Major Works

• Symposium

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato. Plato’s Symposium: A Translation by Seth Benardete with Commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete. Translated by Seth Benardete. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  • Plato. "Symposium." Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by J. M. Cooper, 457–505. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997.
  An excerpt- Socrates’ recounting of Diotima’s teachings on the “Ladder of Love”: “He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward… More

Commentary

• The Ladder of Love

  - Bloom, Allan, "The Ladder of Love," Plato's Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  Excerpt: All of this amounts to nothing more than an abstraction, the improbable assertion that thinking is erotic, unless there is some real connection between the activity of thinking and the phenomena everyone recognizes as erotic. This paradoxical… More

• On Plato’s Symposium

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Symposium," Plato's Symposium, trans. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  Excerpt: Some Platonic dialogues are bound closely to the life and times of Socrates, and some are set at a particular time of day. The Phaedo and Symposium satisfy both criteria; they are also non-Socratically reported dialogues, and both contain… More

• Plato’s Symposium

  - Rosen, Stanley, Plato's Symposium, 3rd ed., South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 1999.
  Book description (from the publisher): This is the first full-length study of the Symposium to be published in English [originally published in 1967], and one of the first English works on Plato to take its bearings by the dramatic form of the Platonic… More

• On Plato’s Symposium

  - Strauss, Leo, On Plato's Symposium, ed. Seth Benardete, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
  Excerpt: This course will be on Plato’s political philosophy and it will be conducted in the form of an explanation and an interpretation of the Symposium. by way of introduction I have to answer these two questions: (1) Why do we study Plato’s… More

• The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium

  - Nussbaum, Martha C., "The Speech of Alcibiades: A Reading of the Symposium," The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 165-195.
  Excerpt: He was, to begin with, beautiful. He was endowed with a physical grace and splendor that captivated the entire city. They did not decline as he grew, but flourished at each stage with new authority and power. He was always highly conscious of his… More

• Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis

  - 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… More

Multimedia

• Leo Strauss Courses on Plato

  - Audio of courses taught by Leo Strauss, 1958 - 1973, provided by the Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago.
  Courses include: Plato’s Laws, Symposium, Gorgias, Meno, Apology/Crito, Protagoras, Euthydemus and Republic.

• Miles Burnyeat on Plato

  - "On Plato," The Great Philosophers, BBC, 1987.
  About the program: The dialogues of Plato are analyzed in this episode of the BBC series The Great Philosophers (1987), in which Bryan Magee interviews Cambridge philosophy professor Miles Burnyeat. Seeing Plato’s ideas initially as extensions of… More