Work · Plato
The Symposium
c.385 BCE · A single dinner party
At a drinking party, speeches on love climb from desire for a beautiful body all the way to Beauty itself — until a drunk Alcibiades crashes in to praise Socrates instead.
7
Speeches
~385 BCE
Written
Athens
Set in
The ladder of love
Diotima’s ladder: love begins as desire for one beautiful body and, trained upward, climbs through all bodies, then souls, then laws and knowledge, to Beauty itself — the eternal Form. The first rung is a physical body, which is why “Platonic love” meaning chaste affection gets the dialogue backwards.
The shape of the argument
Phaedrus
Love is the eldest god, and a spur to courage and sacrifice.
Pausanias
Two loves — a common, bodily one and a higher, heavenly one.
Eryximachus
A physician finds love at work all through nature.
Aristophanes
The comic myth: we were once whole, Zeus split us, and love is the search for our other half.
Agathon
Love as the youngest, fairest god — gorgeous, empty rhetoric.
Socrates & Diotima
Love is no god but a needy in-between spirit, trainable into the climb to Beauty itself.
Alcibiades
A drunk gatecrasher praises Socrates instead — the ladder made flesh.
The cast
Phaedrus — opens: love is the oldest god, a spur to bravery and sacrifice
Pausanias — splits love into a common, bodily kind and a higher, heavenly one
Eryximachus — the doctor; finds love at work all through nature
Aristophanes — the comic poet; tells the split-humans “other half” myth
Agathon — the host, fresh off a tragedy prize; love as the fairest young god
Socrates — refuses the game: love is a lack, not a god
Diotima — the priestess whose teaching Socrates relays — the ladder of love
Alcibiades — crashes in drunk and praises Socrates instead of love
The famous bits
The other halfAristophanes
We were once whole, four-armed and two-faced; Zeus split us, and love is the hunt for our missing half.
Love desires what it lacksSocrates
The question that deflates Agathon: you can’t already possess what you long for.
Love is a daimonDiotima
Neither mortal nor god, but the in-between spirit that spans the gap between them.
The ladder of loveDiotima
Love climbs from one beautiful body through souls and laws and knowledge to Beauty itself.
The SilenusAlcibiades
Socrates is ugly on the outside, and full of golden images within.
The night under the cloakAlcibiades
The most beautiful man in Athens tries to seduce Socrates, and nothing happens.