The Problem of the Platonic Symposium
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Philosophy students who have read the Symposium and wish to understand its argumentative difficulties in depth
- Researchers working on Plato's theory of eros or classical aesthetics
- Readers with German reading ability interested in nineteenth-century classical scholarship
- Advanced undergraduates needing secondary literature for papers
Not a good fit for
- Philosophy beginners with no experience reading Platonic dialogues
- Readers unfamiliar with German who can only rely on Chinese translations for quick conclusions
- General readers expecting popular introductions or plot summaries
Reading tips
- Read a Chinese translation or the original of the Symposium first, then use this book to map the problems.
- Keep a notebook while reading and record the author's difficulties and arguments by dialogue section.
- Slow down when encountering dense terminology and prioritize grasping the author's definition of the core problems.
- Read alongside modern introductions to Plato research to avoid being limited by a single nineteenth-century perspective.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Kleemann, August Ritter von is an author known in German-language scholarship for his work on Plato; reliable public information about his life is scarce, and his dates, nationality and academic positions cannot be firmly established. The library currently holds only one work by him, Das Problem des platonischen Symposion. (The Problem of Plato's Symposium). Judging from its title, it is a specialized study of Plato's dialogue Symposium, examining its structure, themes and the philosophical difficulties it raises, and thus belongs to the intersection of classical philology and the history of philosophy. Works of this kind typically proceed by close reading of the text and detailed analysis of problems, in careful and tightly argued prose addressed to specialist readers rather than a general audience. Although further information about the author remains to be verified, this book is a useful trace of Plato scholarship in German-speaking academia around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and may be consulted by students of classical philosophy and textual scholarship.
