What Is a Middle Work?

The symposium is meant to prepare us for the drier, less literally inspired dialogues. We're supposed to be moved by the comedy and tragedy in that figure of else's abiities. Alcibiades is extremely important for giving context to something like the philosophical dialectic of Diatima. He's not just talking about it; he is showing it. So there's a total difference between a discourse on love and the demonstration of being in love.