The Problem of Suffering (Prompt 2)

"Job" deals with the problem of human suffering at its extreme. Satan tests the faith of Job by causing him to undergo heightened physical and psychological pain.

By the end of "Job," the protagonist learns to retain faith in God no matter what circumstances may prevail. Faith must be enough for human existence. Job learns this lesson; we can speculate that a similar message was to be conveyed to the Bible's readers.

For this story addresses a question we in fact do not have the answers to: why do we suffer? Also why do some live healthily? In today's world, we focus on what we consider 'concrete' - physical and psychological health, drastic events, etc. - to explain our circumstances. But a group such as the Israelites without scientific innovations as ours, one moreover without regard for science, would need a different explanation to rely on.

The idea that God causes all and that we do not have the capacity to understand Him can be seen as a reasonable explanation. It is comforting in that we attribute realities to another's responsibility. For instance, one who believes something or someone else to have caused his failure remains confident in himself. God is also a pleasing explanation in that it addresses all that humans cannot control. Amazing and terrible things happen because there is no rhyme or reason to God's actions: Job says, "He leads priests away stripped, and overthrows the mighty. He deprives of speech those who are trusted, and takes away the discernment of the elders. He pours contempt on princes, and looses the belt of the strong. He uncovers, the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light. He makes nations great, and he destroys them: he enlarges nations, and leads them away. He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless waste. " (Job, 12:19, 12:24). Attributing responsibility along with order (or disorder) to God allows humans to understand their limits.

Job's Questionable Rewards for Faith (Prompt 8)

In "Job," the character of Job suffers for losing faith in God. Though Satan causes his pain, God establishes that if He wanted He could prolong it. For God does not owe any man any kind of blessing: He asks the rhetorical question, "Who has given to me, that I should repay Him?" (Job, 41:11). God believes that humans must be indifferent to suffering - and anything else, for that matter - because faith is all they need.

When Job finally "repent(s) in dust and ashes" for not having faith in God, however, God does reward him (42:6). "...the Lord restored the fortunes of Job" and later "blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels" etc. (42:10, 42:12).

If God does not owe anything to man, why does Job deserve a reward for having faith in God? Should not rewards be as meaningless as suffering, in the face of God?

These are unanswerable questions that result from a confusing, hypocritical solution. What we can investigate, however, is why the author felt the need to end Job pleasantly. He must have felt the need to sacrifice the alternative, logical ending - Job regains faith in God and either continues to suffer or does not, but that does not matter because the human experience only depends on faith - for good reason.

"Job" stresses obedience to God and indifference to all else, at the same time as it presents incentives as material as camels for obedience. For as a set of beliefs created by humans and for humans, they must appease humans. "Job" comes to finally promote faith not only with material incentives; by relieving Job's pain in the end, it also associates suffering with godlessness and health with faith. Faith alone will not suffice for the readers of the Bible; health and other rewards must be at stake as well.

God's Motives in Job (Prompts 3 and 4)

At the beginning of "Job," God sees Job as "a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil" (Job, 2:3). Thus He sees no reason to test Job's faith, until Satan proposes to do so.

Satan warns God of Job, "touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse thee to thy face" (2:5). Satan thus sees imperfection in Job, which he can exaggerate under the circumstances of pain.

Satan's hypothesis proves later to be true, when Job rejects God for causing him to undergo so much pain. Job thereby loses faith in God as supreme, and in His actions and judgments as correct. God therefore is proved wrong by Satan. "Job" is a triumph for Satan in that he demonstrates that God's assumption is false, as well as in that he finds one of his deviant qualities in man. Satan successfully fills these two goals.

God, on the other hand, has no motive in "Job." He nevertheless gets his confidence taken away; there is a sinner in someone He highly regards. The fact that God, unlike Satan, had little curiosity in Job's faith points to God's confidence. God feels no need to defend Job for this reason, and is happy letting Satan do the 'dirty work' of trying to find in him a fault: "Behold, he is in your power; only spare his life" (2:6). The lack of a plan in "God" prepares Him for a grand criticism when error is found.

So when Job proves to defy God, it is not only an affront to His power but also His own knowledge. God has upheld someone to be faithful when he is not; He has also cockily assumed someone to be on His side when he is not. Satan's attack on God reveals faultiness in humans and faultiness in Him as well.

God Creates a World of Binaries Until Man Exists

In Genesis, a world is created on many pairs of items. In each pair, one item either opposes, or is deemed "good" (1) better than the other, which lacks the same modifier. For instance, He starts with the heavens and the earth; then He creates the opposing duos of night and day, light and darkness, evening and morning. God and humans present another hierarchical pair: God is more powerful than and must be obeyed by men and women. These binaries provide structure to the world, clarity for our understanding of the origins of what we experience every day.

