From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe family concerns favor and gratification, with a specifically erotic application when a beloved responds to a lover.
- In the SymposiumPausanias’ question is not whether every favor is pleasant but when granting favors is beautiful rather than shameful.
- In this editionThe edition deliberately keeps “gratify” across ordinary, erotic and medical uses.
- A place to readAn ordinary favor to Phaedrus.
Meaning
The family concerns favor and gratification, with a specifically erotic application when a beloved responds to a lover. It would be misleading either to sexualize every occurrence or to neutralize the courtship argument into unspecified kindness.
Use in the book
Pausanias’ question is not whether every favor is pleasant but when granting favors is beautiful rather than shameful. He supplies paired criteria: the recipient must be decent and the act performed well. His culminating defense joins the lover’s willingness to serve with the beloved’s desire for virtue. Money and political advantage fail this test, and failure to collect an expected payment does not redeem the motive. Conversely, a sincere educational aim remains beautiful even when the supposed educator proves bad.
Eryximachus broadens the field. Medicine must gratify healthy tendencies and refuse unhealthy ones; music must sustain orderly people and cultivate order in others. His handling of Common Love is not a simple command to eliminate pleasure: its pleasurable effect may be admitted carefully without implanting licentiousness. The repeated verb exposes his analogy with Pausanias while also changing what its objects are.
Alcibiades later speaks almost as though enacting Pausanias’ defense, offering Socrates gratification because he wants to become better. Socrates’ response questions the assumed transaction. An educational justification does not by itself establish that wisdom is present, transferable, or obtainable by exchanging one kind of beauty for another.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition deliberately keeps “gratify” across ordinary, erotic and medical uses. Its consistency makes the analogy visible but requires attention to the changing object. The return at 218c–d2 is especially pointed because Alcibiades explicitly subordinates the offer to becoming as good as possible.
ἀχαριστέω (acharisteō)
acharisteō — To refuse gratification; the negative counterpart distinguishes therapeutic refusal from indiscriminate indulgence.
- 186c — ἀχαριστεῖν. The practitioner must refuse the diseased or unwholesome.
Read: Gratification and favour.
χαρίζομαι (charizomai)
charizomai — To do a favor, please or oblige someone; in the courtship setting, to grant a lover sexual favors. The context, not the verb alone, determines the specificity.
- 177c — χαρίσασθαι. Eryximachus wants to oblige Phaedrus by proposing the speeches.
- 182b — χαρίζεσθαι ἐρασταῖς. Pausanias discusses the beloved’s granting of favors to lovers.
- 186c — χαρίζεσθαι. Eryximachus transfers the verb to healthy bodily constituents.
- 218d — χαριζόμενος. Alcibiades presents his proposed compliance as justified by education.
Read: Gratification and favour.
χάρις (charis)
charis — Favor, grace or attractiveness attending an action; its favorable appearance need not settle its ethical quality.
- 183b — χάρις ἔπεστι. The lover’s otherwise servile conduct receives a favorable social coloring.
Read: Gratification and favour.