This seminar is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 6. It will be focused on the overall structure of the dialogue the Symposium, and on each of the speeches about love the interlocutors in the dialogue

In our discussion and Q & A, it is likely that we may stray into other related topics connected to Plato's thought, but we will try to keep the discussion focused primarily on the main topics for the seminar.

Here is the schedule for the seminar (all times are Central Daylight Time)

9:00 AM CDT - Part 1: Overview of the Text and Plato's Thought, Narrative Framework of the work, First Two Speeches

We will be discussing the following topics:

• The complex narrative framing of the work
• Why the symposium attendants give speeches about Love
• Views on sexual desire and relationships in ancient Greece
• The key characters, their occupations, and their relationships
• Phaedo's first speech about love's age and nobility
• The concept of an army of lovers
• Pausanius' second speech about the laws and love
• The distinction between heavenly and earthly love
• Distinctions between legal approaches to love

11:00 AM CDT - Part 2: The Three Middle Speeches About Love: Medicine, Comedy, and Rhetoric

We will be discussing the following topics:

• Eryximachus' third speech about love as a medical and cosmic phenomenon
• Suggestions about how to enjoy good aspects of love
• Aristophanes' fourth speech about love and uniting separated halfs
• An origin myth for human beings and soulmates
• Explaining same-sex and opposite-sex attraction and love
• Agathon's fifth speech about love's beauty and love's virtues
• How speeches about love ought to be made
• Why love possesses all of the virtues
• Socrates' cross-examination of Agathon

1:00 PM CDT - Part 3: The Final Speeches, Conclusion(s) To The Work

We will be discussing the following topics:

• Socrates' sixth speech about love, a dialogue inside the dialogue
• Socrates' teacher, the wise woman Diotima
• What love or desire are actually for
• The ladder of love from bodies to the beautiful itself
• Alcibaides' drunken seventh speech about Socrates
• Why Socrates is beautiful inside though ugly outside
• Socrates' friend-zoning Alcibiades
• The conclusion of the dialogue with comedy and tragedy

Students enrolled in the seminar are free to attend and participate in as many or as few sessions as they would like to while it is running. All sessions will be recorded so students can watch them as many times as they wish afterwards