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(All parts in English)

Last time, we left off at the position of the ἐραστής [erastès: the lover] and of the ἐρώμενος [erômenos: the beloved], of the lover and the beloved, in such a way that the dialectic of the Symposium will allow us to introduce it as what I have called ‘the base’, ‘the turning point’, ‘the essential articulation’ of the problem of love. The problem of love interests us insofar as it will allow us to understand what takes place in transference and, I would say, up to a certain point: because of transference.

To motivate such a lengthy detour as this, which may seem to some of you who are new to this seminar this year, and which after all might seem to you like a superfluous detour, I will try to justify, to present to you the sense, which it seems you should immediately grasp, of the scope of our inquiry.

It seems to me that, at whatever stage of his training, something must be present to the psychoanalyst as such, something that may seize him, catch him by the edge of his coat at more than one turning. And is not the simplest one, it seems to me, hard to avoid from a certain age on, and which for you — it seems to me — must already, by itself, quite vividly contain what the problem of love is.

Has it never seized you at this turning, that in what you have given — to those closest to you, I mean — there is something that was lacking, and not only that was lacking, but that leaves them — those aforesaid, the closest ones — irremediably missed by you? In what way? Precisely by this, which, as analysts, allows you to understand that it is precisely with these close ones that we only circle around the fantasy, whose satisfaction you have more or less sought in them, — which, for them, has more or less substituted its images or its colors.

This being to whom you can suddenly be recalled by some accident, of which death is indeed the one that makes its resonance heard most profoundly, this true being — to the extent that you evoke it — is already receding and already eternally lost. Yet it is still this very being that you try to reach along the paths of your desire. Only, this being is your own. And as an analyst you well know that it is in some way, for lack of having truly wanted it, that you have also more or less missed it. But at least here you are at the level of your own fault, and your failure is its exact measure.

And those others whom you have taken such poor care of, is it because you have, as they say, made them merely your objects? Heaven grant that you had treated them as objects whose weight, taste, and substance one appreciates; you would be less troubled today by their memory, you would have rendered them justice, homage, love, you would have loved them at least as yourself, except that you love badly, but it is not even the fate of the badly loved that has been our lot. You would have made them, no doubt — as they say — subjects as if that were the end of the respect they deserved: respect, as is said, for their dignity, respect owed to our fellow beings.

I fear that this neutralized use of the term ‘our fellow beings’ is quite different from what is at stake in the question of love, and — of these fellows — that the respect you give them moves too quickly: to the respect of the similar, to the reference to their whims of resistance, to their stubborn ideas, to their native stupidity, to their own onions [idiom: their own concerns]! Let them manage!

This, I believe, is really the basis of this halt before their freedom, which so often guides your conduct, freedom of indifference, as they say, but not theirs, rather your own. And it is indeed in this that the question arises for an analyst, namely, what is our relationship to this being of our patient? It is well known, after all, that this is what is at stake in analysis: — is our access to this being or not that of love? Does our access have any relation to what we will know — of the point at which we stand regarding the nature of love?

This, as you will see, will take us rather far, precisely to what, if I may express myself thus by using a metaphor, is in the Symposium when ALCIBIADES compares SOCRATES to some of those small objects, which apparently really existed at the time, similar to ‘Russian dolls’ for example, those things that fit one inside the other. It seems there were images whose exterior represented a satyr or a silenus, and inside we do not quite know what, but surely precious things.

What there must be, what there can be, what is supposed to be there, of this something, in the analyst, is indeed what our question will aim for, but only at the very end. In approaching the problem of this relationship which is that of the analysand to the analyst, which is manifested by this very curious phenomenon of transference, which I am trying to approach in the way that is closest to it, that eludes as little as possible of its forms, at once known to all, and from which one tries more or less to abstract, to avoid, its proper weight, I believe we can do no better than to begin by questioning what this phenomenon is supposed to imitate to the maximum, even to be confused with: love.

There is, as you know, a text by FREUD, famous in this regard, which falls within what is usually called the Technical Writings, closely related to what it is about, namely: let us say that something about something has always hung suspended in the problem of love, an internal discord, some unknown duplicity that is precisely what we ought to get a closer grasp on, perhaps to shed light through this ambiguity on that other thing, this substitution in progress, of which, after some time at this seminar, you must know that it is nonetheless what takes place in analytic action, and which I can summarize as follows.

