In the Symposium, Plato explores the multiple planes and realities on which love exists, ranging across logical, mythical, cultural, and emotional perspectives. Plato could have, of course, written in an essay that love is something that strikes humans in various ways, that it can be viewed as something mysterious and uncontrollable, like a god, or as an internal emotion, or a will of the soul. After some time, the reader could come to understand what Plato was talking about, but chances are they would come to these understandings by making connections regarding love to their own lives and own set of experiences.
By discussing love in dialogue, Plato is not only provoking the reader into a deeper mode of thought, but he is doing it in the same way that a piece of modern day literature brings us to think about love. Language and writing is, after all, brain food for those willing to process it, and I firmly believe that there are many pieces of literature that wouldn't be considered 'philosophy', in a stricter sense of the term, that would very effectively get a reader to consider love and its complexities in much the same, if not a more, significant way.
I think you are completely right when you say that through multiple voices and in using dialogue, the reader can capture the ideas Plato conveys in Symposium. I find it intersting that people are trying to figure out who's perspective is Plato's (and maybe that is because it is how he normally writes- i wouldn't know if that was the case) but what I see in Symposium is a lot of perspectives that don't necessarily contradict each other. While one is more humorous, another is more medical, and another is about the higher love being wisdom, they all have their own bits of merit. That is at least what I'm understanding from these posts. I don't think it's a persuasive dialogue at all, I find it more of a questioning dialogue, trying to get all the ideas about love out into the open.
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