PDF Summary:Symposium, by Plato

What is love? How does love connect to philosophy? How can it lead to human happiness? The ancient Greek philosopher Plato addresses these questions and more in his Symposium, a work which claims that passionate desire, rather than cold and detached analysis, drives philosophy. In our guide, we’ll explore discussions of homoeroticism in ancient Athens, how love informs philosophy, and what it means to love beauty itself.

Through our commentary, we’ll explain not just what Plato says, but also how and why he says it. We’ll interpret the various arguments of the Symposium, offer cultural and historical context, and place the work within Plato’s larger canon. For the more ambiguous and poetic parts of the text, we’ll also show different scholarly interpretations of Plato’s arguments and how they’re informed by characters and setting.

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Socrates and Diotima’s Description of Eros

Socrates praises the beauty of Agathon’s speech, then politely informs him that everything he said was wrong. Then, Socrates gives his own speech on love. His speech mainly consists of him recounting a past conversation he had with a wise woman named Diotima. Diotima, he says, taught him everything he knows about love. For the rest of the guide, we’ll discuss Diotima’s explanation—but keep in mind Socrates is actually the person present and speaking at the party.

(Shortform note: In a dialogue primarily concerned with the intellectual and homoerotic lives of men, it might seem confusing that Socrates cites a woman for his views on love. Scholars suggest that Socrates cites Diotima as a way to gain credibility. Diotima speaks at length on childbirth, pregnancy, and reproduction (which we discuss later in the guide), all subjects strongly associated with women and femininity in ancient Athens. These scholars therefore suggest that Socrates (and perhaps Plato through him) uses Diotima to appeal to that perceived feminine “expertise” in his arguments.)

According to Diotima, Eros is not beloved, but rather is a lover—one that desires and seeks out beautiful things. Instead of a soft, youthful, and beautiful god, he’s an old, tough, and hardened spirit. He acts as a messenger between the humans and gods, delivering human prayers and offerings to the gods and divine instructions or blessings to humans.

(Shortform note: Plato evokes Socrates—an old, gnarled man seeking out beauty and wisdom—with this description of Eros. Plato’s works (and the Symposium in particular) are some of the only surviving descriptions of who Socrates was and what he was like—other descriptions include Aristophanes’s The Clouds (a comic play satirizing Socrates and his philosophy) and philosopher Xenophon’s dialogues. All three of these works present Socrates as absent-minded, unkempt, and more interested in knowledge than he is in the concrete world around him. By having Diotima describe Eros in a similar way, Plato implies that Socrates is the ideal erotic man—a claim that makes more sense once Diotima connects love and philosophy.)

To explain this conclusion, she further defines the act of loving and what it reveals about Eros.

What Loving Is

Diotima begins by describing the act of loving—after all, loving is by definition what Eros does. She reaches the following two conclusions:

1. Love requires an object: Love only exists in relation to something else. For example: “Aristophanes loves wine.” Without the object, the sentence makes no sense: ”Aristophanes loves” doesn’t mean anything.
2. People love what they don’t have: Loving an object means desiring it, and nobody would desire something they already have. If someone says they love something they have, it actually means they desire to continue having it.

(Shortform note: Some scholars suggest that because of these two conclusions, Plato presents a tragic view of love. By definition, Plato says we love what we don’t have and can never get—if we ever got the object of our love, then we’d either stop loving it or worry about losing it in the future. She suggests that those with an excess of such desires can often end up as tragic figures, with lives defined by longing, incompleteness, or a lack of satisfaction. As you read the rest of the guide, keep in mind how Plato’s view on love might create such a tragic figure—especially once we get to Alcibiades’s speech.)

What Eros Isn’t

Based on her conclusions about loving, Diotima outlines four things that Eros is not:

1. Eros is not beautiful: Eros desires beauty, and people desire what they don’t have. Therefore, Eros isn’t beautiful.
2. Eros is not good: All good things are beautiful—that’s why they’re attractive. Since Eros desires beauty, it follows that he desires good as well and therefore is not good himself.
3. Eros is not wise: Wisdom is a good and beautiful quality, so Eros must desire it—and, therefore, lacks it.
4. Eros is not a god: Gods are perfect beings that lack nothing—since Eros lacks beauty, goodness, and wisdom, it follows that he isn’t a god.

However, this doesn’t mean that Eros is ugly, bad, ignorant, and mortal—instead, he exists somewhere between all of these extremes. Someone who is entirely bad doesn’t desire goodness, and someone who is entirely ignorant is unaware of their ignorance and therefore doesn’t desire wisdom. Therefore, Eros has just enough wisdom and goodness to recognize what he doesn’t have—and to recognize that he wants it.

(Shortform note: Plato’s Apology clarifies what it means to be “between extremes,” particularly the extremes of wisdom and ignorance. In the Apology, Socrates distinguishes between divine wisdom and human wisdom: Divine wisdom (the wisdom of the gods) is absolute knowledge of all things, while human wisdom is the ability to recognize how little you actually know. Socrates suggests that people are better off recognizing what they don’t know than they are incorrectly assuming that they have knowledge—recognizing you know nothing encourages you to learn and examine the world around you. Diotima describes Eros as having a similar type of wisdom since he both desires knowledge and lacks the divine wisdom of the gods.)