The one who comes to us, by principle of this supposition that he does not know what he has, already there lies the whole implication of the unconscious, of the fundamental “he does not know,” and it is through this that the bridge is established which can link our new science to the entire tradition of “know thyself.” Of course, there is a fundamental difference, the emphasis is completely shifted from this “he does not know,” and I think I have already said enough about this so that I need do nothing more than point out, in passing, the difference.

“He does not know what he has,” but what? What he truly has within himself? What he asks to “be,” not only to be formed, educated, brought out, cultivated according to the method of all traditional pedagogies… he places himself in the shadow of the fundamentally revealing power of certain dialectics which are the offshoots, the branches of the inaugural approach of SOCRATES inasmuch as it is philosophical—is that what we are, in analysis, going to lead the one who comes to us as analysts?

Simply as readers of FREUD, you must already know something about what, at least at first glance, can appear to us as the paradox of what presents itself to us as the end, τέλος [telos], as the culmination, the termination, of analysis. What does FREUD tell us, if not that, ultimately, what the one who follows this path will find at the end is essentially nothing but a lack? Whether you call this lack “castration” or whether you call it “Pénisneid” [penis envy]—this is a sign, a metaphor. But if that is truly what analysis comes up against, at its end, is there not already some duplicity here?

In short, in reminding you of this ambiguity, this sort of double register, between this beginning and point of departure in principle, and this end—which at first glance may seem so necessarily disappointing—a whole development is inscribed. This development is, strictly speaking, this revelation of this something in its entirety within its text, which is called the Other, the unconscious. Fine. And above all, for anyone hearing about it for the first time—I believe there is no one here in that position—it can only be heard as an enigma.

It is not in this respect that I present it to you, but as the gathering of terms in which our action, as such, is inscribed. It is also to shed light immediately on what I could call, if you like, the general plan in which our path will unfold, when it is, after all, nothing other than immediately apprehending, seeing—my God—what is analogous in this development and these terms to the fundamental starting situation of love.

This situation, though ultimately obvious, has never—as far as I know either—been, in any terms, situated, placed at the start in the terms I propose you articulate right now, these two terms from which we begin:
– ἐραστής [erastès] the lover, or again ἔρόν [erôn] the one who loves,
– ἐρώμενος [erômenos] the one who is loved.

Is not everything already better situated from the outset? There is no need to play hide-and-seek, can we not immediately see in such an assembly [the banquet, and also the wordplay: ‘assembly’ as in ‘symposium’] that what characterizes the ἐραστής [erastès], the lover, for all those who have questioned him, for all who approach him, is it not essentially what he lacks? And we can immediately add that he does not know what he lacks, with that particular emphasis of “un-knowledge,” which is that of the unconscious.

And on the other hand, the ἐρώμενος [erômenos], the beloved object, has he not always been situated as the one who does not know what he has, what he has that is hidden, what constitutes his allure? Because this “what he has”—is it not what, in the relationship of love, is called upon not only to be revealed: to become, to be, to present itself, what up to then is only “possible”? In short, with the analytic emphasis or without it: he too “does not know.” And it is something else at stake: he does not know what he has.

Between these two terms, which constitute, if I may say, in their essence, the lover and the beloved, observe that there is no coincidence at all. What is lacking in one is not this “what he has,” hidden in the other. And that is the whole problem of love. Whether one knows it or not makes no difference. One encounters it at every step in the phenomenon, the tearing, the discord, and anyone has no need for that reason to dialogue, to “dialecticize” διαλεκτικεύεσθαι about love: it suffices to “be in the mix” [first occurrence, wordplay: also “be involved”], to love, to be caught in that gap, in that discord.

Is that even saying everything? Is it enough? Here, I cannot do more. I am already doing a lot in doing so; I expose myself to the risk of certain immediate misunderstanding, but I am telling you: I have no intention here of spinning you a tale, so I immediately shed light with my lantern. Things go further. We can, in the terms we use, provide what the analysis of the creation of meaning in the signifier-signified relation was already indicating. We will see the truth of it as we go along—even if we see how it is handled.

This analysis was already indicating what is at stake, namely that love as a signifier—for us it is one and nothing but that—is a metaphor, provided that we have learned to articulate metaphor as substitution, and that is where we enter into the obscure and where I ask you for now simply to admit it, and to keep in hand what I present here as what it is: an algebraic formula.

