sign warns him. His and Lysias speech has spoken ill of love and punishment is due if not corrected. There is a tradition of ancient greek writers starting a work by retracting what they said previously. Socrates second speech starts out by retracting everything in the first speech. In the past madness was not a denigration but a divine possession. Prophecy, seers, Muses are all examplles of this. The goal of the speech is put forward, to prove that the madness of love is beneficial. The first tasks are to define and examine madness and the soul. (But not possesion?)

First a definition of immortality is presented by Socrates. What is moved when pushed by others is mortal, as it requires an end and a beginning. What moves by itself has always moved without start or stop and is immortal. The soul is a self-mover and therefore immortal, it has no beginning and no end. It would take a god to fully define the soul but Socrates will set what is necessary. With an analogy of the soul being composed of a two horses representing respectively reason and desire being led by a charioteer we receive a tripartite mental model similar to the one in Republic. However the passion aspect of the Republic model is missing. Souls are lifted by wings that let them move freely and souls also have the ability to occupy mortal objects and make them move, explicitly in a temporary union. Gods do not have bodies and their souls does not have the desireous horse. The wings are nourished by wisdom and beauty while ugliness and foulness make them shrink and disappear. At the edge of heaven the souls follow the gods to peer into true reality, the realm of ideas, where the forms reside. This journey is however perilous and the desireous horse can lead them to fall to the earth. Those souls who have seen a form are safe for another circuit.

The souls will be incarnated in the following order depending of how much they have seen of reality: 1 - Philosopher 2 - Lawful king, warlike commander 3 - Statesman, household manager, financier 4 - Trainer, doctor 5 - Prophet, priest 6 - Poet, representational artist 7 - manual laborer, farmer 8 - sophiest, demagogue 9 - tyrant Below I presume are non-humans.

For 10 000 years no soul returns to heaven. Those living the life of philosophers are exempted and after 3 such consecutive lives they grow back their wings and return. The souls that live justly will get a better life and the others a worse life. The afterlife is where reward and punishment takes place. At the thousandth year the next incarnation takes place. This is where souls can go from humans to animals and vice versa. But a soul must have seen the truth to take a human form.

The madness of love is then defined as being when a soul remembers the true beauty it saw at the edge of heaven and ignores the material world. It is a startling, incomprehensible experience. Witnessing beauty brings joy to a soul and its absence anguish and madness, this is what love is and it is the most noble divine possesion. The sullied are driven to lust but the recent initiates are reminded of true beauty and are nourished to let their wings grow. The gods the souls followed influence what beauty they seek and how they react upon seeing it.

Socrates describes the reaction to love from thos living a philosophers life: At the sight of beauty the good horse and charioteer will be in awe while the bad horse will drag them to spoil it with lust. Only after the charioteer has disciplined it will it stay. Eventually the love of the lover will spill over to the loved. If they both can restrain their lust they will have completed one of 3 cycles to regrow their wings. If they fall to lust but sparingly their wings will still be aided in growth. A non-lover can never give this benefit. The conclusion of the speech is that a non-lover will never be able to give this gift to a soul that transcends life.

With the final speech finished, Phaedrus and Socrates discuss what makes Lysias speech bad and thus what is good and bad writing. As in other dialogues like Gorgias the value of the oratory art is discussed. Is the truth required to produce conviction? But only someone who knows the truth can truly lie, as discussed in Hippias Minor. Socrates concludes that a master orator would need expert knowledge in two subjects. The first is what words are commonly agreed upon, such as wood or iron, and what others are in dispute such as love or beauty. The second is that the master orator must have expertise of the soul in order to know what techniques to apply to produce conviction in different souls. Like how a doctor knows the body the orator must know the soul. Good speeches have a set structure which Lysias speech lacks, there is no introduction of its contents and matters such as love are not defined. Speech structure and innovation together with their inventors are listed: Preamble, statement of facts, evidence of witness, indirect evidence, claims to plausability, confirmations and supplementary confirmation, refutation and supplementary refutation, refutation, covert implication and indirect praise, indirect censure. etc. It is determined that it is unfeasible for a mortal to know the nature of the soul, undermining the art of the orators.

When discussing what makes writing good or bad Socrates brings up an Egyptian myth: Thoth discovered many arts and was to gift them to thye Egyptians following consultation with Ammon. When introducing writing Ammon said it would make people forgetful and dependant on text instead of their minds for wisdom. Text, like painting, is unchanging and cannot respond to inquiry or criticism. Wise people will only write for reminding themselves, not to spread knowledge through text. There is an analogy for planting seeds where a wise person would rather plant knowledge in another soul since it is immortal. This can be compared to the struggle for immortality through reproduction outlined in Symposium.

My Own Take:

Phaedrus takes us into many different subjects that other dialogues are singularly dedicated to. It discusses the nature of the soul, its composition, reincarnation and provides a myth of the afterlife all of which we have seen previously in Meno, Republic, Symposium and Gorgias.

