Plato's Symposium: the Process of Love; Reproducing Beauty
The Process of Love; Reproducing Beauty
Throughout his work Plato is well known for implementing dialogue, typically with Socrates as the main interlocutor, to express his philosophical thoughts in an engaging, dramatic fashion. The Symposium is no different and is often considered Plato’s crowning achievement in terms of creating a harmonic interplay between drama and philosophy within his dialogue. Beyond simply presenting his ideas in an entertaining manner, this dialectic method of composition lends a masterful wordsmith such as Plato the ability to build his ideas very convincingly through character interaction. He can present a character with conceptions similar to those of potential readers, only to have those conceptions completely broken down logically towards exposing the “right” conception all through his mouthpiece Socrates.
Furthermore, Plato’s discursive style situates him in a removed, potentially objective position where it is unclear to readers whether Plato is advancing ideas of his own, of Socrates or of someone else entirely. On top of this, in The Symposium, Plato stages the dialogue in the form of a second hand story, which creates further distance and greater poetic significance. These examples answer some of the basic questions why Plato chooses to write in dialogue, but many questions remain and the significance of these choices has yet to be determined in the context of The Symposium. In this essay I will analyze how and why the complex dramatic framing devices employed by Plato in the dialogue of The Symposium serve the aforementioned functions and others toward the development and support of the piece’s overarching messages. Thus, in the spirit of the dialectic method, I will start from the beginning by giving a recap of the narrative and continue to compound on the examination from there.
As briefly mentioned earlier, instead of simply going straight into the dialogue of the title event, Plato presents a conversation
Throughout his work Plato is well known for implementing dialogue, typically with Socrates as the main interlocutor, to express his philosophical thoughts in an engaging, dramatic fashion. The Symposium is no different and is often considered Plato’s crowning achievement in terms of creating a harmonic interplay between drama and philosophy within his dialogue. Beyond simply presenting his ideas in an entertaining manner, this dialectic method of composition lends a masterful wordsmith such as Plato the ability to build his ideas very convincingly through character interaction. He can present a character with conceptions similar to those of potential readers, only to have those conceptions completely broken down logically towards exposing the “right” conception all through his mouthpiece Socrates.
Furthermore, Plato’s discursive style situates him in a removed, potentially objective position where it is unclear to readers whether Plato is advancing ideas of his own, of Socrates or of someone else entirely. On top of this, in The Symposium, Plato stages the dialogue in the form of a second hand story, which creates further distance and greater poetic significance. These examples answer some of the basic questions why Plato chooses to write in dialogue, but many questions remain and the significance of these choices has yet to be determined in the context of The Symposium. In this essay I will analyze how and why the complex dramatic framing devices employed by Plato in the dialogue of The Symposium serve the aforementioned functions and others toward the development and support of the piece’s overarching messages. Thus, in the spirit of the dialectic method, I will start from the beginning by giving a recap of the narrative and continue to compound on the examination from there.
As briefly mentioned earlier, instead of simply going straight into the dialogue of the title event, Plato presents a conversation