Plato's Dialectic at Play

Beneath the after-dinner speeches on love in Plato's Symposium lies a carefully built structure, and this study sets out to uncover it layer by layer. The argument is that dialogue was never mere ornament for Plato but the very form philosophy takes, where dialectic is argument and play at once. Close reading shows Diotima's higher mysteries mirrored in the design of the whole work, and casts the Symposium, with its ascent to the Beautiful, as a companion to the Republic's sterner critique of art.

Drawing on Nietzsche and Mikhail Bakhtin, the book goes on to make the bold case for the Symposium as the first novel, before turning to body and soul, mythos and logos, and Plato's own vanishing signature. It is a rewarding study for anyone who suspects Plato's art and his philosophy are one thing.