The immortality of the soul is argued from it being a self-mover unlike in Phaedo where it's invisibility is tied to immortality. The myth of the afterlife is more elaborate than the one in Gorgias. Souls are not simply judged for their actions but instead their wisdom is what decides whether they elevate or descend to reality. The recollection theory of Meno is extended with the souls having knowledge of their previous lives depending on the gods they followed. In accordance with Symposium the souls search for beauty and the philosophers means of reaching it is through guidance in a partnership where they love another's soul. At the end we get an example of this struggle for immortality through reproduction by Socrates saying that planting knowledge in the souls of others is superior to writing as it is more lasting. This love is more than cultivation in this life but transcends to the cycle of the souls.

We also see criticism of the oratory arts as previously seen in Gorgias where its claim to be an art is in doubt. That true liars must know the truth is also apparent in Hippias Minor. Though I wonder if it is not a bit unfair to claim that orators must have expertise of the soul to perform their art which is unfeasible for mortals. Wouldn't you make the same argument about generals needing expertise of the soul and all variations of the soul to know how to break the resolve and morale of enemy troops?

The critique of writing as being unable to impart wisdom that only in person dialogue can give is interesting. What is then the purpose of these dialogues by Plato? You can make the distinction that simply accepting a text verbatim and repeating the facts and arguments is not wisdom and tricks you into thinking you have learned. Though I deem this too simple of a conclusion to make. As Socrates says, these dialogues cannot respond to inquiry and Plato certainly is not here to defend them. It could be that the dialogue format is to force the reader to engage with the text at multiple levels where one has to judge the intentions of the characters and Plato which leads us to find the answers ourselves. This process has us cultivate our wisdom by ourselves instead of simply accepting a treatise. The discourse on possible interpretations can be seen as a feature of the dialogues in stimulating critical thought.

Observations:

Socrates never travels abroad and rarely beyond the walls of Athens. Landscapes and trees has nothing to teach him, only people in the city. Interesting that there is no romanticism for nature that we often see contemporarily. Is Socrates or Plato convinced that wisdom can only be gained from interaction with other souls and the products they make with their own reasoning? In the Symposium I compared natural beauty vs human art where the latter can be understood with intention that the later lacks (or is beyond human).

Socrates and Phaedrus reach a resting place close to the location of the myth telling that Orithuia, daughter of Athenian king Erechtus was abducted by Boreas, the northern wind, while playing with the nymphs. They discuss the veracity of the myth and Socrates says that one would have to make a rationalisation for all connected myths which would be too much effort for little reward. Socrates accepts common beliefs and focuses on knowing himself. I find this part very interesting as it is an example of the prioritization that one has to make when learning. There is too much in the world for you to ever learn it all and even if you restrict it to direct concerns it will still be too much. Even a lover of wisdom will have to make do with learning the truth of this specialisation and accept a faulty understanding of the rest.

Apollodorus retells the gathering at Agathon's to Glaucon and an unnamed friend. He learned it from Aristodemus that was present. The dialogue is a series of speeches praising love.

Characters:

Agathon: Host

Eryximachus: Doctor

Alcibiades: Future statesman and general of Athens. Switched from his own dialogue, he is the pursuer of Socrates in this one.

Phaedrus: Has his own dialogue.

Aristodemus: Student of Socrates.

Aristophanes: Comic playwright. Wrote the "Clouds" play mocking Socrates.

Pausanias: Lover of Agathon.

Aristodemus meets Socrates on his way to Agathon, but he is not invited. Socrates tells him to join anyways. Socrates is stuck in thought and tells Aristodemus to go ahead, awkwardly he arrives to Agathons without Socrates but it turns out he was meant to be invited anyways. Agathon sends out a slave to gather Socrates but he stays put in his thoughts and only arrives a bit later for dinner. Is this just character building of Socrates?

Phaedrus makes the first speech. Quoting Hesiod: In the beginning there was only Chaos, but from Earth sprang Love which is one of the most ancient gods. Everyone needs guidance to live well and love is what guides people the best. Lover and loved are prevented from doing shameful acts by the shame of the other seeing them. An army of lovers would be unstoppable, possible reference to the band of Thebes. Love makes people commit incredible acts and sacrifices for each other. The gods appreciate virtue the most when accompanied with love.

The second speech is held by Pausanias. First he distinguishes love into two separate gods. Urania, the older deity is the Heavenly Aphrodite. Pandemos the younger deity is the Common Aphrodite. Common Aphrodite is the vulgar love that is attached to the body and not the soul. It is not virtouous and leads to debauchery. Once a body is no longer beautiful it abandons it. Heavenly Aphrodite is the love of the soul and only for men as it is the attraction to what is by nature the strongest and most intelligent. Affairs with the young should be forbidden to prevent the vulgar lovers from exploiting them. Tyrannts oppose love and do not desire their subjects to have strong bonds with each other and to have ambitions beyond serving. Customs surrounding love vary in every polis. In some people take lovers freely, others deem it disgraceful. In Athens the customs are complex. Proposing your love is encouraged, failing is shameful. But its also shameful to quickly accept. Behaviour that would otherwise be shameful is acceptable if love drives it. To beg and serve someone due to poverty is disgraceful, but due to love it is accepted. To be seduced by wealth and power is disgraceful. To be deceived in love is not, thinking the one you love is a good man when they are bad is not shameful.

