Summary Plato Love and Relationship Notes for A-Level OCR Classical Civilisation
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Course
Love and Relationships
Institution
OCR
Notes on Plato including quotes from the texts, essay plans, context, and quotes from scholars from an A* student.
Themes include:
- Love and Lust
- Desire
- Morality
- Marriage and Relationships
- Men and Women
- The State
- Gods and Religion
- Homoerotic Relationships
- Plato's aims (...
Plato (b. c. 427 BC d. c. 347 BC)
Life
- Life
o Plato was a Greek philosopher and author born into a rich Athenian family.
o Inspired by Socrates
Socrates was not born into a wealthy family.
He served in the Athenian army in the Peloponnesian War.
He did not write any of his ideas down and so his later representation is mainly down to the
representation of his ideas in Plato.
o After Socrates was executed in 399 BC, Plato travelled around the Mediterranean before later returning
to Athens and founding the Academy, a school for philosophers (Aristotle went).
- Context of the Symposium
o Written in mid-late 380s BC to celebrate Agathon’s victory at a dramatic festival in 416 BC.
“Those present are among the intellectual elite of the day” – Frisbee Sheffield
Expert in law, Representative of medical expertise, Comic Poet, Tragic Poet, Philosopher
etc.
o Symposiums
“Relationships between erastes and eromenos perhaps reflected the fact that access to women was
limited while access to men was less so.” – Frisbee Sheffield
Older man sought sexual favours from a youth on the brink of manhood in return for social,
political, and moral training
Place to enjoy physical pleasure – food, drink, sex – but also develop the mind through song and
conversation
“the symposium was a central site for the transmission of a shared cultural and intellectual
heritage” – Frisbee Sheffield
Symposium not usually like this – “unusually intellectual character of this symposium” - Gill
o Time (First read between 384-379 BC but set in 416 BC)
Plato embodies ideas in characters and lives to allow readers to see “the connection between what
people argue for and what kind of people they turn out to be.” – Frisbee Sheffield
The Symposium is set in 416 BC when Athens was full of promise.
The Sicilian Expedition was leaving, led by young general Alcibiades.
o By 404 BC Alcibiades was dead, having been prosecuted for the failure, gone over to
the Spartans and ended in the Persian court.
The passion which he struggled to control in the Symposium was the same passion
which led to the misguided campaign in Sicily.
Thucydides refers to uncontrolled and unreasoning desire when explaining
the reasons behind the expedition.
The Symposium is narrated by Apollodorus years after the supposed symposium. During this time.
The Athenians had lost some of the confidence central to the narrative.
Just a year after Agathon’s victory, Alcibiades had persuaded the Athenians to embark on
the doomed Sicilian expedition, a defeat that marked a turning point in the bitter struggle
with Sparta
Religious scandals – Profanation of the sacred mysteries of Eleusis and the mutilation of the
Herms
o In which some of the participants of Agathon’s symposium were implicated
“The lives and loves of each speaker, which are revealed in their speech, may well
be Plato’s contribution to a post-war debate about such matters” – Frisbee
Sheffield
“It is as if he is saying to us, ‘might events have been different if the movers
and shakers of Athenian culture at this time had thought differently about
love and desire’” – Frisbee Sheffield
Socrates was executed in 399 BC on charges of ‘corrupting the youth’ of Athens.
o Alcibiades (Real)
Notorious associate of Socrates – their high profile relationship was arguably one of the reasons
for Socrates’ trial and then death in 399 BC
Major figure in Athenian politics
By end of Peloponnesian war, he had betrayed Athens to Sparta and Persia
Known as beautiful
- Reception by Contemporary Audience
, o “The erotic world of Plato’s dialogues is in part, of course, just that of his society” – Reeve
Love and Lust
- Love in general
o “Plato does not have a comprehensive theory of love [but he constructs] a bridge between love and
philosophy” – G.R.F. Ferrari
o Speeches in Symposium are concerned with the nature of love, Phaedrus with love, persuasion and
philosophical enlightenment and in Republic and Laws he considers the place of love and relationships
in a perfect society.
- Physical Symptoms
o Phaedrus
Socrates says that sexual desire urges the soul to grow wings and take flight - describes with
language of sexual arousal (parts of the body become warm, moist, and swell)
“sweat and unwonted heat”
“Too disturbed to sleep at night”
“Oblivious to mothers, brothers, and all its friends”
“It does not care [...] if its wealth suffers through neglect”
“It is ready to play the part of a slave”
Alcibiades in Symposium also describes being “like a slave” in love
He is totally captivated by Socrates and compares it to being with Odysseus’ sirens
o Charmides – Plato describes Socrates as ‘on fire’ when looking at Charmides
o Symposium – Socrates able to restrain feelings of desire while Alcibiades compares it to being bitten
by a snake.
o Phaedo – Pleasure/pain “is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body”
- Benefits of love
o Symposium
Phaedrus focuses on how love produces a sense of shame and therefore encourages virtue
between lovers.
Previous poetry often presented eros as an ambivalent force, powerful and dangerous, that
could lead to good or ill but “The encomiastic structure of Plato’s Symposium [...] will
allow for none of that” – requires a focus on the praise-worthy aspects of eros – Frisbee
Sheffield
Phaedrus clearly establishes the role of love in moral education.
Pausanius builds on the idea that a love relationship leads to some kind of excellence – therefore
argues that the soul not the body must be the proper focus of attention in any loving relationship
Splits love into two – Pandemian Eros (sexual love, desire, passion) and Uranian Eros
(desire for women as well as for boys). Uranian Eros is nobler as it is the desire for mental
enrichment.
Eryximachus – Agrees aim of a loving relationship is to cultivate excellence so a correct lover
should have an expertise
Eryximachus - love can create balance and “harmony”
Aristophanes presents love as the pursuit of unity in a story that explains the variety of sexual
desire.
Aristophanes: “Eros is himself the epitome of beauty and virtue”
o Aristophanes’ speech is about finding fulfilling, loving relationships rather than love
(love is a far more likely explanation for people forming lifelong partnerships)
People find their other halves.
o Undermined:
In the mouth of comic poet Aristophanes
Ridiculous side to story – originally we rolled around as circle creatures and now
all we want to do is fuse together in a constant state of sexual union
Agathon – poetic display detailing Eros’ virtues – argues previous speakers have failed to
establish the nature of eros responsible for the benefits he can bestow
Love is young, soft and sweetly scented, just, moderate, courageous and wise.
Lovers must be supremely beautiful and possessing all these bestowable virtues in order to
give them to others
o (Socrates later argues that if lovers already have these things than what is the longing
Aristophanes captures so beautifully)
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