Symposium Socrates' speech 198-212

We have heard speeches from almost everyone at the dinner party, and now it is time for Socrates to give his.  He starts off by saying that he is worried he will not be able to give a speech as beautiful as the one Agathon just gave.  It’s interesting how Socrates seems to always start off his speeches with some sort of self deprecation, even everyone including himself knows that he is always the smartest one in the room.    Socrates goes on to assert that part of the reason Agathon’s speech was so beautiful is because he was praising a fictitious version of love embellished with the grandest and most beautiful qualities, rather than praising the actual love. Socrates says that he would like to tell the truth about love using questioning, his preferred way of giving speeches.  He says that he would like to do his speech in a different style so he can avoid being compared to Agathon.

Socrates says that since love desires that which is beautiful and good, and since you can only desire that which you do not already have, Love is not beautiful or good. I thought this idea that you cannot desire that which you already have was really interesting.  Recently I read an article that said people who write down a list, or “count their blessings” reported feelings of being much happier at the end of the study. However when Socrates said “Whenever you say ‘I desire what I already have’ what you really mean is “I desire what I have now to be mine in the future as well” it made me think that these people in the study might not be as content with their lives if they thought there was a possibility they might lose what they have in the future.  So perhaps their newfound happiness is all a form of self delusion.   They are not happy with what they have, they are happy with the belief that what they have will still be there in the future.  It made me wonder how people who are living in war zones can find any contentment with their life at all, because there is always a chance that they could lose everything they have.

Socrates then moves on to the part of his speech where he is restating a speech given by Diotima.  In this, he says that even though love is not beautiful or good, it is not ugly or bad either.  It exists in a middle ground between the two extremes. This part as interesting because it seemed to me that they were drawing a parallel between love and philosophers in this part.  Philosophers also exist in a middle ground, only they are caught in between knowledge and ignorance.  They are not ignorant because they know that they desire knowledge, and the fact that they desire it means they don’t have it yet.

The part of the passage that I found the most interesting was when Diotima was talking about how love doesn’t desire beauty, but rather reproduction and birth in beauty.  Diotima says that reproduction is really amazing because it is how mortals achieve immortality, and therefore she seems to think of it as a godly act. She says this desire for immortality is why even animals love their offspring so much they sacrifice their own well-being to protect them.  I thought it was funny how she said that humans will sacrifice far more in the pursuit of honor than they will for the well-being of their children.  She seems to place those who try to preserve their immortality through producing children in a lower class, almost on par with animals.  The highest class is those who give birth to wisdom and virtue, which I interpret to mean philosophers.  What I thought was really interesting about this section was that while they said purpose of love was to reproduce, they talk about how the most immortal form of reproduction is giving birth to wisdom.  However, I don’t see why it is necessary to love another person in order to give birth to wisdom.  It seems like something a person could do by themselves. I also thought it was interesting how they said that everyone is in a pregnant state even before they meet their lover.  It makes it seem like whatever they are going to give birth to already exists solely in one person, but they can’t access it until they fall in love.