Eryximachus speech takes Pausanias concept of common and heavenly love and expands it to a universal principle that occurs in all things. Love is present in health, music and poetry. In the body the noble love brings health while the vulgar love brings unhealth and a doctors task is to nurture the first and retrain the later. The product is mutual love and reconcillation between the elements of the body that are mutually oppossed: hot and cold, warm and dry. Eryximachus cites Heraclitus about difference being harmony, which he interprets as harmony being the result of resolving differences, being love. Music is the science of love with rhythm and harmony. Urania, Heavenly Muse vs Polyhymnia, Common Muse. The first comes with correctly composed and performed music. The later comes with common vulgar songs that can lead one into debauchery if not careful. As with medicine, music is about restraining the vulgar love, desires. The same principle applies to astronomy predicting the seasons and divination which produces love between gods and humans.

Aristophanes speech tells that todays humans are just halves of the previous human race. With 4 arms, 4 legs and 4 ears they were highly mighty, with 3 genders. The males descended from the sun, the women from the earth and the androgynous from the moon which had characteristics of both. Their might threatened the gods and the humans were divided in two as a punishment. Love is the urge to be reunited with the other half before division. Men seeking men are the manliest. Love should guide all make whole.

The speech of Agathon tells that love is actually the youngest god, and the best. It hates old age. The horrible events described by Hesiod and Parmenides were caused by Necessity and not Love as it would never bring violence or horror. Love comes to gentle and soft souls, abhors the ugly. It has not set form, it is moldable and changing. Love is virtous, it makes people moderate, just, brave and wise. No desire can withstand love, resulting moderation. Love makes people do brave acts. Love has the gods settle their disputes and make great works. Anyone can be a poet when they have love, wisdom.

Socrates in typical fashion rejects the previous praise and says these oratory techniques gave any qualitity to love to make it great, ignoring if it was actually true. He starts questioning Agathon on love. What is love of? Love is of a thing. But if you love a thing and then possess it, would you still desire it? Does a strong man desire to be strong? Love is not just a desire to possess a thing, one must also possess it forever. And if love wants beauty, wouldnt that mean that love does not possess beauty and then is ugly? Agathon is perplexed and sees that his previous speech was not true given the gaps.

Socrates retells a dialogue he had with the woman that taught him about love, Diotima from Mantinea. She is a seer that helped Athens avoid plague for 10 years. Diotima puts forward that common ideas of love are contradictory, as the dialogue with Agathon showed. If love desires beauty then it must not have and thus not be beautiful. To resolve this paradox, love is in between needing and not having beauty. There is a state in between ignorance and wisdom, correct judgement without reasoning. This is what Love is, in between ugly and beauty. Love is also not a god, it is in between mortal and divinity, a great spirit that acts as a messenger between gods and men. Love is the son of Poros, son of Metis (Cunning) and Penia (Poverty). He always follows Aphrodite. Love is not about being loved, but about being a lover, searching. Descending from Metis, Love is also loves knowledge and is a philosopher.

Love is wanting beautiful things forever and thing are beautiful because they are good. Possessing goodness forever is happiness which is the real goal of love. Everyone desires to be happy, but we only use love to describe wanting all of love, other pursuits like money for happiness is not called being in love. Diotima rejects Aristophanes myth of halves, for it is really the good that we seek, not another halve. If the halve is bad it would be rejected.

Love's desire to keep beauty forever entails desiring immortality which can only be achieved by reproducing. Everyone is pregnant with a beauty to release. If they are most pregnant in the body they will seek another to create new person with. Those most pregnant in soul will seek another soul to release their beauty with. Reproduction can only occur in beauty, surrounded by ugliness birth will be prevented and the bearer suffer painful labor. Reproduction is the means that mortals strive for immortality. Bodies wither and even souls will change in personality and forgetting knowledge. Producing new people or great works is the means that people as well as animals employ to reach immortality. Homer, Hesiod and Lycurgus brought up as examples of works by pregnant souls.

Those pregnant in the soul, like Socrates, will walk a path where they first love one beautiful body. Eventually they will love other bodies and realize that the beauty in all are related. They will then look for beautiful souls, nevermind how beautiful the body is. The activities of the beautiful souls will then lead them to love knowledge and become a lover of wisdom, a philosopher.

The form of love is then described by Diotima: It simply is and does not deplete or replete, is not beautiful in relation to anything but absolute, it is not accompanied with another but is by itself. It is pure, unmixed and not polluted by color or flesh, mortality. At the final stage of the path the philosopher will see the true form of love and finally be able to realize true virtue and not mere images of it.

