| 3 pm Saturday 22 March 2025 | in Brunswick | Guest Speaker: Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides | Bookings Essential | Donations Accepted |
Sipping Socratic Philosophy: Plato and Drunkenness
The session explores Plato’s representation of Socrates as a drunken follower of Dionysus in the Symposium, a description that opposes his statement that Socrates was never seen drunk (p. 220a). Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides will trace Plato’s use of drunkenness as a metaphor for philosophical initiation across his dialogues, notably the Phaedrus, the Phaedo, and the Laws.
According to Eva, Plato constructs a metaphor about the sober but mind-altering effect of philosophy in response to the influx of Dionysian images in fifth-century Athens that celebrate physical drunkenness. Although Plato did not trust poetry and never developed a theory of metaphors, like Aristotle, nevertheless he drew on Euripides’ influential representation of Dionysian cult for his metaphorical use of drunkenness in an attempt to defend the cognitive reframing that Socrates’ words effected on his audiences.
Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Macquarie University, having completed her studies in Greece, the UK, and Australia. She has been an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2017-2022) and is currently a Gerda Henkel Fellow (2024-2026). She has published extensively and her latest book on Wine and Ecstasy in Plato: a Metaphor of Sorts and its Early Reception is currently in press by SUNY Press.
Past and present students, their family and friends, are all welcome. Bookings Essential.
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