Complete Works (110 page)

Now I have spoken about the god’s justice, moderation, and bravery; his wisdom remains.
²⁶
I must try not to leave out anything that can be said on this. In the first place—to honor
our
profession as Eryximachus [e] did his
²⁷
—the god is so skilled a poet that he can make others into poets: once Love touches him,
anyone
becomes a poet,

… howe’er uncultured he had been before.
²⁸

This, we may fittingly observe, testifies that Love is a good poet, good, in sum, at every kind of artistic production. For you can’t give to another
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what you don’t have yourself, and you can’t teach what you don’t know.

And as to the production of animals—who will deny that they are all born and begotten through Love’s skill?

And as for artisans and professionals—don’t we know that whoever has this god for a teacher ends up in the light of fame, while a man untouched by Love ends in obscurity? Apollo, for one, invented archery, [b] medicine, and prophecy when desire and love showed the way. Even he, therefore, would be a pupil of Love, and so would the Muses in music, Hephaestus in bronze work, Athena in weaving, and Zeus in “the governance of gods and men.”

That too is how the gods’ quarrels were settled, once Love came to be among them—love of beauty, obviously, because love is not drawn to ugliness. Before that, as I said in the beginning, and as the poets say, many dreadful things happened among the gods, because Necessity was king. [c] But once this god was born, all goods came to gods and men alike through love of beauty.

This is how I think of Love, Phaedrus: first, he is himself the most beautiful and the best; after that, if anyone else is at all like that, Love is responsible. I am suddenly struck by a need to say something in poetic meter,
²⁹
that it is he who—

Gives peace to men and stillness to the sea,
[d]
Lays winds to rest, and careworn men to sleep.

Love fills us with togetherness and drains all of our divisiveness away. Love calls gatherings like these together. In feasts, in dances, and in ceremonies, he gives the lead. Love moves us to mildness, removes from us wildness. He is giver of kindness, never of meanness. Gracious, kindly
³⁰
—let wise men see and gods admire! Treasure to lovers, envy to others, father of elegance, luxury, delicacy, grace, yearning, desire. Love cares [e] well for good men, cares not for bad ones. In pain, in fear, in desire, or speech, Love is our best guide and guard; he is our comrade and our savior. Ornament of all gods and men, most beautiful leader and the best! Every man should follow Love, sing beautifully his hymns, and join with him in the song he sings that charms the mind of god or man.

This, Phaedrus, is the speech I have to offer. Let it be dedicated to the
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god, part of it in fun, part of it moderately serious, as best I could manage.

When Agathon finished, Aristodemus said, everyone there burst into applause, so becoming to himself and to the god did they think the young man’s speech.

Then Socrates glanced at Eryximachus and said, “Now do you think I was foolish to feel the fear I felt before? Didn’t I speak like a prophet a while ago when I said that Agathon would give an amazing speech and I would be tongue-tied?”

“You were prophetic about one thing, I think,” said Eryximachus, “that Agathon would speak well. But you, tongue-tied? No, I don’t believe that.” [b]

