SAPERE X: Plutarch: Dialog über die Liebe
Über die Liebe (Amatorius), introduced, translated and provided with interpretative essays by Herwig Görgemanns / Barbara Feichtinger-Zimmermann / Fritz Graf / Werner G. Jeanrond / Jan Opsomer, Tübingen 2006. Published since spring 2011 in a second, corrected and expanded edition in the UTB series.
The subject of this entertaining script is a conversation about the nature of love (Eros), which is said to have taken place between the newlywed Plutarch and some friends on the occasion of the Eros festival held in Thespiai on the Helicon in the Valley of the Muses and is now reproduced by Plutarch's son Autobulos. A double dramatic setting - Plutarch's wedding and the union of Bakchon and Ismenodora, in which the slightly older rich woman takes the initiative and has the handsome youth abducted - motivates the conversation about Eros: the ethical discussion about the relationship of boy-love to the love between man and woman leads to the philosophical-religious question about the nature and power of love itself. Unlike the famous speech of Diotima in Plato's Symposion , the divinity of Eros is asserted here and unfolded in various ways. In the end, man's ascent into the sphere of the divine with the help of Eros is presented in a combination of motifs from Egyptian mythology and Platonic philosophy that is characteristic of Plutarch. Plutarch's writing offers a philosophical as well as religious interpretation of love - and this is clothed in a beautiful literary narrative.
Reviews:
- B. EFFE, Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft 60, Heft 1/2 (2007), 22-25.
- H. G. INGENKAMP, Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 258, Heft 3/4 (2007), 182-193.
- New Testament Abstracts 51/1 (2007), 201.
- B.WYSS, Museum Helveticum 66 (2009), S.239-240.
- F. PEZZOLI, BMCR 2010.09.37 (2010).
Görgemanns, Herwig; Feichtinger-Zimmermann, Barbara; Graf, Fritz; Jeanrond, Werner G.; Opsomer, Jan
Composite volume; German, Ancient Greek
Published: 2011
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck Verlag: Tübingen
ISBN: 13 978-3-16-148824-5