![]() The dramatic date of the gathering within Symposium is 416 BCE, identifiable from the historical record of the tragic poet Agathon’s victory in Athens' annual drama competition, to which the play alludes. Plato’s Symposium (written around 385 BCE) portrays an evening party among close male associates and friends. In any case, the engaging literary form of dialogue reflects the centrality of debate in resolving moral problems (for example, the ethical questions dramatized by Aeschylus and Sophocles), which were ever at the forefront of Plato's mind. Earlier philosophers wrote in a variety of forms that we might consider odd today – maxims, paradoxes, even poetry. Other disciples of the philosopher Socrates wrote “Socratic dialogues,” too. ![]() ![]() Alcibades Being Taught by Socrates by François-André Vincent, 1775 (Wikimedia Commons)Īlthough we today might take the “dialogue” to be an unusual, even surprising, form for the exposition of philosophy – which we are more used to associating with lengthy and weighty prose treatises – dialogue was by no means a form unique to Plato. ![]()
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