Background information on the institution of the Greek symposium and pederasty is available in several important essays in O. Murray, Sympotika: A Symposium on the Symposium (Oxford, 1990). Of particular interest for understanding pederastic relationships in Greek culture are J. M. Bremmer, ‘Adolescents, symposion, pederasty’, in the Murray collection. Also of interest here are K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978) and C. Calame, The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1999). For books on eros in Greek culture more broadly, interesting studies include P. W. Ludwig, Eros and Polis (Cambridge, 2002), and B. Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Colorado, 1997).
For a discussion of the difficulties of Plato’s use of the dialogue form and the possibilities of extracting Platonic doctrine from them, see M. Frede, ‘Plato’s arguments and the Dialogue Form’ in Klagge and Smith (eds.) Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume (Oxford, 1992), 201–19, and more recently, J. Beversluis, ‘A Defence of Dogmatism in the Interpretation of Plato’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, volume XXXI (2006, Winter), 85–111.
Christopher Rowe’s edition of Plato’s Symposium (Aris and Phillips, 1998) provides a good commentary on the Symposium. For those with a reading knowledge of Greek, the edition of R.G. Bury is a treasure trove of insights (Cambridge, 1932). R. Hunter, Plato’s Symposium (Oxford, 2004), offers an overview of the Symposium that is particularly sensitive to its literary and historical context. A more philosophical approach is taken by F. Sheffield, Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire (Oxford, 2006).
For a discussion of some general themes in Plato’s ethics, helpful books include A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1989, with a new 1997 edition); T. Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford, 1995); and J. Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford, 1995) (which discusses ancient views of happiness, including Plato). The debate about whether Socrates’ ethics in the Symposium is egoistic was started by G. Vlastos, ‘ The individual as an object of love’ in Vlastos (ed.) Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1981), 1–34. A riposte is L.A. Kosman, ‘Platonic Love’, in W. H. Weikmeister, Facets of Plato’s Philosophy (Assen, 1976), 53–69.
The following articles will be useful for a discussion of some of the specific issues raised in the introduction. An overview of Plato’s theory of desire can be found in C. Kahn’s ‘Plato’s Theory of Desire’, Review of Metaphysics (1987) 41: 77–103. T. Penner’s ‘ Thought and Desire in Plato’ in Vlastos (ed.) Plato, volume ii: Ethics, and Philosophy of Art and Religion; A Collection of Critical Essays (New York, 1971), 96–119 focuses on the relationship between desire and belief in Plato, and A. Nehamas’ ‘Socratic Intellectualism’ in A. Nehamas (ed.), The Virtues of Authenticity (Princeton, 1999), Chapter 2 reflects more broadly on Socratic intellectualism. Reflection on the method of the ascent to the Form of Beauty will benefit from R. Patterson, ‘ The Ascent passage in Plato’s Symposium’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (1991) 7:193–214. For a collection of essays that explores some of the broader issues about knowledge in Plato and its relationship to Forms, see G. Fine, Plato on Knowledge and Forms (Oxford, 2003).