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Plato's Language of Love and the Female*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Margalit Finkelberg
Margalit Finkelberg
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
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Extract

In the course of his talk on Eros, the first in the Symposium, Phaedrus embarks on a demonstration of the ability of love to prompt people to noble and courageous deeds. Although the context of the discussion of love in the Symposium is primarily homosexual, “the most remarkable feature” of Phaedrus's speech, as William K. C. Guthrie puts it, is that the exemplary figure illustrating his thesis is a woman. Alcestis, the wife of Admetus king of Therae, was the only one among her husband's relatives who volunteered to die in his stead:

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , July 1997 , pp. 231 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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References

1 Guthrie, William K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy (6 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) 4. 381.Google Scholar

2 Plato Symp. 179b.4-d.l. Here and elsewhere, the translations of Plato are mine unless otherwise noted.

3 That is to say, it is easier for the lover, possessed as he is by Eros (cf. Phaedr. 255b.6), to do noble and virtuous deeds for the sake of the beloved. This, however, does not mean that, as Rosen, Stanley took it (Plato's Symposium [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968] 58Google Scholar), the lover is “higher” than the beloved. As I shall argue presently, the contrary is true.

4 Plato Symp. 180a.2-b.5.

5 See Plato Phaedr. 255–56; Plato Symp. 182a-85c. Compare Dover, Kenneth J., Greek Homosexuality (London: Duckworth, 1978) 81–109.Google Scholar

6 See Rettig, Georg F., Platonis Symposion (Halle: Orphantotropheas, 1875) 117Google Scholar; regarding Symp. 179b.7: “Being placed in this way, Admetus is marked as Alcestis's παιδικά.”

7 As, for example, in Plato Symp. 181b.2–3 or in Xenophon Symp. 8.21, both of which equate the role of the eromenos with that of a woman.

8 Aeschylus Eumen. 658–62; see also Kirk, Geoffrey S., Raven, John E., and Schofield, Malcolm, The Presocratic Philosophers (2d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 354–55.Google Scholar

9 See Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 58–111.Google Scholar

10 Rettig, Platonis Symposion, 115; Friedrich A. Wolf's commentary on the Symposium (Platons Gastmahl: Ein Dialog [Leipzip, 1782]) is quoted from Rettig, Platonis Symposion, 124.

11 Regarding Symp. 179c. 1–2, see Dover, Kenneth, Plato: Symposium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 93.Google Scholar

12 Although both the Symposium and the Phaedrus put the principle of philosophy in direct connection with that of love, their models of love are different: as distinct from the self-moving and composite soul of the Phaedrus, which desires the supreme good by virtue of its affinity with it, in the Symposium, Plato works with the model of a soul that is devoid of any quality and that pursues the supreme good owing to this very deficiency. The difference in question, an inquiry into the reasons of which lies beyond the scope of this paper, is only too rarely the subject of treatment in the scholarly literature; but see Gould, Thomas, Platonic Love (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).Google Scholar

13 Plato Symp. 204c. 1–6.

14 See, for example, Osborne, Catherine, Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) 101Google Scholar: “By this means it becomes clear that the state of being neither one thing nor the other, but in between, is fundamental to the theory of love that is being offered [in the Symposium].”

15 Plato Symp. 200a.8–201c.7.

16 Ibid. 203c.2–3.

17 Compare τέλεον, ibid. 204c.5.

18 Ibid. 200a.9: τ πιθυμουᵔν πιθυμειᵔν οὑᵔ νδεές στιν (cf. Lys. 221d.7–8); 200e.2–4: πιθυμωᵔν τουᵔ μ τοίμου πιθυμειᵔ κα τουᵔ μ παρόντος κα οὑᵔ νδεής στι; 200e.7–8: τούτων ὡᵔν ἂν ἔνδεια παρηᵔ αὑτῳᵔ; 201b.l–2: οὑᵔ νδεής στι κα μ ἔχει, τούτου ραᵔν; 202d.1–3: Ἔρωτα \ldots δι᾽ ἔνδειαν τωᵔν γαθωᵔν κα καλωᵔν πιθυμειᵔν αὐτωᵔν τωύτων ὡᵔν νδεής στιν.

