After arriving drunk (‘plastered’ in one translationFootnote 1) at Agathon's party, Alcibiades offers to praise Socrates instead of love, the object of the other characters' praise. In praising Socrates, Alcibiades says that he will have to use images (εἰκόνων, 215a4–5). He assures his companions, however, that this ‘is no joke: the image will be for the sake of the truth’ (ἔσται δ' ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἕνεκα, οὐ τοῦ γελοίου, 215a6). Alcibiades goes on to present his famous images of a Socrates who is full of divine images (ἀγάλματα), and who casts spells with his words (λόγοι). Later, Alcibiades describes those words themselves as ‘bursting with images of virtue’ (ἀγάλματ' ἀρετῆς, 222a3–4).
This focus on Socrates' images seems in tension with the view that Socrates exemplifies the proper lover earlier described. The successful lover gives birth ‘not to images of virtue’, but to ‘true virtue’ (212a). How can Socrates burst with images and yet exemplify the lover who generates not images, but true virtue? This question urges us toward a firmer grasp of this unique Socrates (221c–d) and his exemplary character. Despite the apparent tension in the text, Socrates does indeed model true love: Socrates is filled with images, but those images engender true virtue in others.
One might fear that Alcibiades' own flaws – not to mention his inebriation – mar his account of Socrates,Footnote 2 but I shall trust his claim that there's truth in wine (217e). He is obviously not the most reliable speaker, but I'd like to think that Socrates was right to find promise in him. Furthermore, as has been often remarked, Alcibiades tells Socrates to correct any false assertions (214e, 217b, 219c);Footnote 3 the fact that Socrates never interrupts seems to be an endorsement of Alcibiades' claims.Footnote 4 Perhaps Socrates, though, is an incomplete philosopher, one who has not reached the highest mystery, as Diotima feared might happen.Footnote 5 A third possibility is that Diotima's own view of philosophy, which cannot accommodate Socrates and his images, is flawed – perhaps she presents too much mystery and not enough philosophy.Footnote 6 In the present discussion, however, I shall attempt to treat Socrates as well as possible. In other words, I shall show that Alcibiades correctly places Socrates at the top of Diotima's stairs, a placement which shows him to be the ideal lover and philosopher. Socrates, then, appears as a source of images, in Alcibiades' account, and yet, following Diotima's description, he gives birth not to images but to true virtue.
The tension, then, is only on the surface. Socrates' images, like those in Alcibiades' speech, are for the sake of the truth – his images produce true virtue in others. Although images must be distinct from true virtue, true virtue arises from Socrates' images. Such images bring forth the true virtue that is the successful lover's offspring.Footnote 7
I
Socrates presents his account of love after Agathon and his other guests have all spoken. Although Socrates claims that the art of love (τὰ ἐρωτικά) is the only thing he knows (ἐπίστασθαι) (177d8), he does not present his own account, but instead recounts what he claims is the ‘speech about love I once heard from a woman of Mantinea, Diotima’ (201d1–2). She assures Socrates that despite his former opinion, love is ‘neither beautiful nor good’ (201e6–7). Diotima tells Socrates, in fact, about a love that resembles Socrates – ugly, poor, shoeless, but also clever and resourceful (203c–e and 215b, 220b–c)Footnote 8 – and then goes on to explain the purpose of this love.Footnote 9 Love, in order to be happy, desires to possess good things forever (204d–205a). Since humans are not immortal and so cannot possess anything forever, their best hope is to pursue reproduction and birth in beauty:
Pregnancy, reproduction – this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it cannot occur in anything that is out of harmony, but ugliness is out of harmony with all that is godly. Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. (206c7–d2)
In beauty, therefore, reproduction occurs, and that reproduction brings humans as close as possible to eternal possession of good things: it brings us as close as possible to true happiness. Although some reproduction is physical, the superior reproduction involves giving birth both to virtue and to beautiful words (λόγοι):
Everyone would rather have such children than human ones, and would look up to Homer, Hesiod, and the other good poets with envy and admiration for the offspring they have left behind – offspring, which, because they are immortal themselves, provide their parents with immortal glory and remembrance. (209c7–d4)
After introducing this idea of psychic pregnancy, Diotima finally explains the ‘highest mystery’ to Socrates, although she fears he'll be unable to follow (210a). The successful lover moves from one to many beautiful bodies, then to beautiful souls; from souls to customs, and from customs to various kinds of knowledge, and eventually to beauty itself: ‘one goes always upward for the sake of this beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stairs’ (211c1–3). Throughout the preliminary stages, the lover generates λόγοι, as in the case of the lover of beautiful souls, who is ‘content to love and care for [the beloved] and to seek to give birth to such λόγοι as will make young men better’ (210c1–3).
