Paste your essay in here…In his essay “Spiritual Pregnancy in Plato's Symposium,” E.E Pender, analyzes the development of the metaphor of spiritual pregnancy in Plato’s Symposium. He specifically focuses on two points: (1) There are two quite different types of spiritual pregnancy in the Symposium: a 'male' type, which is analogous to the build-up to physical ejaculation, and a ‘female’ type, which is analogous to the physical experience of pregnancy as understood. (2) It is the Form of Beauty, rather than the lover of beauty, that is pregnant at 212a, which means that in the course of Diotima's speech the role of 'beauty' changes from that of presiding deity in childbirth to that of sexual partner and mother. For the purpose of this reflection of Pender’s interpretation, I will explore the first point made in his first observation, that there is a male form of pregnancy which is analogous to the build-up of physical ejaculation, and will __.
To begin, Pender draws a distinction between physical and spiritual pregnancy by analyzing Diotima’s claim that “those who are pregnant in their bodies turn rather to women and are lovers in this way, believing that by means of the begetting of children they can secure for themselves immortality and memory and happiness hereafter forever.” As Pender puts it, ‘those who are pregnant in their bodies’ refers to people who have conceived ‘seed’ inside themselves and are ready to give birth to it via intercourse, and by using the phrase ‘begetting children’ Diotima is making a reference to the male experience, as opposed to the female experience of bearing children. This experience, for men, is the physical experience of pregnancy. While the situation Diotima expresses later in the passage when she claims, “other men are pregnant in their soul – for there are men who conceive in their souls even more than in their bodies – with the things which is fitting for soul both to conceive and give birth to,” is analogous to the experience of male physical pregnancy.
The men described in this example are spiritually pregnant just as the men in the earlier example were physically pregnant. Pender points out that this is still the stage of production and ejaculation of seed and these men have not yet approached the birth of soul-children which just as on the physical level requires intercourse. Pender identifies the ‘soul-seed’ to be the ‘things which it is fitting for soul to conceive and give birth to’ or, ‘intelligence and the rest of virtue.’ Diotima expresses in the passage that all poets and inventors are ‘begetters’ of intelligence and virtue, thus Pender points out that since poets and inventors have produced and ejaculated seed, it seems we are to think of them both as pregnant in their soul and fathering their offspring by ejaculating.
As Pender’s argument comes together, it is easy to see, based on the belief that offspring bring with them ‘immortality and memory and happiness hereafter forever,’ that poets, inventors, and intellectuals alike, produce ‘offspring’ whether in the form of a poem an invention that is in a sense immortal. The Homerics viewed the gods and actions stemming from the gods with such reverence because the gods are immortal and thus any action taken by a god or ‘backed’ by a god is superior to that of a mere human. This notion that a product of your intellect lives on forever and immortalizes you is groundbreaking and particularly important because it paves the way for another way of viewing life. As we discussed previously in class, up to this point the Athenians believed that great honor came from being a war hero and, specifically, being immortalized by the songs written their honor, yet here we have this new idea that being an intellectual provides the same form of immortality.
Pender notes that Homer, and Hesiod, and lawgivers such as Lycurgus and Solon, have all fathered spiritual children. The logic of the analogy would suggest that these men father their soul-children in the way that men usually father children – by ejaculating in another person. Yet, Diotima does not talk of spiritual intercourse and says nothing explicit about the spiritual partners of the poets and lawgivers. Interestingly, Pender states that ‘there can be no doubt that Plato is playing down the idea of spiritual intercourse at this stage. For this idea would lead to very awkward questions about who was Homer’s partner when he fathered the Iliad? Or could a change of partner account for the differences between Iliad and Odyssey.
A possible answer to this is simply that the audience for whom Plato is writing was composed of well educated, upper-class men, who were likely to have only a limited interest in the subject of female childbearing. In fact, the Symposium addresses a very particular aspect of this male audience’s experience, their experience of love and erotic desire. However, in his dialogue on love Plato concentrates largely on homosexual relations. Apart from Aristophanes, all the speakers at the symposium are in homosexual affairs and in the speeches far more is said of the homosexual than heterosexual Eros. As described in the text, the male has spiritual sex with his partner, that is, he has conversations with him, and then finally ejaculates the seed – intelligence and virtue – with which he has been pregnant. In this sense, the spiritually pregnant man can have sex with his partner both in his presence and in his absence.