After Socrates finishes retelling his speech Alcibiades arrives, drunk and mad with jealousy that he chose to sit down with Agathon, the most beautiful person in the room. Alcibiades will hold a speech praising Socrates next, Socrates can interrupt him if he ever says anything not true. He compares Socrates to statues of a musician and a satyr. Everyone is captivated by his speech, skilled orators pale in comparison. Socrates used to chase after Alcibiades, now it is Alcibiades that goes after him and is jealous. He is gripped with shame when he cannot live according to Socrates guidance on virtous living. It pains him, but he knows without Socrates he would be worse off and realized that he must have him to be happy. Socrates follows beautiful boys in a daze, but he cares not for their beauty or their riches. Alcibiades first thought Socrates wanted him, but he never took the chance when opportunity came. Even when Alcibiades pushed himself onto him did he do it.

Socrates has an incredible composure. He always wears a light cloak no matter how freezing cold it is. Even in a battlefield he will walk calmly and observing like he does in the city. He saved Alcibiades life in war. His arguments are ridiculous at first but are truer than any other. Charmides, Euthydemus and other boys have fallen in love with him like Alcibiades. Socrates life is a game of irony, it is a wonder to behold when he is serious.

My own take:

Symposium is a heavy dialogue that goes into a lot of important concepts in Plato's philosophy. We learn of the forms by what form love has and to how love drives us to pursue happiness and by what means. The first speeches on love establish common beliefs and opinions that the speech by Socrates then addresses. Common ideas that there are different types of love by whether its carnal lust or noble imparting of virtue of another, or that love is a universal mechaniism of resolving differences between elements or that people are looking for lost halves. Another prominent element is that love between men and boys is more virtous and better, but only if it is love of the soul and through guidance. There is also the concept that love makes people wiser or more virtous.

Love is in the intermediate between ugly and beauty, it searches for beauty and wants to keep it forever. An important identity is that what is beautiful is good. I think Eryximachus speech on correctly composed music being heavenly love can be an example of this.

I don't know where this fits in Platonic philosophy, but there ought to be a distinction between natural beauty and man-made beauty. The beauty we see in a vase and the beauty in a waterfall are not the same. The first has a creator with intentionality behind it. The later is made by nature without intention (or by the incomprehensible gods I suppose). In a classical sense we can judge the beauty of man-made things by their excellence in implementing established practices. But this cannot be applied to natural things. Though you could judge them both by their distance to the form of beauty, perhaps the Timaeus dialogue will illuminate whether the natural world is closer to the ideal than the man made. An argument in favor of human art is that it is inherently the result of reason which puts it closer to the forms.

Nevertheless, keeping good things forever is what happiness is and the "forever" aspect has the consequences of wanting to achieve immortality. The only means afforded to mortals is reproduction by creating beauty through either children or works such as art or ideas. What determines a person's path is whether they are the most pregnant with beauty in either body or soul. Having children is not elaborated much upon, though it is not surprising that creating art or ideas is held higher than making more mortals by Plato. Perhaps the former can be considered not highly tied to virtue as children can simply be the result of giving in to desire? Having children can be seen as a means of immortality as your love for your children is tied to beyond your life span.

Diotima's speech on love makes no division of love into heavenly and vulgar. Like with most dialogues exploring virtue it is knowledge that guide people. Vulgar and heavenly love is simply a matter of the wisdom and virtue of a person. That love can make people more virtous or wise is not directly addressed, but I make the interpretation that it is not love making people wise but instead wise people loving.

The greatest focus is put onto those that are most pregnant in the soul. They are lead to seek out other souls to give birth to their beauty which can be in terms of ideas or works of art. Famous artists like Homer are brought up as examples of people giving birth to beauty. Interestingly this part of the speech is explicitly cosmopolitan, exclaiming that all peoples and not just Greeks create beauty. Women are not explicitly excluded either. Here we find the path of the philosopher that Socrates walks. The path starts with appreciation of beauty in one body, to identifying it in all bodies, then onto beautiful souls. The activity of the beautiful souls then leads to the love of wisdom. The final speech of Alcibiades makes the case that Socrates has progressed well along this path. Like the other love speeches says Alcibiades has gotten a sense of shame after falling in love with Socrates that compels him to be more virtous. Socrates is not in the slightest interested in boys for their bodies or any other quality but their souls. The desires and the impulses of the body does not rule his soul, Socrates is observing and analyzing even outside in the cold of winter or on the battlefield. While not at a level that makes Socrates supernatural or divine it serves to highlight the effect of pursuing philosophy to its final end.

On the path of the philosopher they will finally encounter the form of love and will finally be able to realize true virtue and not mere imitations. The transferability of virtue is frequently debated in the other dialogues. I would almost have expected Diotima to diss Pericles at this part of the speech. The Protagoras dialogue has Socrates paradoxically stating that virtue is both knowledge but not teachable. Only a true philosopher can make another soul more virtuous. The example form of love gives a clear example of the forms: unchanging, timeless, independent and immaterial. It cannot be seen or heard, only grasped with reason.

