Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Symposium |
SymposiumNoun1. A meeting or conference for the public discussion of some topic especially one in which the participants form an audience and make presentations. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "symposium" was first used: 16th century. (references) |
Etymology: Symposium \Sym*po"si*um\, noun; plural Symposia. [Latin expression, from the Greek expression sympo`sion drinking party, feast; sy`n with po`sis drinking. See Syn-, and compare to Potable.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
General | A meeting at which several speakers deliver short addresses on related topics ; meeting of a number of experts in a particular field at which papers are presented by specialists on particular subjects and discussed with a view to making recommendations concerning the problems under discussion. Source: European Union. (references) |
Public Administration | A meeting at which there is a free interchange of ideas. . . a meeting at which several speakers deliver short addresses on related topics or on various aspects of the same topic. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Symposium is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. The Symposium is one of the most controversial of Plato's dialogues.Some argue that it proves incontrovertibly that Socrates engaged in pederasty; and furthermore that denial of this is merely wishful thinking by those who cannot bear a speck on Socrates' reputation. Others claim equally stridently, that not only does it not prove any such thing, but that it is in fact artfully constructed to rebut just those kinds of calumnies propagated by Socrates political enemies. Arguably it could also be intended thus without being true, but that view has not been proffered much.
It is necessary to be careful when judging the ancients to avoid modern standards. Male homosexuality among the aristocracy was perfectly acceptable in ancient Greece, and pederasty was institutionalised in Sparta at least. Just as in many other societies, some circles of the middle class were much less liberal in outlook.
It is also a notable dialogue of Socrates with one of his own teachers, the deeply and broadly learned courtesan Diotima.
Setting
From the very start of the dialogue, the reader's nose is rubbed in the fact that this is no ordinary Socratic dialogue. The cultural elite of Athens is celebrating Agathon having won the prize for his first tragedy. Our first view of Socrates as he is about to join the second day of revels in the artists honor, has him washed and primped up and "even" wearing shoes!
Such celebrations are the occasion of getting drunk, speaking with excessive liberty, and sometimes even the truth.
The Discussion
The beginning of the discussion is dominated by very lightharted banter and ribbing between all present, but as the evening progresses talk turns to the deep subject of Eros. Socratic irony notwithstanding, Plato is not known for using much hilarity in his dialogues. But now even Eros is subjected by most, including Socrates.
A challenge is presented, and Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon all make speeches of praise pursuant to the challenge. All that remains is for Socrates to give his.
First Socrates wants to interrogate Agathon in his usual manner. This he does, arguing somewhat flippantly that Eros is not beautiful. Though the argument is superficially lightheartedly constructed, some have argued that this is just Plato palming the card, and that it is actually the genuine view Socrates has of Eros.
Then comes the buildup to the final climax. Socrates speaks. He actually recounts a story! In his youth he associated much with the wise courtesan Diotima, who initiated the young Socrates into the Art of Love. As Socrates tells the story, Diotima revealed to Socrates that all lusts stem from the will to eternity and immortality through creation of things, and even the begetting of children, as this is the only victory over death.
Climax and Counterpoint
Enter Alcibiades.
The thoroughly soused Alcibiades saunters in shouting and making a scene. He is wearing garlands of violets, ivy and ribbons. Enquiring if the feast will allow him to join even in his excessively drunk state, he makes deprecating humor about it.
All gladly ask him to join, though Socrates makes a witty remark about what a jealous boy he is, not wanting Socrates to sit next to any other beautiful boy.
Since Alcibiades is new to the party but has not yet participated in the challenge, they ask his proffer. But he in turn mocks Socrates, making the biting and somewhat indescreet remark that Socrates will not allow gods or men praised, unless it be Socrates himself. Intimating both in context of the party and of the dialogue itself, that Socrates did not indeed think much of gods. Even in a drinkathon this is too much for Socrates. He snaps: "Can't you hold your tongue?"
Eryximachus defuses the situation by suggesting that Alcibiades indeed praise Socrates.
Though he claims to do so, he wants to do so by simile. Oddly enough he launches into a mock-attack on Socrates, under the guise of being an unrequited lover of him. That though Socrates seeks the company of pretty boys, he never consummates a relationship with any of them. He tells how he himself tried to seduce Socrates, wrestling with him at the gym and so forth; nothing, zilch.
And then comes the climax of the whole dialogue. After a longwinded account of both their (but principally Socrates') wartime bravery, deprecating his own, but flattering Socrates' ; Alcibiades makes the claim that Socrates' only interest in hanging out with young and sexy prepubescent boys is so he can prevent any other elder tutors having the chance of making love to them and instead make them love all the good and virtuous things.
