Symposia: Plato, the Erotic, and Moral Value

Socrates was wise, because he knew that he did not know anything; this has long been the prevailing wisdom of the Socratic-Platonic tradition. In Plato s Middle Period spanning dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus Socrates consistently claims to have knowledge in one area: the erotic. This book argues that the underlining of erotic matters in what it refers to as Plato s Erotic Period marks the most significant and dramatic moment in Plato s career. Plato s attention to the erotic in this period calls for a fundamental reassessment of many of the most important Platonic ideas: his complicated quarrel with poetry, his dubious doctrine of forms, his alleged hostility to the body and embodiment. In the Erotic Period, Plato s views are much richer, and infinitely more complex, than the many caricatures of his thought allow.