The dramatic nature of Plato’s dialogues is delightfully evident in the Symposium. The marriage between character and thought bursts forth as the guests gather at Agathon’s house to celebrate the success of his first tragedy. With wit and insight, they each present their ideas about love—from Erixymachus’s scientific naturalism to Aristophanes’ comic fantasy. The unexpected arrival of Alcibiades breaks the spell cast by Diotima’s ethereal climb up the staircase of love to beauty itself. Ecstasy and intoxication clash as Plato (...) concludes with one of his most skillful displays of dialectic. (shrink)

I Have argued elsewhere, and still believe, that the Phaedo was written before Plato's first journey to Italy, when the strong Pythagorean influences displayed in that dialogue were reaching him through the Pythagorean centres on the Greek mainland, in particular Phleius and Thebes; and that in the Republic and Phaedrus it is possible to trace equally strong Pythagorean influence but different in detail, because Plato had now come into contact with the Pythagoreans who still remained in Italy, particularly Archytas. (...) The most remarkable of these influences from whatever source was the doctrine of the immortality and transmigration of the soul, which we know to have been held by the earliest Pythagorean society, and the account of the soul's experience in the world below. (shrink)

The dramatic nature of Plato’s dialogues is delightfully evident in the Symposium. The marriage between character and thought bursts forth as the guests gather at Agathon’s house to celebrate the success of his first tragedy. With wit and insight, they each present their ideas about love—from Erixymachus’s scientific naturalism to Aristophanes’ comic fantasy. The unexpected arrival of Alcibiades breaks the spell cast by Diotima’s ethereal climb up the staircase of love to beauty itself. Ecstasy and intoxication clash as Plato (...) concludes with one of his most skillful displays of dialectic. (shrink)

Gerald A. Press - Plato's Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 167-168 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gerald A. Press Hunter College and City University of New York Graduate Center James Lesher, Debra Nails, and Frisbee Sheffield, editors. Plato's Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006. Pp. xi + 446. Paper, $29.95. (...) class='Hi'>Plato's Symposium has been a fertile source of philosophical, literary, and artistic inspiration for more than two thousand years. It continues to inspire debates amid the changing fashions in contemporary Plato interpretation. This volume of papers, which grew out of a conference at the Center for Hellenic Studies in 2005, is divided into four parts. Most of the papers are richly rewarding, but there is space here to do little more than hint at their main points. Part I, "The Symposium and.. (shrink)

Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love ever written. This new edition brings together the English translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's "On Plato's _Symposium_" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The Ladder of Love." In the _Symposium,_ Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal, where the guests include the (...) poet Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of love and desire, all the while addressing many of the major themes of Platonic philosophy: the relationship of philosophy and poetry, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature (Series Editors: Kathleen Coleman and Richard Rutherford) introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context, and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from the (...) original are translated into English. Plato's Symposium tells of a dinner party at a crucial point in Athenian history at which the guests decide that they will each in turn deliver a speech in praise of love. The humorous and brilliant work that follows points the way towards all Western thinking about love. The Symposium is also one of Plato's most sophisticated meditations on the practice of philosophy. This book introduces the literary and historical context of Plato's work, surveys and explains the arguments, and considers why Plato has cast this work in a highly unusual narrative form. A final chapter traces the influence of the Symposium from antiquity to the modern day. (shrink)

Plato’s Symposium offers an enticing range of topics for the critical-guide treatment of philosophical classics now in vogue. The current volume contains thirteen essays of consistently high quality devoted to such issues as the nature of erotic desire and its orientation toward the forms, the ethical question of how best to live in the pursuit of wisdom, Plato’s engagement with poetry, and his use of dramatic interaction between speakers to advance his philosophical agenda.An admirable feature of the volume is (...) the close attention that is paid to all parts of the Symposium. Many discussions of the dialogue focus exclusively on Socrates’s speech, but Destrée and Giannopoulou have taken care to avoid this narrowly... (shrink)