Part 3: Diotima’s Description of Love

After describing Eros, Diotima discusses the human experience of love. She concludes that the main object of love is not beauty.

In this third part of our guide, we’ll explain Diotima’s views on human love by explaining what humans love, why humans love, and how humans should love.

What We Love

To understand the human experience of love, Diotima first outlines what humans love. She suggests that, instead of beauty, the main object of human love is goodness. This is because goodness brings people happiness—a meaningful life well-lived. By definition, a good life is a happy life.

Furthermore, Diotima concludes that humans desire immortality: As explored earlier, if people have good things, they desire to continue having them. Therefore, people want to permanently have good things. The longer someone lives, the longer they can have good things, so by desiring goodness people desire immortality.

(Shortform note: To understand what Plato means by happiness, it helps to consider the original Greek word: eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is usually translated to “happiness,” though it doesn’t entirely match our modern definition. While we usually think of happiness as a temporary positive emotion, eudaimonia refers to an overall state of living life excellently. The stabler, longer-lasting state of eudaimonia also explains why Diotima says people want permanent good—she’s saying people want to always live excellently, not that they want to always experience pure joy or bliss.)

Why We Love

Diotima suggests that the purpose of love is reproduction, either in a physical sense (creating a child) or a mental sense (creating virtue and wisdom). Creating physical or mental offspring is the closest a human can get to becoming immortal (and therefore permanently having good things). An individual’s offspring will live much longer than they do—physical children will carry on parts of their ancestors, and great works of art, ideas, or virtuous acts are often remembered long after the death of their creators.

Diotima emphasizes in particular the importance of mental children—a great work or great deed lives far longer than any physical child, and therefore brings its parent closer to immortality.

(Shortform note: It seems like Plato contradicts his other dialogues here by saying we reproduce because we desire immortality. In several of his other works (including the Meno and Phaedo), Plato argues that people have immortal souls (his idea of the soul is similar to the mind or the self) that are reborn into many different bodies. This raises the question: If our souls are immortal, then why is reproduction the closest we can get to immortality? Some scholars argue that this is an inconsistency where Plato temporarily appeals to a more pragmatic, skeptical viewpoint. Others suggest that in the Symposium, Plato talks about individual immortality—immortality of one person rather than of their soul (which over time inhabits many people).)

Love as Reproduction

According to Diotima, everyone is pregnant in some way—every individual has the potential to create physical or mental offspring. However, people can only give birth in the presence of beauty:

In a physical sense, beauty excites people to seek out suitable sexual partners and makes them happy and relaxed enough to engage in sex (or, later on, childbirth).

(Shortform note: You might wonder why Diotima suggests that males and females can become physically pregnant. Scholars suggest that Plato refers to ejaculation as the male form of pregnancy and childbirth: An aroused male is pregnant and gives birth upon ejaculating. This conception of male childbirth further cements the connection Plato’s trying to make between beauty and childbirth—beauty inspires sexual arousal which allows a male to “give birth” and ejaculate during intercourse.)

In a mental sense, a beautiful body or beautiful mind inspires new ideas. Particularly, Diotima suggests that a beloved with a beautiful mind and body can inspire a lover to birth excellent intellectual offspring. These intellectual children are speeches on virtue or wisdom that make up the educational component of a pederastic relationship.

(Shortform note: Plato seems to have two competing ideas on intellectual offspring in a pederastic relationship. He mentions one just above: A beautiful beloved inspires their lover to birth intellectual offspring. However, Plato’s Theaetetus suggests that Socrates acts as a “midwife of the soul”—just as a normal midwife helps deliver physical offspring, Socrates helps deliver mental offspring. This metaphor suggests that the lover (Socrates) actually inspires the beloved to birth intellectual offspring. Scholars suggest that this contradiction might result from Plato’s personality and ambiguous feelings on homosexual desire—the Symposium’s view seems to celebrate these desires, while the Theaetetus takes a more restrained approach.)

How We Should Love

Since people only give birth in the presence of beauty, it follows that beauty is crucial for a good life—even if it isn’t the main goal of love. Diotima then explains how to pursue beauty and birth offspring in a way that leads to the happiest life possible.

The Ascent

Diotima explains that the best way to pursue beauty requires a journey of self-realization that she calls the “ascent”: A process of learning to love beautiful things that are more and more good and meaningful.

• An ascendant’s natural desire for beauty inspires them to create intellectual offspring—in other words, it inspires them to develop their rational abilities and do philosophy.
• A long-term dedication to reasoning and thinking about beauty eventually allows the ascendant to understand what beauty itself actually is—and since all good things are beautiful, an understanding of beauty itself allows the ascendant to understand what goodness itself is.
• Diotima describes this understanding in terms of intellectual reproduction—in the presence of absolute beauty, the pupil can birth intellectual offspring that are absolutely and universally true.

