Symposia: Plato, the Erotic, and Moral ValueSocrates was wise, because he knew that he did not know anything; this has long been the prevailing wisdom of the Socratic-Platonic tradition. In Plato s Middle Period spanning dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus Socrates consistently claims to have knowledge in one area: the erotic. This book argues that the underlining of erotic matters in what it refers to as Plato s Erotic Period marks the most significant and dramatic moment in Plato s career. Plato s attention to the erotic in this period calls for a fundamental reassessment of many of the most important Platonic ideas: his complicated quarrel with poetry, his dubious doctrine of forms, his alleged hostility to the body and embodiment. In the Erotic Period, Plato s views are much richer, and infinitely more complex, than the many caricatures of his thought allow. |
Contents
ON BEGINNING CAUTIOUSLY or What Do We Mean By Ethics? | 1 |
SYMPOSIUM THE FIRST PLATO or Cosmology Ethics and the Poets | 21 |
SYMPOSIUM THE SECOND THE EROTIC or Love in the Middle | 39 |
SYMPOSIUM THE THIRD MORAL VALUE or Counting Being and True Love | 71 |
ON ENDING GRACIOUSLY or The Greek Legacy Today | 105 |
ON LANGUAGE AND LITERACY | 127 |
Notes | 141 |
173 | |
177 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Alcibiades already argument Athens attempt beauty become begins better body called Cambridge chapter Chicago Christian claim classical clear clearly complex course critical culture death desire dialogue discussion Early entire erōs Erotic Period especially Essays essential ethics experience fact finally give Greek human idea important insight insists interesting involved kind knowledge language later Laws learned least less live lover Mantineia Martha matter mean metaphor moral nature never Nietzsche Nussbaum Pausanias perhaps person Phaedrus philosophical Plato play poetry political precisely problem question reason reflection relation relationship religious Republic rhetoric seems sexual simply social society Socrates sort soul speaking speech story suggests sure Symposium tell things third thought tion tradition translated true truth trying turn understand University Press virtue whole writing York