[SydPhil] UNSW Event Invitation: Memory, Immortality, and Identity in Plato’s Symposium - 13 May

Tue May 6 12:58:23 AEST 2025

[UNSW]

Memory, Immortality, and Identity in Plato’s Symposium

How do we become immortal? On the face of it, the matter seems clear enough: just don’t die! But while such an answer can’t be faulted for its pithiness and simplicity, living forever is not always the most practical, or desirable option. There is another thread of thought which appears in contemporary reflections on immortality with roots in the ancient world which presents another possibility: we secure immortality through employing our productive capacities. On this account, by producing artefacts which outlast us, we might ‘live on’ in the world long after our individual lives have come to an end. Not just any production will do, of course, but it is a familiar enough claim in regards to monuments, great works of art, or even philosophical productions. But can such a conceit pass philosophical muster, and transcend metaphorical operation?

This paper pursues a defence of the model of immortality-via-production advanced by Plato in his Symposium. My innovative manoeuvre is to pursue hitherto unrecognised epic entanglements of Diotima’s account to establish a far richer model of immortality than that typically admitted in the scholarship. My focus is the extended passage at 208c1-209e4 in which Diotima offers various examples of erotic productivity to justify her claim that the artefacts which result from such a process - either children or poetic and philosophical productions - serve to furnish their producers with immortality. I suggest that, in this passage, Diotima situates her account of immortality-via-production in an established tradition of post-mortem fate which I refer to as the ‘kleos tradition’, which finds foundational expression in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In doing so, I argue that Diotima develops a plausible and defensible account of immortality, which touches on matters of memory, narrative, honour, recognition, social identity, and ethical exemplarism, among other important issues.

Bio: Anthony Hooper is a Lecturer in the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Wollongong. His central research interest is in the intersection between ancient philosophical and literature, with a focus on Plato. He has published extensively in this area, and is the editor of the volume, Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece, and the upcoming volume, The Draw of Thaleia: Plato and Comedy in the Socratic Dialogues.

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13 May 2025

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1pm—2:30pm

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UNSW Kensington

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Room 209, Morven Brown

  A light lunch will be provided.

For more information

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k.lai at unsw.edu.au<mailto:k.lai at unsw.edu.au>

School of Humanities & Languages
Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture

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