This blog supplements my earlier one on "Who wants to be immortal?" The omission of Plato's Symposium in a discussion on immortality is a serious one, since he had profound thoughts on this matter. The Symposium is one of Plato's most beautiful dialogues and concerns the questions of love, beauty, death and immortality. Socrates is the main speaker, although it is most probably accurate to say that he is a mere mouthpiece for Plato's ideas. The dialogue is set on the holiday in Ancient Athens which celebrates Eros, the god of love, as remembered by the narrator of the dialogue many years later. He recalls how several Greek men met at a house for a symposium, or drinking party, and to celebrate Eros. They decide to hold a competition in which the men eulogise the god of love. There follow speeches by a physician, tragic poet, a comic poet (Aristophanes) and Socrates. The symposium in interrupted by a drunken Alcibiades, the most beautiful man in Greece, who makes a eulogy praising Socrates.
One of Plato's many profound insights when he has Socrates draw an implication from his definition of "love" (eros or desire), namely the observation that "Given our agreement that the aim of love is the permanent possession of goodness for oneself, it necessarily follows that we desire immortality along with goodness, and consequently the aim of love has to be immortality as well" (207a). He then links all human (and even animal) acts of creativity and procreativity to this desire for immortality, since they are attempts to create something that will outlive our own mortality, a second-hand immortality.
So how do these ancient insights illuminate the contemporary world? Well, if what we all ultimately desire is immortality, and the permanent possession of good things for oneself, and if money can now buy the technology to make these goals achievable, then we can expect the super-rich to spend their fortunes achieving the goal of immortality, which has, until now, seemed impossible and unattainable. It is not enough for them to possess all good things for themselves but to possess them forever. Immortality will not be for everyone but only for the elite few, who, by attaining immortality, will cease to be human.
One of Plato's many profound insights when he has Socrates draw an implication from his definition of "love" (eros or desire), namely the observation that "Given our agreement that the aim of love is the permanent possession of goodness for oneself, it necessarily follows that we desire immortality along with goodness, and consequently the aim of love has to be immortality as well" (207a). He then links all human (and even animal) acts of creativity and procreativity to this desire for immortality, since they are attempts to create something that will outlive our own mortality, a second-hand immortality.
So how do these ancient insights illuminate the contemporary world? Well, if what we all ultimately desire is immortality, and the permanent possession of good things for oneself, and if money can now buy the technology to make these goals achievable, then we can expect the super-rich to spend their fortunes achieving the goal of immortality, which has, until now, seemed impossible and unattainable. It is not enough for them to possess all good things for themselves but to possess them forever. Immortality will not be for everyone but only for the elite few, who, by attaining immortality, will cease to be human.