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from Part I - Love in Plato
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
This chapter explores the different treatments the topic of love received in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. The Symposium expressly addresses the question of the character and benefits of eros – and the question of its nature. It is a philosophical enquiry into this phenomenon, conducted by a set of mature men (and the memory of one exceptional woman) who have personal experience in this topic and have thought about it. In the Phaedrus, by contrast, the topic is addressed from the point of view of a would-be lover trying, through a speech addressed to the young and inexperienced man, to persuade him to submit to his overtures and desires. For Plato, eros is crucial to the practice of philosophy, a force which can take us in two separate directions, towards the good and towards the bad.
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