When the lover reaches the last stage, however, he gives birth to something beyond λόγοι.Footnote 10 The successful lover, who has come into contact with beauty itself, gives birth to virtue itself, which he alone can produce:
only then will he give birth not to images of virtue (οὐκ εἴδωλα ἀρετῆς), because he's in touch with no images (οὐκ εἰδώλου ἐϕαπτομένῳ), but to true virtue, because he is in touch with the truth. (212a2–5)
The lover's goal, as always, is reproduction; the successful lover, however, reproduces something different from all other lovers: he produces true virtue. Diotima no longer mentions λόγοι – the generation here apparently has an entirely new character. The ascending lovers generate λόγοι, but the lover who completes the ascent produces virtue, ‘and when he has given birth to true virtue and nurtured it, the love of the gods belongs to him, and if any human could become immortal, it would be he’ (212a5–7).
It is, of course, not at all clear what it means to ‘give birth to true virtue’: some readers understand it as the transformation of the lover into a genuinely virtuous person;Footnote 11 others envision a virtue produced in another – the truly successful lover, on this account, would bring forth the excellence of others.Footnote 12 Frisbee Sheffield has recently defended the view that contemplation itself is genuine virtue. She argues that since Diotima says that a life spent ‘beholding beauty itself’ (θεωμένῳ αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν, 211d) is the best life for humans, and since true virtue entails true happiness, the activity of contemplation must be equivalent to true virtue.Footnote 13
As F.C. White has pointed out, however, Diotima treats contemplation not as an end in itself, but instead as desirable ‘because in the life of contemplating Beauty, and in that life alone, the lover will beget true virtue’.Footnote 14 The grasp of beauty itself makes possible the reproduction of true virtue. As Diotima says at 212a, the successful lover gives birth to ‘true virtue, because he is in touch with the truth’ (ἀληθῆ, ἅτε τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἐϕαπτομένῳ). On White's account, that true virtue takes the form of the discourses, the λόγοι that the true lover leaves behind – discourses which turn others toward what is important in life.Footnote 15 White, however, must then make the odd claim that the discourses are themselves virtue, rather than simply things that lead to virtue. In a more recent piece, in fact, he says that Socrates' discourses ‘are the offspring that ensure his immortality’,Footnote 16 even though the discourses consist, as White himself notes, of images of virtue (ἀγάλματ' ἀρετῆς, 222a4), rather than the true virtue that Diotima promises the true lover (212a).
I am in no way qualified to speak on the generation of virtue, but Diotima's account does suggest another explanation: the successful lover should produce the sort of thing that the ascending lover tries to generate, but the successful lover should, of course, succeed. The lover of beautiful souls, recall, will ‘seek to give birth to the kind of speeches’ (τίκτειν λόγους τοιούτους καὶ ζητεῖν) that will make young people ‘better’ (βελτίους, 210c1–3). Although some commentators would excise the word ζητεῖν (‘to seek’) here,Footnote 17 the ascending lover must be seeking and inquiring – indeed, that very activity compels him upward.Footnote 18 The ascending lover seeks beneficial speeches (λόγοι); the successful lover actually generates the kind of speeches that make people better.Footnote 19 Once the lover reaches the top, he produces λόγοι that engender true virtue in others.
Socrates produces such speeches, speeches which teem with images of virtue (222a). Socrates exemplifies the successful lover, who generates virtue in others by means of images and λόγοι. The fact that Socrates is ‘bursting with images’ does not therefore conflict with Diotima's claim that the true lover generates virtue, since Socrates' images, like those in Alcibiades' speech, are for the sake of the truth – they are for the sake of others' true virtue.
