The Symposium: Love and the Ladder of Beauty

Plato's Symposium is set at a drinking party in 416 BCE celebrating the tragic poet Agathon's victory. Each guest gives a speech in praise of Eros, the god of love. The comic playwright Aristophanes tells a myth that humans were once double beings, split in two by Zeus, so love is the search for one's other half. Socrates then reports what he learned from a wise woman, Diotima of Mantinea: love is a longing for what we lack, ultimately the desire to possess the good forever.

Diotima describes a 'ladder' of love, rising from love of one beautiful body to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful souls, laws and knowledge, and finally to Beauty itself, a Form. The drunken Alcibiades then bursts in and praises Socrates' self-control. The dialogue shows Plato using drama and myth to make philosophy vivid, and it shaped Western ideas of love for centuries.