Plato's dialogue feast summary by chapters. Ancient literature in translations into Russian and other languages

Prostokniga invites readers to get acquainted with the classics of philosophy, Plato's dialogues in the work "The Feast".

"" - a dialogue dedicated to the problem of Eros (Love). At the feast, there is a conversation between the playwright Agathon, Socrates, the politician Alcibiades, the comedian Aristophanes and others.

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Analysis and summary... Structurally, the work is divided into seven dialogues with the main characters: Apollodorus, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eriksimachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Alcibiades and, of course,. Each dialogue follows in turn, complementing and developing the previous one. Conversations touch on the same theme of love, but from different angles, positions, views and opinions. Thus, Plato tried to come to a single true conclusion in exciting issues, both for philosophy and for philosophers and rhetoricians of those times. Moreover, the dialogue itself, as a literary form, is for Plato a way to achieve true knowledge.

As Yekaterina Matusova, Ph.D. in Philosophy, writes: “Socrates invents a dialogue as a means of communication - a conversation consisting of questions and answers - precisely because this form is absolutely rational: it does not affect feelings, but requires constant vigilance of the mind, which should expose thought in lies at every turn. "

That is, the result of any dialogue should ideally be real knowledge, and not an empty thought. This is necessary, first of all, so that a person who lives in the grip of a false opinion gets rid of ignorance. Indeed, for Plato's Socrates, a person who lives by opinions and false opinions, and not knowledge, is in darkness and fog, constantly chasing a shadow, all the time bumping into "objects of life." And secondly, it is necessary for a person to realize that not "all mental reasoning is true." Indeed, of two opposite reasoning about the same subject, one is at least false. But which of them is true and which is not is unclear. And from this follows the main thesis of Socratic ethics: "People sin out of ignorance (good and evil)", but this does not relieve them of moral responsibility. Therefore, for Plato and Socrates, the dialogue had another task - to find and deduce the laws by which truth can be achieved. Thus, it can be assumed that for Plato's Socrates, dialogue is not only a means, not only a rational form of conversation, it is a path of cognition, which can also be shrouded in false conjectures and opinions, which a person should get rid of as soon as possible. But if we think and speak correctly about the subject, then this still does not mean anything. As the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Toporov writes: "For Plato, the main criterion of true knowledge is only appropriate behavior."

That is, if a person comprehends the truth, then his deeds must correspond to it. Without this, truth is just an opinion.

And from this judgment follows the paraphrased Kantian moral imperative known from childhood: "do to others as you want them to do to you."

At the same time, one must understand the fact that in his work Plato never speaks in the first person. The acting hero is always Socrates (Plato's teacher), who talks with the same real people with whom he could actually communicate or really communicate. Therefore, all his ideas, as well as everything that was actually said or done by Socrates, Plato puts into his mouth. However, Plato somewhat exaggerates the image of his teacher, constructing his image in such a way as to demonstrate his perfect virtue, creating the image of a “man who has learned” and an “ideal philosopher”. And without this, the literary image of Socrates could not “expose the ignorance of the interlocutor, confusing him completely, so that he (the interlocutor) would no longer see any way out. And this is necessary so that a person, with all the depth of his essence, understands how far from the truth he is, ”says Ekaterina Matusova. And this fact should motivate a person to the courageous work of true knowledge. Indeed, for Plato, knowledge is the path that the human soul carries out independently and in no other way. Without this, it would be impossible to use the dialogues themselves, both for pedagogical and moral purposes.

But at the same time, Plato is not a biographer or chronicler, he is a philosopher and a writer who creates the text, as Yekaterina Matusova said: "subordinating it to her personal goals." So in the work "The Feast", Plato builds dialogues in such a way that Socrates was able to expose the ignorance or delusion of his interlocutors in the matter of love. In this work, Plato describes love not so much of an erotic nature, but more of a metaphysical one, subordinating it to the idea of knowledge. As already mentioned, in order for a person to take the path of comprehending the truth, he first needs to get rid of false opinions. And this is a courageous act and it is similar to a heroic deed, because too much impedes knowledge. But love is the driving force behind this labor. “It does not cease to attract those who do not yet have, to what they want to have,” says Vladimir Toporov. After all, if you look at it, the very word philosophy is translated as "love for wisdom." That is, "a philosopher is a passionately longing for reason" - writes Plato.

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At the same time, one must understand the fact that by the word love was understood and understood quite a lot. For example, for Phaedrus from the work "Feast", love was understood as the most ancient deity (feeling). Pausanias describes two loves: destructive and creative. Eriksimachus understands love as nature, which fills the essence of all things, events and actions. Aristophanes in his speech says that love is a person's striving for primordial wholeness, citing an example of the myth of the "Androgyne", when a person was born from one androgyne being: half male, the other female. Divided by the will of the gods, man and woman are looking for their soul mate to unite. Love for Aristophanes is "the thirst for and striving for integrity." And, for example, for Agathon, love is perfect. It is the beginning of life, allowing all living things to arise. But Socrates in his speech questions the words of the participants in the conversation.

As already mentioned, love for Plato's Socrates is the driving force on the path to knowledge. By the ultimate goal of cognition, we mean the achievement of good, which is beautiful. That is, "thirst for good" and "thirst for beauty" are nothing more than love. As Yekaterina Matusova says: “This thirst is innate in man because he languishes in memories of that truly beautiful, which his soul saw with his own eyes before falling into the body. She carries his reflection in herself, and he disturbs her, wanting to break through. " Therefore, for Plato, the essence of knowledge is revealed through the recollection of what is hidden in the soul, through the thirst for good, that is, through the desire of a person to remember the beautiful (truth). And at the same time, remembering the beautiful can be carried out in another person.

“Languishing in memories of heavenly beauty, the soul rushes to the person in whose guise it fancies a reflection of the sought-after beauty,” writes Ekaterina Matusova.

Love, according to Plato, is not a striving for a person, it is a striving for beauty in a person. The more a person comprehends the true, the more he “longs for good”, the more his soul “remembers”, the more he wants to see the beauty in the soul of the person to whom he felt attracted.

This attraction, according to Plato, is the lowest form of love, but a necessary stage in the ascent to its top. The striving of the human soul for happiness and immortality is the pinnacle of love. But since immortality on earth is impossible, and the soul wants to find happiness and immortality here and now, the attraction of people and souls helps in this. Through posterity, a person acquires immortality. But this immortality is relative, short-lived and imaginary. Therefore, the soul seeks to comprehend moral beauty, freeing itself from the shackles of transience. And having cognized virtue, the human soul is able to see the "source of all beauty": "Whoever is instructed on the path of love, he will contemplate the beauty in the correct order, he, having reached the end of this path, will suddenly see something amazingly beautiful in nature, that is the very thing, Socrates, for the sake of which all previous works were undertaken - something, firstly, eternal, that is, knowing neither birth, nor death, nor growth, nor impoverishment, and secondly, not in something beautiful, but in something ugly, not once, somewhere, for someone and comparatively beautiful, but at another time, in another place, for another and comparatively with another ugliness. This beautiful thing will appear to him not in the form of some face, hands or other part of the body, not in the form of some speech or knowledge, not in something else, be it an animal, earth, sky or something else, but itself by itself, always uniform in itself. " - says the priestess Diotima to Socrates. This is the ultimate goal of love attraction: purity, immortality and divine beauty.

