Syllabus and Bibliography for Plato’s Symposium PHI 366
Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction to the course and early scenes (Symposium 172a – 180c)
Week 2: Phaedrus’ and Pausanias’ speeches (Symposium 180c-185c)
Week 3: Aristophanes’ hiccups, Eryximachus’ speech and Aristophanes’ speech (Symposium
185c-192b)
Week 4: Aristophanes’ speech (cont.) and Agathon’s speech (Symposium 192b-198a)
Week 5: Diotima’s speech (Symposium 198a-206a)
Week 6: Diotima’s speech (cont.) (Symposium 206a-210a)
Week 7: Diotima’s speech (cont.) (Symposium 210a-212c)
Week 8: Alcibiades’ speech (Symposium 212c-222c)
Week 9: Ending of the dialogue, overall review and place of Symposium within Platonic
corpus (Symposium 222c-223d)
Week 10: Relation of the Symposium to the Phaedrus and the Lysis.
Week 11: Nachleben of the Symposium: Plotinus, Ficino and Freud.
Bibliography
I will be recommending particular readings for particular sections of the dialogue as we go
along. However, as all parts of the Symposium interrelate to form a carefully polished whole
(as I hope to convince you!), I am including all these readings here in a general bibliography.
You are not expected to read all of this, or even most of it: just sample what takes your fancy
(and, of course, what is available).
Set Text: C.J. Rowe (ed.), 1998, Plato: Symposium. Oxford: Aris and Phillips Classical
Texts (available from Blackwell’s Bookshop in Mappin Street). This contains the original
Greek as well as a translation and detailed notes. Please note: This is an open book exam.
Students should take their copies of the C.J.Rowe edition into the exam. Copies may be
annotated in the following ways only: underlinings; highlighting; cross-referencing
(including bookmarks) and phrases up to three words long.
Other editions (apart from our Rowe set text) well worth looking at:
Gill, C., Symposium. (Penguin)
Howatson, M.C. and Sheffield, F., 2008, Plato: The Symposium. Cambridge University
Press.
K. Dover’s edition (Cambridge University Press) includes only the Greek text, but is worth
consulting for its introduction and linguistic and historical notes.
Useful Source Material
Note: These Greek texts are available in the Library in the Loeb editions (Greek on one side
of the page; a translation on the other).
Plato Phaedrus (on the kalon (beauty; the fine) and erotic love)
Plato Lysis (on philia, friendship)
Plato (?) Alcibiades 1
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War (particularly Book 6 for Alcibiades e.g.
6.15.4)
Plutarch Alcibiades
Plotinus Enneads 1.6 (on the kalon (beauty; the fine) and its relation to the agathon (the
good))
Xenophon Symposium
Secondary Reading
Blondell, R., 2002, The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues. Cambridge University
Press.
Ferrari, G.R.F., 1992, ‘Platonic Love’ in The Cambridge Companion to Plato (ed. R. Kraut)
Goldhill, S., 2009, The End of Dialogue in Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
Halperin, D.M., 1990, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. Routledge.
Halperin, D.M, Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F. (eds.), 1990, Before Sexuality: the Construction
of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton University Press.
Hobbs, A. 1) 2012, Entries on ‘The Symposium’ and ‘Women’ in the Continuum Companion
to Plato.
2) 2010, Entries on ‘Virtue, Philosophical Conceptions of’ and ‘Virtue, Popular
Conceptions of’ in G. Press (ed.) The Oxford Encylopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Oxford University Press.
3) 2006, ‘Female Imagery in Plato’ in Lesher, Nails and Sheffield (eds.) 2006.
4) 2000, ‘Alcibiades’ revenge: thumos in the Symposium’ Plato and the Hero
(ch.9). Cambridge University Press.
5) ‘Plato on Erotic Love’ interview for www.philosophybites.com Revised
version included in D. Edmonds and N. Warburton (eds.), 2012, Philosophy Bites Back.
Oxford University Press.
6) Discussion of ‘Love’ on the BBC Radio 4 In Our Time archive.
Hunter, R., 2004, Plato’s Symposium. Oxford University Press.
Kahn, C.H., 1996, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: the Philosophical Use of a Literary
Form. Cambridge University Press.
Kraut, R., 1992, The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge University Press.
Lesher, J., Nails, D. and Sheffield, F., 2006, Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and
Reception. Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University Press.
Nehamas, A., 1998, The Art of Living; Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault
University of California Press..
Nichols, M.P., 2009, Socrates on Friendship and Community. Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, N., 1986, The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge University Press.
Price, A.W., 1989. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford University Press.
Rowe, C.J., 2010, Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing. Cambridge University Press.
Rutherford, R.B., 1995, The Art of Plato. Cambridge, MA
Sandford, S., 2010, Plato and Sex. Polity Press.
Santas, G., Plato and Freud: Two Theories of Love. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Sheffield, F., 2006, Plato’s Symposium: the Ethics of Desire. Oxford University Press.
Skinner, M., 2005, Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Malden, MA
Stokes, M.C., 1986, Plato’s Socratic Conversations (pp.114-182). London: Athlone Press
Tuana, N. (ed.), 1994, Feminist Interpretations of Plato. Pennsylvania
Winkler, J.J., 1990, The Constraints of Desire: the Anthropology of Sexual Gender in
Ancient Greece. New York