symposium · plato

Plato's Symposium stages a drinking party where Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates and others give speeches in praise of Love. Socrates reports the priestess Diotima's teaching that eros climbs from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls to Beauty itself, and then Alcibiades bursts in drunk to describe what it is like to love Socrates.

Plato, Symposium, in Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Hackett Publishing, 1997). Read over two sessions, Freshman Fall at Torrey Honors.