Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Plato is popularly known as a philosopher and is usually studied that way, but he is also a masterful dramatist. Both Symposium and Phaedrus allow him to show off his talents in this regard, and I hope we will be able to examine the way he handles characterization and dramatic structure as well as the substance of his arguments in these dialogues.

Both dialogues focus on the nature of love but they do touch on a number of other issues. There is plenty here to discuss despite the fact they are relatively short, so I think 3 weeks for each is not excessive.

There are numerous translations of both dialogues, many old ones and some new ones as well. I was once crazy enough to read it in Greek and found Geoffrey Steadman's edition with grammatical notes incredibly helpful. I came to the conclusion that R.E. Allen's translation is the most literal, along with that of Seth Benardete, but I've come to appreciate Robin Waterfield's translation for its flow. I haven't looked at Phaedrus as closely but I'm going to give Stephen Scully a whirl.

Here is the place to let us know which translation you favor.

Reading Schedule:

Symposium

April 5: Preliminaries and the five speeches, through the speech of Agathon, 172-197c

April 12: The speech of Socrates, 198 - 212a

April 19: The speech of Alcibiades and conclusion, 212b- 223d

Phaedrus

April 26: Preliminaries and the first speech of Socrates, 227-241

May 3: Second speech of Socrates, 241d-259d

May 10: The art of rhetoric and conclusion, 259e-279

In Plato's Symposium Socrates has bathed and is wearing sandals, in Phaedrus Socrates--as always--is barefoot.
In the Symposium Phaedrus' speech comes first and it is a very poor speech.....

Per THE German translator, Fr. Schleiermacher:
Phaedrus is the First Platonic dialogue; the Symposium comes at the conclusion of Schleiermacher's 2nd of 3 groups... only followed by Phaedo, Philebus, Republic, Laws & Timaeus.

To fully understand Plato it was for Schleiermacher of major importance to understand the ordering. The only other dialogue that treats extensively of "love" /friendship - is Lysis - a dialogue that Schleiermacher placed directly after Phaedrus as the 2nd dialogue which examines love in a dialectical manner, whereas the Phaedrus' treatment is mythological > thus Plato's development from Myth to Dialectic is one key to understanding his ordering of the dialogues.

Perhaps the early 19th Century Germans understood Plato better than the 21st Century does ....?

I will be reading
Symposium: Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff.
Phaedrus: Translated by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff.

Both books are from:
Plato. Plato: Complete Works . Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Edited by John M. Cooper
Associate Editor, D. S. Hutchinson

My plan is to read The Symposium translation by Peter Kalkavage, Eva Brann and Eric Salem and The Phaedrus translation by Waterfield. I may pull out my older translations if I can find them ;).

I will be reading Plato's Symposium, or The Drinking Party translated by Michael Joyce (Everyman's Library, London and New York, 1935) and Plato's Phaedrus translated with an introduction and commentary by R. Hackforth (Cambridge and New York, 1952).

I have the Allan Bloom book with the Bernadete translsation, but for convenience' sake I will probably go with the p.d. Jowett on Kindle.

Jowett is freely available and well respected, but his translations are sometimes a little suspect. I ran across this interesting tidbit as I was browsing through James Romm's The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom:

Jowett, himself asexual and homophobic, was nonetheless deeply intrigued by Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, texts he helped introduce into the Oxford curriculum. He recognized the great humanistic value of these works yet could not accept their (to us) obvious idealization of male eros. As [German classicist K.O.} Muller had done with his Dorians, Jowett found ingenious ways out of the problem. "What Plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves of women, before we can attach any serious meanings to his words," Jowett wrote in the introduction to his Phaedrus translation. Ultimately he decided (as we'll see further on) that Plato's discussions of eros were merely metaphoric.

So...caveat lector.

The Perseus text, presented in nice small easily digested annotated chunks, can be found here:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/s...
Click on Plato, Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus (English) in the list and scroll down the table of contents to find it.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

The exact URL is below, but I could not get it to work from here.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/t....

I have a soft spot for the Oxford World's Classics books (for purely aesthetic reasons; I like how they look and feel), and since I own the Symposium in that edition (Robin Waterfield translation), I'll go with that and also get the Phaedrus in the same series (also Waterfield). I remember the introduction to the Symposium being outstanding.

Based on Thomas' comments on accuracy and what was readily available to me, I got the Seth Benardete translation (Plato's Symposium).

Benardete is tough to read sometimes because he sticks so closely to the Greek. If you get frustrated with that translation, there are a couple others online (besides Jowett) :

Michael Joyce: https://people.stfx.ca/dalmaini/Al-Ma...

R.E. Allen: https://web.education.wisc.edu/halver...

Thomas wrote: "Benardete is tough to read sometimes because he sticks so closely to the Greek. If you get frustrated with that translation, there are a couple others online (besides Jowett) :

Michael Joyce: htt..."

Good to know Thomas, thanks!

I've got the Cooper edition on my bookshelf and a dramatized audiobook of the Jowett translation (as well as the ebook). Plato is one of the few philosophers I can listen to, though I still have to have my eyes on the text to do any serious analysis. I'll probably start with the Jowett and compare with the Cooper at points of special interest.