On 11 Nov 2000, at 19:42, shirley sharon-zisser wrote:
> Seduction, as Diotima taught Socrates and Socrates
> Alcibiades long before Spenser, can lead nowhere but to the empty space
> which is its cause. But en-route, if we care to listen, seduction will
> offer us fragmentary forms of truth and no-ledge worthy of the gods ...
1. We do not whether Diotima was real or fictitious, though
probably the latter. The male name "Diotomos" is common, and
among the paucity of female names we know "Diotima" is attested
from Boeotia in the early Classical period. We have absolutely no
reason to believe, however, that any living "Diotima" ever "taught"
Socrates anything.
2. Plato makes her the spokesperson in the "Symposium" to avoid
(a) the appearance of self-interest in constructing a philosophical
activity that has its roots in homosexual attraction and (b) the
appearance that Socrates is preaching or speaking down to
Agathon and his fellow guests with an eye on rhetorical victory.
3. Plato has Diotima teach Socrates ta erwtika, the erotic, not
"seduction." Anyone who says that has completely misunderstood
Plato. His whole concern here and the Phaedrus is with the
educational effort of the "erasths" toward the "eromenos," an ascent
from physical beauty to the Good. The whole passage is suffused
with irony, the irony that, as Friedrich Schlegel said, "contains and
excites a feeling of insoluble opposition between the unconditional
and the conditional, between the impossibility and the necessity of a
complete communication." Socrates' power to induce aporia in
others who use language carelessly undergoes an ironic division
into two Socrates: one continues to represent the spirit of truth-
seeking ignorance and one the priestess leading to the highest
truths. The second Socrates (priestess) even tells the first Socrates
that he may not reach the deepest mysteries of love despite her
efforts at guidance. The elaborate irony is to me sure proof Diotima
never existed.
4. I have no idea what "no-ledge" might be or its relation to space,
but whatever the signification, it doesn't lie in Plato.
==============================================
Steven J. Willett
University of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu Campus
2-3 Nunohashi 3-chome, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan 432-8012
Voice and Fax: (053) 457-4514
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