This binary thinking, while useful in a rough perception of nature, is challenged when applied to humans, in the Adam and Eve story.  The first humans have the two options of eating from the tree of knowledge, thereby disobeying God and receiving the punishment of death, and keeping themselves from eating it, respecting God and living forever. Eve has committed the first deed and not the second. There exist the possibilities of living in or outside of the Garden of Eden, and they will be banished to the second. But this basic manner of thinking cannot apply to something so ephemeral as morals, and the author(s) must have been aware of this. For the most disobedient force was the snake; consequently it receives the worst punishment. The snake has a singular, simple, malicious motive. In Eve however, there are several sources of motivation: she believes the snake, she is hungry, and she desires the state of wisdom the snake claims the tree offers. Adam does not have the same motivations for eating from the tree of knowledge; he only has trust in his companion (2, 3). God is then forced to deviate from his binary treatment and create new categories, as his belligerent subjects represent to Him differing levels of moral turpitude. There now is God, supreme and to be obeyed, men, who disobey Him and receive adequate punishment, women, who disobey Him even more than men do and receive the same punishment plus that of childbirth, and the serpent, who commits the worst crime and receives the worst punishment.

The initial method of classifying items into two quickly loses applicability in Genesis. As soon as God or the author(s) attempt to define the origins of men and women, new levels of definition must be added. For as a text written by humans, the author(s) have a limited understanding of nature, and a far more complex one of mankind. Genesis describes the origins of the world with simplicity, in binaries, for we have so little in common with foreign creatures, plants, dirt, sea and sky; a text by, for and about humans, Genesis then must detail its definition of them.

Lysistrata's Scheme (Prompt 5)

Lysistrata tries to establish peace between the Greek poli by exploiting men's sexual desires. All the other women of "Lysistrata" at first have doubts whether her plan will work, and whether they are strong enough to participate. But after the women hear Lysistrata out and remind themselves of the hardships war causes them, they decide to work with her. Even though the women express cowardice in the beginning, and several find themselves giving in to their sexual desires later on, thereby undermining Lysistrata's efforts, they all nevertheless achieve mutually held goals. The women agree with Lysistrata's plan and carry it out with success.

On the other hand, the men disagree with Lysistrata's plan until the very end for two main reasons. (1) They doubt that peace can and should prevail. It is understandable that a world without war might be hard to imagine for the characters of "Lystistrata," especially the men, if they have spent many years at war without clear success. But by refusing to believe that peace could be established, the men demonstrate a lower level of intelligence next to their female counterparts, who do believe it. For by the end, Lysistrata and the other women prove the men wrong by doing what was unthinkable to them.

(2) The other reason that motivates - more so than their inability to foresee peace - the men to respond adversely to Lysistrata's scheme, is sexism. The men hate the idea and reality that the women manipulate them and gain power, even if it produces the universally acceptable result of peace. The women, however, understand their position in society to be inherently different than that of the men, but nevertheless equally vital. The rationale of sexism might seem completely inferior compared to the rationale of peace to the reader of today. But even if understood without knowledge of how the audience of "Lysistrata" might have treated the two genders, the men's chauvinism comes off as weak compared to the women's desire for order. For throughout the play, the male characters display themselves to be disorganized and inept. For instance, in preparation for an attack on the women, the men blow on coals for the fire to rise but repeatedly send smoke back into their faces (152). They are unprepared and unable to learn from their mistakes. And of course, ultimately, their notion that women cannot overpower men is refuted, as the women successfully manipulate them into establishing peace against their will. Contrary to what they believe, the men are in fact not as powerful as the women. But more than sexism's ultimate falseness, the hierarchy of the universal and timeless value for peace over violence succeeds in rejecting sexism. For instance, the argument between the Magistrate with his men and Lysistrata highlights this association of violence with sexism and peace with equality. When the Magistrate expresses surprise at the fact that the women triumph over his bowmen, Lysistrata says: "Did you think...that women couldn't have any stomach for a fight?" (159). The Magistrate responds to her rhetorical question with a joke, demonstrating his dedication to chauvinism: "They certainly do - any time a tavern-keeper tries to cheat them!" (159). This clash over gender differences is immediately followed by a clash of perspectives on war and peace in general, represented in the preceding skirmish. Stratyllis backs Lysistrata, claiming "we only want to stay demure at home doing no harm, disturbing not a twig" (159). The Men are then only able to respond by trying to get them to stop talking, thereby attempting to reassert their power: "Monsters, enough! Our patience now is gone" (159). The men's commitment to chauvinism keeps them from accepting peace; the women's dedication to peace leads them to refute sexism and rule in the world of "Lysistrata". By associating the men with failed sexism and violence, as well as the women with prevailing gender equality and peace, the "Lysistrata" upholds the main character's scheme over the men's.

