Martha Nussbaum writes about The Speech of
Alcibiades in The Symposium. I found
this part of the Symposium confusing. I
think Alcibiades is a handsome man who shows up to the party drunk, and when he
asks Socrates to tell him everything he knows, then something happens and
Alcibiades goes from hating Socrates to loving him, and then he wants to be
with Socrates and he wants Socrates to teach him how to be the best man he can be,
and he wants to go to bed with Socrates.
At the end he goes under Socrates’ cloak. I am not sure what exactly happens in this
book, but I know the symposium is about erotic love and often discusses
beauty. Perhaps this is just Plato
putting a positive light on Socrates; showing that Socrates is desirable and
that Knowledge is desirable? I did find
this book to be humorous. And maybe this
was just a way for him to make his theory of the Forms desirable.
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