It is insofar as—in the function where this occurs—the ἐραστής [erastès]—the lover who is the subject of lack—comes to the place of, substitutes for, the function of the ἐρώμενος [erômenos]—who is object, beloved object—that the signification of love is produced. We may take some time to clarify this formula, we have the time to do so in the year ahead. At least I will not have failed to give you from the outset this point of reference, which can serve, not as a riddle, but at least as a reference point proper to avoid certain ambiguities, when I develop further.

And now let us enter into this Banquet, whose scene I have, so to speak, set for you last time, introduced the characters, the characters who are by no means primitive in any respect when it comes to the simplification of the problem they present to us. They are highly sophisticated characters, that much is clear! And here, to retrace what is one of the implications of what I spent my time with you on last time, I will summarize in a few terms, because I consider it important that the provocative character of it be expressed, articulated.

There is still something rather humorous in the fact that after twenty-four centuries of religious meditation, not a single reflection on love during these twenty-four centuries—whether it happened among libertines or among priests—not a single meditation on love has failed to refer to this inaugural text.

This text, after all, taken from its external side, for someone entering it unprepared, still represents a sort of tonus [tone, atmosphere], as it is said, between people whom we must admit, for the peasant coming out of his little garden around Athens, is a gathering of old queens: SOCRATES is 53 years old, ALCIBIADES—still beautiful, it seems—is 36, and AGATHON himself, at whose house they are gathered, is 30. He has just won the prize for the tragedy contest (which is what allows us to date The Banquet exactly).

Obviously, one must not stop at these appearances. It is always in salons, that is, in a place where people have nothing particularly attractive in their appearance, it is among duchesses that the finest things are said. They are lost forever, of course, but not for everyone, at least not for those who say them. Here we have the luck to know what all these characters, each in turn, exchanged that night.

Much has been said about this Banquet, and needless to say, those whose job it is to be philosophers, philologists, Hellenists, have examined it with a magnifying glass, and I have not exhausted the sum of their remarks. But it is also not inexhaustible, because it always revolves around a single point. However inexhaustible it may be, it is still out of the question for me to give you the sum of these minute debates that occur around one line or another: firstly, it is not said that they are of such a nature as not to let us miss something important, and it is not convenient for me, who am neither a philosopher, nor a philologist, nor a Hellenist, to put myself in that role, in that skin, and to give you a lecture on The Banquet.

What I can simply hope for is to give you first a preliminary grasp of that something which I ask you to believe: it is not in this way, on a first reading, that I trust it, trust me. At least give me credit for thinking it is not for the first time, nor for the use of this seminar, that I have entered into this text. And also give me credit for having made some effort to refresh what I remembered concerning the works devoted to it, even to inform myself about those I may have neglected until now.

This, as an apology for having—and still because I think it is best—approached things from the end, that is, from what, by the very method I teach you, must be, for you, the object of a kind of reserve, namely what I understand from it. That is precisely where I run the greatest risks. Be grateful to me for running them on your behalf. Let this serve only as an introduction for you to criticisms that are not so much to be directed at what I am going to tell you I have understood, but at what is in the text, namely, at what, in any case, will, after this, appear to you as what caught my understanding. I mean, what, this understanding—true or false—explains it, renders it necessary, and as text then, as signifier, impossible—even for you, even if you understand it differently—impossible to get around.

So I will skip the first pages, those pages which always exist in Plato’s dialogues. And this one is not a dialogue like the others, but nevertheless, this kind of situation meant to create what I have called the illusion of authenticity, these step-backs, these signposts of transmission, of the one who repeated what the other told him. It is always the way in which Plato, at the beginning, intends to create a certain depth, which doubtless serves for him as the resonance of what he is about to say.

I will also skip the rules I alluded to last time, the laws of the Banquet. I indicated to you that these laws were not merely local, improvised, that they referred to a prototype: the Συμόσιον [symposion] was something that had its own laws. No doubt, they were not exactly the same here and there, in Athens and in Crete. I will skip all these references.