The Role of Alcibiades in the Symposium (Prompt 4)

Alcibiades contrasts with the other men at the symposium in many ways. Clearly, Alcibiades differs from the others in manner: drunk, he makes an emotional, confused and insulting speech. Meanwhile, the other men at the symposium have decided to refrain from heavy drinking in order to share insights in respectful, sober conversation.

Parallel to the respective behaviors of Alcibiades and the other men of the Symposium are the directions of their speeches. Phaedrus, Aristodemus, Pausanias, Socrates, Agathon, Aristophanes and Eryximachus have dedicated their symposium to the understanding and praise of Love. Each gives his own opinion of what Love is and how one should praise him, adding on to or modifying the view of another. For they share the common goal of making sense of the foreign and praise-worthy concept of Love. Alcibiades, however, does not have the same aim in his speech. Sharing his simultaneous "praise" and "reproach" of Socrates, Alcibiades haphazardly admits a range of personal emotions to his audience rather than answer a philosophical question (75). The relative aimlessness of Alcibiades' speech, next to the other men's, can be assumed to have resulted from an intoxicated state of mind. But it also reflects Alcibiades' comparably foolish decision to get drunk: he prefers the vulgar pleasures of alcohol, as well as the weakened mental state it entails, to his peers' sober search for an answer to a philosophical question, and the enlightened state to which it leads.

This lack of direction in Alcibiades' speech, foiled against the preceding speeches of the men at the symposium, points to inferiority in him as valuing vacancy over enlightenment. The subjects themselves that Alcibiades addresses - his disdain and love of Socrates - further highlight his deficiency. While the men of the Symposium speak of Love, a god who resides above men and enables their success, Alcibiades discusses Socrates - though a great philosopher, a single mortal man. Thus, Alcibiades focuses on a much more low-level topic than his peers. For in the world of the Symposium, value is placed on large, meaningful concepts over individual mortals. For example, one who truly loves beauty pursues it in all its forms, not just in one body, as Socrates claims Diotima says, just before Alcibiades' speech. "A lover...should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of any other...When he grasps this, he must become a  lover of all beautiful bodies, and he must think that this wild gaping after just one body is a small thing and despise it" (57-58). Diotima then proceeds to say that the pursuit of beauty in all bodies is then a 'small thing' compared to beauty in its essence, or in all its forms. Alcibiades, revealing his emotions towards one man, Socrates, is caught up at a primary level then, according to Diotima. By placing Alcibiades' speech after Diotima lays out what should be valued and what should not, the Symposium encourages the reader to understand him as inferior to the other men, in that he values the individual mortal over the immortal concept.

The Purpose of the Introductory Dialogue (Prompt 1)

In Plato's Symposium, several philosophers have a friendly conversation about the significance of the god Love. A man named Aristodemus once relayed this discussion to Apollodorus who does the same in the Symposium to another man named Glaucon. Finally, Plato passes on the same ideas to the reader via the Symposium. Thus, the meaning of Love at the core of the Symposium is interpreted by philosophers, then Aristodemus, then Apollodorus, then Plato, then us. This multitude of frames around an idea of truth about Love points to the importance of interpretation in the Symposium.

Each thinker - Phaedrus, Pausanius, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, Diotima, Alcibiades - has his own opinion of the nature of Love. Each man's view of Love may have components of another's, for they agree on certain points, but is in its entirety unique. The distinctive nature of each philosopher's thoughts on Love often motivates them to reject each other's ideas or modify parts of their own. Nevertheless, each philosopher remains convinced of a unique, composite view on Love.

Thus, we begin with multiple, varied interpretations of the same concept of Love. In relaying such views to Glaucon, Aristodemus and Apollodorus can both be assumed to influence them: it is highly doubtful that they remembers each man's speech, especially if the conversation took place years ago when they were all "still children" (2). Plato, then, has the ability to alter Apollodorus' version and Arisodemus' version as well as all the ideas of the philosophers. As readers, we have the freedom to accept or reject (parts of) Plato's ideas about Apollodorus' ideas about Aristodemus' ideas about the philosophers' ideas.

This filtering of ideas ideas through various interpretations - that the Symposium emphasizes so with multiple layers and the Introductory Dialogue - does not insinuate that there is no one true essence of Love. It rather suggests that one meaning of Love (and of any subject, for that matter) is unattainable, and that all Love can do for us is found in these honorable attempts to understand it. The process of comprehension - not the arrival at one definition - is the focus of the Symposium.

In Apollodorus' story in the Introductory Dialogue, one character Agathon seats himself next to Socrates so that he "may catch a bit of the wisdom that came to (him)" (5). But Sophocles responds: "How wonderful it would be, dear Agathon, if the foolish were filled with wisdom simply by touching the wise" (5). The physical action of 'touching' is not enough to gain wisdom; it takes thought and time. Similarly, the meaning of Love cannot be simply transmitted to the philosophers, then Aristodemus, Apollodorus, Plato and us. Meaning, like wisdom, is ephemeral, existing only in men's attempts to attain it.