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Daily · Philosophy

Symposium

Plato · philosophical dialogue, c. 385–370 BCE·3 hrs in the original·original at gutenberg.org
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  • Six speeches, one argument: Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon each praise Love from their own vantage points, with Socrates then synthesizing and surpassing them all by insisting that only truth, not flattery, can constitute genuine praise.
  • Aristophanes' myth of the split humans: In the most memorable speech before Socrates speaks, Aristophanes explains that humans were once round, four-limbed creatures whom Zeus split in two, so that love is the lifelong search of each half for its missing other, and the desire of the whole is the very definition of love.
  • Diotima's ladder of beauty: Socrates reports that the prophetess Diotima taught him that love is a great intermediary spirit, son of Plenty and Poverty, and that the lover who ascends correctly moves from one beautiful body to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful souls, laws, sciences, and finally to the eternal, absolute Form of Beauty itself, in whose contemplation true virtue is born.
  • Alcibiades' portrait of Socrates: Arriving drunk, Alcibiades abandons the topic of Love and instead praises Socrates as a Silenus figure, ugly on the outside but containing divine images within, a man who resisted Alcibiades' seduction, endured cold and hunger at Potidaea without complaint, stood motionless in thought from dawn to dawn, and saved Alcibiades' life in battle.
  • The final scene: After revellers disrupt the party and most guests fall asleep or leave, Socrates alone remains awake at daybreak, arguing to the drowsy Aristophanes and Agathon that the true genius of tragedy and comedy is the same, before rising, bathing, and going about his day as usual.
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•Why it earns a slot

The Symposium is the foundational text in Western philosophy for the idea that erotic desire, properly redirected, can ascend to the contemplation of eternal truth, and Diotima's ladder remains one of the most influential arguments in the history of metaphysics and aesthetics.

At a dinner party celebrating the playwright Agathon's tragic victory, a series of guests take turns delivering speeches in praise of the god Love. The speeches range from mythological and rhetorical to philosophical, culminating in Socrates' account of a ladder of ascent from physical beauty to the eternal Form of Beauty itself, as taught to him by the wise woman Diotima. The evening ends with the drunken Alcibiades arriving to deliver an unplanned tribute to Socrates himself, praising his uncanny wisdom and iron self-mastery.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: gutenberg.org.

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