19 On the Pythagorean table of opposites, see Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) 48–51Google Scholar; Burkert, Walter, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) 51–52.Google Scholar

20 Plato Lys. 215a.6-b.3.

21 Ibid. 220d.4–7.

22 Ibid. 221d-e;esp. 221d.7–8: τό γε πιθυμουᵔν, οὑᵔ ἂν νδες ᾐᵔ, τούτου πιθυμειᵔ and Plato Symp. 200a.9: τ πιθυμουᵔν πιθυμειᵔν ούᵔ νδεές στιν.

23 See Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, 4. 148.

24 See above, n. 12; and Plato Phaedr. 245c-46b, 253c-54e; compare Plato Tim. 34c-35b.

25 Osborne (Eros Unveiled, 57–61) overlooks the difference between ϕιλία and ἔρως and thus treats the subjects of the Lysis and the Symposium as identical in every respect. This in turn leads to the erroneous conclusion that one should not take seriously Plato's doctrine of ἔρως in the Symposium because it came under fire in the discussion of ϕιλία in the Lysis. The sexual dimension that Plato introduces in the Symposium, however, makes all the difference.

26 Plato Phileb. 53d: τούτοις τοίνυν οικότα δυοιᵔν οὐᵔσι δύο ἄλλα ζήτει κατ πάνθ᾽ ὅσα λέγομεν εἰᵔναι (trans. Hackforth, Reginald, in Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato [Bollingen Series 71; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963] 1135).Google Scholar

27 Plato Symp. 208c-9e, 211d-12a.

28 Dover, Plato: Symposium, 147; κύειν (206c. 1); κυηᵔσαι (209c.3); τόκος (206b.7, c.6, e.5, 209a.2); τίκτειν (206C.3, 209a.3, 209b.2, c.3, 210c.1, d.5, 212a.2, a.5); γενναᵔν (209 b.2, b.3–4, c.3, 210a.7); γέννησις (206e.5).

29 Plato Lys. 218a.2-b.3 (trans. J. Wright, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 162).

30 Plato Symp. 203e.4–204a.4, 204b.2–5; compare 202a.5–9.

31 Plato Theaet. 149b.5–7: κυισκομένη κα τίκτουσα.

32 Ibid. 150b.6-e.l (trans. Francis M. Cornford, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 855).

33 Plato Symp. 200b.9-c.5 (trans. Michael Joyce, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 552).

34 Plato Symp. 222b.3–4: παιδικ μαᵔλλον αὐτς καθίσταται ντ᾽ ραστουᵔ.

35 Ibid. 209e.5–10a. 1: “Well now, my dear Socrates, I have no doubt that even you might be initiated (κἂν σὺ μυηθείης) into these, the more elementary mysteries of Love. But I don't know whether you could apprehend the final revelation (τ δ τελε κα ποπτικά)” (trans. Joyce, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 561). Myesis, telete, and epopteia are technical terms designating the hierarchic gradation of the process of initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries; see Places, Édouard Des, “Platon et la langue des mystères,” quoted from Études platoniciennes (Leiden: Brill, 1981) 87.Google Scholar

36 See Cornford, Francis M., “The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium,” quoted from Vlastos, Gregory, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays (2 vols.; Modern Studies in Philosophy; Garden City: Doubleday, 1971) 2. 126–28.Google Scholar In his account Cornford omits the first stage, probably taking it for granted.

37 Plato Symp. 210a.7–212a.6.

38 Ibid. 210c.6-d.3.

39 Plato Ep. 7.342c.4–6 (trans. Levi Arnold Post, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 1589–90 [with slight changes]).

40 Plato Symp. 210e.2–4.

41 Plato Ep. 7.342d.8-e.2; compare 341c.6-d.2.

42 Plato Symp. 210e.4–6.

43 Plato Ep. 7.341c.6-d.2.

44 Ibid. 344b.3-c.l.

45 Levison, Michael, Morton, Andrew Q., and Winspear, Alban D. (“The Seventh Letter of Plato,” Mind 77 [1968] 309–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar) ascribe it to Speusippus on stylometric reasons (together with the Critias, the Timaeus, and books 5 and 6 of the Leges). According to Branwood, Leonard (“Stylometry and Chronology,” in Kraut, Richard, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992] 112)Google Scholar, “A comparison of the Platonic works using canonical correlation analysis to establish the chronological order indicated the existence of a sharply defined final group consisting of Phil., Cleit., Epist. iii, vii, and viii, Sph., Pol., Laws, Epin., Ti., and Criti., written in that order between 355 B.C. and 347 B.C.”

