Summary: Symposium

Socrates and Aristodemus attend a banquet at Agathon’s, in the company of Aristophanes, Apollodorus, Pausanias, and Eryximachus. The guests agree not to get drunk but to drink lightly and spend the evening in discussion.

The proposed theme of the discourse is love. More precisely, each participant is to deliver a eulogy to love, proceeding from left to right, with the aim of composing the most beautiful eulogy possible ¹.

Phaedrus speaks first. For him, the greatest good for a man is to have a lover. Love is the best guide in life, as it compels us to shun shameful deeds and perform only noble ones. An army composed of lovers would be invincible, for none would dare to act cowardly or fight poorly, lest they bring disgrace upon themselves in the eyes of their beloved.

He observes that lovers perform exceptional acts for love—for instance, Alcestis, who sacrifices herself for her husband and, as a reward from the gods, is brought back to life.

Pausanias then takes his turn. He argues that the question has been wrongly framed: one cannot speak of love as though it were a single, uniform phenomenon, for there are different kinds of love. It is first necessary to determine which type of love is worthy of praise.

No action is inherently good or evil; its moral value depends on how it is performed. For instance, excessive drinking debases a person, while moderate drinking brings honour.

The same applies to love: It is disgraceful to yield to a dishonourable man in a dishonourable manner, but noble to yield in a noble manner to a worthy man ². Pausanias praises "celestial Aphrodite", a love shared between men, which unites both body and mind, in contrast to "popular Aphrodite", which is practised between men and women and is driven purely by physical desire.

Love of the body is inferior to love of the soul, for the former is fleeting: Once the beauty of the body has faded, love vanishes with it, breaking all vows and promises. By contrast, he who loves the soul remains devoted for life, for he is attached to something enduring ³.

After this speech, Eryximachus announces that he will consider love from a much broader perspective. Love does not concern only humans but characterises the relationships between all beings, both animate and inanimate.

Medicine, for instance, has discovered that illness can arise from the presence of two opposing and therefore hostile principles within the body. Healing consists in introducing love and harmony into these conflicts.

Similarly, music seeks harmony—for example, between high and low notes. Music, therefore, is a form of love: It is, through harmony and rhythm, a science of amorous movements ⁴.

Even natural disasters (floods, frosts, epidemics...) result from a disturbance in the amorous movements that bind all these elements together ⁵.

Thus, through Eryximachus, we see the emergence of the vast, indeed universal, power of Love—the great unifier ⁶.

Aristophanes, for his part, explores the origins of love: why do we love? What is the source of this feeling that compels us to unite with another? To answer this question, he recounts a myth that has since become famous as the "myth of Aristophanes".

Originally, humans were androgynous, both male and female. They were shaped like spheres and moved by rolling over themselves. Their ambition drove them to seek equality with the gods. Zeus, punishing their audacity, did not destroy them but weakened them: he split each of them into two halves, one male and one female.

Yet each, lamenting the loss of their original unity, sought their other half and longed to be reunited:

Embracing, entwined with one another, burning to become one, they perished of hunger and inaction, for they no longer wished to do anything apart ⁷.

¹ 177d
² 183d
³ 183e
⁴ 187c
⁵ 188b
⁶ 188d
⁷ 191a