14 Background on Platonic Dialogues

Although Plato is known for his dialogues, writing dialogues to express philosophical phenomena was not at all original to Plato as other disciples of Socrates wrote in dialogue format. In Ancient Greece, the dialogue style of writing was popular because it emphasized the “centrality of debate in solving moral problems.” Written around 385 BCE Plato’s Symposium is a dialogue between a group of close male friends at a dinner party. The men present are all historical figures in ancient Athens, though the party itself comes from the imagination of Plato as the dinner party itself is set in 416 BCE when Plato was just 11 years old.

Kate Brassal of Columbia University defines a symposium: “A symposium (“drinking together”) was a social gathering of high-status male guests who wore garlands and reclined on long couches, while being served wine by slave boys and sometimes entertained by hired (non-citizen) women. Party-goers would have been used to singing songs and hymns in honor of various gods—drinking songs of this sort have survived from antiquity until today.  Symposiasts might expect to be entertained by song, dance, poetry and even rhetoric—but not rigorous philosophical debate.”^[1]

The dialogue consists of speeches surrounding the praise of Eros, the god of Love.