46 Plato Ep. 7.341c-d.

47 Ibid. 341e.2–3.

48 Ibid. 341b.l, 344c.6.

49 Plato Symp. 211d.8–212a.7 (trans. Joyce, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 563).

50 Plato Ep. 7.341d.l–2:ν τῃᵔ ψυχῃᵔ γενόμενον αὐτ αυτ ἤδη τρέϕει.

51 Plato Symp. 191c.7, 192c.5–6.

52 Plato Rep. 490a.8-b.7 (trans. Paul Shorey, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 726).

53 Compare Cornford (“Doctrine of Eros,” 127–28) on the Symposium: “As in the Republic, the union of the soul with Beauty is called a marriage—the sacred marriage of the Eleusinia—of which the offspring are not phantoms, like those images of goodness that first inspired love of the beautiful person, but true virtue, the virtue which is wisdom.”

54 One should add in this connection that there are not a few contexts in Plato that treat the female in the strictly traditional sense. That is to say, the female involved in the erotic model created by Plato and the female proper do not necessarily amount to one and the same entity.

55 Plato Tim. 50c.7-d.2 (Cornford, Francis M., ed., Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato [London: Kegan Paul, 1937] 185Google Scholar [with slight changes]); compare Tim. 48e.2–49a.6.

56 Aristotle Phys. 1.9, 192a. 16–24 (trans. Hardie, Robert P. and Gaye, Phoebe K., in Barnes, Jonathan, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation [2 vols.; Bollingen Series 71.2; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984] 1. 328).Google Scholar

57 Charlton, William (Aristotle's Physics: Books I and II [Clarendon Aristotle Series; Oxford: Clarendon, 1992] 82–83Google Scholar) wrongly takes these examples as thoroughly belonging to Aristotle's criticism of Plato, and then naturally finds himself at a loss in the face of Metaph. 1.6, 988a.5 and Gen. an. 1.20, 729a.28–30, “where Aristotle seems happy to compare the matter-form relationship with the female-male.” But compare Ross, David (Aristotle's Physics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936] 498):Google Scholar “Aristotle realizes that in describing θηᵔλυ and αἰσχρόν as desiring ἄρρεν and καλόν he has momentarily fallen into the Platonic error of making things desire their own contraries. He points out therefore that αἰσχρόν and θηᵔλυ are simply concomitants of the matter which is what, strictly speaking, strives after εἰᵔδος.”

58 Aristotle Gen. an. 1.20, 729a.22–33, 729a.34-b.23.

59 Ibid. 1.17–2.1.

60 Ibid. 1.21,729b.9–22, esp. 1.22 (trans. Arthur Platt, in Barnes, Complete Works of Aristotle, 1. 1132–33). See also Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology, 86: “His [Aristotle's] particular definition of the female in terms of incapacity, his idea of the relationship between male and female as not just analogous to, but an example of, that between form and matter, and his development of the idea that the male is the efficient cause in reproduction all involve or incorporate new conceptions.”

61 See Gotthelf, Allan, “Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality,” Review of Metaphysics 30 (1976/1977) 233Google Scholar: “Not all motion and change, however, can be explained solely in terms of the nature of the moving or changing entity. Most motion and change, in fact, is caused by interaction. Things act on other things, and things respond to the action on them of other things in characteristic ways. In addition to having ‘within themselves a source of motion-orchange and rest’ [Phys. 2.1, 192b.13–14], each natural thing has within itself'a source of being moved-or-changed by another’ [Metaph. 4.12, 1019a.15–16; cf. 8.1], to which, in each case, corresponds a ‘source’ in that other of so changing the first—which is to say that in addition to having a nature, each natural thing has potentials—potentials to change certain other things in certain ways (which we may call ‘active potentials’) and potentials to be changed by certain things in certain ways (which we may call ‘passive potentials’)” (Gotthelf s emphasis). See also Peck, Arthur L., “Aristotle on Κίνησις)” in Anton, John P. and Kustas, George L., eds., Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (5 vols.; Albany: SUNY Press, 1971) 1. 478–90.Google Scholar

