Author: Matthew Sanderson
Category: Historical Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Sex and Gender
Word count: 1000
Imagine throwing a party with delicious food where you and your friends debate what love is. Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428–348 BCE) tells a similar story in his Symposium.
In this work, Plato describes a banquet attended by a small gathering of people—a physician, a poet, a philosopher, among others—who take turns competing to see who can give the best speech about love. The speeches mostly focus on romantic love, but they can apply to other types of love as well.
This essay introduces Plato’s Symposium by summarizing the core philosophical views in its speeches.[1]
1. Phaedrus
Phaedrus speaks first and argues that love can inspire moral excellence or virtue: it can motivate people to try to become the best version of themselves for their beloved because we want to impress them and make them think highly of us.[2] For example, Phaedrus claims that lovers might feel intense shame when their beloved discovers that they’ve done something immoral. Phaedrus also says love can inspire the lover to perform great heroic acts, including possibly even dying for one’s beloved.
2. Pausanias
Pausanias is next and argues that there are two different kinds of love, and Phaedrus’ view of love applies only to noble love, the love of another person’s character and values.[3] According to Pausanias, there is also vulgar love, a desire only for physical bodies and short-term gratification.
Pausanias’ view that noble love focuses on humans as persons lays the groundwork for later speakers to talk about love as a longing for something that’s profoundly meaningful. The first two speeches also urge us to think of love as a type of desire.[4]
3. Eryximachus
As a physician, Eryximachus seeks to broaden the discussion from focusing on love between humans to viewing love as a cosmic force found in all things—e.g., animals, plants, etc.
More specifically, Eryximachus views love as a desire or drive for order and balance at work in the universe. Thus, he sees love as the restorative power in nature. To love is to want to make harmony out of discordance and wholeness out of fragmentation. For instance, loving your romantic partner means that, after an argument, you likely want to “make up” with them.
4. Aristophanes
Playwright Aristophanes speaks of love as the desire to find your “other half”—to be completed or made whole by your romantic partner. To explain why, he tells a mythical story rich with symbolism.[5]
He says there were originally three kinds of humans: some male, some female, and some androgynous (i.e., half male and half female). Each had a round body and possessed twice the number of limbs and organs than we do now. Because of their strength and power (twice the amount of biceps!), they became arrogant and challenged the gods. The chief god, Zeus, decided to punish them by cutting them in half.
Since then humans have searched for their other half to restore the wholeness of their original form. Each half of an original man seeks another man, while each half of an original woman seeks another woman. The halves of the original androgynous humans search for people of the opposite sex. In short, humans desire to reunite with their other half or “soul mate.” Notice that Aristophanes follows Eryximachus in arguing that love is a desire for wholeness or harmony.
5. Agathon
Agathon, a poet, argues that previous speeches only discussed what love does or the effects of love, but not what love is. Thus, Agathon seeks to focus on the nature of love itself independent of its consequences. To do this, he speaks in flowery language to emphasize that love is beautiful.
6. Socrates
Socrates’ speech argues that love itself is not beautiful, because love desires beauty and therefore lacks it. Socrates further reasons that because love wants to possess beauty always and forever, love is also the desire for immortality. However, because we are mortal beings, the best we can do to achieve immortality, according to Socrates, is to give birth (either literally or metaphorically) to beautiful creations that we “leave behind” after we die. This can include birthing human children, but also great moral deeds and works of art, literature, etc.
Perhaps the most famous part of Socrates’ speech is his “ladder of love”—which he says he learned from his teacher, the priestess Diotima—wherein he describes the journey of personal growth from vulgar to noble love. Socrates says that people typically begin in youth by loving one beautiful body. However, we eventually realize that there are many beautiful bodies, and thus come to love all beautiful bodies and physical beauty in general.
Next we realize that what we really love in beautiful bodies is humans as persons, especially their character and values. But then we figure out that what makes persons beautiful is their moral excellence, and thus we begin to love and desire the most impactful form of that excellence: just (i.e., fair) laws and institutions.
Next we realize that what makes laws and institutions beautiful is the thinking behind them, and so we begin to love learning and seek wisdom. This can ultimately lead us to become philosophers, as philosophy means love of wisdom.[6] Then we finally realize that what we really love and desire is beauty itself, i.e., the idea or concept of beauty in general.[7] Thus, “true” (or noble) love, for Socrates, leads to philosophical enlightenment.
7. Alcibiades
The last speech is by Alcibiades who dramatizes the ladder of love by praising Socrates as an exemplar of virtue and wisdom.[8] Alcibiades also recounts how Socrates rejected his romantic advances, which demonstrates Socrates’ refusal of vulgar love in favor of the higher rungs of the ladder of love.
