n)? What does Socrates really think of Agathon's speech? Socrates says he can only speak in his own manner; what is his own manner?When Socrates says he would just like to ask Agathon a few question before he embarks on his own speech, picture Columbosaying the same thing (in his rumpled trenchcoat, with his mussed-up hair and that vague screwy look in his eye). Look out!His meth od of examination has been named the "Platonic dialogue," in which he draws out the truth by asking what seem tobe ridiculously simply questions. Watch him.Top of p. 24: "whether love desires that of which love is"--you might more clearly translate "does he long for what he is in lovewith?" To what admission does he bring Agathon in the middle of page 25?Diotima. A woman. A woman so wise that she is wiser than the wisest man who ever lived: Socrates. Notice that she usesthe same kind of examination technique that Socrates does. We know nothing about her. What do you think? Did Socratesinvent her? Did Plato? We cannot know. Page 26, line 5: "right opinion" = "correct opinion." What is "a mean"? She says love is"a great spirit," a "daemon." How does her (or is it Socrates'?) definition of love differ from those we have already read?What i s wisdom? What is virtue?What do all men [i.e., people] love? Why is beauty so important? Why is death so important? Why is it important to havepoets and artists in any society? What is "true" love between two people like? Lycurgus and Solon were great Greek lawgiver swhose ideas about law survive to the present day.Notice Diotima's "even you" reference in the middle of p. 32. She uses the same deprecating (look it up) language withSocrates that he uses of himself. Why? "Forms" are an important idea in Plato's work. Plato (and perhaps Socrates) holdsthat we kno w that a chair is a chair (and not a camel) because there is an eternal, unchangeable, non-physical "form" of achair that we know. We, in effect, (unconsciously) compare ...