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In general, a person who has reached the heights of love is not only completely virtuous, but also carries the features of the immortal and divinely beautiful.

Plato's dialogues are fascinating and profound. Every person who is driven by the thirst for knowledge is obliged to familiarize himself with the works of this great philosopher of all times and peoples.

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In the article we will consider the "Feast" dialogue, present its brief content. Plato's "Feast" belongs to the genre of symposias (table conversations). The rudiments of this genre are found in the literature of Ancient Greece long before the birth of this philosopher. During, for example, Homer's heroes eat, drink and have a "mutual conversation", which is described in "Iliad". And in the Odyssey, the travels of the protagonist of the work are presented with the help of his own story about them at a feast at Alkinoy, the king of the Faecians. The description of the feast made by Xenophanes - a poet and philosopher - in his elegy has also become a textbook.

The meaning of the name of the dialogue

After a plentiful meal, the guests turned to wine. That is why the word "symposion", which is used to refer to the word "feast," is translated as "drinking together." In Greek, the name "Feast" of Plato also sounds like "Symposion". The conversations of Hellenic intellectuals over a cup of wine often turned to aesthetic, ethical and philosophical topics. The eponymous "Feast", a philosophical dialogue, was also created by Xenophon, a famous contemporary of Plato and his friend.

Main theme and idea

What is the author's idea? Let's briefly analyze the work before presenting its summary. Plato's "Feast" is a dialogue, the main theme of which is discussions about love and good. According to a number of testimonies, in ancient times he had subtitles "Speeches about Love", "About Good", etc. It is impossible to say exactly when this work was created. It is believed that its most probable date is 379 BC. NS.

Platonic philosophy, long before the creation of this dialogue, put forward it was quite simple to explain what the essence of material things is. It was much more difficult to formulate the idea of the human soul. The book "Feast" (Plato), the summary of which interests us, is precisely devoted to clarifying this issue. The philosopher believes that the idea of the human soul is in the eternal striving for goodness and beauty, in a love craving for them. Concluding Plato's "Feast", we note that it consists of a short introduction and conclusion, as well as seven speeches of the participants in the feast, with the help of which the main idea is revealed.

Introduction

Plato, in the introduction to his dialogue, describes the meeting of Apollodorus with Glaucon. The latter asks Apollodorus to tell about the feast, which was given about 15 years ago in the house of the poet Agathon. At this feast, there was talk of love. Apollodorus says that he himself did not participate in it, but he can convey the dialogues that were conducted there, according to Aristodemus, one of the participants.

Then Apollodorus tells how Aristodemus accidentally met Socrates on the street. The philosopher went to dinner at Agathon's and decided to invite him along. Pausanias, one of those present at the feast, after it began, invited the participants to make a speech in honor of Eros.

Phaedrus speech

In his speech, Phaedrus said that Eros, according to the assurances of Parmenides and Hesiod, is the most ancient of the deities. He doesn't even have parents. The power given by Eros is incomparable with any other. The lover will not abandon the object of passion to the mercy of fate, and the beloved is noble in that he is devoted to the lover.

Pausanias' speech

He draws attention to the fact that love attraction is not always sublime. It can also be base. Pausanias believes that there are two Eroths, since the goddesses of Aphrodite, whom many recognize as his mother, are also two. Aphrodite Heavenly is the eldest of them, this is the daughter of Uranus. The younger one (Aphrodite the Vile) is the daughter of Dione and Zeus. Thus, there are two Eros - the vulgar and the heavenly - which are very different from each other.

Noble heavenly love is a feeling for a man who is smarter and more beautiful than a woman. Such love cannot be called frivolous lust. This is a noble and dignified feeling. Everything is allowed to the one who is embraced by it, but only in the sphere of mind and soul, for the sake of perfection and wisdom, and not for the sake of the body. Such a person commits selfless acts.

Eriksimachus' speech

Further, one amusing episode is described by Plato ("The Feast"). Its summary is as follows. The turn to speak after Pausanias was to pass to Aristophanes, the famous comedy writer. However, he was very drunk and could not cope with the hiccups. The floor was given to the doctor Eriksimach.

In his speech, he says that Eros lives not only in man. He is in all nature. The fact that there are two Erots is even necessary, since the essence of life is to maintain feelings in harmony. The same can be said for medicine. In it, the doctor's task is to ensure a balance between healthy and sick beginnings. The same can be said about music, about its harmony of rhythm and sound. The same applies to the weather. Various natural forces (humidity and dryness, cold and warm) only make the year abundant when they “merge” (in an act of love) with each other “harmoniously” and “judiciously”. Even fortune-telling and sacrifices are acts of harmonious union of gods and people.

Aristophanes' speech

Meanwhile, Aristophanes' hiccups pass, and he takes the floor. It is his speech that Plato further describes ("The Feast"). The summary of the words of the comedian boils down to the myth composed by him that the people who inhabited the earth in ancient times were androgynous - both women and men. They had 4 legs and arms, 2 faces looking in opposite directions, 2 pairs of ears, etc. When such a person was in a hurry, he moved, rolling with a wheel on 8 limbs.

Since the androgynes were very strong and outraged Zeus with their outrage, he ordered Apollo to cut each of them into 2 halves. The female and male halves were scattered on the ground. However, the recollection of the former connection gave rise in people to the desire to look for each other in order to restore the former fullness.

Aristophanes concludes that Eros is the desire of the halves to each other to restore their original nature and integrity. However, this is possible only if they honor the gods, since in the case of wickedness, the gods are able to cut people into even smaller pieces.

We turn to Agathon's speech and present its summary. Plato's "Feast" is a dialogue that takes place in the house of this particular person.

Agathon's speech

The speech at the feast after Aristophanes is held by the poet Agathon, the master of the house. With poetic fervor, he praises the following properties of Eros: body flexibility, tenderness, eternal youth... According to Agathon, the god of love does not tolerate any violence in the passion he evokes. Feeling roughness in someone's soul, he leaves her forever. Eros gives courage, prudence, justice, wisdom to a person. Agathon believes that love is the most worthy of the leaders. It is for him that all people must follow.

