Week 3

Eryximachus: Man’s art to cure disorderly bodies, and nature’s indifference to love

October 7, 2025 6:30 PM - 8:00 pm

Eryximachus is silent about law, replacing it with art (medicine), and speaks of love as a cosmic, natural force that governs not only the souls of human beings, but the bodies of animals and even the plants (186a). In this materialistic, rationalistic, universalizing account, what is special or distinctive about human love? (Could distinctively human love depend on law?) What gives rise to disharmony, disease, and disorder (187c-188a), and why does nature need to be “corrected” by the medical art? How are we to understand art (and mind) as body? Is Eryximachus’ almost clinical detachment from love consistent with self-awareness?

Reading: 185c – 189b

Readings are from Plato’s Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete (Univ. of Chicago, 2001).