Alcibiades

Who would you invite to your ideal dinner party? Plato answered that question centuries ago with his sublime Symposium, a gripping, novel-like account of a gathering of Athenian notables, which is also a powerful philosophical exploration of the force of Eros, or love. We know that the feast is supposed to have taken place in 416 BC since its host, Agathon, has just won a prize for one of his tragedies. We also know that the setting is, alas, imaginary, since Plato makes sure to distance himself from the account by having Apollodorus tell the story to his friends some 16 years later, having heard it from an acquaintance. Instead

At an improbable soirée in 1987, Mike Tyson was making aggressive sexual advances to the young model Naomi Campbell when the septuagenarian philosopher A.J. Ayer stepped in to demand that the boxer desist. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world,’ snarled Tyson. ‘And I,’ replied Ayer, ‘am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our fields. I suggest we talk about this like rational men.’ And while Campbell sensibly slipped away, the odd couple did just that. The Chicago philosophy professor Agnes Callard relates this story not just to clinch the slightly self-serving professional point that philosophers aren’t always useless