Symposium

About the book

Guests at a banquet offer speeches in praise of love, each drawing upon the speaker's interests and habits of thought. Their accounts range through myth, medicine, poetry, social custom, and philosophical inquiry, with Socrates eventually introducing a further voice into the discussion. Plato gives the speeches a dramatic setting that prevents them from becoming merely interchangeable arguments. Interruptions, admiration, rivalry, and personal attachment complicate what the participants claim to explain. The dialogue asks how desire may move from particular attraction towards broader forms of understanding without making the particular person irrelevant to the conversation. Its layered narration also keeps the act of remembering and reporting visible. The result combines intellectual ambition with the lively uncertainty of people discussing a subject in which they are personally involved.

• Love and desire
• Beauty
• Philosophical conversation

Why read it

For the interplay between memorable speeches and a social occasion that continually complicates their claims.

Benjamin Jowett translation · English text