Naming the Lyric: Literature versus Philosophy in Plato's Symposium
The argument
Plato's Symposium has a view about who may teach the knowledge of love, and the essay asks what that view leaves out. Reading the dialogue through Sappho, Diotima, and Alcibiades, it argues that the Symposium stages a tension between philosophical ascent and the knowledge held in embodied, particular love. Sappho starts from what each person finds most beautiful. The beloved differs from person to person, yet the experience is recognizable and can be shared. That movement from one attachment toward an experience others can recognize is philosophical knowledge. Alcibiades' love for Socrates makes the question one of knowing another person. The essay uses the dialogue's literary structure and its silence about Sappho to show what ascent gains and what it risks losing.
Publication details
- Author
- Katherine Elkins
- Publication
- Philosophy and Literature 44, no. 2 (2020), pp. 402–417.
- DOI
- 10.1353/phl.2020.0030
Naming the Lyric at the publisher →
Key concepts
Plato's Symposium; Sappho; Diotima; Alcibiades; eros; lyric; philosophical authority; embodied knowledge; particular and shared experience.
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