Plato's Symposium & consciousness.

'Courage can be learned on the battlefield or in all other manner of ways. The Question, then, is how to acquire these virtues. Plato turned to ‘Symposium’.

As practiced in Athens in the Athens of Plato’s time, ‘symposia’ (literally, a ‘drinking together’) were essentially parties with plenty of wine and entertainment, usually beginning with dinner and often ending with revelry in the streets. The one difference between symposia and modern drinking parties was the institution of the ‘symposiarch’, an archon or ‘ruler’ of the symposium who, among other things, determined the ratio in which water mixed with the wine and thus the degree of inebriation.

However, symposia were not always characterised by inebriation. Sometimes the symposiarch established a more refined form, as happens in the dialogue called “The Symposium”, to make room for an evening of intelligent stimulating conversation. A symposium such as this, Plato felt, could be transformed into an ideal arena in which to practice sophrosyne, provided the ‘symposiasts’ wished it and an appropriate symposiarch could be found.

To understand what Plato had in mind, we can begin with Plato’s view that wine in appropriate controlled amounts has the dual effect of intensifying pleasure and reducing the mechanical ability to resist it. Thus, a person seeking to develop the virtue of sophrosyne could use a symposium much as an athlete might choose to train with weights. The additional denying force(that which opposes or provides resistance)resulting in correspondingly faster development.

However, as any student knows, such practice is far more effective in advancement, when done under the guidance of a skilled teacher. In a properly conducted sophrosyne, himself would be able to set up a conflict in the symposiasts between their heightened desires and the rules he established for the symposium. (This can be represented as friction, the battle between the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’.) a few simple rules would suffice, for example, not to interrupt, to listen, and to speak to the subject. As the wine took effect, the symposiasts would find this increasingly difficult to work with. By hiding an aim, and perhaps by offering mental photographic observations, the symposiarch could help the symposiasts see their conflicting desires (the expressed I’s)- recognise the higher ones and then yielding to them - over it's lower counterpart.

The wine enhances the effect by opening the symposiasts emotionally to the symposiarch’s influence.

Thus, in addition to creating opportunities to practice sophrosyne, the symposium also increases the learning value of that practice.

A crucial element in this plan is the symposiasts’ commitment to it. If they lack a clear, intentional aim to use the symposium specifically to practice sophrosyne, it will descent until it becomes just another drinking party, the symposiarch’s skill notwithstanding. Here, the use of symposia, like all esoteric techniques, become circular and self-defeating. The commitment to develop sophrosyne must be on that ‘divine fear’ or remorse which comes from seeing oneself unable to resist one’s desires or control one’s mechanicality. Helping the symposiasts to see themselves in this way, is, in turn, one of the primary purposes of such a symposium.

In summary, Plato sees the symposium first as an opportunity to acquire self-knowledge, that is, an opportunity to learn to recognise conflicting desires and to experience the consequences of an unconscious waking state. Next, it becomes an opportunity to practice sophrosyne, that is, to separate from pleasure and desires and to continue to act from the most rational side of the soul. The symposiarch and the form he creates are the first force, acting on the symposiasts to create inner conflict and to help them see, a process which is intensified by the consumption of wine. The third force is made up of ‘divine fear’ and of the symposiasts desire to work on themselves. The triad is that of regeneration: Form. Matter. Life.'