Symposium is an ancient classic, it’s super short, and reading it in 2020 sets off a total clusterfuck of associative thoughts that I felt an extreme need to try to organise and reflect on. So here goes.
What it is:
Symposium is a story from The Dialogues of Plato, which essentially means it’s something Plato once heard someone say that they heard someone else say. It’s still an epic reflection of life in Greece 400 years BC.
It’s just a recollection of some bros (a.k.a. famous philosophers, but whatever) talking and chilling (and candidly flirting, but we’ll get to that). They speak on the topic of love.
#1 – The human condition prevails
Reading an ancient text from 2500 years ago, and realising that they struggle with the same philosophical challenges as I do in 2020 puts things into perspective. I’m not sure exactly what perspective. It’s amazing to think of the ancients, and how incredibly different our world is today, all while making almost no progress on the challenge of being human. Ignoring the language barrier, a philosophical conversation between Nietsche and Socrates would be totally feasible – the same problems, 2500 years apart. Humanity is hard.
#2 – The Greeks were ultra gay, and it’s incredible that anyone reading Plato would ever think differently.
Actually they’re more like non-binary. But the actual preferences are not the point – the point is how cultural context totally changes the perception of written words. Writing might feel very concrete, like they’re inflexible, but they’re just not.
In 2020, I can read Symposium and clearly see the flirting between the men, and the fairly explicit stories of trying to get laid with dudes.
But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, for hundreds of years, the idea of same-sex relationships were so unacceptable that the entire concept of “platonic love” was thought to be speaking of a love that was not sexual. Still today, platonic love is used to describe a love that is not sexual in nature.
Even though a passage in Symposium is a dude explaining how he crept under the covers to socrates, and tried to make stuff happen, and was rejected and sorely disappointed, that was somehow transformed into “a love that is not sexual in nature”.
To me, this indicates the massive role of preconceptions & unconscious bias in how an interpretation of the material one consumes.
It makes me wonder what cultural biases I have today, that are causing me to misunderstand foundational material in a similar manner as the renaissance men who were so sure that platonic love was asexual.
#3 – Patroclus wasn’t Achilles’ cousin
In the Hollywood film “Troy”, Brad Pitt plays Achilles, and some other dude plays his “cousin” Patroclus – a character who Achilles ends up having to avenge at some point.
Turns out they were lovers, not cousins. Plato is pretty clear about that relationship, and how it was noble for Achilles to avenge the death of his lover. One of the characters in Symposium specifically notes that it’s important to notice that Patroclus must be the lover, and Achilles the love, for Achilles was fairest of the two.
So yea. Not cousins. Thanks Hollywood.
#4 – The cure for hiccups is the same today as it was 2500 years ago
For some reason, Plato chose to include a passage where a physician (present at the table of greek bros talking about love) consults one of the other guys on how to cure his hiccups. 1. Hold your breath, 2. gargle some water and 3. tickle your nose so you sneeze a few times.
In 2500 years, we haven’t gotten better at dealing with hiccups.
Yep. Total clusterfuck, but it feels good to have it split into a numbered list now. What a rollercoaster ride, all delivered in under 50 pages of 2500 year old writing.