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Re: Ourania versus Pandemos

Posted by Pharmakon on 2025-December-2 14:00:41, Tuesday
In reply to Re: Ourania versus Pandemos posted by franciebrady on 2025-December-2 02:12:04, Tuesday

The quote is from the speech of Pausanias in Plato's Symposium. This is the second of seven speeches about love -- and specifically boylove -- in that dialogue, coming after one attributed to Phaedrus. The whole speech of Pausanias is available at the link below.

Pausanias distinguishes between two goddesses sharing the name Aphrodite, the elder representing heavenly love and the younger earthly love. Other accounts treat these as two "epithets" or aspects of the same love goddess, Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos. This speech is the source of term "uranian" to mean homosexual in 19th Century England, and the label "Uranians" to refer to the group of English poets who wrote about the romantic or sexual love of adolescent males. (There were American poets who are sometimes included under the term Uranian, the most prominent being Walt Whitman, but in the US Whitman's own terminology "Calamites" was often used instead, derived from the similarly themed poems in the "Calamus" section of Leaves of Grass.)

Even when the speaker is Socrates, caution is required in attributing to Plato opinions he places in the mouths of the speakers in his dialogues. This is especially the case in the Symposium, since besides Socrates there are six other speakers who express a variety of views. These are actual historical figures some of whose views would have been known to Plato's readers, so even setting aside that the dialogues are dramatic works (though designed to be read, not performed) and the speeches all serve dramatic ends, Plato likely faced some constraints in what he could plausibly have them say. The speech of Pausanias is followed by speeches from Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and finally Alcibiades, so the dramatic structure strongly suggests that Plato's own view will emerge, if at all, only gradually in the interplay of his characters.

I agree with you that one of the most striking aspects of Pausanias' speech is the phrase "in this matter the good are a law to themselves." Whether or not this is really Plato's opinion, it is one worthy of consideration.

hugzu ;-p


Pharmakon
  • (https site) Speech of Pausanias from Plato's Symposium
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