We come to the fulfillment of the ceremony, which will involve something that, all in all, must be called by a name, and a name that—let me note in passing—lends itself to discussion: “praise of Love.” Is it ἐνκώμιον [enkômion: praise][177ac], is it ἐπαίνεσις [épaïnesis]? I will skip all this, which has its interest but is secondary. And I would simply like today to situate what I can call the progress of what will unfold around this succession of speeches, which are first that of Phaedrus, then that of Pausanias, and so on.

Phaedrus is another rather curious character; one would need to draw his character. It is not all that important. For today, know only that it is curious that it is he who brought [177d] the subject to light, who is the πατὴρ τοῦ λόγου [patèr tou logou]: the father of the subject. It is curious because we know him a little bit from elsewhere, from the beginning of the Phaedrus: he is a curious hypochondriac. I tell you this right away, it may be useful to you later on. I offer you now, while I think of it, my apologies. I do not know why I spoke to you of the night last time. Of course, I remembered that it is not in the Phaedrus that it begins at night, but in the Protagoras. This corrected, let us continue.

Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus—and before Eryximachus it should have been Aristophanes, but he has the hiccups, lets the other go before him, and speaks afterward. It is the eternal problem in this whole story of knowing how Aristophanes, the comic poet, found himself there with Socrates, whom everyone knows he did more than criticize, he ridiculed, slandered in his comedies, and whom, generally speaking, historians hold as in part responsible for Socrates’ tragic end, that is, his condemnation. I told you that this doubtless involves a profound reason, for which I do not give any more than others the ultimate solution, but where perhaps we will try first to shed a little light.

Then comes Agathon and after Agathon, Socrates. This constitutes what is properly The Banquet, that is, everything that happens up to this crucial point, which I pointed out to you last time should be considered essential, namely the entrance of Alcibiades, to which corresponds the subversion of all the rules of the Banquet, if only by this: he appears drunk, he presents himself as being essentially drunk and speaks as such in drunkenness.

Suppose you say to yourself that the interest of this dialogue, of this Banquet, is to manifest something which is properly the difficulty of saying something that stands up about love. If it were only that, we would be purely and simply in cacophony. But what Plato—at least that is what I claim, and it is not a particular boldness to claim it—what Plato shows us, in a way that will never be revealed, that will never be brought to light, is that the outline traced by this difficulty is something that points us to the place where the fundamental topology lies which prevents us from saying anything about love that stands up.

What I am saying here is not very new. No one thinks to contest it. I mean that all those who have concerned themselves with this “dialogue”—in quotation marks—since it is hardly something that deserves this title, since it is a series of praises, a series in sum of little songs, of drinking songs in honor of love, which, because these people are a bit cleverer than others—and besides we are told that it is a subject not often chosen, which might be surprising at first sight—take on their full weight.

So we are told that each translates the affair in his own key, in his own register. It is not clear, by the way, why, for example, Phaedrus is said to introduce it under the angle of religion, myth, or even ethnography. And indeed, in all this there is some truth. I mean that our Phaedrus introduces love [178a] by telling us that it is μέγας θεός [megas theos], it is a great god. He does not say only that, but still he refers to two theologians, Hesiod and Parmenides, who in different ways have spoken of the genealogy of the gods, which is still something important. We are not going to think we are obliged to refer to the Theogony of Hesiod and to Parmenides’ poem on the pretext that a verse is quoted from it in Phaedrus’ speech. I will say all the same that there was, two or three years ago, maybe four, something very important that appeared on this point, by a contemporary: Jean Beaufret, on Parmenides’ Poem. It is very interesting to read.

That being said, let us set that aside and try to grasp what is in this speech by Phaedrus. There is, then, the reference to the gods. Why to the gods in the plural? I simply want to point out something nonetheless. I do not know what sense “the gods,” especially the ancient gods, has for you, but after all, they are spoken of enough in this dialogue that it is still quite useful, even necessary, for me to answer this question as if it were posed from you to me.

What do you think, after all, of the gods? Where do they stand in relation to the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real? It is not an idle question, not at all. All the way through, the question at stake is whether or not Love is a god, and at least by the end, we will have made the progress of knowing with certainty that it is not one. Obviously, I am not going to give you a lecture on the sacred here. Quite simply, just to pin down a few formulas on the subject.

The gods, insofar as they exist for us in our register, in that which serves us to advance in our experience, insofar as these three categories are of any use to us, the gods, it is quite certain, obviously belong to the Real: the gods are a mode of revelation of the Real.

