Journey of Transformation

Module #2Fall 2009

Plato(427 – 347 B.C.)

• The son of a wealthy and noble family.• The trial and eventual execution of Socrates (399 B.C.)

changed the course of his life. • He abandoned his political career and turned to

philosophy, opening a school on the outskirts of Athens dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom.

• Plato's school, then known as The Academy, it was the first university in western history and operated from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529. It was located on the outskirts of Athens and dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom.

• Plato was both a writer and a teacher.

The Socratic Method

• The technique of interrogation and cross-examination in which basic assumptions or crude, starting-level propositions are rigorously challenged, scrutinized, revised, and gradually refined into more accurate and powerful insights.

The Symposium

• Is considered one of the foundational documents of Western Culture. Completed in the middle period of Plato’s writing. Other works include The Republic, and Phaedo.

• It is an analysis and celebration of love in philosophy.• It is a “drinking party,” and symposia’s were strictly

stag, and quite lavish and somewhat semi-formal. • Serving Girls, Dancing Girls, flute players and hetaires

(a high class escort).• Held in private homes, people recline on couches

arranged in a circle.

Three Keys

• Drama– 3 Acts, Verbal Sparring matches.

• Rhetoric– Can be read as a pure rhetorical debate--a contest in which

each speech can be judged for its style and substance, in addition to being viewed as a moral reflection of the person who delivers it.

• Dialectic – Literally a speaking or thinking through on some issue or

problem, dialectic may be defined as a process of statement and counter-statement, thesis and antithesis, question and reply that leads by incremental stages to a better understanding of a particular issue and a closer approximation to the truth.

What is being discussed?

• Eros?• Normal Love?• Spiritual Love?• Desire?• Sexual Love?• Attraction?• Male - Male, Female – Male?