Diotima tells us “since he is pregnant he embraces beautiful bodies rather than ugly ones and if he finds a beautiful and noble soul of good disposition, he specifically embraces the combination of both” (209b4-c2). In this sense the pregnant man embraces beautiful bodies rather than ugly ones, because, as Diotima has continuously stated, there can be no ejaculation without arousal and thus without beauty there can be no birth. Through his discourse, however, Socrates seems to be attempting to wean the lovers from physical to spiritual pleasures. After all, if all the conception – pregnancy and desire for ejaculation – are happening at the spiritual level, then there is no need for a pregnant man to be in search of a physically beautiful partner. If another man, or boy, has a beautiful soul, then this should be all the beauty required for a spiritual ejaculation a childbirth. Socrates’ makes this clear by stating ‘touching/having sexual intercourse with the beautiful young man, I imagine, and being in company with/talking with/having sexual intercourse with him, he gives birth and begets those things which he has long been pregnant with, both in his presence and remembering him in his absence.” This is an interesting passage, as, although it can be read as a part of the soul courtship which will lead to intercourse and the birth of soul children, it is also exactly what goes on at the literal level. It is by means of such conversations that homosexuals such as Pausanias and Eurymachus set about wooing their beloveds. The role of the lover as an educator is well known. Plato is skillfully presenting his soul-courtship in terms which will resonate with conventions of homosexual relations at Athens.
Following the pregnancy, after the male has spiritual sex with his partner, and finally ejaculates the seed with which he has been pregnant for so long, the soul-child is then born and the proud fathers share its upbringing. Plato doesn’t share what the actual nature of the soul-child, but we learn that it is more beautiful and more immortal than a human child. The reference to immortality picks up Diotima’s earlier argument that human desire to procreate stems from the desire for immortality. The reason should children are more immortal than human is presumably that ideas, poetry etc., as mentioned earlier can outlive people. However, the reason why soul-children are more beautiful is less clear. Pender argues that this is an appropriate idea, given that these praises of soul-children are ‘undoubtedly addressed to Agathon’, the unmarried poet, and are ‘intended to flatter him by extolling the offspring of his art.’
Later, Pender introduces the idea that the lover of beauty is having sex with the Form of Beauty. So, it could be said that in this same way a man, as a lover of philosophy, begets a child in philosophy when he gives birth. According to Plato, the Forms are perfection and thus beauty in and of itself. So, it seems to me, that the question posed by Pender earlier, of who would be Homer’s partner when he fathered the Iliad, the answer seems simple: it was poetry.
In the same way that we call both the sky and blue jeans by the same color, even though, clearly a pair of jeans and the sky are not the same color (the wavelengths of light reflected by the sky at every location and all the millions of blue jeans in every state of fading constantly change), and yet we somehow have a consensus of the basic form Blueness as it applies to them. It could be said that as a lover of poetry, Homer begets his child – a poem – in the true Form of Poetry. The difference of the two poems is no greater than the difference between the two blues.
Pender notes that the true nature of the parents generally determines the nature of the child that is created and thus, when our lover has intercourse with images, he produces images of virtue, whereas when he has intercourse with truth, he produces true virtue. Making images and true virtue soul-children – not merely soul-seed. Plato presents the male lover as having intercourse with the Form of Beauty and fathering virtue, showing that a child has been procreated by means of intercourse between two partners. When we attempt to follow the analogy of physical procreation, we expect both a male and female type of pregnancy to have taken place. The lover experiences a ‘male’ pregnancy leading to ejaculation as he ‘has intercourse with the truth’ and so ‘fathers’ the spiritual children. After intercourse, a mother must nurture and bring to birth the male seed and in this passage the Form of Beauty, the lover’s sexual partner, clearly must perform the mother’s role.
Thus, it is the Form that experiences the pregnancy, labor and birth of the soul child, with the lover taking the role of a proud father. Here, Plato avoids all mention of the Form as pregnant and focusses attention instead on the experience of the lover and his triumph of finally fathering real children, as opposed to phantom children. The mention of phantom children although puzzling at first, seems to be used by Plato to make an important philosophical point. Previously, when the lover and his beloved had spiritual intercourse they gave birth to virtue. Yet, now we learn from Diotima that these children are not real, but phantoms, or images of virtue. The only true spiritual children are those procreated by contact with the Form of Beauty. Thus, altogether they are ‘more beautiful’ and more immortal’ than human ones, these spiritual children (poems and laws) cannot match the products of union with the Form of Beauty.
In conclusion, on the physical level, the result of union is human children. On the first spiritual level as described by Pender, phantom children are produced, and only in the second level of spiritual union does the lover beget true soul-children. This seems to be a way of communicating that all poetry is inferior to the product of the philosopher’s contemplation. Now, the idea that these ‘second-level’ spiritual children are more beautiful and more immortal, makes complete sense. Considering that when a lover has consorted with a Form, he has fathered a semi-divine child, because the Form itself is divine (211e), and through this special relationship with the Form, the lover has a closer link to the realm of divine beings.