The Symposium
Read this summary in any language — built-in translation in the reader.
What’s it about?
At a lavish Athenian dinner party, Socrates and his companions deliver competing speeches on love, culminating in a radical vision of desire as a ladder from physical attraction to the eternal form of Beauty itself.
You’ll learn
- Love is desire for what we lack
- Two kinds of love: common and heavenly
- Love is a ladder to divine Beauty
- True love seeks wisdom, not possession