After a bit of light byplay, the dialogue fades away, as a huge crowd of revellers enter, and in the general hubbub, no-one is able to hold sustained and focused conversation anymore.
Conclusions
The less controversial salient point of the dialogue is the insight we get both to Socrates' wartime relationship with Alcibiades and of Diotima tutoring Socrates in the purpose of sex among other things. These are confirmed elsewhere, but here they are expressed as coming from Socrates' and Alcibiades' own mouth, whatever we might think of the reliability of Plato in reporting those speeches.
What then of the more controversial question of Socrates' sexual inclinations. The only fair judgment, even if it appears to be equivocal, is to say that the Symposium definitely does offer ammunition to both those who say that Socrates did like boys, and also to those who deny it. Eros is in the eye of the beholder.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Symposium."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Amusement | Festivity, merrymaking; party; (social gathering); blowout, hullabaloo, hoedown, bat, bum, bust, clambake, donation party, fish fry, jamboree, kantikoy, nautch, randy, squantum, tear, Turnerfest, yule log; fete, festival, gala, ridotto; revels, revelry, reveling; carnival, brawl, saturnalia, high jinks; feast, banquet; (food); regale, symposium, wassail; carouse, carousal; jollification, junket, wake, Irish wake, picnic, fete champetre, regatta, field day; treat. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Symposium |
| English words defined with "symposium": Symposia, Symposion. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "symposium": VCODE. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "symposium": Symposiarch. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Symposium" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Czech (symposium), French (symposium), German (symposium), Latin (drinking party, symposium), Swedish (symposium). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | A Symposium on Popular Songs (1962) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Periodicals |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | San Marino Int'l Symposium on AIDs Poster. |  | Physical Fitness & Sports Medicine : A symposium cosponsored by the National Library of Medicine, [NIAMSD], the National Fitness Foundation. / [National Library of Medicine]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | Oxygen Free Radicals : Frontiers in Basic Sciences That Relate to Heart, Lung, And Blood Diseases Symposium. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | [Dr. Fredrickson is at a symposium on phospholipid dinner]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | [Samuel Lazerow addresses the symposium on acquisition policy]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Advances in Reproductive Medicine : Fifth Annual Child Health Day Symposium / National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, [et. al.]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | International Symposium : Current Concepts In Diuretic Therapy Coronary Pathology In North Africa. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Methyldopa In Hypertension International Symposium. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | Gays & work symposium. Credit: Library of Congress. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The purpose of the symposium was to lay the foundation for a national plan for rapid stroke treatment. (references) | |
The theme of the Symposium will be "Current Controversies in Research in Pathogenesis and Treatment of Marfan Syndrome and Related Disorders". (references) | ||
NINDS, in conjunction with the NIH Office of Rare Diseases, sponsored a satellite symposium on Joubert Syndrome in conjunction with the Child Neurology conference. (references) | ||
Business | In October a national symposium on domestic violence was held in Beijing. (references) | |
Civil Liberties | Equatorial Guinea | In April 1999, shortly before a national symposium on press liberty was scheduled, the Minister of the Interior ordered the removal of the democratically elected president of ASOPGE, Manual Nze Nzogo, even though the ASOPGE was a legally recognized association. (references) |
Germany | In June 1999, the Justice Ministry cosponsored a major symposium on combating the spread of hate materials on the Internet, and it proposed voluntary measures for Internet service providers and companies doing online business, as well as improved international law enforcement cooperation that have reportedly had a positive effect. (references) | |
Economic History | Japan | The Symposium brought together more than 30 leading experts on investment and business from the corporate, academic and government sectors of both nations. (references) |
Human Rights | Venezuela | However, human rights NGO's claimed that the Ombudsman's office had taken action on only 20 percent of cases presented to it. Human rights groups remained concerned about the Chavez administration's lack of a human rights agenda and lack of support for the national human rights agenda formulated by the previous Government in a 1997 symposium with NGO's. (references) |
