In this seminar, students will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in two of the most famous and important of Plato’s dialogues: the Symposium and the Phaedrus. These dialogues have as their subject the topic of love (Eros) and its relationship to philosophy, and contain some of the most significant and well-known passages in all of Plato’s writing. In fact, they qualify as literary masterworks of enormous depth and profundity, which repay reading and re-reading over the course of a lifetime. Here the dialogues part ways. Symposium tells the story of a dinner party, where a group of Athens’ literary and political elite hold speeches in praise of love, and thereby discuss medicine, homosexuality, mythology, and literary theory. Particularly remarkable are Aristophanes’s description of the Kugelmensch—an ancient explanation of the notion that in true love, one finds one’s ‘other half’—the initiation of Socrates into the ‘mysteries of love’ by the seeress Diotima, and the raw, yet sophisticated speech of Alcibiades, in the register of a Satyr-play. Phaedrus tells of Socrates’s teaching that love is a kind of divine madness, an idea which held particular influence not only in antiquity but the Renaissance and modernity as well. The midsection of the dialogue explores questions of the soul and its afterlife, featuring a classic description of the soul as a winged-being, as well as of a charioteer struggling to drive a chariot led by four horses of diverse inclinations. The dialogue finishes with a no less powerful engagement with literary and rhetorical criticism, which puts to test the very notion of doing philosophy through literature and texts—a particularly relevant question for us in SoSe 2020. Aspects of these dialogues and their philosophical significance, as well as their contexts in ancient Greek philosophy, culture, and religion will be discussed among the students each week in chat. English and German. close

Belfiore, Elizabeth S. 2006. „Dancing with the Gods: The Myth of the Chariot in Plato’s Phaedrus.” American Journal of Philology 127.2: 185-217. Accessible online in Primo. Bruer, Horst. 2011. „Platonische Liebe in Shakespeares Sonett 116.“ Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 129.3: 378-397. Accessible online in Primo. Destrée, Pierre. 2012. „The Speech of Alcibiades (212c4-222b7).“ Pages 191-205 in Christoph Horn, (hrsg.), Platon: Symposion. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Accessible online in Primo. Dover, Kenneth J. 1984. Plato: Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ehli, Bridger. 2018. „Rationalizing Socrates’ daimonion.“ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26.2: 225-240. Accessible online in Primo. Frede, Dorothea. 2012. „Die Rede des Sokrates: Eros als Verlangen nach Unsterblichkeit (204c7-209e4).“ Pages 141-157 in Christoph Horn, (hrsg.), Platon: Symposium. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Accessible online in Primo. Fröhlich, Bettina. 2012. „Die ‚Kunst der Liebe‘. Zur Liebeskonzeption in Platons Phaidros.” Perspektiven der Philosophie, Neues Jahrbuch 38:47-63. Accessible online in Primo. Hooper, Anthony. 2013. „The greatest Hope of All: Aristophanes on Human Nature in Plato’s Symposium 1.“ The Classical Quarterly 63.2: 567-579. Accessible online in Primo. Kühn, Wilfried. 1998. „Welche Kritik an wessen Schriften? Der Schluß von Platons Phaidros, nichtesoterisch interpretiert.“ Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 52.1: 23-39. Accessible online in Primo. Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. Symposium, Phaedrus. Available online in what remains the standard, classic English translation of Benjamin Jowett at the Internet Classics Archive; modified by the instructor to include Teubner page numbers and available from the blackboard. Shapiro, Julia. 2015. “Pederasty and the Popular Audience.” Pages 177-207 in Ancient Sex: New Essays. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Accessible online in Primo. Verdenius, W. J. 1962. „Der Begriff der Mania in Platons Phaidros.“ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 44.2: 132-150. Accessible online in Primo. Vlastos, Gregory. 1981. „The Individual as an Object of Love“. Pages 3-42 in Gregory Vlastos (Hrsg.), Platonic Studies, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Werner, Daniel. 2010. „Rhetoric and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus.“ Greece and Rome 57.1: 21-46. Accessible online in Primo. Idem. 2012. Myth and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Accessible online in Primo. Wildberger, Jula. 2012. „Die komplexe Anlage von Forgespräch und Rahmenhandlung und andere literarisch-formale Askpekte des Symposion (172a1-178a5).“ S. 17-34 in Christoph Horn, (hrsg.), Platon: Symposion. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Accessible online in Primo. Yunis, Harvey. 2011. Plato, Phaedrus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. close