This essay examines the concept of love as presented in Plato's Symposium, moving through each speaker's definition before arriving at Socrates' philosophical climax. The paper contrasts the shallow, materialistic views of the aristocratic guests — who equate love primarily with erotic desire, beauty, and social status — with Socrates' spiritual vision of love as a passionate quest for wisdom, virtue, and union with divine truth. Drawing on Diotima's teachings and the dramatic entrance of Alcibiades, the essay argues that Socrates uses the Symposium as a vehicle for elevating human desire from physical appetite to philosophical enlightenment, with implications for both personal morality and civic life in a democratic republic.
In order to answer the question of what "love" means to Plato and Socrates in the Symposium, the most important first step is to explain how the other participants define it before Socrates weighs in with his more philosophical and spiritual account. All of these participants are wealthy, privileged young men from the aristocratic class — except, of course, for Socrates, who comes from the artisan class. They are arrogant, shallow, and narcissistic, mainly in love with themselves, and they define love as Eros: erotic, physical, and sexual experience, along with love of money, fame, and physical beauty. Occasionally they also recognize that philos, or friendship, can be a form of love — a point with which Socrates agrees — though he carries it further to the higher level of agape, or universal, God-like benevolence, understanding, and virtue.
Rather than democracy, these men would prefer Athens to be governed by an elite or an aristocracy, but Socrates opposes this. Like Alcibiades, they may belong to a wealthy ruling class with contempt for those less privileged, but that is never the political or moral position of Socrates. In his view, all citizens of a republic should be motivated by a higher type of morality than simply love of money, pleasure, and the self, and should follow the example he sets.
Unlike the audience at the Symposium, Socrates is not rich or powerful, nor young and handsome, and the only celebrity he possesses comes from being mocked and derided by most of his fellow citizens. He speaks last and definitively, after all the younger men have offered opinions on love and beauty that invariably dwell on the physical and sexual rather than on the higher spiritual level that most interests a philosopher. For those who do not understand his message — that true love is a passion for eternal truth, wisdom, and virtue rather than the things of the world — Alcibiades conveniently appears at the end and explains it all again for the slower learners.
Socrates regards philosophy as a spiritual quest and an activity of the soul's longing and desire for God, while he disdains the money, power, sex, and fame that most mortals strive for all their lives. His task is to elevate the conversation and steer it away from mere worldly concerns about the purely sexual dimensions of love and beauty toward spiritual and transcendent levels. He guides the young men in this direction by describing his own encounter with a wise woman named Diotima when he was their age. According to her, love should not simply be an erotic desire for beautiful bodies and material things, all of which are temporary and transitory. Instead, the highest form of love is that of wisdom and truth — eternal realities — and the love of the immortal soul in seeking after God. This same lesson can be applied to political and economic life as well as to relations between individuals, for Socrates also feels love for the beautifully constructed state and its laws. For this reason, Socrates refuses to be seduced by the rich and beautiful young Alcibiades, who was also quite arrogant and conceited until Socrates showed him higher truths.
All the wealthy young men are permitted to give their narrow, materialistic definitions of love and beauty while Socrates says nothing, pretending he has never heard any of this before. At the end, however, Alcibiades makes clear that he has already dealt with these questions many times before. Phaedrus begins by commenting on famous lovers in history, such as the beautiful young Achilles and his older mentor Patroclus. This gives him the idea that all soldiers should be lovers, since they would fight to the death for one another and generally show great courage in battle. Pausanias praises Eros and Aphrodite as well, cautioning that "the Eros we should praise is the one which encourages people to love in the right way," which is not simply the sexual act but a love between minds (Gil 19). He also values the love of boys above that of women, but "only with boys old enough to think for themselves," in a relationship that develops into friendship or philos (Gil 20). He notes that fathers protect their sons from male lovers and forbid them to meet, while other boys will sneer at them — a way of testing whether the older man "loves the body rather than the mind" (Gil 23).
In their turn, Aristophanes and Agathon also proclaim Eros to be the best and most beautiful of all the gods. Aristophanes describes him as "the most friendly towards men" and then relates the legend that three genders once existed, the third being a combination of male and female — a hermaphrodite. Zeus divided them in two, and now they spend eternity trying to find each other again, seeking the perfect lover, but "in an imperfect world we must settle for the nearest to this we can get, and this is finding a boyfriend who is mentally congenial" (Gil 38). Agathon then offers his opinion that Eros is "the most beautiful and best of the gods" and also the youngest, since he is fast enough to always run away from old age (Gil 40). Eros also promotes the "love of beauty" in the world and among the gods, and was kind, generous, and gentle, so that because of his influence "all manner of good has resulted" (Gil 44).
"Diotima's ladder from desire to divine wisdom"
"Alcibiades' erotic pursuit rejected by Socrates"
For all his admitted flaws, Alcibiades plays the most crucial role in the Symposium, explaining to the young men in the room that Socrates is simply not interested in any of the pleasures and passions of the material world — whether money, sex, fame, or honor. These are all temporary and transitory compared to the immortal soul and its desire to share in the eternal wisdom and truth of God. If his students feel passion and desire, it should not be directed toward the things of the physical or material world, which all of them were discussing at the start of the Symposium. Socrates would take their erotic drives and direct them up the ladder to higher philosophical truths, including how to live a good and virtuous life and how to prepare for eternal life in the next world.
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