62 Aristotle Metaph. 12.7, 1072a.24-b.4 (trans. David Ross, in Barnes, Complete Works of Aristotle, 2. 1694).

63 See Kahn, Charles H., “The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle's Teleology,” in Gotthelf, Allan, ed., Aristotle on Nature and Living Things (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1985) 183–205.Google Scholar

64 Aristotle Metaph. 12.7, 1072b.3–4., ὡς ρώμενον: this phrase is often taken in the direct rather than metaphorical sense; yet the presence of ὡς before the participle precludes such reading. As the late Yehuda Landau argued (The Desire of Matter towards Form in Aristotle's Philosophy [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1972] 10Google Scholar [Hebrew]), “at the most essential points of his doctrine … Aristotle introduces a simile”; both Phys. 192a.23 (above, n. 56) and Metaph. 1072b.3–4 are among his examples.

65 See Gould, Platonic Love, 146: “By rejecting both the dualism and the self-moving psyche [as found in the Phaedrus, the Timaeus, and the Laws] and re-establishing the supremacy of final causation, Aristotle actually gave back to Love once more the role it had in the Symposium, the Phaedo, and the Republic.” See also Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, 4. 421; and Osborne, Eros Unveiled, 137–38.

66 Plato Tim. 51a.4-b.2.

67 μεταλαμβάνον δ πορώτατά πῃ τουᵔ νοητουᵔ. See Arist. Phys. 4.2, 209b.11–16: “This is why Plato in the Timaeus says that matter and space are the same, for the ‘participant’ and space are identical (τ γρ μεταληπτικν κα τν χώραν \llgrepsilonν κα ταὐτόν). (It is true, indeed, that the account he gives there of the ‘participant’ is different from what he says in his so-called unwritten teaching. Nevertheless, he did identify place and space.) I mention Plato because, while all hold place to be something, he alone tried to say what it is.” Compare Simplicius Physics 542. For the discussion, see Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 187–88; Joseph Bright Skemp, “ϒΑΗ and ϒΠΟΔΟΧΗ,” in Düring, Ingemar and Owen, Gwilym E. L., eds., Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-fourth Century (Studia Graeca et Latina Gottoburgensia; Göteborg: Almquist and Wicksell, 1960) 209–10.Google Scholar

68 Skemp (“ϒΛΗ and ϒΠΟΔΟΧΗ”) draws attention to the fact that in Gen. corr. 320a.3 and 329a.13–24 Aristotle actually applies to his own ὕλη the terms δεκτικόν and τιθήνη, which Plato employs in his description of the Receptacle.

69 See Dillon, John M., “Female Principles in Platonism,” in idem, The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity (Great Yarmouth: Variorum, 1990) 113–23.Google Scholar

70 Plutarch Mor. 370f-371a: ϕιεμένην δ τηᵔς μείνονος [sc. ϕύσεως] ε κα ποθουᵔσαν κα διώκουσαν. (LCL; trans, and ed. Babbit, Frank C.; 15 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1969, 5. 119 [with slight changes]).Google Scholar

71 Ibid. 382f-83a, cf. 382c-d.

72 Ibid. 374f-75a, cf. 374e, 375c-d.

73 Ibid. 372e-f; cf. 373e-f, 377a-b; compare Tim. 48–51 (see above, n. 55).

74 Ibid. 374d. See also n. 67 above.

75 Compare the approach adopted in Christian Froidefond, “Plutarque et le platonisme,” ANRW 2.36.1 (1987) 219: “Néanmoins, oser écrire que la matière a un dynamisme propre qui l'oriente vers le Bien et l'Etre absolu, c'était 1. compléter hardiment les rapports établis par le platonisme entre les Idées et les sensibles en opérant un rapprochement synthétique entre le dynamisme téléologique de l'Idée et la gnoséologie, présentée jusque là comme une ‘montée’ vers l'Idée par voie d'allégorie et avec des préoccupations plus pédagogiques qu'ontologiques. 2. Intégrer à la métaphysique le movement, qui, en dépit du ‘Sophiste’, n'avait jamais un véritable statut ontologique. 3. Se donner les moyens d'établir une cosmologie cohérente, en s'opposant aux Epicuriens et Stoïciens, mais aussi à la lettre du platonisme, dans la mesure où l'auteur du ‘Timée’ voit dans la χώρα une indifférenciation totale de laquelle ‘naîtra’ l'ὕλη ἄποιος..”

