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Socrates and DiotimaIntroduction

Socrates and Diotima: Introduction [There has been much debate about how to read and interpret the many ideas and opinions expressed in Plato’s dialogues. One approach, currently popular, is to treat the conversations recreated in the dialogues as literary fiction. On this view, characters and settings in the dialogues were invented or contrived by Plato to showcase or try out positions of his own, either programmatically or at different stages in his thinking.1 Another approach is to categorize “early dialogues” as “Socratic”—more or less accurately depicting the historical Socrates in conversation with his contemporaries—but to read “middle” and “late” dialogues as “Platonic,” with Socrates increasingly a mouthpiece for Plato’s own evolving theory of Forms. Neither approach is without difficulty. Given the diversity of views expressed in the dialogues and the many accurate and specific references to historical persons and historical events, the fictional thesis is hard to sustain. Not only are many of the characters public figures, but some of them were Plato’s own relatives, including his mother’s uncle Critias, his mother’s brother Charmides, and his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon who figure prominently in the Republic. Nor has it been easy to find any clear dividing line between so-called early Socratic dialogues and dialogues in which Plato supposedly expresses his own ideas. Adding to the difficulty is the lack of reliable evidence as to when each dialogue was written, the evolution of Plato’s thinking, or events in his life.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Socrates and DiotimaIntroduction

Part of the Breaking Feminist Waves Book Series
Nye, Andrea
Socrates and Diotima — Dec 1, 2015
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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2015
ISBN
978-1-349-57292-2
Pages
1 –8
DOI
10.1057/9781137514042_1
Publisher site
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Abstract

[There has been much debate about how to read and interpret the many ideas and opinions expressed in Plato’s dialogues. One approach, currently popular, is to treat the conversations recreated in the dialogues as literary fiction. On this view, characters and settings in the dialogues were invented or contrived by Plato to showcase or try out positions of his own, either programmatically or at different stages in his thinking.1 Another approach is to categorize “early dialogues” as “Socratic”—more or less accurately depicting the historical Socrates in conversation with his contemporaries—but to read “middle” and “late” dialogues as “Platonic,” with Socrates increasingly a mouthpiece for Plato’s own evolving theory of Forms. Neither approach is without difficulty. Given the diversity of views expressed in the dialogues and the many accurate and specific references to historical persons and historical events, the fictional thesis is hard to sustain. Not only are many of the characters public figures, but some of them were Plato’s own relatives, including his mother’s uncle Critias, his mother’s brother Charmides, and his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon who figure prominently in the Republic. Nor has it been easy to find any clear dividing line between so-called early Socratic dialogues and dialogues in which Plato supposedly expresses his own ideas. Adding to the difficulty is the lack of reliable evidence as to when each dialogue was written, the evolution of Plato’s thinking, or events in his life.2]

Published: Dec 1, 2015

Keywords: Religious Authority; Persian Versus; Literary Fiction; Immortal Soul; Retelling Story

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