II
Although at the time of Diotima's speech Socrates cannot follow her to the top, there are compelling reasons to think that he later completed the ascent. Socrates' behaviour, as Alcibiades describes it, suggests that he becomes the successful lover Diotima discusses, as Ruby Blondell and William J. Prior have both recently argued.Footnote 20 His indifference to physical things – ranging from Alcibiades' beautiful body (218b–219d) to the cold at Potidaea (220a–c) – bespeaks a character who has left ‘mortal nonsense’ (ϕλυαρίας θνητῆς, 211e3) behind. Further, the episodes where he stands motionless (175a–e, 220c–d) seem to imply that he has reached the sort of understanding promised in Diotima's account. Socrates in these moments speaks to no one, and Blondell argues that ‘in so far as Socrates … treats philosophical inquiry as something to be undertaken … with other human beings, what he is doing in the doorway cannot be ‘seeking’, or solving a problem … [i]t seems plausible to infer that he is, instead, gazing on the Form of Beauty'.Footnote 21
Alcibiades' emphasis on Socrates' relation to virtue also reinforces this reading, since the successful lover generates true virtue, according to Diotima (212a). Alcibiades repeatedly praises Socrates' virtue, as at 219d, where he says he admired Socrates for ‘his nature, his self-control and courage – here was a man whose wisdom and strength went beyond my wildest dreams!’ Socrates does not only display virtue, according to Alcibiades, but he also is full of λόγοι that make people better (222a). Socrates clearly fits Diotima's account of a person who gives birth to true virtue (212a). His generation of virtue, his apparent contemplation of beauty itself, and his disdain for ‘mortal nonsense’ together suggest that Socrates is indeed a lover who has reached the top of Diotima's ‘rising stairs’ (211c).
III
One problem with this reading is that we have to take Alcibiades very seriously, and treat his comments about Socrates as reliable. Doing so, however, requires giving credit to all of Alcibiades' speech. In particular, we must attend to Alcibiades' claim that Socrates' produces λόγοι ‘bursting with images of virtue’ (ἀγάλματ' ἀρετῆς, 222a1–5). And so again our bind: it appears either that Alcibiades is wrong in suggesting that Socrates produces both true virtue and images of virtue, or that Diotima is wrong to oppose true virtue and its image. I hope to show, nevertheless, that the difficulty can be resolved: since Socrates' images give rise to virtue in others, he is full of images but gives birth to truth.
Alcibiades appears just after Socrates ends his account of Diotima's claims about love. Preceded by drunken revelry and the shrieks of a flute girl, Alcibiades is half-carried into Agathon's house, but then ‘he managed to stand by himself, crowned with a wreath of violets and ivy and ribbons on his head’ (212d7–e2). After a brief spat with Socrates, Alcibiades downs nearly half a gallon of wine (214a) and offers to give a speech in praise of Socrates.
In praising Socrates, Alcibiades says that he'll have to use images (εἰκόνων, 215a4–5). His images, though, are not designed to amuse: ‘the image will be for the sake of the truth’ (ἔσται δ' ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἕνεκα, 215a6). Whereas Diotima appeared to contrast images and truth (212a), Alcibiades brings them together.
One of Alcibiades' images is of Socrates charming others with his words just as Marsyas charmed with his flute; the other image matters more for us, though, since with it Alcibiades compares Socrates himself to an image, a sculpted Silenus (γεγλυμμένος σιληνός), 216d6). A Silenus is a satyr, described by Howatson and Sheffield as ‘lewd, drunken, and mischievous’ mythical creatures: not perhaps the most flattering comparison, though satyrs do resemble Socrates in being ‘snub-nosed and with protuberant eyes’.Footnote 22 This Silenus image has further images inside it: each is ‘split right down the middle, and inside it's full of tiny images (ἀγάλματα) of the gods’ (215b2–3).
