this book is one of the most fascinating takes on love i’ve ever read. plato really treats love as something worth thinking deeply about. through speeches by figures like socrates, aristophanes, and agathon, love gets explored from all kinds of angles, each showing a different side of it. what stood out most was socrates’ idea that philosophy is actually an expression of love. he ties the longing for beauty and wisdom to a quest for the forms, showing how love can push us beyond physical attraction toward something bigger, like intellectual and spiritual growth. it’s poetic and thought-provoking, though it’s fair to wonder how honest socrates is being in his speech. the variety of perspectives, from aristophanes’ humor to alcibiades’ messy, flawed love for socrates, makes the dialogue feel rich and layered. each speech highlights a different piece of what love can be, but socrates’ view feels the deepest. plato’s work is so thoughtful but also feels personal in a way. it made me think a lot about how love can either go wrong or help us grow. it’s a timeless piece that blends big ideas, emotion, and metaphor beautifully.

That awkward moment when your lover talks about you instead of giving a eulogy on love.

In spite of graduating college a good two years ago this is the first book by Plato I have ever picked up, I even chuckled a couple times. Wonderfully executed and re translated people were just as trifling, just as love sick and ghosting on each other too! Some solid quotes here one of which says "any promise made in the throes of passion is no passion at all."

Great read!

A quick and interesting read that had me constantly thinking

A bunch of drunk dude bros talking about "love" and Greek mythology.

I admit, I was intimidated to begin any of Plato's work. I tend to underestimate myself at times. For years I had been telling myself that I "want to read The Symposium someday" - well, in 2015, that day came when I stumbled across a collection of the works of Plato in a thrift store.

I had feared that I wouldn't be "smart enough" to comprehend Plato, I was wrong. I had feared I might be bored or put off by the language, I was wrong.

The Symposium was a great read for me, and in the process of reading it, I gained some confidence in myself as well.

I think I would’ve enjoyed being at this gathering.

It only makes sense that one of the most comprehensive philosophical discussions about all the aspects of Love ends with Socrates musing that anyone who fancies himself a comic playwright must also be well versed in tragedy.

And of course, the only un-partnered attendee of the Symposium, Aristophanes, the comic playwright, gives us the tragic (and comedic) basis for our modern conception of soulmates. In which, though physical love is thought to be the basest, it’s the only comfort we have from the agony of being parted from our other halves. Even though we are meant to transcend physical desire in favor of knowing Love himself, to do so would mean certain death in the separation from our beloved.

Perhaps the part most revealing of how humanity could be so consumed by Love while also naming him the greatest of all Dionysian Mysteries, however, is the sudden pause, mid-eulogy, Phaedrus takes to set straight (ha) one of the most contentious debates in history — whether or not Achilles bottomed for Patroclus.