76 See Dillon, John, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) 199, 203–5, 208, 229–30.Google Scholar

77 See Glucker, John, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978) 256–80.Google Scholar

78 It is true, of course, that giving a prominent role to the female principle and identifying it with the mother of all becoming and the Receptacle of the Timaeus was part of the thinking of the so-called Middle Platonists. Notably, Philo describes Sophia as “the Mother of all things in the Universe, affording to her offspring, as soon as they are born, the nourishment which they require from her own breasts” (Det. pot. ins. 115–16; Dillon, Middle Platonists, 164). Plutarch, however, is the only writer who conceptualized his female principle in complete conformity with Plato's interpretation of the erastes in the Symposium. On Philo, see Dillon, Middle Platonists, 163–64; Runia, David T., Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (2 vols.; Amsterdam: Vu Boekhandel, 1983) 245–52.Google Scholar

79 Plato Ep. 7.343a; compare 344c. 1–8.

80 Ibid. 343b.

81 Sayre, Kenneth M., “Plato's Dialogues in the Light of the Seventh Letter,” in Griswold, Charles L. Jr, ed., Platonic Writings: Platonic Readings (London: Routledge, 1988) 107.Google Scholar

82 Plato Crat. 439b; compare 440b-c (trans. Benjamin Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 473 [with slight changes]).

83 Plato Ep. 7.341e.2–3.

84 Plutarch Mor. 382d-e. On epopteia see above, n. 35.

85 See Kahn, “Prime Mover in Aristotle's Teleology,” 199.

86 Des Places, “Platon et la langue des mystères,” 91: “At the beginning of the great revelation which ends her speech, Diotima, the prophetess from Mantinea, introduces the epopsy she promised to Socrates … in terms that should have spoken to the heart of Eleusinian initiates.” See also Cornford, “Doctrine of Eros,” 128; Michael L. Morgan, “Plato and Greek Religion,” in Kraut, Cambridge Companion to Plato, 233–35.

87 Kerényi, Carl, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (trans. Ralph Manheim; Bollingen Series 65.4; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967) 145.Google Scholar

88 Ibid., 211 n. 122.

89 Plato Tim. 52d-53a (trans. Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 1179 [with slight changes]).

90 See the study by Harrison, Jane Ellen, “Mystica vannus Jacchi,” JHS 23 (1903) 292–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91 Compare the description of such a process in Apuleius Met. 11.21. See also Des Places (“Platon et la langue des mystères,” 92) on the ξαίϕνης of Symp. 210a.l (see above, n. 42): “The theomenos of the progressive contemplation of the Beautiful prepares the katopsetai for the supreme revelation which, as we have seen, appears within a flow of light and suddenly (exaiphnes): this adverb, dear to the heart of the mystics both pagan and Christian, emerges in the Seventh Letter in connection with the intuition of the Being which, on the top of the dialectical scale, springs up in an instant, like a spark.”

92 The eunuch devotees of Cybele, invariably spoken of in the feminine gender, come to mind in this connection; compare Catullus 62; Apuleius Met. 8.26. See also the ritual search, ζήτησις, of the mysteries, the numerous examples of which are adduced by Merkelbach, Reinhold in Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich: Beck, 1962) esp. 267: “‘Search’Google Scholar (πιζήτησις), ‘good hope’ (γαθ λπίς), and ‘discovery’ (νεύρεσις), are all words from the mysteries.” See also now his Isis regina—Zeus Sarapis: Die griechisch-aegyptische Religion nach den Quellen dargestellt (Leipzig: Teubner, 1995).Google Scholar

93 Apuleius Met. 9.5.

94 Kerényi, Eleusis, 98.

95 Plato Phaedr. 276a, 277a (trans. Hackforth, in Hamilton and Cairns, Collected Dialogues of Plato, 521, 52). Compare Ep. 7.341e.

96 This episode from Porphyrius The Life of Plotinus 15, was brought to my attention by Yehuda Liebes.