Women | Niger | A 1998 study by CARE International indicated that 5 percent of women between 15 and 49 years of age had undergone FGM; however, a 1999 symposium cited a World Health Organization global study of 20 percent. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Symposium" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.69% of the time. "Symposium" is used about 229 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 98.69% | 226 | 20,021 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.87% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Noun (common) | 0.44% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 229 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "symposium"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | simposium, takim specialistësh, përmbledhje artikujsh. (various references) | |
Arabic | نقاش حوار (argument, debate), ندوة (colloquy, seminar), حفلة شراب. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | симпозиум (workshop), философско разискване, философска беседа, научно разискване, научна беседа, пиршество (banquet, carousal, carouse, feast, regale). (various references) | |
Chinese | 讨论会 (Symposia), 討論會 (discussion forum). (various references) | |
Czech | symposium, hostina (banquet, dinner, feast, junket, regale, spread). (various references) | |
Danish | symposium. (various references) | |
Dutch | symposium, symposion. (various references) | |
Farsi | مقالات گوناگون درباره یک موضوع , مجلس مذاکره دوستانه , همسگالی , هم نشست , ضیافت (Banquet, Repast), بزم پس ازشام . (various references) | |
Finnish | symposiumi. (various references) | |
French | symposium. (various references) | |
German | Symposium. (various references) | |
Greek | συμπόσιο (banquet, feast). (various references) | |
Hebrew | "יון (advisement, consideration, debate, deliberation, discussion), רב שיח, סימפוזיון. (various references) | |
Hungarian | szimpózium, ivóest. (various references) | |
Indonesian | simposium. (various references) | |
Italian | simposio. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 座談会 (round-table discussion), 座談会 (round-table discussion), シンボル"作 (Conference of Ministers of the Group of Five, diesel, dungarees, G5, gaps between bones or muscles, gene, gene bank, gene engineering, General Infantery, genetic engineering, genius, GI, G-mark, G-men, GNP, Good design mark, government men, gross national product, jeans, jeans jacket, jeans pants, jeep, spaces, symbol manipulation, symmetric, symmetry, sympathetic). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ざ "かい (round-table discussion), シンポジウ , シンポ (sympathetic). (various references) | |
Korean | 심포지엄 (Symposia). (various references) | |
Manx | cohaggloo (comment, commune, confer, conference, dialogue). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ymposiumsay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | simpósio. (various references) | |
Romanian | simpozion, banchet (banquet, dinner party, entertainment, feast, house dinner, regale, repast, spread). (various references) | |
Russian | симпозиум (symposia). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | simpozijum. (various references) | |
Spanish | simposio (symposia, symposiums). (various references) | |
Swedish | symposium. (various references) | |
Thai | การประชุมสัมมนา. (various references) | |
Turkish | sempozyum, seminer (seminar), konuyla ilgililerin tümü, konuyla ilgili çok yazarlı yayın. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | симпозіум, філософська розмова. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Greek | 700 BCE-300 CE | symposion. (various references) |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | symposium. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "symposium": symposiums. (additional references) | |
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"Symposium" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: composium, symphosium. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "symposium" (pronounced si'mpō"zēum) |
| 4 | -z ē u m | cesium, gymnasium, magnesium. |
| 3 | -ē u m | alluvium, ammonium, aquarium, atrium, auditorium, axiom, bacterium, barium, beryllium, medium, millennium, minium, moratorium, myocardium, nephridium, neptunium, niobium, nobelium, opium, opprobrium, osmium, palladium, pandemonium, paramecium, petroleum, planetarium, Plasmodium, plutonium, podium, polonium, potassium, premium, presidium, promethium, protium, psyllium, radium, cadmium, calcium, chromium, colloquium, compendium, condominium, consortium, crematorium, delirium, deuterium, disequilibrium, emporium, equilibrium, europium, fermium, gallium, geranium, gonium, hafnium, harmonium, helium, Herbarium, holmium, honorarium, idiom, indium, iridium, lawrencium, linoleum, lithium, requiem, rhodium, selenium, sodium, stadium, strontium, superpremium, tedium, tellurium, thallium, thorium, titanium, tritium, uranium, vanadium, yttrium, zirconium. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "i-m-m-o-p-s-s-u-y" | |
-2 letters: osmiums. | |
-3 letters: myosis, opiums, osmium, possum, pyosis. | |
-4 letters: misos, missy, momus, mossy, mousy, mumps, mussy, opium, pious, pisos, pommy, simps, soups, soupy, spumy, sumos, sumps, sysop, yomim. | |
-5 letters: immy, imps, isms, miso, miss, momi, moms, mops, mopy, moss, mump, mums, muss, opus, piso, piss, pois, poms, posy, psis, puss, simp, sims, sips, sops, soup. | |
| Words containing the letters "i-m-m-o-p-s-s-u-y" | |
+1 letter: symposiums. | |
+4 letters: praseodymiums. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Translations: Ancient 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
