The Dialectical Interchange between Agathon and Socrates: Symposium 198b–201d

Abstract

In recent years philosophers working within the field of Platonic studies have begun to stress the relationship between form and content in Plato’s works. This ‘revelation’ in its turn has led to a richer understanding of Platonic texts; no longer (or at least not so often) do we find a Socratic argument excised from its dramatic context and syllogistically and analytically examined. Analysis, of course, can never be divorced from philosophy but with respect to the corpus Platonicum philosophical analysis has been supplemented by a sensitivity to the denouement of an argument, in other words, the dramatic context.