Nichols, Mary P., Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Excerpt:

Any argument that the philosophic pursuits of Plato’s Socrates exemplify an understanding of love and friendship supportive of political life, as I make in this book, must confront the charges against Socrates made by his own political community, the city of Athens. Socrates was accused and found guilty of doing injustice “by corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods of the city but in new daemonic things” (Apology 24b). Whereas in his Apology of Socrates Plato presents Socrates giving his defense in an Athenian court, his Symposium serves as his own consideration of those charges against Socrates, and I shall argue his own “apology for Socrates.”

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