Socrates' speech

The book "Feast" (Plato), perhaps, is most interesting precisely in the speech of Socrates. The words spoken by Agathon caused a violent reaction from the audience. Socrates also praises her, but in such a way that a restrained contradiction to the poet is caught in his speech. The philosopher ironically notes that a commendable speech is attributing to its subject a huge number of beautiful qualities, without thinking about whether this subject has them or not. The philosopher declares that he intends to speak only the truth about Eros.

Socrates in his speech resorts to maieutics - the dialectical method, his favorite. The author describes how, conducting a dialogue with Agathon and asking him questions skillfully linked to each other, the philosopher gradually forces the interlocutor to abandon what he has just said.

Socrates says that love is a person's ardent desire for something. However, you can only desire passionately when you feel the need for it. You need something that you yourself do not have. Since Eros is love for goodness and beauty, it follows from this that he himself is devoid of goodness and beauty. This, however, does not mean that this god is ugly and evil, because he is inevitably inherent in a craving for the good. Rather, Eros is somewhere in between these two extremes. He does not have the fullness of life, so he strives for it. And if he does not possess this completeness, then he cannot be called a god. Thus, the genius of love is something between a mortal and an immortal being. Staying between gods and people, Eros connects human nature with divine nature.

Socrates goes on to relate the myth of how this god was conceived. It happened at the birthday party of Aphrodite in the garden of Zeus. The god Poros (Wealth), who fell asleep from the intoxicating nectar, participated in the conception; and the Beggar Singing (Poverty). Eros, who was born from this connection, is poor, rude and ugly, like a mother. However, he strives for completeness, for the perfect and beautiful, thanks to the properties of his father. Eros strives for all kinds of good qualities: not only for beauty, but also for heroism and courage. He seeks wisdom, therefore he devotes his life to philosophy, staying in the middle between ignorance and wisdom. After all, if Eros managed to know the essence of being, then he would begin to own it, and therefore would stop striving for it, as Socrates believes.

The erotic hierarchy described by him continues Plato's "Feast" dialogue. in relation to love, it develops into a whole system. He disposes of manifestations of this feeling as their spiritual qualities increase. Falling in love only with the body, after a while we acquire the idea of Beauty, which unites all beautiful bodies into a single alluring symbol. However, through her, a person gradually begins to love the soul more than the body. This is how the image of the Beautiful Soul appears. part of our being) after a while, thanks to this craving, acquires a thirst for science and wisdom. From separate sciences, man then proceeds to the idea of the Beautiful, which is the limit of the desires of all people.

Alcibiades' speech

Let us continue to describe Plato's dialogue "The Feast", a summary of which is given in the review. Further, the author talks about how Alcibiades bursts into the feast. He is drunk, surrounded by a band of revelers. The guests at the feast barely manage to explain to Alcibiades the essence of the conversation. He is asked to express his opinion about Eros. However, having familiarized himself with the content of the speech of the previous speaker, he fully agrees with him. In his words, the theme of love in Plato's "Feast" does not receive further development. Since he has nothing to add about Eros, Alcibiades decides to make a speech in honor of the great philosopher Socrates.

He compares the appearance of the philosopher with the Silenos (companions of Dionysus) and with Marsyas, an ugly satyr. However, Alcibiades notices that when he listens to Socrates, his heart beats faster, and tears flow from his eyes. The same thing happens with many other people. Socrates makes us live in a new way with his speeches and avoid unworthy actions. In the divine words of a philosopher, one can find the answers to all the questions that are asked by those who yearn to achieve the highest nobility.

Socrates' behavior is also impeccable. Alcibiades participated with him in a military campaign and was amazed at the philosopher's heroism and his great physical endurance. Socrates saved his life in battle, and then modestly refused the reward for it. This person is not like other people, both ancient and modern.

Plato, conveying the speech of Alcibiades in his work, brings us to the idea that it is in Socrates that the features of the "homeless", "not shod", "rude", "ugly", "poor", but inseparable from the desire for "perfect "And" wonderful "genius. This concludes the philosophical reasoning in Plato's dialogue "The Feast", a brief retelling, analysis and general information which are outlined in this article. It remains for us to describe only the finale of this work.

Conclusion

After the speech of Alcibiades, a small-volume conclusion is presented, which ends Plato's dialogue "The Feast". Its summary is not of great interest from the point of view of philosophy. It tells how the guests of the feast gradually disperse. This concludes the summary we have described. Plato's "Feast" is a work to which many philosophers still refer today.

Painting by A. Feuerbach

Very briefly: A philosophical text about the nature of love and its types, presented in the form of a conversation between the ancient Greeks who praise the god Eros. The central place is occupied by Socrates' ideas about the beautiful, the essence of which is good.

Apollodorus and his friend

Apollodorus, at the request of a friend, when meeting him, talks about the feast at Agathon, where Socrates, Alcibiades and others were and speeches about love were made. It was a long time ago, Apollodorus himself was not present there, but learned about the conversations of those from Aristodemus.

On that day, Aristodemus met Socrates, who invited him to dinner with Agathon. Socrates lagged behind and came to visit later. After supper, those present reclined and in turn spoke a word of praise to the god Eros.

Phaedrus Speech: The Earliest Origins of Eros

Phaedrus calls Eros the oldest god, he is the primary source of the greatest blessings. There is no "greater good for a young man than a worthy lover, and for a lover - than a worthy lover." The lover is ready for any deeds for the sake of his beloved, even to die for his sake. But it is the devotion of the beloved to the lover that especially delights the gods, for which the beloved are honored with greater honor. As an example, Phaedrus cites Achilles' revenge for the murder of his admirer Partocles.

After all, the lover is more divine than the beloved, because he is inspired by God.

It is the mighty god of love, Eros, who is able to "endow people with valor and give them bliss."

Pausanias Speech: Two Eros

There are two Eros: vulgar and heavenly. Eros vulgar gives love to people who are insignificant, heavenly love is, first of all, love for young men, for a creature more intelligent and sublime than a woman. Such love is a concern for moral improvement:

Low is that vulgar admirer who loves the body more than the soul ... One has only to bloom the body, as it "flies away" ... And whoever loves for high moral dignity, he remains faithful all his life ...

It is commendable if the beloved young man accepts the courtship of the admirer and learns from that wisdom. But the feelings of both should be absolutely sincere, there is no place for self-interest in them.

Eriksimachus Speech: Eros is Spilled Throughout Nature

The dual nature of Eros is manifested in all that exists. Moderate Eros and unbridled Eros must be in harmony with each other:

After all, the healthy and diseased beginnings of the body ... are different and dissimilar, and the dissimilar strives for the dissimilar and loves it. Consequently, a healthy beginning has one Eros, and a sick person has another.

It is necessary and beautiful to please the moderate God and to honor him; it is necessary to resort to the vulgar Eros carefully, so that he does not give rise to intemperance. Fortune-telling and sacrifices help to establish friendly relations between people and the gods.

