What is most barbaric about the figure of Socrates is that this unartistic human being constitutes the erotic center of the relationships of the circle around Plato. If, however, his love of the general capacity to communicate dispenses with art, then by what means does he render it effective? By means of will. Socrates makes Eros a slave to his purposes. This sacrilege is reflected in the castratedness of his person. For in the last analysis, this is what the Athenians abhor; their feeling, even if subjectively base, is historically in the right. Socrates poisons the young; he leads them astray. His love for them is neither “end” nor pure eidos, but rather a means. This is the magician, the maieutician who interchanges the sexes, the innocently condemned one who dies out of irony and in defiance of his opponents. He is even something of a clown.—The Socratic dialogue needs to be studied in relation to myth. What did Plato intend with it?