Plato's Symposium

Author: Pierre Destrée
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107525696
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
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 At once a historical document, a philosophical drama that enacts abstract ideas in an often light-hearted way, and a literary masterpiece, it has exerted an influence that goes well beyond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.

Plato's Symposium

Author: Plato
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022620815X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
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.

Plato's Symposium

Author: Frisbee Candida Cheyenne Sheffield
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199567816
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
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, analysing 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.

Plato's Symposium

Author: James H. Lesher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Book Description
In his Symposium, Plato crafted speeches in praise of love that has influenced writers and artists from antiquity to the present. But questions remain concerning the meaning of specific features, the significance of the dialogue as a whole, and the character of its influence. Here, an international team of scholars addresses such questions.

Lakoma

Author: Plato
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521295239
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Plato's dialogue the Symposium with introduction and commentary.

Symposium and the Death of Socrates

Author: Plato
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
ISBN: 9781853264795
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
"Symposium" gives an account of the sparkling society that was Athens at the height of her empire. The other dialogues collected here under the title "The Death of Socrates" tell the tale of how Socrates was put on trial for impiety, found guilty and sentenced to death.

Plato on Love

Author: Plato
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603840591
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
This collection features Plato's writings on sex and love in the preeminent translations of Stanley Lombardo, Paul Woodruff and Alexander Nehamas, D. S. Hutchinson, and C. D. C. Reeve. Reeve's Introduction provides a wealth of historical information about Plato and Socrates, and the sexual norms of classical Athens. His introductory essay looks closely at the dialogues themselves and includes the following sections: Socrates and the Art of Love; Socrates and Athenian Paiderastia; Loving Socrates; Love and the Ascent to the Beautiful; The Art and Psychology of Love Explained; and Writing about Love.

Plato

Author: Plato
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

Symposium

Author: Plato
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780856686153
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
The Symposium is a complex piece which is perhaps as widely read as any of Plato's works apart from the Republic. However the existing standard commentaries in English do not offer much by way of help to any reader except the classicist who knows Greek; and they also tend to be light on the dialogue as a work of philosophy. This new edition aims to fill both gaps. As well as providing a new and accurate translation facing the Greek text, it includes a substantial commentary, keyed mainly to the translation, which takes into account the needs of those without (or with little) Greek. It also treats the Symposium not just as a piece of literature that includes some philosophy, but as the product of a serious philosopher who is simultaneously a writer of the first order. Among the particular concerns of the commentary is to elucidate the underlying structure and argument of the dialogue. The outcome is not a synthesis of previous scholarship (collected in a sizeable, but selective, bibliography, but what is in many respects a fresh reading of a central and influential Platonic text. Greek text with facing-page translation, introduction and notes.

Symposium or Drinking Party

Author: Plato
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 158510843X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
This new edition of Plato's Symposium provides beginning readers and scholars alike with a solid, reliable translation that is both faithful to the original text and accessible to contemporary readers. In addition, the volume offers a number of aids to help the reader make his or her way through this remarkable work: A concise introduction sets the scene, conveys the tenor of the dialogue, and introduces the reader to the main characters with a gloss on their backgrounds and a comment on their roles in the dialogue. It also provides a list of basic points for readers to keep in mind as they read the work. A thought-provoking interpretive essay offers reflections on the themes of the dialogue, focusing especially on the dialogue as drama. A select bibliography points to works, both classic and contemporary, that are especially relevant to readers of the Symposium. Two appendices consist of a line drawing that depicts the spacial layout and positioning of characters in the Symposium, and a chart that shows the relation of the first six speeches to number, age, parentage and the function of Eros.