9 - Erôs before and after tripartition

Summary

This chapter compares the accounts of the nature, aims, and activity of erôs in the Symposium and the Phaedrus and assesses the evidence for the impact of tripartition. Unlike the Phaedrus, the Symposium contains very little about the nature of the soul. Socrates argues that the desire for good things and happiness manifests itself in creative activity in the presence of beauty because this is the distinctively mortal way in which one can achieve a share of happiness. Desiring agents are distinguished in the Symposium not by being dominated by a distinctive part of the soul, but by different specifications of the good central to the happy life, and in the different ways in which they try to secure that good. The Symposium is concerned to explore the role of erôs in the good life, and each speaker is to praise erôs.