The role of Eros in improving the pupil, or what Socrates learned from Sappho

Title: The role of Eros in improving the pupil, or what Socrates learned from Sappho
Creator: Johnson, Marguerite
Relation: Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator p. 7-29
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
Resource Type: book chapter
Date: 2012
Description: Eros - in theory and, perhaps, in practice - was a central concern of certain pre-Socratics, most obviously Empedocles, and of the Platonic schools from Plato himself on. Indeed, the role of eros in improving the pupil - spiritually as well as intellectually - was a topos of various philosophical dialogues, including those by persons other than Plato, such as Xenophon (Symposium) and Plutarch (Eroticus). Yet it may be argued that the inquiry into eros, and the employment of eros for purposes that may loosely be described as 'educational', had a separate or independent existence, already reflected in poetry, and above all in the poetic 'pedagogies' of Sappho. Taking the latter view as more than idle theorising, I propose to explore the influence of Sappho - duBois' 'underworld' or 'subtext' - on the Platonic Socrates-as-pedagogue, while keeping an eye on the Alcibiades I and the undisputed works of Plato that touch on these themes.
Subject: Eros; Socrates; Sappho; Plato
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1302560
Identifier: uon:20500
Identifier: ISBN:9780715640869
Language: eng

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