Aristophanes' Speech: Eros as Man's Striving for Primordial Integrity

Aristophanes tells the myth about androgynes - ancient people, consisting of two halves: two modern people... Androgynes were very strong, for the decision to attack the gods Zeus cut them in half.

... when the bodies were cut in half, each half lustfully rushed to the other, they hugged, intertwined and, eagerly wanting to grow together, did not want to do anything separately.

Since then, the androgynous halves have been looking for each other, wanting to merge together. Through the union of man and woman, the human race continues. When a man converges with a man, the satisfaction from intercourse is achieved. The quest for wholeness is the quest to heal human nature.

Men, descended from the former man and who are attracted to each other, Aristophanes calls the most worthy: they are by nature the most courageous.

Thus, the desire for integrity and the pursuit of it are called love. Before ... we were one thing, but now, because of our injustice, we are separated by God ...

Agathon's speech: the perfections of Eros

Eros is the most perfect god. He is the bearer of the best qualities: beauty, courage, discretion, skill in arts and crafts. Even the gods can regard Eros as their teacher.

Socrates humbly notes that he is in a quandary after Agathon's so beautiful speech. He begins his speech with a dialogue with Agathon, asking him questions.

Socrates' speech: Eros's goal is the mastery of the good

Eros is always love for someone or for something, the object of this love is what you need. If Eros needs beauty, and goodness is beautiful, then he also needs goodness.

Socrates described Eros as if based on the story of a Mantinean woman, Diotima. Eros is not beautiful, but not ugly, not kind, but not evil, which means that he is in the middle between all the extremes. But since he is neither beautiful nor kind, he cannot be called a god. According to Diotima, Eros is not a god or a man, he is a genius.

The purpose of geniuses is to be interpreters and mediators between people and gods, transmitting to the gods prayers and sacrifices of people, and to people the orders of the gods and rewards for sacrifices.

Eros is the son of Poros and the beggar Singia, therefore he personifies the middle between his parents: he is poor, but "like a father, he is drawn to the beautiful and perfect." Eros is brave, brave and strong, thirsts for rationality and achieves it, he is busy with philosophy.

Eros is love for beauty. If beauty is good, then everyone wants it to be his lot. All people are pregnant, both physically and spiritually. Nature can be freed from the burden only in the beautiful.

The intercourse of a man and a woman is such a permit. And this is a divine matter, for conception and birth are the essence of the manifestation of the immortal principle in a mortal being ... which means that love is a striving for immortality.

Caring for offspring is a striving for the eternal, in eternity you can achieve beauty - good.

A drunken Alcibiades appears. He is offered to say his word about Eros, but he refuses: he recognizes the speech of Socrates that had been sounded before this as logically indisputable. Then Alcibiades is asked to praise Socrates.

Alcibiades' speech: a panegyric to Socrates

Alcibiades compares Socrates' speeches to the playing of the satyr Marsyas on the flute, but Socrates is a satyr without instruments.

When I listen to him, my heart beats much stronger than that of the raging Koribants, and tears flow from my eyes from his words; the same thing, as I see it, is happening with many others.

Alcibiades admires Socrates. The young man hoped to draw on his wisdom and wanted to seduce the philosopher with his beauty, but the beauty did not produce the desired effect. Alcibiades was subdued by the spirit of Socrates. In joint campaigns with a fan, the philosopher showed his best qualities: courage, stamina, endurance. He even saved Alcibiades' life and refused the reward in his favor. Socrates has a unique personality compared to everyone else.

Final scene

Socrates warns Agathon against the speeches of Alcibiades: Alcibiades wants to sow discord between Agathon and the philosopher. Then Agathon lies down closer to Socrates. Alcibiades asks Agathon to lie at least between him and Socrates. But the philosopher replied that if Agathon lay down below Alcibiades, then he, Socrates, would not be able to give praise to his neighbor on the right, i.e. Agathon. Then noisy revelers appeared, someone went home. Aristodemus fell asleep, and waking up, he saw Socrates, Aristophanes and Agathon talking. Soon Alcibiades left after Socrates.

Moscow City Pedagogical University

Psychology faculty

Extramural

abstract

on the subject:

"Philosophy"

The theme of love in the work

Plato's "Feast"

Checked by the teacher:

Kondratyev Viktor Mikhailovich

Performed:

2nd year student

Correspondence department

Petrova Yulia Evgenievna

phone: 338-94-88

"The Feast" is a philosophical composition about love. The philosopher interprets everything broadly. And he speaks of love differently from the novel.

"Feast" belongs to the genre of table conversations that Plato initiated and which had analogies not only on Greek, but also on Roman soil, not only in the literature of antiquity, but also in Christian literature of the period of the formation of the Middle Ages.

The topics of table conversations changed over time, but the conversation itself was the second stage of the feast, when, after a plentiful meal, the guests turned to wine. Over a cup of wine, the general conversation was not only entertaining, but also highly intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic. Entertainment did not interfere with a serious conversation at all, only helped to clothe it in a light, half-joking form, which was in harmony with the banquet atmosphere.

Plato's "feast" was called "speeches of love." The theme of the dialogue is the ascent of man to the highest good, which is nothing more than the embodiment of the idea of heavenly love. As true sins, they speak not of love in itself, but of love that owes its existence to one of the gods. His name is Eros.

The entire dialogue is a story about a feast held on the occasion of the victory of the tragic poet Agathon in the Athenian theater. The story is told on behalf of Aristodemus, who came with Socrates and was present at the feast.

The composition "Feast" is very easy to analyze due to the fact that it is easy to trace its structure: between a short introduction and the same conclusion, the dialogue contains seven speeches, each of which interprets one or another aspect of the same theme - the theme of love. First of all, attention is drawn to the unusual logical sequence both within the limits of each of the seven speeches, and in the correlation of all speeches.

Introduction.

2. For a better understanding of the logic of the dialogue, I would like to give a plan for its speeches, indicating topics and speakers:

a) the most ancient origin of Eros (Phaedrus);

b) two Eros (Pausanias);

c) Eros is spread throughout nature (Eriksimah);

d) Eros as a person's striving for primordial integrity (Aristophanes);

e) the perfection of Eros (Agathon);

f) the goal of Eros is the mastery of the good (Socrates);

g) disagreement with Socrates (Alcibiades).

The introduction begins with a story about a meeting of a certain Apollodorus from Phaler with a certain Glaucon, as well as the latter's request to tell about the feast in the house of Agathon and the consent of Apollodorus to do this from the words of a certain Aristodemus of Kidafin, who was personally present at the feast.

