Abstract

This dissertation offers an interpretation of Plato's Symposium which tries to remain faithful to Plato's concrete dramatic mode of presentation. The dialogue is read as having a tripartite structure and consequently is treated in three Acts. ;The first Act argues that Plato's first five speakers on Eros offer something like an account of the 'origins and history' of Hellenic consciousness. This history begins with Homer and ends with the latest in sophistical poetry . At the same time it presents a critique of Homer, analogous to that found in Republic. Sophistical culture is seen as but the logical outcome of the archaic Homeric ideal. ;The second Act argues that Socrates' dialogue with Diotima is a dramatization of his effort to reorient his culture. Socrates' famous mimetic irony is seen as his loving work on behalf of his polis, by which he seeks to reconstruct its history by replacing Homeric Eris with Eros. Love as such, it is argued, is likewise presented by Plato as being a sort of mimesis. ;The third Act, finally, argues that Alcibiades represents the judgment of his culture upon Socrates. Both historically--by virtue of his impending venture to Sicily--and personally--by virtue of his account of Socrates' "hybris"--he raises the question of whether Socratic philosophy must, in the end, be considered a failure. After discussing the sense in which the Symposium does indeed appear to find Socrates to be "lacking," I consider the way in which it also seems to project us ahead to another dialogical encounter