Document Type : Research

Author

• Samira Rezaee

Master of Philosophy, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

While Plato chooses dialogue as the form of his philosophical works, and due to this, his works are distinct in the history of philosophy, ‘The Symposium’ is a different one in Plato’s works. This dialogue presents seven interrelated speeches on the nature of love, with each speaker contributing to the discussion and passing the topic to the next. Consequently, as the preceding and subsequent contributions constitute every utterance in the ‘The Symposium’, each utterance emerges as inherently incomplete, which invites a continuous investigation of the subject throughout the dialogue. Our primary claim in this article is twofold: first, that ‘The Symposium’ should not be considered merely as one of Plato’s dialogues but as a pattern of dialogue itself, and second, that this recognition prompts us to reconsider dialogue not only as Plato’s chosen literary form but also as a pattern of his philosophical thinking.
 

Keywords

• Dialogue
• Subject
• Whatness
• Limit
• Completeness
• Incompleteness

Main Subjects

• Philosophy