Plato's Symposium

Our purpose is to seek an understanding of the Republic’s Cave image through the path of the "erotic dialogues." We shall use the Symposium as a transitional stage between the Phaedrus(particularly Socrates’ second speech) and Bks. VI and VII of the Republic. In this respect, Socrates’ second speech on love will be central. It is to emphasize the human condition as a striving, moving upward. Within this, the whole problem of the human condition will become bound up with the problem of fate i.e., the whole problem of how man is to establish himself within his proper destiny or limits. Thus, in the Symposium, the discussion of love will unfold (as it did in the Phaedrus) into a discussion of human being. It is from here that we shall be able to move on to the Image of the Cave.

Outline of the Symposium.

[I — V, First Sequence: the effects of Eros. ]

1. Prologue(172a —178a).
2. The Speech of Phaedrus(178a — 180b).
3. The Speech of Pausanias(180c — 185d).
1. Interlude: Aristophanes hiccups (185d —e).
4. The Speech of Eryximachus(186a —189b).
5. The Speech of Aristophanes(189c — 193d).
1. Interlude(193e —194c).

[ VI — VII, Second Sequence: the nature of Eros. ]

1. The Speech of Agathon(195a —197e).
1. Interlude: Socrates and Agathon(198a —201c).
2. The Speech of Socrates(201d —212c).
1. The Nature of Eros(201e —204e).
3. The Speech of Alcibiades: eulogy to Socrates(212d —222e).
4. Epilogue (222e —223d).

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©Robert Cavalier, Carnegie Mellon