| Acknowledgments | xi |
| Introduction | 1 |
1 | Apollodorus's Prologue: An Imitation of an Imitation | 7 |
1.1 | The Historical Frame | 7 |
1.2 | Apollodorus and Mimetic Narrative | 10 |
1.3 | The Force of Hybris | 13 |
1.4 | Malakos versus Manikos: Soft or Mad? | 15 |
1.5 | Anachronisms? | 18 |
2 | Aristodemus's Prologue: The Destruction and Transformation of the Factual Frame of Reference | 21 |
2.1 | The Story | 22 |
2.2 | Sufficiency and Beauty: Emerging Criteria for Judgment | 23 |
2.3 | The Spatial Order? | 26 |
2.4 | Mimetic versus Hubristic: The Destruction and Transformation of the Factual Narrative | 28 |
2.5 | Sophistic Education in the Context of Other Dialogues: Protagoras, Phaedo, Republic | 33 |
2.6 | Between Religious Observance and the Cycle of Opposites | 37 |
2.7 | "The Father of the Discourse" | 39 |
3 | The Order of the Speeches: Formulating the Problem | 43 |
3.1 | Eros | 44 |
3.2 | Encomium | 46 |
3.3 | The Problem of the Significance of the Early Speeches | 46 |
4 | From Character to Speech: The Early Speeches and Their Significance | 51 |
4.1 | Phaedrus: The Ardent Apprentice, but Confused Mythologue | 51 |
4.2 | Pausanias: The Sophistic Sociologue | 56 |
4.3 | Hiccups and Eryximachus, the Homogenic Doctor-Scientist | 62 |
4.4 | Aristophanes: The Poet as Educator | 68 |
4.4.1 | Aristophanes' Speech and Socrates' Criticism of Mimetic Art in the Republic | 70 |
4.4.2 | The Possibility of Anachronism and Plato's Vanishing Signature | 78 |
4.4.3 | Aristophanes' Speech as a Parody of Philosophical Dialectic | 80 |
4.4.4 | Aristophanes' Speech and Individual Identity | 82 |
4.4.5 | Aristophanes' Hiccups Revisited | 85 |
4.5 | Agathon: The Sophistic Theologue as the "Climax" of an Unselfcritical Tradition | 85 |
4.5.1 | Advance over the Previous Speakers? | 86 |
4.5.2 | Agathon as Theologue Without Need | 92 |
4.5.3 | The Shadow of the "Good": Agathon's Portrait in the Context of the Republic | 94 |
4.6 | Conclusion | 100 |
5 | Diotima-Socrates: Mythical Thought in the Making | 104 |
5.1 | Introduction: The Problem | 104 |
5.2 | The Elenchus of Agathon and the Question of Truth | 108 |
5.3 | The Role of Diotima | 111 |
5.4 | Eros-Daimon | 118 |
5.5 | Diotima and the Art of Mythmaking Revisited: The Birth of Eros | 121 |
5.6 | Love: Relation or Substance? | 130 |
5.7 | Rhetoric and Dialectic | 133 |
5.8 | Criticism of Aristophanes and Agathon | 135 |
5.9 | The Curious Case of Procreation in the Beautiful | 137 |
5.10 | The Concluding Sections of the Lesser Mysteries | 141 |
5.11 | Preliminary Conclusion | 145 |
6 | The Greater Mysteries and the Structure of the Symposium So Far | 147 |
6.1 | The Movement of Ascent: Structure | 148 |
6.2 | The Movement of Ascent and the Earlier Speeches | 151 |
6.3 | Immortality and God-Belovedness | 158 |
6.4 | Overall Conclusion | 159 |
6.4.1 | "Platonic Love": The View So Far | 159 |
7 | Alcibiades and the Conclusion of the Symposium: The Test and Trial of Praise | 163 |
7.1 | The Figure of Dionysus and the Face of Socrates | 163 |
7.2 | The Role of Alcibiades | 165 |
7.3 | The Test of Praise | 168 |
7.4 | The Trial of Praise | 176 |
7.5 | Eros, the Tyrant, and His Revelers | 179 |
7.6 | Identity and Diversity: The Uniqueness of Socrates | 181 |
7.7 | Logoi Opened Up: An Image for the Symposium? | 183 |
7.8 | The Concluding Scenes: Rest and the Self-Motion of Thought-"Socrates Standing Seeking" | 184 |
8 | Conclusion: Plato's Dialectic at Play | 188 |
8.1 | Character, Voice, and Genre | 188 |
8.2 | Bakhtin and the Dialogical Character of Novelistic Discourse | 197 |
8.3 | The Symposium as the First "Novel" of Its Kind in History | 200 |
8.4 | Plato's Dialectic at Play: Art, Reason, and Understanding | 203 |
8.5 | Plato's Positive View of Art | 215 |
8.6 | Structure, Myth, and Argument | 220 |
8.7 | Soul-Body and Human Identity | 224 |
8.8 | "Platonic Love" and "Plato" | 234 |
| Select Bibliography | 241 |
| Index | 255 |