Characterizations of Philosophical Dialectic in the Symposium

As I mentioned in class, one of the main purposes of the Symposium is to contrast a conventional ritual that involves having a male-only pajama party, where each participant gives a speech praising something or someone, to another kind of activity, which is using conversation as a means to truth. To use the Greek terms, this is a contrast between rhetoric and dialectic. Here are some more particular points in the book where this becomes clear:

Rhetorical symposium is for men. This doesn't automatically make it intellectual, since they are still drinking and since we know these men like to have sex with each other, but from their standpoint it makes it MORE intellectual. "Let us dispense with the flute-girl who just made her entrance; let her play for herself or, if she prefers, for the women in the house. Let us instead spend our evening in conversation." (176e) Plato is actually kind of a prude - symposia parties typically had prostitutes in addition to flute girls. It may help to imagine them dismissing the prostitutes.

Rhetoric is successive, dialectic is digressive: "At that point Phaedrus interrupted: 'Agathon, my friend, if you answer Socrates, he'll no longer care whether we get anywhere with what we're doing here, so long as he has a partner for discussion'..." (194e)

Socrates contrasts rhetoric to dialectic: "I know nothing whatever of this business of how anything whatever ought to be praised. In my foolishness, I thought you should tell the truth about whatever you praise... the proposal, apparently, was that everyone here make the rest of us think he is praising love - and not that he actually praise him." (198d-198e)

The point of rhetoric is to speak fancy (like Agathon); the point of dialectic is to find philosophical truth: "You will hear the truth about Love, and the words and phrasing will take care of themselves." (199b)