ABSTRACT
Although Plato’s use of comedy and tragedy in the Symposium is well-known, few have wondered how the actual experience of the Athenian stage brings out the nature of philosophy in the dialogue. This chapter argues that Plato, like Athenian drama, associates comedy with the human and contingent, Plato’s world of Becoming, and tragedy with necessity and the divine, his world of Being. Within this opposition philosophy, like Eros or like the satyr Socrates, mediates, while the Symposium, taking on the opposed modes of comedy and tragedy, sets itself to incorporate both the absolute and the utter chance of human life.