This is followed by the story of Aristodemus about the circumstances preceding the feast: the meeting of Aristodemus with Socrates, his invitation to the feast, Socrates being late, the gracious meeting of Aristodemus in the house of Agathon and the proposal of one of the guests, Pausanias, not only to take up the feast, but to each of its main participants to say a commendable speech to Eros, the god of love.

* With the consent of all the other participants in the feast, Phaedrus begins the conversation about Eros, and moreover, it is quite logical, since he talks about the ancient origin of Eros. “Eros is the greatest god whom people and gods admire for many reasons, not least because of his origin: it is honor to be the oldest god. And the proof of this is the absence of his parents ... Earth and Eros were born after Chaos, ”that is, existence and love are inseparable and are the most ancient categories.

Phaedrus's speech is still devoid of analytical power and exhibits only the most general properties of Eros, which have been spoken about since the time of the undivided domination of mythology. Since the objective world in ancient times was as concrete and as sensible as possible, it is not at all surprising that all movements in the world were thought of as a result of love attraction. Universal gravitation, which seemed obvious in those days, was interpreted as an exclusively amorous gravitation, and it is not at all surprising that Eros is interpreted in Phaedrus's speech as a principle that is both the most ancient and the most powerful. He speaks of the greatest moral authority of Eros and the incomparable vitality of the god of love: “He was the primary source of the greatest blessings for us ... if it were possible to form a state out of lovers and their beloved ... all shameful and competing with each other ", for" ... He is most capable of endowing people with valor and bestowing bliss on them during life and after death. " In this regard, Phaedrus begins to develop the idea of the highest value of true love, reinforcing his reasoning with a story about the attitude of deities to it: when the lover is devoted to the object of his love. " A peculiar conclusion of this speech is the statement that "the lover is more divine than the beloved, because he is inspired by God, and the beloved is grateful for his devotion to the lover."

* Discourses on the nature of love continue in the second speech - the speech of Pausanias. The theory of Eros, presented in the first speech, even from the point of view of that time, seemed too general and alien to any analysis. Indeed, there is a higher principle in Eros, but there is also a lower one. Mythology suggested that the higher is something higher in space, that is, heavenly; and the doctrine of the superiority of the masculine over the feminine, traditional for the ancient world, suggested that the highest is necessarily masculine. Here Plato approached a very delicate topic, requiring caution in assessments. It is about same-sex love, therefore, the highest Eros is love between men. In ancient Greece, this was not a deviation, but rather the norm.

Two Eros and, by analogy with them, two Aphrodites, are concrete images that personify the highest and the lowest love. Since nothing in itself is neither beautiful nor ugly, the criterion of the beautiful Eros is his descent from the Heavenly Aphrodite, in contrast to the vulgar Eros, the son of Aphrodite the Poshla. Aphrodite the Poshlaya is involved in both masculine and feminine principles. Eros of Aphrodite the vulgar went and is capable of anything. This is exactly the kind of love that insignificant people love, and they love, firstly, women no less than young men, and secondly, they love their loved ones more for their bodies than for their souls, and they love those who are more stupid, caring only about how to get what you want. " alien to criminal insolence. ”So, heavenly love is love for a man, which are more beautiful, smarter than women... For lovers, everything is allowed, but only in the sphere of the soul and mind, disinterestedly, for the sake of wisdom and perfection, and not for the sake of the body.

The following statement appears to be a generalizing and not too concrete conclusion of this speech: “About any business it can be said that in itself it is neither beautiful nor ugly. Whatever we do, it is beautiful not in itself, but depending on how it is done, how it happens: if a thing is done beautifully and correctly, then it becomes beautiful, and if it is wrong, then, on the contrary, ugly. The same is with love: not every Eros is beautiful and worthy of praise, but only the one that prompts you to love beautifully. "

* The third speech is the speech of Eriksimachus. He says that Eros is not only in man, but also in all nature, in all being: “He lives not only in the human soul and not only in its striving for beautiful people, but also in many of its other impulses, and indeed in many other things in the world - in the bodies of animals, in plants, in everything that exists, for he was great, amazing, all-embracing, involved in all the affairs of people and gods. " The thought of Eriksimachus about love, spread throughout the world of plants and animals, is typical precisely for Greek philosophy.

In my opinion, his idea is interesting and astronomy has to do with love.

* Aristophanes, who speaks fourth, again returns in his speech to man, but not to his soul, but to the body, moreover, the prehistoric body. Aristophanes composes the myth of the primitive existence at the same time in the form of men and women. The people were of three sexes. Since these people were very strong and plotted against Zeus, the latter cuts each into two halves, scatters them all over the world and makes them eternally seek each other to restore their former fullness and power. Therefore, Eros is the striving of the divided human halves to one another for the sake of restoring integrity: "Love is called the thirst for integrity and the striving for it."

Aristophanes' speech is one of the most interesting examples of the myth of Plato's work. In the myth created by Plato, his own fantasies and some generally accepted mythological and philosophical views are intertwined. The generally accepted romantic interpretation of this myth as the myth of two souls striving for mutual union has nothing to do with Plato's myths about monsters, divided in half and eternally hungry for physical union.

* Then the floor is taken by the owner of the house - Agathon. Unlike previous speakers, he lists individual specific essential properties of Eros: beauty, eternal youth, tenderness, flexibility of the body, perfection, non-recognition of any violence by him, justice, prudence and courage, wisdom in all arts and crafts and in the ordering of all the deeds of the gods.

* And now it is the turn of Socrates. His speech in "The Feast" is, of course, central. Socrates leads it in his usual manner, in his own way. He does not deliver a monologue, but asks questions and listens to them. Chooses Agafon as a partner. Socrates' speech has its own peculiarity, since he immediately says that he will tell the truth about Eros.

It turns out that everyone else was not telling the truth. At the beginning of the conversation, Agathon, agreeing with one of the remarks of Socrates, says: "I cannot argue with you, Socrates." To which Socrates replies: "Neti, my dear Agathon, you cannot argue with the truth, and arguing with Socrates is not a tricky business."

Further, the theme of immortality develops. For his sake, love exists, and there is plenty of evidence of this. For example, take ambition. “You will be surprised at its meaninglessness if you don’t remember what I said and lose sight of how obsessed people are with the desire to make their name loud,“ so that on

eternal time to acquire immortal glory ", for the sake of which they are ready to expose themselves to even greater dangers than for the sake of their children, spend money, endure any hardships, and finally die."

Another way to achieve immortality is to leave corporeal offspring, that is, to multiply oneself. Many people say: “I live for the sake of my children,” these people strive to establish themselves in genes and thoughts, for this there is love.

Now about the path of love. There is something like the science of love. You need to start at

youth with striving for beauty. In the contemplation of the beautiful in itself, only a person who sees it can live. In my opinion, we must strive for the best from the very beginning, gradually climbing "the steps higher and higher."

“I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. " (John, 14.6).

