Product Description

Plato's Symposium is the most literary of all his works and one which all students of classics are likely to want to read whether or not they are studying Plato's philosophy. But the reader does need help in appreciating both the artistry and the arguments, and in comprehending the social and cultural background against which the 'praise of love' is delivered. Sir Kenneth Dover provides here a sympathetic and modern edition of the kind that is long overdue. It consists of an introduction, the Greek text accompanied by a very abbreviated critical apparatus, and a commentary on the text which is intended to elucidate the Greek, to make the philosophical argument intelligible, and to relate the content of what is said to the concepts and assumptions of contemporary morality and society. An edition for students of Greek in universities and the upper forms of schools.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7452343 in Books
• Published on: 1980-03-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 196 pages

Review
'This commentary ... does three things superbly. It explains Plato's Greek punctiliously, especially the less familiar constructions, particles, and words that are often loosely or wrongly translated. With a razor's sharpness it cuts through sloppy or faulty logic in Plato's Greek. And it provides the necessary background material, whether historical, literary, sexual, or social.' Greece & Rome

' ... few books can have given in three pages so informative and at the same time so provocative an account of Plato's philosophy.' The Times Educational Supplement

'This is a tight-packed, authoritative, but readable edition.' J.A.C.T. Bulletin

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Greek

From the Publisher
Library of Liberal Arts title.

Customer Reviews

The Wit and Wisdom of Love
Plato's "Symposium" will always be read because there will always be people who question the nature of Love. Agathon's dinner party is the scene of a conversation between a small group of men, who go around the table offering their views on Love. What does Love mean to us to-day? Reading over the responses of the dinner-guests and their host, we find the same range of answers in Ancient Greece that we are likely to find now.

Phaedrus and Pausanias are utilitarians and materialists. Phaedrus looks at love between people and a proto-Burkean love for government and state. Pausanias complicates the argument, saying that there are two different kinds of love, one which is common and one which is heavenly - yet still oriented towards the real and the tangible. Eryximachus is a proto-Swedenborg, trying to reconcile or harmonize the two kinds of love.

The jewels of Plato's "Symposium" are Aristophanes and Socrates. Aristophanes gives us the profoundly moving depiction of Love as a fundamental human need, a desire for completion. For a writer of comedy, whose aim as an art form is forgiveness and acceptance, Aristophanes's explanation is no surprise, though its depth is amazing. While women are generally discounted throughout the "Symposium," not only does Socrates, as we might expect, completely astound his audience (both inside the book and out) with his progressively logical and ascendant view of Love, but he also does it through the voice of a woman, Diotima. When we realize that Socrates is a character in this fiction, and that his words originate in a woman, the egalitarianism and wisdom of Plato the author truly shines forth, like the absolute beauty he claims as the ultimate goal of Love.

Was Plato a feminist? I don't know. I do know that the "Symposium" is a tremendous book. I picked it up and did not stop reading it until I was finished. The style of the Penguin translation is smooth, with a lighthearted tone that can make you forget that you are reading philosophy. Plato's comedic masterpiece in the "Symposium" is the character of Alcibiades, who provides the work a fitting end. Get the "Symposium" and read it now. You cannot help but Love it...in a Platonic sort of way.

Cut Your Teeth On This One
A special mood is induced by reading Plato, the product of an elite society whose ideal was leisurely contemplation. Indeed, it is an activity that seems to clash at every point with our own unreflective society whose thought currency is minted in soundbites and advertising slogans. People are not encouraged to be philosophical nowadays, so it is mainly the resort of the antisocial and the willfully eccentric who are in this way enabled to look down on the 'crude, vulgar masses.' Who, reading a book of Plato's, hasn't felt something of this pleasure?

If there is one book by Plato that can be considered to have a more mainstream appeal then it must surely be "The Symposium." The subject of love is of interest to us all and worthy of investigation as behind this word, perhaps the most overstretched in our language, there are so many possible meanings.

With this book we are able to eavesdrop on an after dinner party conversation by some truly great minds. As always, Plato is happy to present more than one view. Of course, the shocking point for the mainstream modern reader is that most of the discussion concerns homosexual love, nevertheless much of what is said can also be applied to many heterosexual situations.

Among the participants presented with perhaps some semblance to their original characters, are the great Athenian comic playwright, Aristophanes, and, towards the end, the party is enlivened by the arrival of the controversial Alcibiades, possibly the most brilliant statesman and soldier of his generation. It is through him and his confession of attempted seduction that we learn a great many details about Plato's mentor, Socrates.

The translator, Christopher Gill, succeeds in presenting the chain of argument in a clear, lucid style, further supplemented by a fine, lengthy introduction and copious notes for those unfamiliar with late fifth century BC Greece.

Symposium in Greek
There are three good commentaries I know of on the Symposium. There is Rosen's, whose virtue is scholarly depth. Allen's, which unlike Rosen's, is good as an introduction and for those who simply want to enjoy the Symposium without getting entangled in scholarship. Finally there is this one, whose primary virtue is as a commentary of the Greek. This book, unlike Allen's, contains no English translation. If you want to read Symposium in Greek and need help or if you want to look up various terms in Greek, this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you don't read Greek, or are uninterested in Greek there is a high likelihood you will be disappointed by this book.