Zara Amdur

This paper argues that Plato’s Symposium offers an epistemic critique of the social institution of pederasty. Pausanias’ speech makes clear that the social scripts surrounding pederasty assume that wisdom is something the lover contains and gives to the beloved in exchange for sexual favors. I call this view of wisdom ‘the container model.’ Socrates explicitly denies this model and subverts the customary roles of pederasty in discussion with Agathon and Alcibiades respectively. The paper culminates with a novel account of Socrates’ rejection of Alcibiades, one upon which the container model is critiqued for epistemic and ethical reasons. Alternatively, Socrates suggests that time is required for one’s internal “mind’s eye” (219a) to develop. While he acknowledges that two people can reflect together on what is best for them, one person cannot give wisdom to another.

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates relates what he has learned from Diotima, a foreign woman. This paper argues that her status as a foreigner helps us better understand what she taught. For example, she depicts Eros’s mother, Penia, as a political outsider who generates a new relationship between the mortal and the divine. Similarly, Diotima herself generates a new understanding of one’s relationship to one’s ideas with her claim that “all human beings are pregnant in both body and soul.” In the Athens of Plato and Socrates, there was constant dispute over whether immigrant women could give birth to citizens. In this controversial context, Diotima’s expansion of the notion of pregnancy beyond corporeal reproduction operates against the culturally dominant obligation on women’s bodies to procreate. Surprisingly then, Plato’s text emphasizes how the political disadvantage of a foreign woman results in an epistemic advantage.