King's College London. Department of Philosophy

Philip Krinks.

The consensus, that Plato's Symposium is only loosely unified, with the early speeches of little interest and the speech of Alcibiades an appendix, is to be rejected. Instead, the dialogue forms a complex, unified reflection on what it is for a human being to progress and on the kind of completion to be found in human life. -- The call to praise erōs unifies the first six speeches: in the context of contemporary attacks, erōs stands in need of defence. These speeches demonstrate the availability of defences, individually coherent, but mutually inconsistent, each expressing a view of the human condition. Each speech also reflects on methodology, progressively modifying encomiastic convention. Phaedrus commits to showing eros causes virtue, but a further principle is found necessary by each symposiast: specificity, completeness, understanding power, and praising characteristics directly, respectively. -- Socrates finds truth also necessary, but lacking in that apparently progressive sequence of defences. He follows the others' principles but in reverse order, turning things literally back to front. Socrates shows how erōs leads to acts which yield a reputation for virtue in the eyes of others, and so immortality. But he then says that such virtue is a false semblance, unless someone experiences a progressive development in her own life, forming a conception of absolute beauty. How such a person looks in the eyes of others is not said. -- Alcibiades' praise of Socrates is no less a defence, since Socrates was no less under attack. Alcibiades unwittingly answers the question how Socrates looked in the eyes of others. His method, images for the sake of truth, creates a partial defence of Socrates. Alcibiades competes with Plato's whole creation, revealed as a competing set of images for the sake of a different tmth, about Socrates and about erōs.

The Unity of Plato's Symposium

Developing a Defence of Eros

Luke Brunning

This thesis examines our relatedness to roles. Section one presents aspects of Christine Korsgaard's recent work as a loose theory of roles. To summarise: Roles are normatively structured forms that we have to identify with to render them part of ourselves. Identification doesn't require reflection about roles. We think about them if we are tempted to violate their norms. Finally, the fact that we have many roles generates an ethical demand to integrate them. The rest of section one argues that Korsgaard's conception of identification is not sufficient to account for the complexities of our relatedness to roles. Section two develops a richer account of role-relatedness by considering Erving Goffman's notion of "attachment" to a role. I argue that attachment is normative; that how we comport ourselves to a role is open to critique. Then I argue that this normativity is itself a constituent part of the role in question. It is internal to a role, and not accounted for by a general interpretation of a generic form of relatedness that might hold between a person and many roles. I also consider whether attachment has cognitive and affective aspects, and defend my view against alternatives. Section three considers reflective role-attachment. I argue, contra Korsgaard, that we think about roles in many contexts and, significantly, such thought can be problematic. Firstly, reflection can be self-defeating if it is a normative aspect of the role in question that one refrains from reflecting about it. Secondly, reflection on a role might reify it. Various kinds of reification are considered. They are ethically problematic because reification can precipitate alienation which, I argue, impedes on a flourishing life. The final section draws upon earlier conclusions to argue that Korsgaard is wrong to suggest we need to integrate our roles. Integration might generate alienation.

King's College London. Department of Philosophy

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