A Precis on Symposium by Plato

Rachel Lew

Rhetoric 103A / Jerilyn Sambrooke

8 Oct 2016

A Precis on Symposium by Plato

Toward the end of Plato’s Symposium, Socrates gives a speech calling for mankind to strive toward the divine ideal that is true virtue. He recounts that the wise woman Diotima once told him seeing “true beauty” would allow a mortal man to obtain virtue, and that she asked:

“But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life…?”

In this precis I will prove that the message of striving for ideal virtue is strengthened by the hypothetical language with which it is deployed. For the purpose of clarity I will refer to Diotima’s words as the words of Socrates when discussing their effects on Socrates’ audience.

A superficial search for hypothetical language in this passage yields two examples of the conditional tense: the phrases “But what if man had eyes,” and “if mortal man may.” The first of these mostly serves to introduce the scenario that follows as hypothetical; Diotima (and therefore Socrates) is prefacing her description of a wonderful beauty by noting that it is not available to man. The phrase is also an insult that sets up the passage’s overall condescending tone toward mankind. This serves to shame the audience for a mode of existence they cannot help, and to challenge them to push away from their miserable mortality.

Non-grammatical instances of hypothetical language are also present in this passage. Given the definition of the hypothetical as that which indirectly figures an ideal situation, most of the descriptive language in this passage can be categorized as hypothetical because it makes a strong distinction between the mortal and the immortal (also called the divine or the ideal in Symposium). For example, Diotima calls the “colors” of life, which in other contexts might be considered an evocation of the beauty of life, “pollutions” that a man must mentally discard in order to approach true beauty, which encompasses immortality, divinity, and true virtue.

Through praise of the purity of the “clear and unalloyed” ideal, and description of color, appearances, and images as pollution, Socrates attempts to diminish his audience’s longing for these colorful distractions, arguing that to see these things is not to see “true beauty.” It is important to note that “seeing” beauty is likely Socrates/Diotima’s metaphor for the act of mortals contacting beauty and divinity through love; although love is not named in this passage, Socrates describes it at the beginning of his speech as the “mediator who spans the chasm which divides [divine and mortal].” If to see is to love, then to love mortal beauties, or the “colors and vanities of human life,” is to see with mortal eyes, and to love true beauty is to see with eyes that man does not have. The physical impossibility of seeing without eyes makes the act an ideal that is unattainable and only approachable by compromise; i.e. an ideal that can be reached for but not reached.

Thus, the hypothetical scenario in this passage both conducts a tone that disparages the audience for their lack of ability as mortals, and describes a tantalizing beauty truer and purer than beauties that mortals normally access. Socrates’ words in this passage work doubly in this way to push his audience away from their mortality and pull them toward divinity, compelling them to reach for the ideal, the divine, and true virtue.