– It is in this sense that all philosophical progress tends, in a way by its own necessity, to eliminate them.

– It is in this sense that Christian revelation finds itself—as Hegel very rightly observed—on the path of their elimination, that is, under this register, Christian revelation is just a little further, a little deeper along this path that goes from polytheism to atheism.

– It is in this sense that—in relation to a certain notion of divinity, of the god as the height of revelation, as numen, as radiance, apparition (it is a fundamental, real thing)—Christianity is undeniably on the path that reduces, that ultimately abolishes the god of that same revelation, insofar as it tends to shift it, like the dogma, toward the Word, toward the λόγος [logos] as such, in other words, finds itself on a path parallel to that followed by the philosopher, to the extent that, as I said to you earlier, his fate is to deny the gods.

So these same revelations that, up to then, are encountered by man in the Real, in the Real where what is revealed is also Real, but this same revelation is not placed by him in the Real, he goes to find this revelation in the logos, he seeks it at the level of a signifying articulation.

Every inquiry that tends to articulate itself as science at the beginning of Plato’s philosophical undertaking teaches us—rightly or wrongly, I mean whether true or not—that this was what Socrates did. Socrates demanded that what we have this innocent relationship with, which is called δόξα [doxa], and which is—my God, why not?—sometimes true, that we not be satisfied with it, but that we ask ourselves why, that we should only be satisfied with that assured truth he calls ἐπιστήμη [epistēmē], science, that is, which gives an account of its reasons.

That, Plato tells us, was the business of Socratic φιλοσοφεῖν [philosophein]. I spoke to you about what I called Plato’s Schwärmerei [first occurrence: enthusiasm, also mystic rapture]. One must believe that something in this undertaking ends up failing, so that, despite the rigor, the talent, deployed in the demonstration of such a method… so many things in Plato that served, benefitted, afterwards all the mystagogies: I am speaking above all of gnosis, and let us say what in Christianity itself has always remained gnostic… it nevertheless remains clear that what pleases him is science. How could we blame him for having carried, from the very first step, this path all the way through?

In any case, then, Phaedrus’ speech refers, to introduce the problem of Love, to this notion that it is a great god, almost the oldest of the gods, born right after Chaos, says Hesiod, the first whom the mysterious Goddess, the primordial Goddess of Parmenides’ discourse, thought of.

It is not possible here, at this level, in Plato’s time, that we do not evoke, that we do not try—this task may well be impossible to carry out—to determine everything these terms might have meant in Plato’s time, because after all, try to start from the idea that the first times these things were said, and we were at that point in Plato’s time, it is entirely excluded that all this had that silly pastoral tone it has, for example, in the seventeenth century, where when one speaks of Eros, everyone plays along: all this is set in a completely different context, in a context of courtly culture, of echoes of L’Astrée and all that follows, that is, of words without importance; here words have their full importance, the discussion is truly theological.

And it is also to make you understand this importance that I found nothing better than to tell you: to really grasp it, get hold of Plotinus’ Second Ennead, and see how he speaks of something that is placed at about the same level. It is also a matter of Eros, it is only about that.

You will not be able—if you have read even a little theological text on the Trinity—not to notice that this discourse by Plotinus—just… I think there are three words to change—is a discourse—we are at the end of the third century—on the Trinity. I mean that this ZEUS, this APHRODITE, and this EROS, it is “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This is simply to allow you to imagine what is at stake when Phaedrus speaks in these terms of Eros: to speak of love, all in all, for Phaedrus, is to speak of theology. And after all, it is very important to realize that this speech begins with such an introduction, since for many people even now—and especially in the Christian tradition, for example—to speak of love is to speak of theology.

It is all the more interesting to see that this discourse does not stop there, but moves to an illustration of its remarks. And the mode of illustration in question is just as interesting, for we are going to be told about this divine love, we are going to be told about its effects. These effects, I underline, are eminent at their level by the dignity they reveal with the theme that has become a bit worn out since in rhetorical developments, namely that love is a bond against which all human effort would break.

An army made of beloveds and lovers [179a]—and here the classical underlying illustration is the famous Theban legion—would be an invincible army, and the beloved for the lover, just as the lover for the beloved, would be eminently capable of representing the highest moral authority, that before which one does not yield, that before which one cannot dishonor oneself. This leads to the extreme, namely to love as the principle of the ultimate sacrifice. And it is not without interest to see appear here the image of Alceste, that is, in the Euripidean reference, which once more illustrates what I brought to you last year as delimiting the zone of tragedy [179b], namely strictly speaking this zone of the “between-two-deaths.”

