Symposium

At a drinking party in ancient Athens, a group of friends decides to spend the evening praising the god of Love. Each guest gives a speech, offering a different view of what love is and why it matters. The comic playwright Aristophanes tells a myth about humans split in two, forever searching for their other half. Socrates reports the teachings of a wise woman named Diotima, who describes a ladder of love that leads from beautiful bodies to Beauty itself. Then the party is interrupted by the drunken Alcibiades, who delivers a startling speech about Socrates himself.

Plato's Symposium is a dramatic dialogue, full of vivid characters, humour and memorable images, and it asks serious questions: What do we really want when we love? Can love be educated? Is there a difference between loving a person and loving beauty itself?

This edition is designed for general readers, students and book clubs. It contains the complete text of the Symposium in the classic translation by Benjamin Jowett, with Jowett's own introduction, together with a new introduction that sets the work in its historical and philosophical context, a guide to the key ideas and arguments, a summary of the dialogue, an overview of its major themes, a glossary of names and terms, and twelve discussion questions.