One line in Diotima's speech mentions that only in beauty can the inner beauty be released, in ugliness it will be arrested in painful labor. It reflects the struggle of those searching for beauty when their surroundings are either unsupportive or hostile. For artists it can represent living in a society where you cannot pursue or make art. In a philosophical sense this can also be tied with previous ideas that tyrants despise love. Several dialogues and the collection involving the death of Socrates mention the perils of questioning people and their beliefs. The pain here can be the external or self-imposed repression of intellectual curiosity.

Symposium is the dialogue that by and so far gives the clearest message on how to live. We want to be happy, forever. One method of pursuing this is through having children where you raise them to be good. The other means is through creating beauty in works that are good or through learning. Knowledge is more enduring than the material and the good can only be pursued by learning it.

Observations:

What is the significance of Apollodorus being a second-hand witness retelling what Aristodemus told him? Why not have Aristodemus tell Apollodorus in the dialogue instead?

Wise Plato gives us the treatment for hiccups, using a feather to cause a sneeze.

Translation notes say that since this is Diotima's speech it can interpreted as being an idea of Plato and not the historical Socrates.

There havent been many women mentioned in Plato's text so far in my readings so far, only Diotima and Aspasia in Menexenus. The idea of love Socrates retells from Diotima that we can ascribe to Plato is much more inclusive or at least not outright exclusive of women like the other speeches. With Republic's philosopher kings being possibly women I'm getting an impression that Plato was less mysoginistic than most Greeks.

Most dialogues deal in dualisms where one either knows something or not or is able to or not. The unrational correct judgement between ignorance and wisdom is notable. We previously saw a third instance in Ion where divine inspiration lets the ignorant be wise in matters they are not experts in. The other speeches gives love the attribute of gifting wisdom to those it possesses, but Diotima's love makes no mention of it. Making correct judgements without reason consistently should be impossible.

Here the soul is deemed changing, contra Phaedo. Or maybe Phaedo made the wrong conclusions on the soul being anything but more long lasting than the body. Meno has the soul store all of its knowledge before birth, merely remembering it in life, but it does not handle the act of forgetting. Interestingly the dialogue agrees with the flesh polluting the forms as in Phaedo where the body corrupts the soul with desire.

Mantinea is a town whose population was split by the Spartans which was referenced earlier. Does theme of division tie Diotima to Aristophanes speech? Does her Mantinean origin play into this role? Did she lose a half during split by Sparta, but ultimately realized it was happiness she was really searching and not specifically another? Is this why she rejects Aristophanes?

At the end of the party when everyone has either went to sleep or left Socrates debates with Aristophanes and Agathon that expert playwrights should be able to make both comedy and tragedy. Aristophanes fell asleep before Socrates could finish however. Is this commentary on Aristophanes as a playwright?

Are these qualities of Socrates meant to be special to him or to philosophers? Never yielding to the impulses of the body, always analyzing and calculating.

At the onset of the dialogue there is a joking discussion between Agathon and Socrates about wisdom being transefered through touch. Clearly Socrates is focused on communication through dialogue to make people more wise, is it a reference to Alcibiades trying to have Socrates take him? That things would maybe be much easier if vulgar love could also impart virtue perhaps.

Menexenus featured earlier in the Lysis dialogue and ended up a student oF Socrates. In this dialogue he encounters Socrates they discuss who will become the chosen funerary orator. Socrates thinks that the funerary orations are not very impressive, that it is trivial to get your speech received well if you are praising your very audience. To praise one people in front of another would be a feat though. He says that the speeches are not improvised as Menexenus thought and are in fact prepared. Socrates has been learning oratory from Aspasia, the famed wife of Pericles. He retells a speech that she had him memorize.

The dialogue is odd since it is mostly only an admittedly fine speech. You could interpret it as a jab against the oratory sophists and the superior ability of the philsophers, but that still leaves with with meagre content. But since Aristotle cites it multiple times it is solidly attributed to Plato.

Speech: The speech commences with it's purpose, to praise the dead the and urge the living to live as bravely and virtously. To honor the dead the speech will first go through their origin, then their upbringing and finally their deeds.

The lands of Athens are bountiful with grain and blessed with olive oil, the dispute between Athena and Neptune of ownership is brought up. The supremacy of man over all other animals is stated. No matter their origins or status, the government of Athens selects the best of merit to lead. Unlike in other states, all citizens are equal and none may enslave the other. Once it was a monarchy, now it is a democracy.

Athens stood up for the freedom of Greeks and was willing to fight both barbarians and other Greeks to free them from enslavement.

Together with Eretria Athens fought against Persia. At the battle of Marathon Athens alone beat them, with the Spartans arriving the day after the battle. At Plataea the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians jointly secured victory.

Then the Peloponnesian War broke out where the Delian League led by Sparta fought the Peloponnesian League led by Athens.

At the naval battle of Arginusae the Athenians won, but shamefuly failed to retrieve the dead and wounded from the sea.