Plato's Symposium is an exceptionally multi-layered dialogue. At once a historical document, a philosophical drama that enacts abstract ideas in an often light-hearted way, and a literary masterpiece, it has exerted an influence that goes well beyond the confines of philosophy. The essays in this volume, by leading scholars, offer detailed analyses of all parts of the work, focusing on the central and much-debated theme of erōs or 'human desire' - which can refer both to physical desire or (...) desire for happiness. They reveal thematic continuities between the prologue and the various speeches as well as between the speeches themselves, and present a rich collection of contrasting yet complementary readings of Diotima's speech. The volume will be invaluable for classicists and philosophers alike, and for all who are interested in one of Plato's most fascinating and challenging dialogues. (shrink)

In Plato’s Symposium Eryximachus provides a metaphysical theory based on the attraction of basic elements which he applies to a variety of domains, including music. In the text of his speech there is a variation in the manuscripts at 187d2 between two readings, “μέλεσί τε καὶ μέτροις” and “μέλεσί τε καὶ ῥυθμοῖς”. Though the former is almost universally followed, I argue that the latter is the correct reading, based on three sources of evidence: (1) the manuscript tradition, (2) Plato’s (...) style and diction, and (3) the logic of the passage. In all three cases ῥυθμοῖς is the preferable reading. (shrink)

Frisbee Sheffield argues that the Symposium has been unduly marginalized by philosophers. Although the topic, eros, and the setting at a symposium have seemed anomalous, she demonstrates that both are intimately related to Plato's preoccupation with the nature of the good life, with virtue, and how it is acquired and transmitted. For Plato, analyzing our desires is a way of reflecting on the kind of people we will turn out to be and on our chances of leading (...) a worthwhile and happy life. In its focus on the question why he considered desires to be amenable to this type of reflection, this book explores Plato's ethics of desire. (shrink)

Although Plato's notion of spiritual pregnancy has received a great deal of critical attention in recent years, the development of the metaphor in the Symposium has not been fully analysed. Close attention to the details of the image reveals two important points which have so far been overlooked: There are two quite different types of spiritual pregnancy in the Symposium: a ‘male’ type, which is analogous to the build-up to physical ejaculation, and a ‘female’ type, which is (...) analogous to the physical experience of pregnancy as normally understood. (shrink)

I love this book. It is Plato’s dialogue on love, on Eros, in a superior translation accompanied by commentaries that help show what an astonishing attainment of the human mind and spirit Plato’s Symposium is.

A new translation of selections from one of the great philosophical works about love, Plato's Symposium.

