Plato's Symposium

Plato and Socrates

The Platonic Dialogue

The Socratic Method (dialectic)

    questioning

    analogy

    irony

symposium: drinking party and conversation

Love

    Platonic love: purely spiritual, non-amorous relationship

    philia: strong fraternal or familial bond (Phil-adelphia)

    eros: instinctive bodily desire of any sort

            the "unquenchable want" or desire

            from sexual appetite to hunger/thirst

            to thirst for knowledge

    homosexuality in ancient Greece

The Symposium

    as a drama in several acts

    as rhetoric (encomia on love)

    as dialectic

The Narrative Structure

The Setting

The Participants

This material has been published on the web by Prof. Tom Sienkewicz for his students at Monmouth College. If you have any questions, you can contact him at toms@monm.edu.

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