Кто победил в состязании платоновского «Пира»?

Платоновские исследования. 2020. Т. 13. № 2. С. 113–137.

Дмитрий Курдыбайло, Кузютин Денис

At the beginning of Plato’s Symposium, Eryximachus introduces a contest for the best encomium to Eros, making the rest of the dialogue a remarkable competition. We consider the seven speeches of the Symposium a kind of competitive game with proper rules, winners, and possibly losers. However, the dialogue provides neither explicit rules of the game, nor criteria to estimate the performance of the competitors. Therefore, to determine them, the following steps are taken. Firstly, the contestants’ speeches are analysed to reveal their views on the best kind of speechand to determine the difficulties they face, and which they are ready to overcome in order to win. Secondly, each encomium’s structure is examined to discover that all of them have the same composition of an introductory refutation of the previous speaker,the ensuing exposition of the initial theses of the speech, and their explication within a set of proper arguments. Thirdly, the sequence of encomia is discussed bearing in mind the difficulties relating to changing their order. Fourthly, the arguments of all speeches are assembled in a joined list. Finally, each speech is rated according to all the relevant criteria, and a final rating of all seven encomia is given. This rating accords with minor details of the dialogue, which may possibly have a metaphorical sense. The position of the top three encomia corresponds to the special place occupied by Socrates’, Agathon’s, and Aristophanes’ speeches mentioned in major current studiesof the Symposium.

Keywords: Платон, Plato, contest, Аристофан, Aristophanes, Symposium, Eryximachus, encomium, game strategy, Пир, Эриксимах, состязание, энкомий, игровая стратегия