The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, "Leo Strauss On Plato's "Symposium"" offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Satyr Play in Plato's SymposiumM. D. UsherIn the Symposium, Socrates jokingly declares that "the satyric—nay silenic—drama" of Alcibiades' drunken panegyric was perfectly clear to the guests that evening at Agathon's house (222d3-4).1 Though this statement implies an extended treatment of a theme, discussions of silenic elements in the dialogue have rarely ventured far beyond the overt comparison of Socrates to a Silenus or Marsyas figure in Alcibiades' (...) speech (215a4-222b7).2 Yet, as Paul Zanker has observed (1995, 38), "There is surely more than one aspect to the comparison of Socrates to Silenus." In fact, the final scenes of the Symposium are riddled with satyric motifs, many of which Plato inverts or otherwise adapts, in the pointed critique of wealth, beauty, and sexual attraction that he achieves in the character of Socrates.Let me begin defending this thesis with a Platonic analogy and suggest that if we look at the big letters first, we will be able to read the smaller ones more readily: Though it has only recently, and only in passing, been adduced as a source (Clay 2000, 74), much of the scene involving Alcibiades and Socrates is modeled on the myth of King Midas' capture of the satyr Silenus.3 While the extant sources for the Midas legend are disparate and fragmentary, an investigation into its literary provenance and the uses to which it was put in antiquity (section 1 of this essay) suggests that the encounter between Midas and Silenus was something of a literary set piece that had been used as a vehicle for popular wisdom and philosophic critique long before Plato's time. Indeed, in [End Page 205] reusing the story in just this fashion in his lost dialogue, the Eudemus,4 Aristotle highlights both its popularity and antiquity, describing it as "having been carried about on the lips of men for many years now."5The finer print (section 2) involves another source never previously adduced in discussions of the Symposium, Euripides' Cyclops, where we will consider both what is particular to that play (our only complete satyr drama) and what is typical of the genre.6 Cyclops was produced in the last five years of Euripides' life,7 when an impressionable Plato, that "nursling of Attic drama,"8 was in his early twenties.An awareness of the extent of Plato's use and adaptation of satyr lore in the Symposium is essential for a full appreciation of his philosophy of love, his technique as an author, and the purpose of the dialogue. Einstein once said that the secret to creativity is hiding one's sources. In constructing the final scenes of the Symposium, Plato is deeply unoriginal in precisely this sense. It would be well to emphasize at the start, however, that the satyric motifs adduced here—as legendary and mythic material—would have had a wide currency in many media, and one need not advance or defend arguments for strictly literary dependence. Indeed, it will be seen that the way Plato incorporates silenic elements into the Symposium is suggestive and indirect, though no less compelling, important, or even intentional for that reason. That Plato's purpose in including them is as apologetic as it is literary and philosophical is discussed in a concluding section where I attempt to bring some recent readings of Plato under one head. [End Page 206]I. The Capture of SilenusSome minor variants notwithstanding,9 the basic outline of this story is as follows: Silenus is captured while sleeping by Midas' henchmen, who have tricked him by spiking a river with wine; whereupon, in exchange for his release, Silenus agrees to reveal to Midas hidden wisdom about man and the nature of the world.10 Both the apprehension of the satyr while sleeping and the conversation that follows in the myth are adapted by Plato in the part of the Symposium where Alcibiades describes his unsuccessful romantic overtures toward Socrates. Having prevailed upon Socrates to come to dinner and spend the night, Alcibiades approaches the satyr-sage in bed and asks if he is sleeping (218c3). By Plato's inversion, however, it turns out that Socrates, unlike the... (shrink)

In this paper, I show that Aristophanes’s speech in Plato’s Symposium is tied into an interesting and hitherto unexplored web of ideas in Plato’s ethics and psychology. The poet’s analysis of erōs as ‘leading us to what “belongs” (the oikeion)’ (193d2) and as ‘restoring us in our “original nature” (archaia phusis)’ (193d4) is not a mere negative contribution that renders him a ‘target for Diotima’s fire’ (Dover). Rather, he unwittingly communicates central ethical and psychological ideas which we find developed (...) in key passages of Plato’s dialogues. What is interesting is that Diotima in a curious passage seems to dismiss his contribution of the oikeion as unrelated to our good (agathon) and irrelevant to the analysis of desire (205d10–206a1). I argue that this interpretation of Diotima’s response to Aristophanes, which would render her position an ethical anomaly in Plato’s dialogues, should be rejected. Instead, it is more plausible to read her response as proposing a revisionary conception of the oikeion, relying on the idea that our agathon is our true oikeion. In addition, I tentatively suggest that the theory of psychic pregnancy may be seen as presenting the agathon of wisdom of virtue produced in the ascent as an oikeion. Just as fascinating as Diotima’s stance on the oikeion is the question how her teachings relate to the concept of an archaia phusis of the soul. The idea that the soul’s self-perfection constitutes a return to a temporally prior condition of excellence, which in two places other than the Symposium (Republic X, Timaeus) is called the ‘archaia phusis’, is pervasive and centrally important to Plato’s psychology. I address the question whether Diotima’s ascent passage constitutes a psychological anomaly in portraying self-perfection as unrelated to the concept of the archaia phusis. I argue that an answer to this depends on the stance we take on the Symposium’s position regarding the immortality of the soul. While a reading that posits a rejection of immortality in the Symposium must indeed deny a role for the concept in Diotima’s speech, I show that a reading allowing for immortality as a theoretical commitment in the background has an interesting interpretative option: along with Timaeus 90d5, it may fruitfully interpret the ascent as an ordering of the soul ‘in accordance with its archaia phusis’. (shrink)

