Apresian, R. G. The Conceptual Composition of Plato’s Dialogue ‘Symposium’ and Plato’s Philosophy of Love

Abstract: The two approaches can be distinguished to discussing Plato’s ‘Symposium’. According to the first approach, in Socrates’ speech Plato shared his point of view of love (eros). According to the second approach, each participant of the symposium makes his own contribution to the development of the definition of love. The author of the present article keeps to the second approach and tries to show that in his ‘Symposium’ Plato presented his concept of love (eros) dialectically, i.e. as a part of the development of different or differently expressed ideas. Plato’s views on love are described on the basis of, first of all, analytical comparison of different definitions of love offered in different speeches and discovery of conceptual similarities and secondly, a potential comparison of the contents of ‘Symposium’ with Aristotle’s teaching about philia and New Testament teaching about agape that view love as one’s attitude towards the other compared to one’s attitude to himself and one’s attitude to supreme forces. Plato’s concept of love includes both the program of self-improvement in love and the ideal of human relations (which Socrates did not touch upon in his speech). The latter is clearly shown in Alcibiades’ speech who came back to the question about relations between lovers following Socrates’ erotosophia and showed what the best of such relations could be. From the point of view of the discourse, Alcibiades’ speech was the converging point between Socrates’ speech and speeches of other participants of the dispute. Alcibiades’ speech provided for the intellectual synthesis as the framework for developing Plato’s concept of love (eros).

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