Vision Of Love In Plato's Symposium

The Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) is widely regarded as one of Plato’s greatest philosophical and stylistic triumphs. The dialogue recounts a drinking party in the house of Agathon at which Socrates and a number of other prominent Athenian citizens deliver speeches in praise of Eros (Love). Our assigned section begins just after the end of Agathon’s speech, in which the young Sophist heaped lavish praise on Love for his youth and beauty. Socrates addresses the gathering and disputes Agathon’s account, laying out his own vision of Love as the desire for the eternal possession of the good, a bridge between man and the divine.
Socrates begins by cross-examining Agathon and drawing out the faults in his speech. Love, Socrates forces Agathon to admit, is always love of something, in the same way that a father is always the father of someone. Love desires what is beautiful and good, and we always desire that which we do not possess. Love, therefore, must be neither good nor beautiful in itself.
Diotima provided a mythology of Love’s birth as a way of introduction. Love is not himself a god, as the previous speakers assumed, but a spirit that serves as an emissary between human beings and the divine. He is the child of Poverty and Plenty and partakes in characteristics of both, always bountiful in his energies but wanting in substance. The figure of the god is not dainty or beautiful, but rough. He desires what is beautiful and very much unlike himself. These rich metaphors lay the groundwork for Plato’s philosophical project in the next few pages. They help to make sense of the fact that the erotic drive, which seems rough, messy and exceedingly human, can at the same time touch upon the divine. Love is a desire that, when properly focused, can act as a bridge between human beings and the