Socrates’ Higher Vision of Love

Reading: Plato, Symposium, 32-77.

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

1. Agathon offers a glimpse of the rhetorical style practiced among by trained Sophists—those paid teachers of oratory against whom Socrates defined himself. Focus our attention on a particular phrase or turn of logic and say what you like about it—or perhaps what you find distasteful.
2. Socrates refuses to “play the game” and give a proper speech. Instead, he interrogates Agathon. Pointing to particulars, what does this move allow the philosopher to do? Does he accomplish something special, or does he simply sidestep the challenge of giving a speech in praise of Love?
3. Some of you likely noticed the odd absence of women in this dialogue. Yet the crowning speech is given by a wise woman, Diotima. Pointing to particulars, how does her style of speech or her thinking differ from those of the men who preceded Socrates?
4. The dialogue ends with Alcibiades’ drunken entrance. He, too, gives a speech, but his is in praise of Socrates. Pointing to particulars, how does his speech stand in relation to the earlier ones? Does it clash with them? Or harmonize in some way?