Paradoxical Perpetual Longings: Platonic Eros during Times of Plague

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Thought and Philosophy I

Abstract

In this paper, I imagine how eros, as depicted by Aristophanes and Socrates in Plato’s ‘Symposium,’ might be transformed during times of plague. First, I lay out four expressions of that mysterious god, force of nature or impulsion of mind identified in ‘Symposium’: the pursuit of one’s lost other half, procreation, the pursuit of glory or remembrance, and the pursuit of wisdom. What all of these expressions of eros share, I contend, is an inability to satisfy the longing which drives them. After analyzing Aristophanes and Socrates’ speeches, I argue that the well from which eros springs seems to be none other than human mortality. If eros does emerge from our inevitable death, then we might wonder what would happen to expressions of eros when confronting mortality is unavoidable. Drawing on Priscilla Wald’s work on the outbreak narrative - the surprisingly formulaic pattern found in fictional, historical and epidemiological depictions of communicable disease first laid out in Thucydides’ account of the plague of Athens - I argue that pandemics not only force us to confront mortality and thus the futility of erotic longings, but that they also transform the objects of eros identified in ‘Symposium.’ When basic human contact risks life and limb, that which is typically felt to be one’s own, such as one’s city, kin, lover, and body, may become that which is most threatening and foreign. I analyze Thucydides’ account of the plague in these terms, considering how the pestilence renders the familiar foreign, the beautiful ugly, and the objects of longing objects of aversion. Putting ‘Symposium’ in dialogue with ‘The Peloponnesian War’ illuminates several limitations of eros, and also invites us to consider how the plague might have influenced Alcibiades, a key figure known in both texts for erotic longings that proved politically and personally destabilizing.

Author

• Rachel Wagner, University of Toronto