Just like the Silenus statue, according to Alcibiades, Socrates appears rough and licentious on the outside, but is full of inner beauty. Socrates acts boy-crazy and ignorant (216d), but Alcibiades once saw Socrates open like a Silenus: ‘I had a glimpse of the images (ἀγάλματα) he keeps hidden within: they were so divine and golden, so utterly beautiful (πάγκαλα) and amazing’ (216e6–217a1). Alcibiades seems to have glimpsed Socrates' virtue – or rather, images of that virtue, since he calls them ἀγάλματα. Alcibiades wished to consummate his love with Socrates physically, but not because of sexual attraction to Socrates; he seeks Socrates' embrace for the sake of virtue. Alcibiades thus explains his position to Socrates: ‘Nothing is more important to me than becoming the best man I can be, and no one can help me more than you to reach that aim’ (218d1–3). The images in Alcibiades' speech are for the sake of the truth; similarly, the images in Socrates are such as to move people to true virtue. Further, when Socrates refuses to have sex with Alcibiades, the latter was ‘deeply humiliated, but also … couldn't help admiring [Socrates’] nature, his self-control and courage', along with his wisdom and strength (219d3–7). Even Socrates' apparently hurtful actions turn Alcibiades' thoughts to virtue! Those utterly beautiful images in Socrates are in fact for the sake of others' virtue.
Why images, though? Why must Socrates bring forth Alcibiades' virtue through images? As C.D.C. Reeve has recently explained, Socrates cannot place virtue in Alcibiades or contemplate the truth for him: ‘One must see the forms for oneself’.Footnote 23 Images necessarily point beyond themselves, toward what they are not – they point toward their models, toward the originals of which they are images. To recognize an image is to recognize something that falls short, something that calls its model to mind, though the image itself is not the model. Socrates cannot force Alcibiades to be virtuous, and he cannot show him virtue itself; images of virtue, though, might turn Alcibiades toward the truth. Socrates' images of virtue point Alcibiades toward genuine virtue – they are images of ‘what is itself necessarily beyond images’.Footnote 24 By presenting Alcibiades with images, Socrates urges him toward virtue.
It is not only Socrates' actions and nature, though, that give rise to such virtue. Beautiful images appear inside Socrates' λόγοι, which also resemble Silenus statues, according to Alcibiades:
If you were to listen to his λόγοι, at first they'd strike you as totally ridiculous … He's always going on about pack asses, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, or tanners; he's always making the same tired old points in the same tired old ways … But if you see them when they open up, if you go behind their surface, you'll realize that no other λόγοι make any sense. They're truly worthy of a god, bursting with images of virtue (ἀγάλματ' ἀρετῆς). (221e1–222a4)
Again images: Socrates' words burst with images of virtue, not with virtue itself. Those words, nevertheless, are of ‘great – no of the greatest – importance for anyone who wants to become truly beautiful and good’ (τῷ μέλλοντι καλῷ κἀγαθῷ ἔσεσθαι, 222a4–6). Socrates and his λόγοι are bursting with images, but those images help bring forth virtue.
Images might very well urge someone toward virtue, but Diotima describes the true lover as giving birth ‘not to images of virtue (οὐκ εἴδωλα ἀρετῆς) … but to true virtue’ (212a2–5). Why stress the opposition between truth and image if one can promote the other? Again, the lower lovers suggest an answer: the lower lovers were pregnant with virtue and produced λόγοι. Obviously virtue is not discourse, but speaking and arguing about virtue are the ‘customary activities in which [a virtuous person] should engage’ (209b7–c1). They speak and argue in order to educate (209c1–2), and for the sake of the proper ordering of cities and households, since the latter is ‘by far the greatest and most beautiful part of wisdom’ (209a5–7). Like Socrates, whose speech bursts with images that are for the sake of true virtue, the less successful lovers teem with words that promote virtue. As these latter are less successful, their words do not in fact generate true virtue: they produce only phantoms, only images of virtue.Footnote 25 In a sense, the successful lover picks up just where the lower lovers leave off – the lower lover begets nothing but images of virtue; the successful lover is full of images, but his images are for the sake of true virtue. Diotima had described the true lover as giving birth not to images of virtue, but to true virtue. The fact that Socrates is filled with images does not distance him from that true lover, but rather confirms his success: Socrates' images bring forth the virtue of others. Just like the images in Alcibiades' speech, Socrates' images are ‘for the sake of the truth’, for the sake of true virtue.
