Tensão, mito e filosofia: uma investigação sobre a natureza de eros no Banquete de Platão

Abstract

This paper is a study on Plato's Symposium. Its first effort is the analysis of the context in which the themes of the work under examination are developed. In view of this, the initial object of

investigation is the prologue of the text. From it, the aim is to clarify the meaning of the poetic- mythical language that pervades the entire work. However, since the Symposium is of a

philosophical nature, the tension created in it by the encounter between myth and philosophy also constitutes, here, an object of explanation. Once this tensional context is considered, the exposition and analysis of the speeches concerning the one who is recognized as the main object of philosophical investigation in the work begins: Eros/Love. In dealing with these speeches, the

hermeneutical principle is assumed that Eros, until then a god, undergoes a progressive de- divinization throughout them; and this with the aim that, by the time Socrates’ speech is reached,

Love is shown not as a god, but as a daímōn (δαίμων) — an intermediate (metaxý) between the divine and the mortal. That he bears such a title is of the utmost importance because, as this study seeks to demonstrate, it is by being this tension between opposites that, through identification with him, philosophy opens itself as a real possibility to the philosopher. That said, deepening this relationship between Eros and philosophy, the present study, on the one hand, develops the title of philosopher attributed to Love; and, on the other hand, establishes a relation between the concept of metaxý, which is proper to Love, and the concept of participation (méthexis) in Platonic dialectics, showing how, through the first concept, to some extent, Plato grounds and explains the second. Finally, it is to the purpose of Eros, in his relationship with mortals, that the research turns its attention. In human experience, Love is translated as childbirth in beauty, which may occur either in beautiful bodies or in beautiful souls. When in the body, Eros is the cause of the perpetuation of the species. When in the soul, he is the cause of virtue, culture, and knowledge. Nevertheless, the ultimate end of Eros is, in the consideration of such cases of love, to make the mortal ascend to the ultimate knowledge of the divine beautiful — the cause of the beauty in beings. This phenomenon, according to what is set forth in this work, in likeness to poetry, escapes lógos and occurs suddenly (exáiphnēs) in an instant (tò exaíphnēs) of revelation; yet, in difference, a revelation through the intellect (noûs), not through the Muse (Moûsa)