Anyone who completes the ascent has a happy life (a meaningful life well-lived). By that point, they’ll have created intellectual offspring that are permanently and absolutely good—because these offspring reveal eternal truths about goodness itself. Creating eternal and good offspring gets a human as close as they can to immortality.

Beauty Itself and Plato’s Forms

To understand what Plato means by beauty itself and how this informs the ascent, we can look to his theory of the forms: The idea that all particular things exist in reference to eternal ideals. For example: Any circle that we see in the world is imperfect—it has tiny little flaws that keep it from being perfectly circular. Plato suggests, however, that a perfect circle does exist in another realm—the form of the circle. All of the particular circles in our world imitate this form, and that’s what makes them circles—they have, to a limited extent, some of the same circle-like qualities.

In the context of beauty: All beautiful things are beautiful because they have some qualities of the form of beauty. The more an object aligns with the form of beauty, the more beautiful it is. However, the form of beauty doesn’t just exist as a standard to describe beautiful things—it exists on its own as the most perfectly beautiful thing ever. Beauty comes from this abstract, ideal form instead of being inherent to any specific characteristic like “colorful” or “tall.” In fact, Plato suggests that specific characteristics only distract from the form of beauty. The ascent, then, allows a person to strip away specifics by loving more and more abstract things until there are no specifics left to distract from the form of beauty (beauty itself).

The Steps of the Ascent

Diotima outlines six steps of the ascent:

1) Love of one beautiful body: First, an ascendant is physically attracted to one beautiful body, inspiring them to create intellectual offspring.

2) Love of all beautiful bodies: The ascendant will eventually recognize that there’s no reason to desire one physically beautiful body more than another since they all share beautiful attributes in common. Therefore, the ascendant comes to love all beautiful bodies.

3) Love of all beautiful minds: As the ascendant continues to reason and birth mental offspring, the focus of their desire will shift from physical beauty to mental beauty—they’ll start to love wise and moral individuals regardless of their physical appearance.

4) Love of beautiful activities and institutions: Once the ascendant appreciates the beautiful minds of wise and moral people, they’ll come to appreciate the activities, laws, and systems in their society that create these beautiful minds.

5) Love of beautiful knowledge: The ascendant will realize what creates beautiful minds, activities, and institutions—knowledge. From there, they’ll love the beauty of human knowledge and will seek it out.

6) Love of beauty itself: By pursuing beautiful knowledge and birthing intellectual offspring, the ascendant expands the scope of their knowledge and reason until they can finally understand something of beauty itself. This abstract concept of beauty is perfect, eternal, and unchanging—all beautiful things take part in it, but they’re all flawed in comparison.

(Shortform note: Scholars often debate the following question in discussing the steps of the ascent: When someone ascends, do they stop loving objects in the previous steps? For example, does someone on the fifth step no longer love individual people? Some scholars suggest that the ascent provides a strict hierarchy and that ascendants will stop loving individuals in favor of abstract objects or theories. Others argue that while the ascent does prioritize abstract ideas, it doesn’t prevent an ascendant from loving an individual. From this perspective, the ascendant can still appreciate the beauty of the lower steps—they’ll just spend less time doing so as they ascend further.)

Alcibiades and Love of Socrates

At the end of Socrates’s discussion of love, the young man Alcibiades crashes the party, drunk, and gives a speech not on love, but on Socrates. In his speech, Alcibiades discusses his love for and difficulty courting Socrates. His description of Socrates seems to describe someone who has completed the ascent—a person who concerns themselves with abstract knowledge rather than concrete physical pleasures or pains. Alcibiades’s two main points both emphasize Socrates as a man unconcerned with physical things:

1) Switching the lover and beloved: Alcibiades, a beautiful young man, expected Socrates to pursue him as the lover to his beloved. However, while Socrates would happily spend time with Alcibiades and talk to him, he never showed any sexual interest. Frustrated and in love, Alcibiades switched the normal dynamic: He acted as a lover pursuing Socrates as his beloved. Despite his very forward pursuits, though, Socrates still never had sex with him.

2) Socrates’s strength and bravery: Alcibiades also discusses Socrates’s physical strength and stamina as well as his courage. He says that Socrates never seems affected by physical challenges like cold, drunkenness, or tiredness. In addition, he talks about the time they spent in war together, where Socrates never showed fear and even saved Alcibiades’s life in a battle.

(Shortform note: Understanding the role of Alcibiades in the Symposium requires some historical context. The real Alcibiades was an Athenian statesman who famously defected to the enemies of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Scholars suggest that in the Symposium, Plato connects the physical desires of Alcibiades to his political and moral “corruption,” showing that they disrupt virtuous and philosophical life. This shows in Alcibiades’s speech and actions: He crashes the party drunk, speaks out of order (like Aristophanes), doesn’t talk about love (talking instead about his lust for Socrates—he “descends” the dialogue from discussing beauty itself to discussing one individual) and leaves the door open for others to enter and cause chaos.)