Tragedy of Alcibiades in Platos Symposium Essay -- Philosophy Religio

The Tragedy of Alcibiades in Platos SymposiumIn Symposium, a weft from The Dialogues of Plato, Plato uses historical allusions to demonstrate Alcibiades frustration with both social expectations for the phallus and his unfitness to meet these expectations. Alcibiades inability to have a productive intimate alliance effectively castrates him and demonstrates the impotence caused by an overemphasis on eroticism. The tragedy of Alcibiades is that he realizes he is unable to gain virtue through sexual relationships and will then be forced to remain mortal, yet he is unable to bowdlerize his condition.Symposium is set during a festival for Dionysus, the goddess of fertility this setting emphasizes the sexual expectations of smart set that Alcibiades must confront. During fertility festivals, the Athenians would carry phalluses around the city in ribald celebration (Rudall 5)1 the phallus in Athens was a symbolism of both fertility and eroticism. The Athenians, concerned with the pot ential extinction of the human race, performed rituals during these festivals that renowned the phallus as the means of the reproduction of human life. Thus, straight relationships were reassert by the creation of children, and the guidance of the celebration of the phallus was its productive nature. This focus on productivity created a social expectation that sexual relationships should be productive.Thus, the partygoers in Symposium have gathered during a festival celebrating the fertility and productivity of heterosexual relationship to attempt to justify their homosexual relationships by eulogizing Eros. Since heterosexual relationships were justified by the production of children, a justification of homosexual relationships woul... ...s was espouse to Hipparete, daughter of Hipponicus, and had at least one son by her however, the bracing lived separately for most of their wedded life and Hipparete even attempted to disunite Alcibiades. Alcibiades also unsuccessfully at tempted to have a productive sexual relationship by impregnating Timaea, the wife of Agis, so that his descendants would become kings of the Lacedaemonians, plainly Agis realized that the son was not his and subsequently refused the royal succession. (Gregory R. Crane (ed.), The Perseus watch Plutarch, http//www.perseus.tufts. edu/cgi-bin/text?lookup=plut.+alc.+8.1&vers=englishloeb&browse=1, December 1999).5. While the charter relation of the dates of these two events is unknown, it is also unimportant. What is relevant is the relationship that Plato perceived them as having, and he likely believed them to have occurred within days.