After the war Athens had a civil war where the Thirty Tyrants oligarchy imposed by Sparata were ousted.

What differs Athens from the other Greek state is its xenophobia and lack of foreigners.

Any gifts of riches, beauty and strength are wasted if not you are virtous. The parents of the dead should bear their grief and be proud of the glorious lives of their sons.

nothing too much, adage of temperance and self-reliance

Observations:

Socrates learned music from Laprus and oratory from Antiphon.

To truly be able to tell lies a liar needs to know the truth and intentionally evade it. In this manner they have greater abilities than those who can only tell the truth. Socrates gives an example that only someone that really knows math would be able to lie about what the product of two numbers are, without unintentionally telling the truth. In my own understanding you can compare an ignorant liara and knowledgeable liar by a broken clock and a functioning but incorrectly set clock. The first will be wrong all but one second of the day. The second will never tell the right time as it's hands keep moving at the same pace of a correctly set clock but will never intersect.

Hippias accuses Socrates of arguing unfairly, Socrates says that he only argues so dilligently as to reach the truth of a debate. He will never shy from learning and will not be too ashamed to admit when someone has teached him something.

It's clear that Hippias and Socrates are both defining "better" in different terms, the first in a manner of morality and virtue, the other in terms of ability. At the end they are both perplexed and while neither has conceded their point they do not feel sure.

Observations: I would almost expect a moral denounciation of the act of lying no matter the circumstances. Though that was not a concern in Euthydemus. Would the Socrates of the Gorgias dialogue really agree with lying?

If Hippias really is skilled in so many areas as Socrates (ironically) says it would be very impressive.

Even though it is a very short dialogue I felt it dragged out too much, Socrates repeatedly states examples of restrained ability being superior unrestrained disability to Hippias.

First Socrates and Hippias discuss why previous intellectuals did not involve themselves in public affairs. Hippis thinks that the new generation of thinkers have improved their skill over their predecessors. They were simply unable to participate in public affairs like the sophists. In fact the large sums of money that they are making is a testament to their abilities. Hippias claims to have made more money than any other two sophists together.

Strangely though Hippias has visited Sparta the most of any city but has not made any money from his visits. The law is that the Spartans cannot get an education that goes agains their customs. The law is mean to be beneficial, and if the Spartans will not get an education from the most brilliant teacher, then they are lawbreakers. I suspect this part is meant to hint that the Spartans were clever enough to not get educated by Hippias.

They then start discussing the main subject of the dialogue, what the fine is. There are many fine things, but what is it that makes them all fine? As in Euthyphro, Hippias will give an answer and continue to change it when Socrates asks him. Hippias seems to struggle with conceiving of a central concept that all fine things have in common and will frequently continue to give examples of things that are fine, instead of defining the fine.

First, Hippias says a fine girl is a fine thing. But what is it that makes things fine? What is added to them? Then gold is fine. But there are fine things without gold, such as statues by master craftsmen that use other materials such as ivory. Then ivory is also fine. Maybe what is appropriate for a thing is fine. Then there are cases when wood is more fine than gold, such as spoons for stirring a pot.

Then fine is in comparison. One is more fine than the other. Then all is foul in comparison with the gods.

But we want to find what is fine in everything at all times. Hippias says to be honored, healthy, to reach old age, to make a memorial to your parents at their death and be honored by your children at your death, that is a fine thing for everyone at all times. Is it fine for the gods to die and be buried by their children? No, then it's not fine for everyone.

The fine is what when added to things make them seem fine. But there are times when we consider things fine only when they actually are so and are not just perceived as. Are there even any qualities that are always perceived and cannot be percepted erronously? Things in themselves?

Perhaps the fine is ability to do things. What about the ability to do bad things? The fine is the ability to do good things, it is the beneficial.

What is pleasant in sight and sound is a fine thing. This combination of perceptions has Socrates explain to Hippias the difference between union and intersection which he struggles with. Two numbers can each be odd but both even.

Finally, Hippias goes back to simply giving an example of a thing he considers fine, making a well and fine speech. Socrates says if he gave this answer then his debater would mock him, how could he tell if a speech is fine if he cannot explain what the fine is?

Observations: Hippias is the first person to express heterosexual sentiment "a fine girl is a fine thing" in all my readings of Plato, does his portrayal mean something? This another fault of the sophists, the lack of appreciation for the aesthethics of young men? Maybe when I read Symposium I will find out more.

Even Euthydemus and Dionysodorus were portrayed as more clever than Hippias.

In this dialogue and many others Socrates will stress the difference between the effect a thing causes and the thing itself. Plato thinks this is an important concept to keep in mind.

As with any dialogue where Socrates debates a fool, I think it should be stressed that mocking them is a grave mistake, it should instead be taken as a warning of the mistakes we can make.

