Symposium study guide

Socrates

Socrates questions whether desire implies a lack, then recounts Diotima's teaching about immortality and beauty itself. He also receives Alcibiades' tribute and challenges the purpose behind its praise.

Agathon

Agathon hosts the dinner after his dramatic victory and praises Love through its benefits and its ordering of the gods. He later joins Socrates' final conversation before falling asleep.

Phaedrus

Phaedrus inspires the topic of the speeches and praises Love for encouraging honor, courage, and sacrifice. He leaves when the banquet becomes disorderly, rather than remaining through its conclusion.

Pausanias

Pausanias distinguishes two kinds of love and defends attachments that promote virtue rather than praising every attachment equally. Alcibiades later addresses him among companions who understand the painful desire for wisdom.

Aristophanes

Aristophanes presents love as a pursuit of wholeness through an account of humans divided by Zeus. He later discusses dramatic arts with Socrates before falling asleep.

Aristodemus

Aristodemus attends the dinner with Socrates and supplies the account that Apollodorus repeats. He sleeps through much of the disorder but recalls the dawn discussion and follows Socrates out.

Alcibiades

Alcibiades arrives drunk, crowns Agathon and Socrates, and expresses jealousy. His praise of Socrates becomes a personal revelation of shame, admiration, and an unsuccessful attempt at seduction.

Love and virtue

Pausanias judges attachments by whether they promote virtue, which shows love as something to evaluate rather than simply celebrate.

Desire and lack

Aristophanes describes love as a pursuit of wholeness, suggesting that desire begins with a sense of incompleteness. Diotima's account of the desire for immortality extends this concern, showing love reaching toward something beyond what a person already possesses.

Education of desire

Diotima's ascent toward beauty itself shows desire as something that can be educated rather than merely satisfied. Alcibiades' account of Socrates' unsettling speech suggests that philosophical education also disturbs the person who feels its force, rather than offering only reassurance.

Praise and questioning

The movement from praise of Love to Socrates' questions shows that admiration does not settle what something is.

Steps toward beauty

The steps give the movement toward beauty itself a visible shape. They suggest that understanding develops through an ascent rather than arriving all at once.

Birth and children

Birth and children connect Diotima's teaching about immortality with images of continuing life. They suggest a way of thinking about what carries on beyond an individual.

Wine

The contrast between avoiding heavy drinking and being compelled into it shows the movement toward disorder.

Pausanias, Part 1. Pausanias makes this claim while distinguishing kinds of love. It shows that his defense of attachment depends on its connection with virtue, not simply on the presence of desire.

Aristophanes, Part 2. Aristophanes gives this definition within his account of divided humans. It shows love as a response to incompleteness and a longing to recover wholeness.

Diotima, Part 3. Diotima makes this claim in the teaching Socrates recounts. It shows desire reaching beyond immediate satisfaction toward a form of continuity that answers mortality.

Alcibiades, Part 4. Alcibiades says this during his tribute to Socrates.