Symposium

Plato's Symposium stages an inquiry into love at a drinking party held after the playwright Agathon's victory. The guests decide to limit their drinking and offer speeches in praise of Eros. Because each speaker defines love differently, the dialogue develops through contrast instead of presenting a single doctrine at the outset.

The speeches move across custom, desire, education, virtue, and the search for lasting value. Some treat Eros as a god or power; others distinguish forms of attraction by their aims and effects. Socrates changes the direction of the discussion by recounting an account in which love is neither simple possession nor complete perfection, but a desire for what one lacks.

This desire can be educated. Attraction to one beautiful body may expand into appreciation of beautiful practices, knowledge, and finally Beauty itself, understood as a stable object of contemplation rather than one passing example. The dramatic setting keeps philosophy connected to rivalry, performance, humor, and personal attachment. Symposium therefore examines not only what love is, but how longing can direct a person toward creation, understanding, and a life shaped by the pursuit of truth.