Invitation

Plato's Symposium is a classic of, not just Western Philosophy, but also Islamic, Sufi, thought. There is a curious irony that a drinking party held over two thousand years ago now denotes a dry-and-dust academic seminar. In Sufi poetry, similarly, the Tavern and the Wine pourer (Saqi) are merely metaphors for a Platonic gnosis- no actual drinking is meant. Hinduism and Buddhism- which are unconnected to Plato's philosophy- dismiss wine as sinful and it only in Chinese philosophy that the wine cup comes again into its own in the 'pure conversation' school.

What is the great attraction of this book by Plato about a bunch of guys getting drunk? I suppose it is that there is 'truth in wine' and their axle of discourse turns upon the question it is most difficult to be honest about- why are we attracted to some people and not others? What is the basis of Love, of Friendship, of those ties which we, in our hearts, believe not even Death can break?

The Barmecides were a family of polymaths who served the Abbasid Sultans. They are familiar to us from the Arabian Nights. It was at their symposiums in Baghdad over a thousand years ago that Buddhist and Greek Philosophy were reconciled to the sacred revelations vouchsafed the great Semitic prophets. Robert Irwin gives an account here of the canonical symposium devoted to the question raised at Plato's Symposium whose echoes are still with us in every ghazal or qasidah written in any language where Sufism has spread its wings. More particularly, it is in Persian poetry- and the poetry of the languages influenced by Persian- that the question of Love- ennobling and refining Love, Platonic Love- became central to Philosophy, or, indeed, Soteriology.

The Hindus took a different path to the same destination. They had begun by considering 'suhrit prapti'- the gaining of 'like-hearted' companions- as the first step in 'Yoga'- which the great mathematician, Grothendieck, has described as the attempt to unite disparate ratocinative systems on the basis of greater generality. However, the Hindus came to see the 'Viyogini'- the woman separated from her lover- as superior even to the master Yogi. In the poetry of Amir Khusrau- Hinduism and Islam became indistinguishable- a proof that Philosophy can serve plural communities.

What about China? The Persians and Chinese compete for the title of having the best wine poetry- but whereas the wine is merely metaphorical in the best Persian verse, it is real-all-too-real and dangerously potent whether quaffed by Du Fu or Li Po.

My own feeling- perhaps because my training was in mathematical Economics- is that there is a yet stranger symposium we can audit than one where Socrates matches cups with Confucius while Qoheleth tunes David's harp. Evolutionary Game Theory is a scientific attempt to address the question of Love. It is far from perfect- even Ken Binmore's attempt to 'de-Kant' ethics with its aid is risible- but it gets us to 'open questions' in Mathematics which illuminate what Collingwood called Philosophy's 'distinctions without a difference'.

This is a sort of discourse which, simply by being alive, simply by seeking out strangeness or befriending strangers, we all participate in consciously or not and so our finding words to match what is within our hearts is itself Platonic methexis.

What do you think?