The Symposium: Culture as Daimonic conversation

The present essay focuses on the relation between conversation and culture. Through a reading of Plato's "Symposium," it highlights a conversation whi ch reflects on culture while in its midst, combining critique with erotic r itual. Eros, the selected topic of the Symposium, is described by Socrates as a Daimon, a being between God and mortal, whose intermediary state refle cts back on conversation itself as daimonic, and on culture as daimonic con versation. This notion of conversation serves as a basis for a cultural cri tique, on the one hand, of an anthropology that limits itself to an observa tion of culture as closed and defined forms and, on the other hand, of demo nic rather than daimonic notions of conversation.