I use Plato’s Symposium to examine a tension that I believe to be key to self-knowledge. On the one hand, knowledge proper refers to noetic insight into the ultimate explanatory principles and causes, which “objects” are often referred to in the dialogues as forms. On the other hand, self-knowledge refers to basic modes of self-awareness and self-understanding that are at once embodied and interpersonal, and which are not explicitly related to the study of form. I believe these two basic (...) commitments, to knowledge and self-awareness, tend to obscure one another in the dialogues and in contemporary interpretations. My basic thesis is that the demands of theoretical knowledge and self-awareness are in tension with one another but that Platonic philosophy demands that we understand the nature of these opposed demands and endure the strife between them. Self-knowledge, understood in its most encompassing sense, is the life of reflectively enduring that strife, of reconciling the existential burdens of philosophy with the demands of theoretical knowledge proper. (shrink)

A review of Frisbee C., C. Sheffield, Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.

On Beauty and Measure features renowned philosopher John Sallis' commentaries on Plato's dialogues the Symposium and the Statesman. Drawn from two lecture courses delivered by Sallis, they represent his longest and most sustained engagement to date with either work. Brilliantly original, Sallis's close readings of Plato's dialogues are grounded in the original passages and also illuminate the overarching themes that drive the dialogues.

Mommsen is reputed to have said: ‘In spite of his beautiful style, Renan was a true scholar’. Books on the Symposium are rare, perhaps because it is thought that its beauty takes from its philosophical earnestness. Rosen’s work is all the more welcome for that reason, but he also manages to throw light on much else in Plato’s thought. He tries to show that the cliché about Plato’s style being an important part of his meaning is to be taken (...) seriously. Rosen goes through the prologue and the various speeches in the dialogue analysing them and showing their relationship to Platonic and a wide range of other philosophic thought. (shrink)

By comparing the role of harmony in Eryximachus’ discourse with other Platonic passages, especially from the Timaeus, this article aims to provide textual evidence concerning Plato’s conception of cosmological medicine as “harmonic techne”. The comparison with other dialogues will enable us to demonstrate how Eryximachus’ thesis is consistent with Plato’s cosmology — a cosmology which cannot be reduced to a physical conception of reality but represents the expression of a dialectical, and erotic cosmos, characterized by the agreement of parts. Arguably, (...) Eryximachus’ discourse is expression of the Platonic tendency to translate onto the philosophical plane the implications of a model peri physeos. Harmonic techne is thus always linked to the theme of moral responsibility: the philosopher is also doctor, musician and demiurges in his harmonizing activity. The speech of Eryximachus can be approached as a Platonic step which is fundamental for establishing the need for a “medicine” to cure disorder, with a view to obtaining a cosmos ordered according to the harmonic principle. (shrink)

As Reginald Allen has observed, ‘the afterlife and influence of Plato’s Symposium is nearly as broad as the breadth of humane letters in the West.’ I argue here that the dialogue’s appeal can be traced back to six features: (1) the high degree of artistry with which Plato organized the speeches in honor of the god Eros; (2) the symposium format which allows for the presentation of competing intellectual traditions and contrasting personalities; (3) the provision of a philosophical (...) framework through which to understand the process through which the soul ascends from a physical to a spiritual realm: (4) the identification of a distinctively intellectual and spiritual kind of interpersonal relationship later known as ‘Platonic love’: (5) the presentation of a memorable portrait of Socrates in Alcibiades’ speech; and (6) an insightful account of the role played by passionate desire across a wide range of human activities. -/- . (shrink)

