Plato's "Symposium"

Author: Plato
Translator: Liu Xiaofeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: Excerpt: Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Siemens Foundation, I warmly welcome you all to the sixth lecture in our series "Ancient Greek Thinkers and Their Texts." Tonight's theme is Plato's Symposium. In many ways—regarding the speaker, the foundation, and myself—tonight will be different, and I hope you will feel the same. First, the speaker we have invited tonight is extraordinary. I can assure you that this lecture will not only be inspiring and intellectually stimulating but also rigorous and profound. We warmly welcome our speaker, Seth Benardete, whose presence will certainly not disappoint you. The published works of Seth Benardete on Plato, even conservatively speaking, are full of intellectual sparks, inspiring, rigorous, and profound. A famous philosopher once remarked on young Benardete, "It is almost impossible to surpass Benardete."—I believe what this means is: when Benardete explains and studies Plato, Aristotle, Greek tragedy, Homer, Hesiod, or Herodotus, he always leads other researchers, standing at a higher vantage point. Decades have passed since then, the world has changed greatly, and the works on Plato we face today are abundant. However, this fact remains unchanged: Benardete still stands at a high level in his dialogue with Plato—among his contemporaries, few can match his understanding of Plato. And to this day, no one has surpassed him. To surpass him, one must first possess an extremely keen dedication. Benardete's interpretations repeatedly take unexpected and surprising turns. His important arguments are concise and simple, free of ornate language, embellishment, or any preconceived warnings. The result of engaging deeply with the text is merely a series of fleeting evaluations and observations, yet in the eyes of the reader or listener, a completely different overall impression will eventually emerge—the reader will themselves combine certain sentences based on expectations or derive implied meanings from the words, in short, the reader will actively participate in the dialogue process (with Plato). To make this participation easier, I would like to first review and briefly introduce the interlocutors in Plato's Symposium, which Benardete will discuss tonight. For this purpose, I will use Anselm Feuerbach's important painting—Plato's Banquet—a very small reproduction of which you all have received. You need not worry that what I say will unnecessarily repeat what Benardete will elaborate on in detail, nor will I discuss interpretations unrelated to the theme of Plato's Banquet with art historians. This content itself is a separate theme, enough to discuss for an entire evening.