Teaching Plato in Translation
by Susan Gorman, Boston University
Original text © 2004 Susan Gorman
The Symposium
The Dialectic
Turning now to Plato's Symposium, I find that students enjoy this text. The movements of the argument are easier to follow and there is enough humor to keep their interest. However, despite this deceptive ease, the text is sophisticated and demands that its readers ask and answer very difficult questions.
Socrates discusses through dialectic. The 'dialectic' is an initially intimidating term. However, in this case it simply means a method of philosophical enquiry. In the Symposium, the dialectic is the Socratic method. That method is the asking of questions that are then answered by interlocutors.
Later, the dialectic becomes a more specific method of argumentation. The thesis, the initial argumentative statement, is confronted by its antithesis, its opposite. Those two different poles then are reconciled by a synthesis.