“Bless you,” said Socrates. “How am I not going to be tongue-tied, I or anyone else, after a speech delivered with such beauty and variety? The other parts may not have been so wonderful, but that at the end! Who would not be struck dumb on hearing the beauty of the words and phrases? Anyway, I was worried that I’d not be able to say anything that came close to them in beauty, and so I would almost have run away and escaped, [c] if there had been a place to go. And, you see, the speech reminded me of Gorgias, so that I actually experienced what Homer describes: I was afraid that Agathon would end by sending the Gorgian head,
³¹
awesome at speaking in a speech, against my speech, and this would turn me to stone by striking me dumb. Then I realized how ridiculous I’d been to agree to join [d] with you in praising Love and to say that I was a master of the art of love, when I knew nothing whatever of this business, of how anything whatever ought to be praised. In my foolishness, I thought you should tell the truth about whatever you praise, that this should be your basis, and that from this a speaker should select the most beautiful truths and arrange them most suitably. I was quite vain, thinking that I would talk well and that I knew the truth about praising anything whatever. But now it appears that this is not what it is to praise anything whatever; rather, it is to apply [e] to the object the grandest and the most beautiful qualities, whether he actually has them or not. And if they are false, that is no objection; for the proposal, apparently, was that everyone here make the rest of us think he is praising Love—and not that he actually praise him. I think that is why you stir up every word and apply it to Love; your description of him and
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his gifts is designed to make him look better and more beautiful than anything else—to ignorant listeners, plainly, for of course he wouldn’t look that way to those who knew. And your praise did seem beautiful and respectful. But I didn’t even know the method for giving praise; and it was in ignorance that I agreed to take part in this. So “the tongue” promised, and “the mind” did not.
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Goodbye to that! I’m not giving another eulogy using that method, not at all—I wouldn’t be able to do [b] it!—but, if you wish, I’d like to tell the truth my way. I want to avoid any comparison with your speeches, so as not to give you a reason to laugh at me. So look, Phaedrus, would a speech like this satisfy your requirement? You will hear the truth about Love, and the words and phrasing will take care of themselves.”

Then Aristodemus said that Phaedrus and the others urged him to speak in the way he thought was required, whatever it was.

“Well then, Phaedrus,” said Socrates, “allow me to ask Agathon a few [c] little questions, so that, once I have his agreement, I may speak on that basis.”

“You have my permission,” said Phaedrus. “Ask away.”

After that, said Aristodemus, Socrates began: “Indeed, Agathon, my friend, I thought you led the way beautifully into your speech when you said that one should first show the qualities of Love himself, and only then those of his deeds. I must admire that beginning. Come, then, since [d] you have beautifully and magnificently expounded his qualities in other ways, tell me this, too, about Love. Is Love such as to be a love of something or of nothing? I’m not asking if he is born
of
some mother or father, (for the question whether Love is love of mother or of father would really be ridiculous), but it’s as if I’m asking this about a father—whether a father is the father
of
something or not. You’d tell me, of course, if you wanted to give me a good answer, that it’s
of
a son or a daughter that a father is the father. Wouldn’t you?”

“Certainly,” said Agathon.

“Then does the same go for the mother?”

[e] He agreed to that also.

“Well, then,” said Socrates, “answer a little more fully, and you will understand better what I want. If I should ask, ‘What about this: a brother, just insofar as he
is
a brother, is he the brother of something or not?’ ”

He said that he was.

“And he’s of a brother or a sister, isn’t he?”

He agreed.

“Now try to tell me about love,” he said. “Is Love the love of nothing or of something?”

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“Of something, surely!”

“Then keep this object of love in mind, and remember what it is.
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But tell me this much: does Love desire that of which it is the love, or not?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“At the time he desires and loves something, does he actually have what he desires and loves at that time, or doesn’t he?”

“He doesn’t. At least, that wouldn’t be likely,” he said.

“Instead of what’s
likely
,” said Socrates, “ask yourself whether it’s
necessary
[b] that this be so: a thing that desires desires something of which it is in need; otherwise, if it were not in need, it would not desire it. I can’t tell you, Agathon, how strongly it strikes me that this is necessary. But how about you?”

“I think so too.”

“Good. Now then, would someone who is tall, want to be tall? Or someone who is strong want to be strong?”

“Impossible, on the basis of what we’ve agreed.”

“Presumably because no one is in need of those things he already has.”

“True.”

“But maybe a strong man could want to be strong,” said Socrates, “or a fast one fast, or a healthy one healthy: in cases like these, you might [c] think people really do want to be things they already are and do want to have qualities they already have—I bring them up so they won’t deceive us. But in these cases, Agathon, if you stop to think about them, you will see that these people are what they are at the present time, whether they want to be or not, by a logical necessity. And who, may I ask, would ever bother to desire what’s necessary in any event? But when someone says ‘I am healthy, but that’s just what I want to be,’ or ‘I am rich, but that’s just what I want to be,’ or ‘I desire the very things that I have,’ let us say [d] to him: ‘You already have riches and health and strength in your possession, my man, what you want is to possess these things in time to come, since in the present, whether you want to or not, you have them. Whenever you say,
I desire what I already have
, ask yourself whether you don’t mean this:
I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as well
.’ Wouldn’t he agree?”

