Das Problem des platonischen Symposion.

This scholarly work opens with a meticulous preface that explains the careful transcription of Plato’s Symposium, highlighting every correction and offering a complete list of changes for the diligent reader. From the outset, the author frames the dialogue as Plato’s crowning achievement, noting its elegant Athenian grace while immediately raising the central puzzle: the striking contradictions between the Symposium and other Platonic texts on subjects such as the role of poets, the value of ambition (φιλοτιμία), and the nature of the soul’s immortality.

Through close readings of passages from the Gorgias, Phaedrus and Phaedo, the analysis explores how the Symposium’s treatment of eternal striving and the soul’s existence challenges conventional chronologies of Plato’s thought. The author argues that these tensions suggest a nuanced development in Plato’s philosophy, positioning the dialogue at a pivotal crossroads between his early and later periods. Listeners will be guided through the intricate arguments, gaining fresh insight into why the Symposium remains both a masterpiece and a scholarly conundrum.