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The Symposium

The Symposium (Symposion), written by Plato around 385–370 BCE, is a philosophical dialogue centered around a dinner party held in Athens. The guests, who include the tragic poet Agathon, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and Socrates, each deliver a speech in praise of Eros, the Greek god of love and desire. The dialogue is framed not merely as a celebration, but as a profound exploration of the nature, purpose, and spiritual ascent of love itself. The initial speeches offer varied perspectives: Phaedrus praises Eros as the source of virtue and noble self-sacrifice; Pausanias distinguishes between "Common Love" (physical) and "Heavenly Love" (intellectual); Eryximachus views love as a cosmic principle of harmony and balance; and Aristophanes delivers his famous mythical account that humans were originally spherical beings split in two by Zeus, defining love as the desperate search for the lost other half and the pursuit of wholeness. Finally, Agathon describes Eros as a young, beautiful, and perfect god, the source of all artistic and moral virtues.

The climax of the dialogue arrives with the speech of Socrates, who recounts the teachings of Diotima, a wise woman from Mantinea, thereby correcting and deepening the preceding encomiums. Diotima teaches that Love is not a god, but a daimon (a spirit or intermediary) between mortals and the divine, born of Poverty and Resource (Penia and Poros). As a result, Love is perpetually driven by lack to seek and possess the beautiful and the good. The true object of love, she reveals, is not merely the beautiful, but the perpetual possession of the good, which is equivalent to the desire for immortality. This pursuit takes two forms: physical generation (procreation) and, more importantly, spiritual generation (the creation of lasting works of beauty, laws, and knowledge).

Diotima then instructs Socrates on the path of the true lover, known as the Ladder of Love or Ascent to Beauty Itself. This ascent is a spiritual progression that moves from loving the beauty in one individual body, to recognizing the beauty in all bodies, then shifting focus to the beauty of souls, beautiful customs, and beautiful forms of knowledge. The final and highest step is the sudden, direct apprehension of Beauty Itself: the eternal, unchanging, non-sensible, and absolute essence of Beauty, which is the ultimate, divine object of all true desire. The Symposium concludes dramatically with the drunken arrival of Alcibiades, who, instead of praising Love, delivers a passionate encomium to Socrates, describing his moral uniqueness, his extraordinary character, and his intellectual power, thereby presenting Socrates as the living embodiment of the philosophical ideals described on Diotima's Ladder and the ideal true lover.