Socrates starts with asking Lysis about how his parents restrict him. They love him, but they prevent him from doing as he wants and desires. This is because they trust the experts above Lysis, at least for the moment. To get the best outcome we defer to those with expertise in all matters, such as health, ship piloting and so on. A common idea in the dialogues is that the worse should submit and learn from the better, maybe this is the perspective how Lysis restrictions by his family should be viewed from. The ideas in this first discussion does not seem to show picked up later on, is it to bring up the question to how trust to experts and trust to friends conflict?

Directionality of love in friendship. Do both love each other or just on the other? What about those who cannot love back like children and animals?

First the idea that friendship is the attraction of like to like is explored. But a bad person in the company of another bad person will make the other worse, which is not friendship. The bad cannot be friend with the bad which refutes the similarity attraction hypothesis. But good people can be friends peerhaps? But what can a good person offer another? A good person is self-sufficient and does not desire others, which means they do not desire friends and must be enemies to everyone. A silly conclusion.

Hesiod says that the similar are actually in conflict with each other, is it instead that the different are drawn to each other, like hot and cold? But the good and bad cannot go together. What about the neutral? The neutral can love the good and hate the bad. The body is declared neutral, and it loves health to ward off disease. Socrates brings up the distinction between loving a thing and loving the effect that comes with a thing. We love the effect of medicine, not medicine in itself. But can you love anything but effects then, is it possible to love a thing? Friendship is then the love of good. But what if the bad disappeared, without disease the body would have no love of health. You love what you lack.

But how does the love of lack theory address the directionality aspect brought up earlier? Is it a friendship only of both has something the other lacks?

Observations: Socrates says the body is neutral in this dialogue. In Phaedo I got the impression that the body is steadily corrupting the soul with desires and wants to distract it from the truth.

This dialogue and Charmides shows Socrates popularity with the young men and boys of Athens which is mentioned in Laches and Apology. As in Alcibiades and Charmides, Socrates fondness of beautiful boys is featured. This relationship between old and young men in Ancient Greece is complicated and debated.

It's said that all of Western philosophy can be summarized as footnotes of Plato. This dialogue shows that even pickup artistry as an art was founded by the great thinker. Socrates advices Hippothales on how to best charm and keep his lover. If you praise the one you love you end up magnifying your failure if you fail to catch them, and if you lose them the loss will be even sourer. You should keep your boyfriend down so that their confidence does not swell.

Socrates proclaims to value friendship and companions highly above material things. He would rather have a friend than all of Darius gold.

They start out with the idea that learning to fight in heavy armor will be good for the children. It's great physical training and should make them braver in battle. However, one remarks that those who are dedicated to this art rarely become accomplished. Either this art is of little value or not an art at all.

Socrates clarifies that they should not focus so much on the art of heavy armor fighting. It is the effect of it that is desired, not the thing bringing the effect. What is it exactly they want for the children? Socrate says it is the cultivation of their souls. I think everyone is a little quick to accept this, not one remark about whether the body or the souls is fundamental to man.

They debate about who knows virtue and can teach it. Socrates puts forward a common standard by Plato for knowledge whether someone has knowledge: if you cannot say when you learned it or from whom then you probably don't know it. Self-taught people must make demonstrations of their expertise to prove their worth, interestingly Socrates professes to be self-taught since he could not afford lessons from the sophists. But didn't he say he was taught by Prodicus in Protagoras?

Learning what virtue really is is difficult, they decide to focus on finding a part of virtue, courage (manliness).

The first answer is the simplest, courage is to fight without running away. However there are many fighting styles that include running away and turning back to fight, such as cavalry and sometimes the Spartans. What is the common courage for everyone?

Is courage the endurance of the soul? It cannot be in all cases, such as endurance with folly which is not admireable. It is endurance with wisdom. But only in some circumstances like war, endurance with wisdom in money making is not courage.

Is a man fighting with knowledge that that he has an advantage more brave than someone fighting without knowing of an advantage? No, but then we have disqualified wise endurance in favor of foolish endurance.

Finaly answer, courage is wisdom, the knowledge of what is fearful and hopeful in war. To tell good and bad in the past, present and future. But this "courage" is not a part of virtue, it is all of virtue!

Aporia, the definition of courage is not found at the end of the dialogue.

Observations: Maybe Plato it felt too easy to mention Pericles in this dialogue about the transferability of virtue to offspring.

The dialogue ends with a citation of Homer that made an appearance in Protagoras: "Modesty is not a good mate of a needy man."

First Socrates establishes Alcibiades's ignorance. They agree that an important skill of a politician is to lead the city to take just actions. But when did he learn what the less and more just is, and from whom? Alcibiades is asked these questions about many matters and finds himself in a state of confusion when he cannot answer. You can learn things in general from people, like your language, but there are many matters where people disagree on where you must defer to expertise such as health or shipmaking. And since Alcibiades has not learned how to tell the less and more just apart from an expert he must be ignorant. Justice is one subject that people have plenty of disagreements on, such as the Illiad and the Oddyssey, it requires expertise to learn.

