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Symposium

Plato's Symposium transforms an Athenian banquet into a sequence of speeches on love. Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes and Agathon offer competing accounts before Socrates recounts Diotima's teaching on desire, creation and ascent towards Beauty itself. Alcibiades' intoxicated praise of Socrates then tests philosophical love against admiration, jealousy, ambition and lived character.

Translator or editor
Benjamin Jowett
Publication
c. 385-370 BCE
Genre
Socratic dialogue; ethics; aesthetics; philosophy of love
Era
Ancient Philosophy

About this work

Symposium is Plato's celebrated dialogue about love, desire, beauty and philosophical education. At a banquet honouring the tragedian Agathon, the guests agree to deliver speeches in praise of Eros. Phaedrus associates love with courage; Pausanias distinguishes common from educational love; Eryximachus extends love into medicine and cosmic harmony; Aristophanes presents the myth of divided humans searching for wholeness; and Agathon offers an elegant portrait of Love's beauty and virtue. Socrates questions whether Love can possess the beauty it desires, then recounts the teaching of Diotima. Love is an intermediary condition born of lack and resourcefulness. Mortals seek lasting possession of the good through bodily and intellectual creation. Diotima's ascent leads from attraction to one beautiful body through beauty in souls, practices, laws and knowledge towards contemplation of Beauty itself. The movement educates desire rather than simply suppressing it. Alcibiades interrupts the philosophical order with a personal praise of Socrates. His admiration, resentment and failed attempt to acquire wisdom reveal the difficulty of transforming insight into character. The dialogue joins argument, myth, humour and dramatic action to ask what love wants and what it can help a person become.

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