Alceste, alone among all the kin of King Admetus—a happy man but to whom death suddenly gives a sign—Alceste, incarnation of love, is the only one—and not the old parents of said Admetus, however little time they likely have left to live, nor the friends, nor the children, nor anyone else—Alceste is the only one who substitutes herself for him to satisfy death’s demand. In a speech where what is essentially at stake is male love, this may appear remarkable to us, and well worth our taking note. Alceste, then, is here presented to us as an example. This has the interest of setting the scope for what will follow, namely that two examples succeed that of Alceste, two who according to the orator also advanced into this field of the between-two-deaths [179d]:

– Orpheus, who managed to descend into the underworld to fetch his wife Eurydice, and who, as you know, returned empty-handed because of a fault he committed, that of turning around before the permitted moment, a mythical theme reproduced in many legends of civilizations other than Greece. A Japanese legend is famous [Izanagi and Izanami]. What interests us here is the commentary Phaedrus gives.

– And the third example is Achilles.

I will hardly be able today to take things much further than to show you what emerges from the comparison of these three heroes; it is already a first step that puts you on the path. The remarks he makes about Orpheus, first of all. What interests us is what Phaedrus says, not whether he gets to the bottom of things, nor whether it is justified—we cannot go that far—what matters to us is what he says, it is precisely the strangeness of what Phaedrus says that must hold our attention.

First he tells us about Orpheus, son of Aeagre, that the gods did not at all like what he did [179d]. And the reason he gives is in a sense given in the interpretation he offers of what the gods did for him. We are told that the gods, for a type like Orpheus who was in sum not all that admirable, a weakling—we do not know why Phaedrus holds this against him, nor Plato either—did not show him a real woman but a φάσμα [phasma: shade, phantom]. Which, I think, sufficiently echoes what I introduced earlier in my discourse concerning the relation to the other, and what is different between the object of our love as it is covered by our fantasies, and what love questions—the being of the other—to see if it can reach it.

In this, it seems, according to Phaedrus, we see here that Alceste really substituted herself for him in death. You will find in the text this term, which one cannot say I inserted: ὑπὲρ ἀποθανεῖν [huper apothanein], here the substitution-metaphor I mentioned earlier is realized in the literal sense, it is in the place of Admetus that Alceste authentically puts herself. […ὑπὲρ τοῦ αὑτῆς ἀνδρὸς ἀποθανεῖν…] This ὑπεραποθανεῖν [huperapothanein], I think Mr. Ricoeur, who has the text before his eyes, can find it. It is exactly at 180a, where this ὑπὲρ ἀποθανεῖν [huper apothanein] is stated to mark the difference there is: Orpheus thus being in a sense eliminated from this contest of merits in love, between Alceste and Achilles. Achilles, for his part, is something else! He is ἑπαποθανεῖν [epapothanein]: the one who will follow me. He follows Patroclus in death.

To understand what this interpretation of what can be called Achilles’s gesture means for an ancient is also something that would deserve much commentary, because, after all, it is much less clear than for Alceste. We are forced to turn to Homeric texts from which it follows that, in short, Achilles would have had a choice. His mother Thetis told him: “If you do not kill Hector—it is only a matter of killing Hector to avenge the death of Patroclus—you will go home peacefully and have a happy and calm old age, but if you kill Hector your fate is sealed, it is death that awaits you.”

And Achilles had so little doubt about it that we have another passage where he makes this reflection to himself in aside: “I could go home peacefully.” And then, this is still unthinkable, and he says, for one reason or another. This choice is in itself considered as decisive as Alceste’s sacrifice: the choice of μοίρα [moïra], the choice of destiny has the same value as that substitution from being to being. There is really no need to add to that—what, for some reason, Mr. Mario Meunier does in a note, but after all he was a good scholar, on the page we are talking about—that afterwards Achilles supposedly killed himself on the tomb of Patroclus.