So the meaning of love is revealed.

Plato's "Feast" is so full (like "Phaedrus") of all literary, rhetorical, artistic, philosophical (and, in particular, logical) content that a more or less complete analysis of this dialogue requires a whole lot of research. The general opinion of all researchers regarding the time of the creation of this dialogue boils down to the fact that here we are faced with the mature Plato, that is, the dialogue dates back approximately to the mid-80s of the 4th century BC. e., when the author was already over forty years old. This maturity affects the logical methods of dialogue. Generally speaking, Plato was very reluctant to indulge in purely abstract logic. This latter always lurks under the cover of mythological, poetic and symbolic images. But, asking oneself the question, what is the main logical construction of the "Feast" and trying to extract it from the rich artistic fabric of the dialogue, the most correct, perhaps, would be to turn his main attention to the ascent from the material world to the ideal depicted here.

Plato put forward the concept of an idea (or "eidos") in earlier dialogues. However, in the most meaningful of them, Phaedo, if we approach it with all logical rigor, Plato still limits himself almost only to pointing out the very principle of the need to recognize for every thing (including the soul and life) its idea as well. But for the characterization of the soul and life, and especially for the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, this was not enough. After all, every insignificant, and a thing that exists only for an insignificant time also has its own idea, nevertheless, such things are temporary and it costs nothing to destroy them. At the stage of even Phaedo, Plato still does not use all the logical possibilities that arose in philosophers after he distinguished between a thing and the idea of a thing.

As for the "Feast", Plato uses here at least one very important possibility, namely, he interprets the idea of a thing as the limit of its formation. The concept of the limit is well known not only to today's mathematicians, it was also well known to Plato. He knew that a certain sequence of quantities, increasing according to a definite law, can be continued in infinity and can approach the main limit as close as he pleases, but nevertheless never reach it. It is this interpretation of the idea of a thing as its infinite limit that constitutes the philosophical and logical content of the "Feast" dialogue.

With this dialogue, Plato made a significant contribution to the history of logic, but, being a poet and mythologist, rhetorician and playwright, Plato clothed this eternal striving for a thing to its limit in what, of all everyday guises, is most distinguished by an endless striving, and the most intense striving, and exactly carried it to the area love relationship: love, after all, is also an eternal striving and also always has a definite goal, although it reaches it very rarely and for a short time.

The "Feast" dialogue belongs to the genre of table conversations (symposiums) that Plato initiated and which had analogies not only on Greek, but also on Roman soil, not only in the literature of antiquity, but also in Christian literature of the period of the formation of the Middle Ages.

Plato's "Feast" has long been attributed, not without reason, to ethical dialogues. He had a subtitle, given to him by Thrasillus, - "On the Good", and according to some testimonies (Aristotle), "The Feast" of Plato was called "Speeches of Love". Both of these subtitles do not contradict each other, since the theme of the dialogue is man's ascent to the highest good, which is nothing more than the embodiment of the idea of heavenly love.

The entire dialogue is a story about a feast held on the occasion of the victory of the tragic poet Agathon in the Athenian theater. The story is told on behalf of the disciple of Socrates, Apollodorus of Phaler. Thus, we have before us a "story within a story", a reflection of the reflection of the experience of two friends of Socrates.

The composition "Feast" is very easy to analyze because it is easy to trace its structure: between a short introduction and the same conclusion, the dialogue contains seven speeches, each of which deals with one or another aspect of the same theme - the theme of love. First of all, attention is drawn to the unusual logical sequence both within the limits of each of the seven speeches, and in the correlation of all speeches.

So, the introduction. It cannot be said that it is saturated with philosophical content, it only represents a kind of literary exposition. It also presents the main characters of the dialogue, as well as defines in general terms the theme of the entire subsequent narrative. The introduction begins with a story about a meeting of a certain Apollodorus from Phaler with a certain Glaucon, as well as the latter's request to tell about the feast in the house of Agathon and the consent of Apollodorus to do this from the words of a certain Aristodemus of Kidafin, who was personally present at the feast.

With the consent of all the other participants in the feast, Phaedrus begins the conversation about Eros, and moreover it is quite logical, since he speaks of the ancient origin of Eros. "Eros is the greatest god whom people and gods admire for many reasons, and not least because of his origin: after all, it is an honor to be the oldest god. And the proof of this is his lack of parents ... Earth and Eros were born after Chaos," that is, existence and love are inseparable and are the oldest categories.

Phaedrus's speech is still devoid of analytical power and exhibits only the most general properties of Eros, which have been spoken about since the time of the undivided domination of mythology. Since the objective world in ancient times was as concrete and as sensible as possible, it is not at all surprising that all movements in the world were thought of as a result of love attraction. Universal gravitation, which seemed obvious in those days, was interpreted as an exclusively amorous gravitation, and it is not at all surprising that Eros is interpreted in Phaedrus's speech as a principle that is both the most ancient and the most powerful. He speaks of the greatest moral authority of Eros and the incomparable vitality of the god of love: "He was for us the primary source of the greatest blessings ... if it were possible to form a state out of lovers and their beloved ... they would govern him in the best way, avoiding everything shameful and competing with each other, "for" ... He is most capable of endowing people with valor and bestowing bliss on them during life and after death. " In this regard, Phaedrus begins to develop the idea of the highest value of true love, reinforcing his reasoning with a story about the attitude of deities to it: when the lover is devoted to the object of his love. " A peculiar conclusion of this speech is the statement that "the lover is more divine than the beloved, because he is inspired by God, and the beloved is grateful for his devotion to the lover."

Discussions about the nature of love continue in the second speech - the speech of Pausanias. The theory of Eros, presented in the first speech, even from the point of view of that time, seemed too general and alien to any analysis. Indeed, there is a higher principle in Eros, but there is also a lower one. Mythology suggested that the higher is something higher in space, that is, heavenly; and the doctrine of the superiority of the masculine over the feminine, traditional for the ancient world, suggested that the highest is necessarily masculine. Therefore, the highest Eros is love between men. And since by the time of Plato they had already learned to distinguish the psychic from the bodily and value the first above the second, male love turned out to be the most spiritual love in Pausanias' speech.

Two Eros and, by analogy with them, two Aphrodites, are concrete images that personify the highest and the lowest love. Since nothing in itself is neither beautiful nor ugly, the criterion of the beautiful Eros is his descent from the Heavenly Aphrodite, in contrast to the vulgar Eros, the son of Aphrodite the Poshla. Aphrodite Poshllaya is involved in both masculine and feminine principles. Eros of Aphrodite the vulgar went and is capable of anything. This is exactly the kind of love that insignificant people love, and they love, firstly, women no less than young men, and secondly, they love their loved ones more for their bodies than for their souls, and they love those who are more stupid, caring only about how to get what you want. " alien to criminal insolence. "So, heavenly love is love for a man, who are more beautiful, smarter than women. For lovers, everything is allowed, but only in the sphere of the soul and mind, disinterestedly, for the sake of wisdom and perfection, and not for the sake of the body.

