Touch and transmitted wisdom

Use in the book

Agathon invites Socrates to recline beside him so that touch may communicate the wise thing supposedly discovered in the porch. Socrates answers that it would be fine if wisdom behaved like water passing through wool between cups. The sentence is conditional, not an endorsed physical theory of education. He then reverses Agathon’s estimate of the two men, saying that he himself would gain much brilliant wisdom from his host. Agathon calls him insolent.

The scene tests a tempting idea of learning: proximity to a possessor would be enough to fill a deficit. Alcibiades later proposes a comparable exchange, expecting bodily favour to secure everything Socrates knows. In both scenes an attraction to wisdom is real, but the proposed mode of acquisition is inadequate or unverified.

The later occurrences of touching should neither be ignored nor collapsed into this joke. At 209c Diotima’s pregnant soul touches and associates with the beautiful companion, giving birth and nurturing something together. At 211b one nearly touches the goal; at 212a contact with what is true explains the production of true rather than merely imaged virtue. The family can thus mark fruitful encounter as well as a mistaken shortcut. At Delium its hostile sense, laying hands on a fighter, supplies a reminder that the verb itself has no single philosophical meaning.

Places to read

1. 175c–e2Agathon’s wish and Socrates’ conditional cup-and-wool comparison.
2. 209cTouch and company accompany generation and shared nurture.
3. 211b–212a2Reaching the goal and contact with truth develop nonliteral senses.
4. 218d–219bThe proposed exchange of beauties resumes the problem of acquiring an inner good.
5. 221bThe ordinary hostile sense appears in the account of retreat.

Translation in this edition

At 175c the words “by touching you” are printed from T and W, while B omits them. The English preserves the optative and conditional construction of Socrates’ reply. The wool conducts water; it is not presented as producing wisdom or causing intellectual insight.

ἅπτομαι (haptomai)

haptomai — To touch, come into contact with, or lay hold of; its force varies with bodily, educational, contemplative, and hostile contexts.

• 175c — ἁπτόμενός σου. Agathon hopes to enjoy Socrates’ wise discovery by touching him.
• 175d — ἁπτώμεθα. Socrates imagines contact between people as a condition of wisdom’s flow.
• 209c — ἁπτόμενος. Diotima describes contact with the beautiful companion in spiritual generation.
• 221b — ἅπτονται. Enemies do not even lay a hand on composed fighters.

Read: Touch and transmitted wisdom.

ἔριον (erion)

erion — Wool, the material conducting water between cups in the comparison.

• 175d — τοῦ ἐρίου. The strand through which water passes, not the source of the water.

Read: Touch and transmitted wisdom.

ἐφάπτομαι (ephaptomai)

ephaptomai — To come into contact with or lay hold of; at the culmination, contact with truth explains true ethical generation.

• 212a — ἐφαπτομένῳ. The participle is repeated: not touching an image, but touching what is true.

Read: Touch and transmitted wisdom.

κενός (kenos)

kenos — Empty; the comparative describes a receiver in the imagined transfer.

• 175d — κενώτερον. The emptier person, analogised with the emptier cup.

Read: Touch and transmitted wisdom.

ῥέω (rheō)

rheō — To flow; the literal movement of water provides a deliberately conditional model of learning.

• 175d — ῥεῖν. Socrates imagines wisdom flowing from fuller to emptier people.

Read: Touch and transmitted wisdom.