Comparative Literature and Culture 1020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Agathon, Pederasty In Ancient Greece, Silenus
5 May 2016
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Socrates chose death by hemlock instead of exile. Not interested in a pretty speech just in the truth. Love predicated on a lack: one only desires what ones does not have (so, love only complete if incomplete) We desire what we don"t have is not only the content of this dialogue, but an answer to a question. Love is love of something, and something it lacks. What if there is a third term, between good and bad between beauty and ugliness. Diotima will suggest that there can be third term between beauty and ugly. Reminder: the symposium is a telling of tellings: Plato"s telling of glaucoma"s telling of apollodorus" telling of aristodemus" telling (i. e. what he remembered) of socrates" telling 30 years prior of what diotima told him. questions of narrative and memory. Diotima: only woman"s voice in dialogue (comes through socrates) Socrates becomes student; his knowledge comes from a woman. Love is love of what ever don"t have.
