About the Book:The Symposium is one of Platos most accessible dialogues, an engrossing historical document as well as an entertaining literary masterpiece. By uncovering the structural design of the dialogue, Platos Dialectic at Play aims at revealing a Plato for whom the dialogical form was not merely ornamentation or philosophical methodology but the essence of philosophical exploration. His dialectic is not only argument; it is also play. Careful analysis of each layer of the text leads cumulatively to a picture of the dialogues underlying structure, related to both argument and myth, and shows that a dynamic link exists between Diotimas higher mysteries and the organization of the dialogue as a whole. On this basis the authors argue that the Symposium, with its positive theory of art contained in the ascent to the Beautiful, may be viewed as a companion piece to the Republic, with its negative critique of the role of art in the context of the Good. Following Nietzsches suggestion and applying criteria developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, they further argue for seeing the Symposium as the first novel. The book concludes with a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of the Symposium and its place in Platos thought generally, touching on major issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of art, the body-soul connection, the problem of identity, the relationship between mythos and logos, Platonic love, and the question of authorial writing and the vanishing signature of the absent Plato himself.Table of Contents: ContentsIntroduction1. Apollodoruss Prologue: An Imitation of an Imitation1.1 The Historical Frame1.2 Apollodorus and Mimetic Narrative1.3 The Force of Hybris1.4 Malakos versus Manikos: Soft or Mad?1.5 Anachronisms?2. Aristodemuss Prologue: The Destruction and Transformation of the Factual Frame of Reference2.1 The Story2.2 Sufficiency and Beauty: Emerging Criteria for Judgment2.3 The Spatial Order?2.4 Mimetic versus Hubristic: The Destruction of the Factual Narrative2.5 Sophistic Education in the Context of Other Dialogues: Protagoras, Phaedo, Republic2.6 Between Religious Observance and the Cycle of Opposites2.7 The Father of the Discourse3. The Order of the Speeches: Formulating the Problem3.1 Eros3.2 Encomium3.3 The Problem of the Significance of the Early Speeches4. From Character to Speech: The Early Speeches and Their Significance4.1 Phaedrus: The Ardent Apprentice, but Confused Mythologue4.2 Pausanias: The Sophistic Sociologue4.3 Hiccups and Eryximachus, the Homogenic Doctor-Scientist4.4 Aristophanes: The Poet as Educator4.4.1 Aristophanes Speech and Socrates Criticism of Mimetic Art in the Republic4.4.2 The Possibility of Anachronism and Platos Vanishing Signature4.4.3 Aristophanes Speech as a Parody of Philosophical Dialectic4.4.4 Aristophanes Speech and Individual Identity4.4.5 Aristophanes Hiccups Revisited4.5 Agathon: The Sophistic Theologue as the Climax of an Unselfcritical Tradition4.5.1 Advance over the Previous Speakers?4.5.2 Agathon as Theologue Without Need4.5.3 The Shadow of the Good: Agathons Portrait in the Context of the Republic4.6 Conclusion5. Diotima-Socrates: Mythical Thought in the Making5.1 Introduction: The Problem5.2 The Elenchus of Agathon and the Question of Truth5.3 The Role of Diotima5.4 Eros-Daimn5.5 Diotima and the Art of Mythmaking Revisited: The Birth of Eros5.6 Love: Relation or Substance?5.7 Rhetoric and Dialectic5.8 Criticism of Aristophanes and Agathon5.9 The Curious Case of Procreation in the Beautiful5.10 The Concluding Sections of the Lesser Mysteries5.11 Preliminary Conclusion6. The Greater Mysteries and the Structure of the Symposium So Far6.1 The Movement of Ascent: Structure6.2 The Movement of Ascent and the Earlier Speeches6.3 Immortality and God-Belovedness6.4 Overall Conclusion6.4.1 Platonic Love: The View So Far7. Alcibiades and the Conclusion of the Symposium: The Test and Trial of Praise7.1 The Figure of Dionysus and the Face of Socrates7.2 The Role of Alcibiades7.3 The Test of Praise7.4 The Trial of Praise7.5 Eros, the Tyrant, and His Revelers7.6 Identity and Diversity: The Uniqueness of Socrates7.7 Logoi Opened Up: An Image for the Symposium?7.8 The Concluding Scenes: Rest and the Self-Motion of ThoughtSocrates Standing Seeking8. Conclusion: Platos Dialectic at Play8.1 Character, Voice, and Genre8.2 Bakhtin and the Dialogical Character of Novelistic Discourse8.3 The Symposium as the First Novel of Its Kind in History8.4 Platos Dialectic at Play: Art, Reason, and Understanding8.5 Platos Positive View of Art8.6 Structure, Myth, and Argument8.7 Soul-Body and Human Identity8.8 Platonic Love and PlatoSelect BibliographyIndex