According to Aristodemus, Agathon said that he would.

So Socrates said, “Then this is what it is to love something which is not at hand, which the lover does not have: it is to desire the preservation of what he now has in time to come, so that he will have it then.” [e]

“Quite so,” he said.

“So such a man or anyone else who has a desire desires what is not at hand and not present, what he does not have, and what he is not, and that of which he is in need; for such are the objects of desire and love.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Come, then,” said Socrates. “Let us review the points on which we’ve agreed. Aren’t they, first, that Love is the love of something, and, second, that he loves things of which he has a present need?”
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“Yes,” he said.

“Now, remember, in addition to these points, what you said in your speech about what it is that Love loves. If you like, I’ll remind you. I think you said something like this: that the gods’ quarrels were settled by love of beautiful things, for there is no love of ugly ones.
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Didn’t you say something like that?”

“I did,” said Agathon.

“And that’s a suitable thing to say, my friend,” said Socrates. “But if this is so, wouldn’t Love have to be a desire for beauty, and never for ugliness?”

He agreed. [b]

“And we also agreed that he loves just what he needs and does not have.”

“Yes,” he said.

“So Love needs beauty, then, and does not have it.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“So! If something needs beauty and has got no beauty at all, would you still say that it is beautiful?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then do you still agree that Love is beautiful, if those things are so?”

[c] Then Agathon said, “It turns out, Socrates, I didn’t know what I was talking about in that speech.”

“It was a beautiful speech, anyway, Agathon,” said Socrates. “Now take it a little further. Don’t you think that good things are always beautiful as well?”

“I do.”

“Then if Love needs beautiful things, and if all good things are beautiful, he will need good things too.”

“As for me, Socrates,” he said, “I am unable to contradict you. Let it be as you say.”

“Then it’s the truth, my beloved Agathon, that you are unable to contradict,” he said. “It is not hard at all to contradict Socrates.”

[d] Now I’ll let you go. I shall try to go through for you the speech about Love I once heard from a woman of Mantinea, Diotima—a woman who was wise about many things besides this: once she even put off the plague for ten years by telling the Athenians what sacrifices to make. She is the one who taught me the art of love, and I shall go through her speech as best I can on my own, using what Agathon and I have agreed to as a basis.

Following your lead, Agathon, one should first describe who Love is [e] and what he is like, and afterwards describe his works—I think it will be easiest for me to proceed the way Diotima did and tell you how she questioned me.

You see, I had told her almost the same things Agathon told me just now: that Love is a great god and that he belongs to beautiful things.
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And she used the very same arguments against me that I used against Agathon; she showed how, according to my very own speech, Love is neither beautiful nor good.

So I said, “What do you mean, Diotima? Is Love ugly, then, and bad?”

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But she said, “Watch your tongue! Do you really think that, if a thing is not beautiful, it has to be ugly?”

“I certainly do.”

“And if a thing’s not wise, it’s ignorant? Or haven’t you found out yet that there’s something in between wisdom and ignorance?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s judging things correctly without being able to give a reason. Surely you see that this is not the same as knowing—for how could knowledge be unreasoning? And it’s not ignorance either—for how could what hits the truth be ignorance? Correct judgment, of course, has this character: it is
in between
understanding and ignorance.”

“True,” said I, “as you say.” [b]

“Then don’t force whatever is not beautiful to be ugly, or whatever is not good to be bad. It’s the same with Love: when you agree he is neither good nor beautiful, you need not think he is ugly and bad; he could be something in between,” she said.