I have been busy these days with the death of Achilles because it bothered me. I cannot find anywhere a reference that would allow, in the legend of Achilles, to articulate such a thing. I have seen many modes of death for Achilles which, from the point of view of Greek patriotism, give him some curious activities, since he is supposed to have betrayed the Greek cause for the love of Polyxena who is a Trojan, which would somewhat lessen the weight of Phaedrus’s speech.

But to remain, to keep to Phaedrus’s speech, the important point is this: Phaedrus engages in a lengthy consideration concerning the reciprocal function in the erotic bond between Patroclus and Achilles. He corrects us on a point which is this: do not imagine that Patroclus—as was generally believed—was the beloved.

It follows from a careful examination of the characters, Phaedrus tells us in these terms, that the beloved could only be Achilles, much younger and beardless. I am writing this because this issue comes up constantly, about when one is to be loved: whether it is before the beard or after the beard. That is all they talk about; this beard story is found everywhere. We can thank the Romans for having rid us of this business. There must be a reason for it. In any case, Achilles did not have a beard. So, in any case, he is the beloved. But Patroclus, it seems, was about ten years older. By an examination of the texts, he is the lover. What interests us is not that.

It is simply this first indication, this first way in which something appears that has a relation to what I gave you as the point of focus into which we will move forward, that—whatever the case—what the gods find sublime, more marvelous than anything, is when the beloved behaves, in short, as was expected of the lover. And on this point he strictly contrasts the example of Alceste with that of Achilles. What does that mean? Because it is in the text! One cannot see why Phaedrus would make all this story which lasts two pages if it did not have its importance. You think I am exploring the “map of Tenderness” [first occurrence, wordplay: reference to a literary map of love’s journey], but it is not me, it is Plato and it is very well articulated.

One must still deduce the obvious, namely—since he expressly opposes her to Alceste, and tips the scale of the prize to be given by the gods for love on the side of Achilles—what that means. It means, therefore, that Alceste was in the position of the ἐραστής [erastès]. Alceste, the woman, was in the position of the ἐραστής [erastès], that is, the lover, and it is insofar as Achilles was in the position of the beloved that his sacrifice—this is expressly stated—is much more admirable.

In other words, this whole theological discourse of the hypochondriac Phaedrus ends up showing us, pointing out, that this is where what I called earlier the signification of love emerges.

It is that its most striking, most remarkable, sanctioned, crowned appearance by the gods gives a very special place in “the domain of the Blessed” to Achilles—as everyone knows, it is an island that still exists at the mouth of the Danube, where now they have put a home or a center for delinquents—this reward goes to Achilles, and very precisely for this: that a beloved behaves like a lover.

I will not be able to go further with my discourse today. I want to end on something suggestive that may nevertheless allow us to introduce here some practical question. It is this: it is, all in all, on the side of the lover in the erotic pair that, so to speak in the natural position, the activity is found.

And this will be full of consequences for us if, in considering the couple Alceste-Admetus, you are willing to glimpse this, which is made especially accessible to you by what we discover in the analysis of what a woman can—as such—experience of her own lack; there is no reason at all why, at a certain level, we should not conceive that in the couple, then heterosexual, it is at once on the side of the woman that the lack is, we say, no doubt, but also at the same time the activity.

In any case, Phaedrus does not doubt it. And that on the other side, it is on the side of the beloved, of the ἐρώμενος [erômenos] or—use the neuter—of the ἐρώμενον [erômenon], because, after all, what is loved, what is desired, what is at stake in this whole story of the Banquet, what is it?

It is something that is always spoken of—and very often in the neuter—it is: τα παιδικά [ta paidika]. It is called in the neuter “the things of the child, the child as object.” That is precisely what it designates as such, there we see associated with this function of the ἐρώμενος [erômenos] or the ἐρώμενον [erômenon], of what is loved, of the beloved object, a neuter function: it is that it is on its side that the strong term lies.

You will see this later when we have to articulate what makes, if we can say, that the problem is on a higher, more complex level, when it comes to heterosexual love; this—which is so clearly seen at this level—this dissociation of the active and the strong will be useful to us.

It was in any case important to highlight this at the moment when it is so manifestly illustrated by the example precisely of Achilles and Patroclus. It is the illusion that the strong would be the same as the active. Achilles, because he is clearly stronger than Patroclus, would not be the beloved. This is precisely what is denounced here, at this corner of the text—the lesson that we must take note of in passing.

At this point in his speech, Phaedrus hands over to Pausanias.