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Symposium

Plato·c. 385 BCE·Greek

About this text

A dialogue on the nature of love, told through a series of speeches at a drinking party. Socrates recounts the teachings of Diotima on the ascent from physical beauty to the Form of Beauty itself.

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty, a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning.

Beginning from obvious beauties, he must ascend for the sake of that other beauty, using them as steps only, from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

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