The following statement seems to be a generalizing and not too specific conclusion of this speech: “About any business it can be said that in itself it is neither beautiful nor ugly. Whatever we do, it is beautiful not in itself, but depending on how it is done, how it happens: if a job is done beautifully and correctly, then it becomes beautiful, and if it is wrong, then, on the contrary, ugly.The same is with love: not every Eros is beautiful and worthy of praise, but only the one that prompts lovely to love. "

What follows will only deepen what Pausanias said. First, it was necessary to clarify the position of opposites in Eros, translating it from the language of mythology into the language of more developed thinking - the language of natural philosophy, following the example of the opposites of cold and warm, wet and dry, etc. Thus, Eros with his characteristic opposites already received a cosmic meaning, to which the third speech is devoted - the speech of Eriksimachus. He says that Eros is not only in man, but also in all nature, in all being: "He lives not only in the human soul and not only in its striving for beautiful people, but also in many of its other impulses, and indeed in many other things in the world - in the bodies of animals, in plants, in everything that exists, for he was great, amazing, all-embracing, involved in all the affairs of people and gods. " The thought of Eriksimachus about love spread throughout the world of plants and animals is typical of Greek natural philosophy.

The second speech gives rise to another problem: the cosmic opposites outlined in it could not be thought dualistically, but it was necessary to balance them with the help of the theory of harmonious unity of the higher and the lower, showing, moreover, the inevitability of this harmonious principle of Eros and the passionate aspiration of those who turned out to be in the power of Eros. The separation of two Eroses should be subject to the need for them to be in constant harmony, "after all, this requires the ability to establish friendship between the two most hostile principles in the body and instill mutual love in them." The beneficence of the two Eroses is possible only if they are in harmony, also in the sense of the correct alternation of the seasons and the state of the atmosphere that is useful for a person. "The properties of the seasons depend on both of them. When the beginnings, warm and cold, dryness and moisture, are seized by moderate love and they merge with each other judiciously and harmoniously, the year is abundant, it brings health, does not cause much harm. But when the seasons fall under the influence of the unbridled Eros, Eros the rapist, he ruins and spoils a lot. " Finally, sacrifices and fortune-telling are also acts of love harmony, between people and gods, for this is associated "with the protection of love and its healing."

The logical continuation of both thoughts expressed in the second and third speeches is found in the fourth speech - the speech of Aristophanes. Aristophanes composes the myth of the primitive existence at the same time in the form of men and women, or ANDROGINS. Since these people were very strong and malicious against Zeus, the latter cuts each androgyne into two halves, scatters them all over the world and makes them eternally seek each other to restore their former fullness and power. Therefore, Eros is the striving of the split human halves to one another for the sake of restoring integrity: "Love is called the thirst for integrity and the striving for it."

Aristophanes' speech is one of the most interesting examples of Plato's myth-making. In the myth created by Plato, his own fantasies and some generally accepted mythological and philosophical views are intertwined. The generally accepted romantic interpretation of this myth as the myth of two souls striving for mutual union has nothing to do with Plato's myths about monsters, divided in half and eternally hungry for physical union. One can agree with the interpretation of K. Reingard, who sees in him a striving for the ancient integrity and unity of man, purely physical, instead of divinely beautiful integrity with its ascent from body to spirit, from earthly beauty to a higher idea.

The overall result of the first four speeches boils down to the fact that Eros is the primordial world wholeness, calling loving couples to unity on the basis of their irresistible mutual attraction and the search for universal and blissful serenity.

The further development of this position required the concretization of Eros as a purely vital human striving, and secondly, its interpretation with the help of a general philosophical method, not even limited to natural philosophy.

Agathon, in contrast to previous speakers, lists certain specific essential properties of Eros: beauty, eternal youth, tenderness, flexibility of the body, perfection, non-recognition by him of any violence, justice, prudence and courage, wisdom both in the musical arts and in the generation of all living things, in all arts and crafts and in the ordering of all the deeds of the gods.

But the more detailed all sorts of outlandish properties of Eros are considered, the greater the need to give them in a synthetic form, so that they follow from a single and immutable principle. This is precisely what Socrates is doing in his sixth speech, armed with much more complex method than natural philosophy, namely by the method of transcendental dialectics. For the most complete understanding of this speech, it is necessary to understand Plato's point of view in order to clearly imagine all the unproven for us, but for those times the most obvious prerequisites, in the presence of which only one can grasp the logical consistency of Socrates' concept. These premises are reduced mainly to the ancient CONCEPTIVE, but at the same time to SUBSTANTIAL ONTOLOGISM, which, when applied to the most innocent logical constructions, immediately turns them into mythology.

The first stage of this dialectic is that every phenomenon (and hence Eros) has its own subject. And if something strives for something, then it partly already has it (namely, in the form of a goal), partly it does not yet. Without this possession and non-possession, no striving at all can exist. This means that Eros is not yet beauty itself, but there is something intermediate between beauty and ugliness, between blissful fullness and eternally seeking poverty, which is what is said in the prologue of Socrates' speech. The nature of Eros is in the middle; he is the son of the heavenly Poros (Wealth) and Singing (Poverty) - says the Platonic myth. This myth, however, is far from the naivety of primitive thinking and is only a poetic illustration of that dialectical unity of opposites, without which Eros himself as a striving is impossible. This myth also testifies to Plato's contemplative-material ontologism.

The following is the simplest concept: the goal of Eros is the mastery of the good, but not any particular one, but every good and the eternal possession of it. And since eternity cannot be seized at once, it is only possible to seize it gradually, that is, conceiving and generating something else instead of oneself, it means that Eros is love for eternal generation in beauty for the sake of immortality, for generation, both bodily and spiritual, including love for poetry and public-state legislation. All living things, while it is alive, strives to generate, for it is mortal, and it wants to establish itself forever. But Plato, of course, cannot remain on the basis of such a simple and abstract conclusion. If love always seeks to generate, then, he reasoned, there is eternity, for the sake of which only all the products of love exist, physical and non-physical. In this reasoning, contemplative-material ontologism again clearly appears.