One important lesson on knowledge that this dialogue imparts is the levels of competence:

1. Unknown Incompetence

2. Known Incompetence

3. Known Competence

4. Unknown Competence

Socrates explains the step from 1 to 3 to Alcibiades. Plato might not agree on the 4th one, to know something without knowing it. After all you can't teach what you aren't aware of. But it's still not ignorance, maybe the conclusions of the Ion dialogue about inspiration could fit here.

The dialogue explores the relation between what is good, just, admireable and advantageous. At first Alcibiades posits that some sactions are admireable but bad, such as risking your life. Then he agrees that death is preferable to cowardice. What is just is also admireable and advantages and therefore good. Like in most dialogues it is established that all virtues go together.

The importance of education is stressed. Alcibiades claims that even though he is uneducated and ignorant, his noble origins and natural talents will outclass the other politicians in Athens. Socrates angrily rebukes him that he will never realise his ambitions by having such low intellectual ambitions. If he will measure himself with the idiots of the polis he will never rival the kings of Sparta and Persia who make his own origins look humble with their noble houses and access to education.

The inscription at the temple of Delphi, "Know thyself", is central to this dialogue. What is the self that must be cultivated? As the tools of a worker are separate from the worker that uses them, the body is separate of the self that uses it. The self is identified by ruling out all but one of three alternatives. It cannot be the body, as it is ruled by the soul. It cannot be the combination of soul and body, as the body does not partake in the ruling. Then the soul is the only candidate for what the self is. It is our souls that must be improved. This definition is important as it means material thing such as accumulating wealth and other tools does not count as cultivating yourself.

The question of whether virtue can be taught is brought up, as in other dialogues like Meno and Protagoras. Again Pericles and his inept sons are shown as an example of why virtue is not so easy to learn, however it does seem to imply that teachers with real knowledge of virtue can teach it, such as Zeno?

Whether a nod or a predessor to the philosopher-kings of Republic, virtue is established as the main skill of the statesman. Good is when everyone does their own work according to expertise, and politicians must impart virtue on a city to bring good and harmony.

Observations: This dialogue is supposed to be the origin behind Platonic love, where Socrates loves Alcibiades for his soul and not (necessarily?) sexually.

My Take: I really liked this dialogue and agree that its a good introduction to philosophy. It succinctly goes over a lot of important concepts to start out thinking about things and is not too technical or long for a beginner to start with.

Summary: Sophrosyne is a greek concept of excellent character and soundness of mind that is difficult to translate to english. The translation im using uses the word "temperance" which doesnt quite cover all it's meaning. The main participants in this dialogue are Charmides and Critias that discuss with Socrates what temperance can be defined as.

Charmides is a young man famous for his beauty and temperance. Critias is a person we have seen in previous dialogues who has influenced Charmides. These people are important as they later partake in the oligarchy imposed on Athens by Sparta, forming the Thirty Tyrannts. In the dialogue these people are reasonably and virtous but show hints of their authoritarianism. In Apology we learn that Socrates himself was against the oligarchy and would have suffered consequences had it not collapsed.

Starts with medicine analogy where Socrates explains how doctors never cure just one part of the body but restore health to it as a whole. the soul is the source of health and disease. Spiritual corruption brings bodily unhealth. In the Protagoras dialogue the conclusion seemed to be that temperance was ultimately knowledge like the other virtues, could it be a reference to this?

Throughout the dialogue they debate different possible anwers as to what temperance can be. First Charmides suggests that temperance ins a form of quieteness. Quietness also has a connotation of slowness in Greek. But this definition is disqualified, Socrates brings up examples of things we deem virtous that are not slow or quiet such as writing fast or a body being quick. Next Charmides suggests that it's modesty, as people are ashamed of not being temperate. But this is disqualified because Homer does not deem it suitable for all people? I do not quite understand the reasoning.

Finally, Critias suggests that temperance is minding one's own business. But good people can also do works for others. Such as doctors or craftsmen that do good works for others. Critias makes a distinction between doing and making, where making can never be bad, citing Hesiod. So a temperate person does good for himself and for others. But how does he know when he does good and when he does bad? If a doctor does not know when he does good for another, wouldn't that mean he is ignorant of his own temperance? But temperance ought to include knowing oneself. Is temperance then a science of sciences? The temperate man then knows what he knows and what he does not, in order to always do take the correct decision. They reach the conclusion that this is not temperance, but in fact the science of good and evil instead. Like with the Protagoras dialogue, virtue is always knowledge.

It's impossible to know what you do not know.

At the end Critias commands Charmides to learn from Socrates, and Charmides says that he will follow his command and that Socrates has no choice and the matter and should not oppose him. This can be seen as a nod to the fate of Critias and Charmides, that while they are virtous in the dialogue they will become tyrrants.

Observations:

The dialogue starts out with Socrates saying he will pretend to have a charm that can cure Charmides headaches. I am a bit surprised at this deception, from the Gorgias dialogue i would expect lying to be something Socrates would be against.

The dialogue mentions two mythical doctors (shamans?) named Zalmoxis the Thracian and Abaris the Hyperborean.