Scholars often take purification to be a concept that persists the same throughout Plato’s dialogues. Generally, they take it to mean the separation of the soul from the body, picking up on Socrates’s account at Phaedo 67c–d. I do not find that this account of purification endures throughout the dialogues. In this paper, I argue that in Symposium Diotima describes purification differently. I argue that her account of purification emphasizes preparedness for encountering the forms, not the eradication of the (...) corporeal. I present this account in three steps. First, I discuss Diotima’s lower and higher mysteries, focusing on the lower mysteries. Next, I examine Diotima’s use of the Eleusinian mysteries as an analogy for her own mysteries. Here, I overview the historical rites at Agrai and the Eleusinian Mysteria. I argue that, mirroring the Agrai rites, Diotima’s lower mysteries are purificatory, and therefore provide an account of purification. Finally, I explain the account of purification Diotima presents in the lower mysteries as the desire to possess the deathless deathlessly. Diotima’s account of purification is importantly distinct from the Phaedo account. In the former, the separation of the soul from the body is in no way important for purification. We must confront the discrepancies between these accounts and recognize that purification is not a doctrine that persists throughout the dialogues. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Socrates' speech in Plato’s Symposium cannot by itself express Plato’s view of love. All the non-philosophical speeches, each standing for a different contemporary view of love, should be taken into serious consideration, for they are not mere pastiches of empty theories. In fact, they seem to have been placed there to have their intellectual strength tested by philosophy, for not only their contents reveal commonsensical accepted wisdom, but their discursive beauty powerfully impresses the (...) audience, making them true challenges to the cold, though persuasive logos of philosophy. Furthermore, placing Alcibiades' speech right after Diotima’s austere account of love, when the program of speeches as proposed seemed to have arrived at an end, would be unnecessary, if Plato’s aim were simply to disapprove Alcibiades’ behavior to excuse Socrates political attitudes, as it is assumed by Leon Robin in his Notice to his famous translation to the Belles Lettres edition. On the contrary, Alcibiades’ speech sounds more like a criticism of Socratic love made by Plato himself. (shrink)

_Provocative reinterpretation of Plato's Symposium._.

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the (...) hidden host of Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

Introduction -- The problem of Socrates : Kierkegaard and Nietzsche -- Kierkegaard : Socrates vs. the God -- Nietzsche : call for an artistic Socrates -- Plato's Socrates -- Love, generation, and political community (the Symposium) -- The prologue -- Phaedrus' praise of nobility -- Pausanias' praise of law -- Eryximachus' praise of art -- Aristophanic comedy -- Tragic victory -- Socrates' turn -- Socrates' prophetess and the daemonic -- Love as generative -- Alcibiades' dramatic entrance -- Alcibiades' (...) images of socrates -- Alcibiades' praise of Socrates' virtues -- Aftermath -- The incompleteness of the Symposium -- Self-knowledge, love, and rhetoric (Plato's Phaedrus) -- The setting -- Non-lovers (Lysias' speech and Socrates' first speech) -- Souls and their fall -- Lovers and their ascent -- Prayer to love -- Contemporary rhetoric and politics -- A genuine art of rhetoric -- Writing -- Prayer to Pan -- Who is the friend? (the Lysis) -- Joining the group -- Getting acquainted -- Seeking a friend -- Are friends the ones loving, the ones loved, or both? -- Are likes friends? -- Are unlikes friends? -- Are those who are neither good nor bad friends to the good? -- Are the kindred friends? -- Who might friends be? -- Friendly communities -- Socratic philosophizing -- Socrates' youthful search for cause -- Socrates' second sailing and the ideas -- Piety, poetry, and friendship. (shrink)

Plato’s Symposium has no less than three dramatic dates: its narrative frame is placed in 401 BCE; Agathon’s dinner party is envisaged as having occurred in 416; finally, Plato makes Socrates meet Diotima in 440 BCE. I will argue that the multi-level chronology of the Symposium should be approached along the lines of Socrates’ intellectual history as placed against the background of Greek ideas of age classes. As a result, the Symposiumfunctions as a retrospective of Socrates’ life, which (...) uses the traditional concept of ages of man to create a paradigm of philosophical life. (shrink)