8. Conclusion
Overall, Plato’s Symposium highlights that love is not just an emotion or feeling, but also a type of desire focused on attaining higher moral and “spiritual” goals such as virtue, beauty, and wisdom. To love well, in Plato’s view, is to desire what is truly profound.
Notes
[1] This essay summarizes The Symposium of Plato (385-370 BCE/2013). For a general introduction to Plato’s thought, see Grube (1980). For introductions to other specific works of Plato, see Plato’s Form of the Good by Ryan Jenkins, these essays by Spencer Case: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the Journey Out of Ignorance, Why be Moral? Plato’s ‘Ring of Gyges’ Thought Experiment, and Plato’s Crito: When Should We Break the Law?, Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case, and Ethics and God: the Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma by Nathan Nobis. For an introduction to the philosophy of love and friendship, see Solomon et. al. (1991), Helm (2021), as well as What Is It To Love Someone? by Felipe Pereira and Aristotle on Friendship: What Does It Take to Be a Good Friend? by G. M. Trujillo, Jr. For a more detailed introduction to Plato’s philosophy of love and friendship, see Reeve (2021).
Throughout history Plato’s Symposium has been a source of controversy at various times primarily due to its discussions and depictions of pederasty (i.e., mentoring relationships between adult males and adolescent boys in Ancient Greece that had an erotic or sexual element) and homosexuality found throughout the work in both subtle and overt forms. In 2026 it became a source of controversy for a new reason: because of Aristophanes’ mythical story involving three genders. In January 2026, Texas A&M University banned the teaching of the Symposium on the grounds that the work violates a new state law that prohibits teaching that there are more than the two genders of male and female. For an overview of the history of controversy surrounding Plato’s Symposium, including the recent controversy at Texas A&M University, see Reeser (2026).
[2] Thus, love can lead to what some philosophers call a “transformative experience.” For an introduction to philosophical reflections on transformative experiences, see Transformative Experiences: Can Life-Changing Choices Be Both Rational and Authentic? by Felipe Pereira.
[3] Sometimes the two types of love are described as “heavenly love” and “common love.”
[4] In other words, Plato thinks of love as what the ancient Greeks called “eros.” We get our word “erotic” from “eros,” but sexual love is only one type of eros and, for Plato, an inferior type. Overall, eros can be understood as any type of love that is fueled by passionate desire. Thus, for example, the philosopher’s passionate search for truth and wisdom is often understood as a kind of eros or erotic pursuit.
[5] It’s most likely that Aristophanes doesn’t believe this story really took place in history. Instead, he likely makes up the story to dramatically illustrate his view that love is the desire for one’s other half.
[6] For a general introduction to philosophy, including its connection to wisdom, see What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf.
[7] For Plato, beauty is decidedly not in the eye of the beholder, i.e., not subjective. Instead, Plato believes that the essence or defining characteristics of beauty—what he calls the “Form” of beauty—is objectively real, universal and eternal. For an introduction to Plato’s concept of “Forms,” see Plato’s Form of the Good by Ryan Jenkins. For a discussion of what it means to think of beauty as subjective or in the eye of the beholder, see “That’s Subjective”: Subjectivism about Truth, Beauty, and Goodness by Nathan Nobis.
[8] Thus, Alcibiades’ love and speech for Socrates is an important dramatization of Socrates’ views in the context of the story as a whole.
References
Grube, G.M.A. (1980). Plato’s Thought. Hackett Publishing.
Helm, Bennett. (2021). “Love.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Plato. (385-370 BCE/2013). Symposium. The Project Gutenberg.
Reeser, Todd W. (January 15, 2026). “Setting Plato Straight All Over Again.” Inside Higher Ed.
Reeve, C.D.C. (2023). “Plato on Friendship and Eros.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Solomon, Robert C., et. al. (1991). The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love. University Press of Kansas.
Related Essays
What Is It To Love Someone? by Felipe Pereira
Plato’s Form of the Good by Ryan Jenkins
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the Journey Out of Ignorance by Spencer Case
Why be Moral? Plato’s ‘Ring of Gyges’ Thought Experiment by Spencer Case
Plato’s Crito: When Should We Break the Law? by Spencer Case
Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case
Ethics and God: the Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma by Nathan Nobis
Aristotle on Friendship: What Does It Take to Be a Good Friend? by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.
Transformative Experiences: Can Life-Changing Choices Be Both Rational and Authentic? by Felipe Pereira
What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf
“That’s Subjective”: Subjectivism about Truth, Beauty, and Goodness by Nathan Nobis
About the Author
Matthew Sanderson is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at West Shore Community College in Scottville, Michigan. He specializes in philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and 19th and 20th-century continental philosophy. philpeople.org/profiles/matthew-sanderson
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