(Ebook) Socrates' Daimonic Art: Love for Wisdom in Four Platonic Dialogues by Elizabeth S. Belfiore ISBN 9781107007581, 9781316628874, 1107007585, 1316628876

(Ebook) Socrates' Daimonic Art: Love for Wisdom in Four Platonic Dialogues by Elizabeth S. Belfiore ISBN 9781107007581, 9781316628874, 1107007585, 1316628876

First published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato’s dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato’s characterization of Socrates in the Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is “erotic,” not in a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in the Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates’ art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erˆos. Professor Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater.