Socrates, Aristophanes, and you will Agathon are left trailing discussing catastrophe and you may funny: “part of the point is actually you to definitely Socrates try trying to prove to her or him that exact same child understands (epistasthai) just how to generate both funny and you can disaster, that someone that is from the activity (techne) a heartbreaking poet is actually a comical poet also” (223d26).
An exact description, certainly, of the speeches made by the symposiasts exactly who speak prior so you can Socrates
Average poets you should never produce each other funny and you can tragedy, as they do not find out of real information and craft (techne) however, of divine motivation (Ion 534c56). Once they did find out out of passion and studies, once they was indeed craftsmen poets, they would be able to write each other comedy and you may tragedy, given that opposites will always be studied of the same interest. For this reason the comedic craft while the tragic hobby will have to feel one and exact same; just as one plus the exact same hobby, medication, works together with one another disease and you can health.
After the new Symposium, Alcibiades went out-of, allegedly on the throng out of Bacchic revelers, who bust on his lives since representatives of their seizing love into acceptance and you will flattery of one’s audience
Socrates informs us what an effective craftsman poet would be able to develop, the guy cannot tell us just what he would make. Other Platonic spokesmen are considerably more certain. “I our selves are poets,” the Athenian Stranger informs us in the Guidelines, “who possess towards the better of all of our element composed a tragedy that is the most useful and the finest; at any rate, all of our entire composition try developed as a reproduction of the finest and greatest life style-the material and this i claim is the truest tragedy” (817b15). Earlier in the same conversation, the fresh Stranger was equally direct this particular same structure, whether or not not a comedy, really does however embody comedic studies:
A person who is going to gain fundamental understanding cant understand significant matters clover in place of training absurd of them, otherwise anything, for example, instead its contrary. In case we intend to and get advantage, even towards a little measure, we cant getting big and comic also, referring to why we need to learn how to admit just what was absurd, to quit becoming involved by the our very own ignorance from it into creating or stating something absurd, as soon as we try not to must. (816d5-e5)
New Symposium are an emergency to own a keen analogous cause: it includes an imitation of just one element of such as for instance a lifestyle, specifically, what the Protagoras terms and conditions a good “symposium of beautiful and you may an excellent boys” whom “decide to try for each anybody else mettle into the shared argument” from the asking and you may responding concerns (347d3348a9). This is one way Socrates responds to help you Agathons message. It’s exactly how Diotima converses having Socrates. It will be the style of symposium Socrates attempts to re also-establish when Alcibiades “satyr-play” is gone, while the throng away from Bacchic revelers have leftover.
In lieu of the newest Regulations, however, the fresh new Symposium was a funny as well, because it also contains a replica of one’s second best type off symposium described throughout the Protagoras-one where there are poets present, and you will where in actuality the members “dispute more issues that cant end up being situated which have one confidence” (347e17).
Fundamentally, Alcibiades happens having-significantly sufficient-a good flute-lady (212c5-e3; examine 176e6-7). And although she will not gamble, the girl arrival inaugurates the fresh subsequent refuse of your symposium on the things so much more like the kind of symposium reviled regarding Protagoras since “an effective symposium away from preferred, smart fellows… just who, struggling to amuse each other the help of its own discussion, install the expense of flute-females, and spend a large amount to hear the new sound of one’s flute rather than their speak” (347c4-d2). This is the part of satyr-play regarding the Symposium-satyr graphics is actually constant into the Alcibiades speech.