IV
Alcibiades, of course, leaves us one more problem: on his way to ignominy, sacrilege and assassination he, of all people, clearly lacks virtue.Footnote 26 If the true lover brings forth true virtue in others, must Alcibiades' failure not show that Socrates has failed? Indeed, Alcibiades not only lacks virtue: he also shows little or no desire to actually work toward the virtue and wisdom that he praises. In his past conversations with Socrates he claims to be interested in improving himself (as at 218d), but none of his actions substantiate those claims.Footnote 27 Alcibiades does not seem stuck at the stage of loving beautiful bodies – he's chasing Socrates of all people, no looker on any account.Footnote 28 Nevertheless, Alcibiades' attempted seduction of Socrates (217a–219d) presents a clear example of the former's attachment to the particular instead of the eternal. Being rejected humiliated Alcibiades ‘deeply’, but he ‘couldn't bear to lose [Socrates’] friendship' (219d7–8). Although Alcibiades says that he desires Socrates for his wisdom, he treats the relationship as an end in itself rather than as another rung on the ladder.Footnote 29 Alcibiades not only lacks true virtue: he also lacks the desire to move upward toward virtue.
It does not seem that true virtue has been born in Alcibiades. Should we therefore conclude that since Socrates and his images have failed to bring forth virtue in Alcibiades, Socrates is not the true lover Diotima described? That reading must remain open, but recall that Diotima's description of the successful lover mentions not only birth but also nurture: ‘The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it’ (212a5–6). Perhaps Socrates and his images generated virtue in Alcibiades, but that virtue perished owing to lack of nourishment? Indeed, Alcibiades' malnourished virtue might offer an account of his spectacular failure:Footnote 30 like the misdirected reason discussed in Republic 7, which helps vicious clever people accomplish greater evil (518e–519a), perhaps Alcibiades' infant virtue – his promise as a person and a statesman – in part explains the tragic proportion of his demise.
Alcibiades is certainly a promising character, but his demise comes quickly and spectacularly. It might seem less than fair to say that the glimmer of virtue in him is the ‘true virtue’ Diotima describes. On the other hand, perhaps even Alcibiades' brief turn toward virtue should be called true virtue. After all, it's enough to make tears ‘come streaming down [Alcibiades’] face' (215e), and he claims to have been bitten by philosophy in his heart (217e–218a). The pains Alcibiades recounts have little to do with his reputationFootnote 31 or his good looks: he sounds, albeit for a vanishingly small moment, genuinely concerned about his way of life. He sounds, in other words, truly – if briefly – virtuous.
Perhaps we should nevertheless abandon Alcibiades. Perhaps a passing moment of shame is not virtue, at least not true virtue. Would that show Socrates a failure? I don't see why it must. He may not have given birth to true virtue in Alcibiades, but doesn't Plato himself provide us with at least one example of a success? If Plato isn't truly excellent, then I don't know who is. Even if Socrates failed with Alcibiades, he's certainly fathered at least one truly virtuous progeny.
But if Socrates might reasonably be seen as generating at least a turn toward virtue in Alcibiades, why the failure to generate true virtue, or to nurture that excellence? Should we, finally, blame Socrates for this particular failure; should we blame Socrates for Alcibiades? Many have considered this question, and I would join the majority in appealing to Alcibiades' own words:Footnote 32
[Socrates] makes me admit that my political career is a waste of time, while all that matters is just what I most neglect: my personal shortcomings, which cry out for the closest attention. So I refuse to listen to him; I stop my ears and tear myself away from him … (216a4–7)
Had Alcibiades only listened, he here seems to admit, he might have avoided tragedy and instead come closer to virtue. If it is indeed Socrates' images that turn us toward virtue, then our best hope is to follow Alcibiades not in his life but in his speech, and keep our eyes on those images that are for the sake of the truth.Footnote 33
