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 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 a man can have is a lover. Love is the finest guide in life, compelling 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.

Lovers, he observes, perform exceptional acts—Alcestis, for instance, who sacrifices herself for her husband and is brought back to life by the gods as a reward.

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. One must first 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. 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, uniting both body and mind—as opposed to "popular Aphrodite", which is practised between men and women and 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.

Eryximachus then announces that he will consider love from a far broader perspective. Love does not concern only humans but characterises the relationships between all beings, animate and inanimate alike.

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

Music likewise seeks harmony—between high and low notes, for example. Music is therefore 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.

Through Eryximachus, we thus glimpse 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 drives us to seek union with another? To answer this, 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 into two halves, one male and one female.

Yet each half, lamenting the loss of its original unity, sought the other 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