Abstract
Though the Greek custom of paiderastia is the ostensible topic of the speeches given in Plato’s Symposium, a dialogue devoted to the Greek god Eros, upon closer inspection we find that the text itself is a cleverly disguised work on politics centering on the theme of aristocratic friendship; a trope that recurs in several other Platonic dialogues. Indeed, the great irony of the Symposium is that the panegyrics on Greek paiderastia are deliberately crafted to undermine the institution and transform it into something else entirely, namely, aristocratic friendship. This accounts for the different portrait painted of Eros in the Republic, where it is most closely associated with tyranny, as opposed to the Symposium where it is portrayed as a bulwark of liberty. The underlying unity of these two works on the subject of paiderastia, and erotic love in general, has often been overlooked because Plato’s views on the topic are so nuanced that even modern experts are baffled as to what his views actually are. There are three primary reasons for this: a) The developmentalist classification of Plato’s dialogues into early, middle, and late periods assumes that his views changed over time, rendering a definitive interpretation of his overall corpus impossible. b) Plato’s writings typically take the form of dialogues leaving the reader wondering whether the interlocutors speak for themselves or for Plato. c) In each dialogue, Plato often employs a variety of arguments that may appear to contradict arguments made in other works, which suggests the absence of a unified system of Platonic thought in general. And yet, in spite of all of these considerations, it will be shown that whatever apparent discrepancies exist between individual dialogues on the topics of metaphysics or the structure of the ideal polis, by reading all of the speeches in the Symposium as expressions of Plato’s philosophy we find that what connects the Republic and the Symposium is an aristocratic conception of friendship that Plato unswervingly held is the key to both political stability and freedom.