Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros

Seth Benardete

Role: Author

His first teaching position was as a tutor in the Great Books program at St. John’s College in Annapolis (1955–57). During this period he contributed translations of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Maidens and The Persians to the Chicago University Press’s series of The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore.

This essay is reprinted in The Archaeology of the Soul. The essay, “Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros” is informed by an underlying vision, which is a reflection of Seth Benardete’s life – long engagement with one thinker in particular – Plato. The Platonic dialogue presented Benardete with the most vivid case of that periagoge, or turn around, that he found to be the sign of all philosophic thinking and that is the signature as well of his own interpretations not only of Plato but also of other thinkers.

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