Here, the famous hierarchy of beauty arose, which has become popular for whole millennia. We like physical bodies first. However, one can speak of a given body only when there is an idea of the body in general. Physical body, taken by itself, according to Plato, is inert and motionless, but since in reality all bodies are active and mobile, there must be the beginning that moves them; and the beginning is already incorporeal, non-physical. For Plato, as for all antiquity, such a self-driving principle was what was called the soul. Without this premise, the thinkers of that time generally did not allow life and being, although the essence of the soul was defined in different ways. The soul moves and moves everything else. In contrast to it, there is something immovable, just as White color presupposes black, the top presupposes the bottom, etc. This immovable in the soul is nothing more than sciences, and all sciences presuppose for themselves the same eternal and immovable object that they are called to be aware of. The hierarchical sequence in theory is as follows: from one beautiful body to all bodies, from here to beautiful souls, from souls to sciences and from individual sciences to the limit of all sciences, to the idea of the beautiful, which is no longer subject to any changes, but exists forever and unchanged. Contemplative-material ontologism forces Plato here to teach about the limit of all sciences as an eternal and immovable idea of beauty. By this, Plato again slips from a purely logical path to the path of mythology, and his ultimate idea of beauty, proved by him with complete logical perfection, suddenly appears in a new, not entirely logical light. The doctrine of the eternal and ideal kingdom of beauty appears, which not every logician will agree with and which cannot do without the axiomatic mythology of beauty for Plato, albeit unproven, arising on the basis of unrestrained contemplative-substantial ontologism. Thus, Plato has to separate logically flawless proofs from illogical mythology, although in this doctrine of Plato about the eternal idea of beauty there is no such separation of logic and mythology. And in fact, of course, this is not just mythology. This is a mythology that is not naive and pre-reflective, but which is already constructed logically, dialectically, transcendentally. In the future, Kant's transcendentalism set itself the goal of formulating the conditions for the possibility of thinking certain objects. With Plato, this is how it turns out: in order to think of the body, one must already have the concept of the body; in order to think of the concept of the body, one must already have the concept of the soul, and in order to think of the idea of the soul, it is necessary to think of the idea by itself. This is the real TRANSCENDENTALISM, and even rather dialectical, and the ideas are objective. In Plato, a certain a priori ideal nature is conceived, which makes him for the first time possible and a posterior sensual nature. This proves the truth of the statement that Platonism is objective idealism.

However, the seventh speech in the "Feast", namely the speech of Alcibiades, does not allow us to reduce the doctrine of Plato to abstract conceptual objective idealism. The philosophical concept of Alcibiades is that in addition to the usual coincidence of internal and external, subjective and objective, ideal and real, life makes us recognize their unusually diverse and vital colorful contradictions. Socrates, it would seem, is an ideal sage who only knows that he constructs various kinds of logical categories of objective idealism. Alcibiades compares Socrates with Silenos and the satyr Marsyas. Socrates does not use a flute to fascinate listeners, but speeches, forcing people to live in a new way and be ashamed of their unseemly actions. Socrates is unusually physically enduring, courageous and brave - this is evidenced by his heroic behavior in the war. Socrates also has an incomparable personality. To a large extent, Socrates is such and is both historically and in the image of Alcibiades. And nevertheless, all this Socratic-Platonic transcendental dialectic and mythology is presented in the form of an extremely deep and acute general life irony, perfectly proving to us that Plato is not just an objective idealist, but also a very passionate, contradictory, eternally seeking nature. Objective idealism, as it is given in "The Feast", in addition to the transcendental-dialectical doctrine of ideas, is permeated from beginning to end with a painfully sweet sensation of life, in which the ideal and the material are hopelessly confused and mixed - sometimes even to complete indistinguishability. This is also confirmed by the as if accidentally thrown remark of Socrates that the true creator of tragedy must also be the creator of a true comedy, which is not just an accidental aphorism of Plato, but is the true result of the entire philosophy of ideas in The Feast.

From a logical point of view, the most original is the text about the hierarchy of Eros, which ends with the eternal idea of beauty. Digressing from Platonic poetry, mythology, rhetoric and drama, we find something that we did not have in previous dialogues or had in embryonic form. It is the idea of a thing that is presented here as the LIMIT OF THE FORMATION OF A THING. And the concept of a limit has already been proven in modern mathematics and physics. Consequently, this is one of the great achievements of Plato, which will never die, no matter what mythological-poetic, symbolic and rhetorical-dramatic garments it is actually clothed in a specific text of Plato's dialogues.

Central to the "Pir" is the problem of the MIDDLE. Namely, "correct opinion" is a cross between knowledge and sensibility. In the "Feast" there is not only a mention of him, but the problem of Eros is interpreted here directly as the same problem of correct opinion. Consequently, what is new in the concept of Eros is that "knowledge" and "doxa" are accepted here much richer and more fully, since here it is not just "knowledge" and "doxa", but what can be called "feeling", "emotion "and so on. In" The Feast ", although in a not too explicit form, there is the problem of the connection between knowledge and sensibility, terminologically fixed as the problem of the middle. The novelty of the "Feast" in this respect lies in the fact that both named spheres are given as one, single and indivisible sphere, in which it is no longer possible to distinguish either one or the other. Knowledge is so closely combined with sensuality that their complete identity is obtained. From Poros and Singing, Eros is born, which is no longer either Singing or Poros, but that in which both of them were identified. All sorts of opposites have united here into one whole life, into one aggregate generation, into one becoming identity. It is here that the transcendental method first reaches its maturity; and the meaning, which he is called upon to combine with reality, only here for the first time becomes DYNAMIC SENSE, creative dynamics, the active sum of infinitely small increments. Becoming Eros, dynamic synthesis, eternal potency and principle, eternal procreation and intelligent striving - this is the result of Platonism at this stage.

The problem of combining knowledge with sensibility, as well as ideas with being, is in its essence the problem of SYMBOL. Transcendental philosophy provides a genetically meaningful interpretation of the symbol. In The Feast, as in Theetetus and Meno, the transcendental evolution of symbolism is perfectly visible. From now on, Platonism is for us a fundamental and final symbolism with a different philosophical nature of the symbol, and at this stage of Plato's philosophical development we find the SYMBOL as a transcendental principle. This is the philosophical content of Plato's "Feast".

Notes:

1. The theme of a man's love for a handsome young man, with which the dialogue "Feast" is so saturated, should not seem so unusual if we approach it historically. Many millennia of matriarchy caused a peculiar reaction of mythological ideas of the Greeks in their social life. A well-known myth about the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus or the Aeschylus trilogy "Oresteia", in which the gods Apollo and Athena prove the superiority of the man, the hero and the leader of the clan. It is also known that the woman was deprived of rights in the Greek classical society. At the same time, the whole of antiquity differed from the new Europe by the still underdeveloped consciousness of the uniqueness of the personality, crushed by clan and then polis authorities or, in the East, by the unlimited power of a despot. In Persia, same-sex love was especially widespread, and it was from there that the custom passed to Greece. Hence the idea of the highest beauty embodied in the male body, since a man is a full member of society, he is a thinker, he makes laws, he fights, decides the fate of the polis, and love for the body of a young man, personifying the ideal beauty and strength of society, is beautiful.