From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe language is stronger than polite helpfulness: Pausanias deliberately calls the behavior slavery.
- In the SymposiumHis argument begins from asymmetrical conventions.
- In this editionThe translation preserves “slavery”, “willing slavery” and “voluntary slavery”, rather than sanitizing the social metaphor.
- A place to readCourtship receives an exception from the normal reproach of servility.
Meaning
The language is stronger than polite helpfulness: Pausanias deliberately calls the behavior slavery. Its voluntary character and educational purpose are supposed to remove a reproach that would otherwise attach to free people’s servility.
Use in the book
His argument begins from asymmetrical conventions. A lover can implore, sleep at doors and serve a darling in ways that would be condemned if used to gain money or office. For the beloved there remains one parallel exception: willing service for wisdom or another part of virtue. The two norms are to coincide, so that one supplies educational benefit and the other responds for the sake of becoming better.
The apparent reciprocity does not dissolve the role distinction, and it does not authorize every bargain called educational. Pausanias specifically excludes money and civic power as durable grounds of noble friendship. His case of the deceived youth separates the learner’s character from the teacher’s actual worth.
Diotima later calls narrow attachment to one beautiful person or practice a kind of small-minded servitude that the lover must outgrow. Alcibiades, meanwhile, portrays himself as a runaway from Socrates and eventually as enslaved to him despite the failed bargain. These later uses prevent Pausanias’ formula from becoming the dialogue’s final, unqualified description of philosophical education.
Places to read
- 183a–c2Courtship receives an exception from the normal reproach of servility.
- 184b–185b2The educational exception and the two norms of service.
- 210c–dDiotima opposes narrow servitude to an expanding view of beauty.
- 216bAlcibiades represents flight from Socrates as running away.
- 218c–219e23His attempted bargain ends in perplexity and a sense of enslavement.
Translation in this edition
The translation preserves “slavery”, “willing slavery” and “voluntary slavery”, rather than sanitizing the social metaphor. At 184d it also marks Burnet’s supplied infinitive in the construction about doing service. These remain the claims of Pausanias’ speech.
δουλεία (douleia)
douleia — Slavery or servile submission. Courtship transfers the vocabulary of actual subjection into a controversial model of voluntary service.
ἐθελοδουλεία (ethelodouleia)
ethelodouleia — Willing slavery: Pausanias’ name for freely serving someone from whom improvement is expected.
- 184c — ἐθελοδουλεία. Not shameful or flattery when its aim is virtue.
θεραπεύω (therapeuō)
therapeuō — To attend or serve; in this argument it is personal attendance believed to lead to betterment, not itself a technical term for medical cure.
- 184c — θεραπεύειν. Willing attendance upon an expected educator.