Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus

Description

In the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Plato
presents an array of speeches about love, but there is almost no conversation directly
exploring that topic in either dialogue. There are disagreements and inconsistencies within both dialogues that
may spark an unfolding of thinking about love, but that dialectical motion must
occur between the speeches and between the lines of Plato's texts; the reader
must do the work, provoked, invited, and assisted by what they contain. The context for our thinking includes in one
case the subject of tragedy and comedy, in the other the nature of rhetoric and
writing, but it is philosophy, and not poetry or politics, that persistently
claims the center of attention. The
dialogues themselves seem as different as night from day, as urbane wit from
rustic charm, but do they point to opposing or converging attitudes toward
erotic love?