Andrew Payne

Plato’s Symposium offers an enticing range of topics for the critical-guide treatment of philosophical classics now in vogue. The current volume contains thirteen essays of consistently high quality devoted to such issues as the nature of erotic desire and its orientation toward the forms, the ethical question of how best to live in the pursuit of wisdom, Plato’s engagement with poetry, and his use of dramatic interaction between speakers to advance his philosophical agenda.An admirable feature of the volume is the close attention that is paid to all parts of the Symposium. Many discussions of the dialogue focus exclusively on Socrates’s speech, but Destrée and Giannopoulou have taken care to avoid this narrowly...

This dissertation presents Plato's distinctive approach in the Symposium to topics normally associated with Aristotelian ethics: practical reason, friendship, the theoretic life, and the ranking of the lives associated with political activity and philosophy. After an introductory chapter I focus on Diotima's speech in chapters 2 through 6. Eros appears as a species of desire, one that lacks its object, is self-interested, and can generate action. In addition to these basic characteristics common to other desires, eros is directed towards acquiring the good and happiness. This understanding of eros as directed towards the good and beauty while lacking the object of its desire leads to an interpretation of the ascent passage which emphasizes the lover's contingency and lack of self-sufficiency. While an Aristotelian view of the theoretic life presents it as characterized by an almost divine self-sufficiency and continuity of action, the Symposium presents a more human version of the theoretic life. The Diotiman lover does not achieve self-sufficiency or continuous activity. His desire for beauty is fulfilled only in fleeting moments of heightened awareness of the form of beauty. In addition, it shapes the lover's life and serves as a guide in the choice of lives. Further confirmation for this reading of Diotima's speech comes from the sympathetic presentation it allows of Alcibiades' speech. In chapters 7 and 8 I use this reading of the Symposium as a standpoint from which to view two important sections of the Nicamachean Ethics. In Book I of the Ethics Aristotle's account of happiness depends on his conception of self-sufficient activity. I compare his use of activity in the function argument to Diotima's use of the ergon of eros, giving birth in the beautiful, in her description of the best human life. Plato's Lysis echoes many of the themes of the Symposium. It addresses itself to an apparent tension between self-sufficiency and happiness, a tension which also motivates Aristotle's treatment of friendship in Books VIII and IX of the Ethics.

In Republic II Glaucon assigns to Socrates the task of praising justice for itself. What it means to praise justice for itself is unclear. A new interpretation is offered on the basis of an analysis of Glaucon's division of goods. A distinction is developed between criterial benefits, those valuable consequences of a thing which provide a standard for evaluating a thing as a good instance of its type, and fringe benefits, valuable consequences which do not provide such a standard. Socrates is expected to praise justice by describing the benefits it constitutes as a valuable activity of soul. He may also use the criterial benefits of justice but not its fringe benefits. This account of Socrates' task is superior to those interpretations which rule out all use of valuable consequences in praising justice and to those interpretations which fail to preserve the distinction between the second and third classes of goods