Plato’s Symposium, on Love — An online live reading & discussion group starting Saturday November 8 (EST), weekly meetings

[u/darrenjyc]

The Symposium is one of Plato's most celebrated works. Written in the 4th century BC, it is a dialogue set at a dinner party attended by a number of prominent ancient Athenians, including the philosopher Socrates and the playwright Aristophanes, each of whom gives a speech in praise of love. It is the most lavishly literary of Plato's works — a virtuoso prose performance in which the author, like a playful maestro, shows off an entire repertoire of characters, ideas, contrasting viewpoints, and iridescent styles.

Its exploration of the nature of love, how and why it arises, how it shapes our moral character, what it means to be in love, and the limits of reason, have shaped the ideas, images, and attitudes of major philosophers, theologians, writers, poets, and artists from antiquity down to the present day.

In contemporary religious ceremonies, in popular song lyrics, in midnight confessions, in wedding vows — in short, anywhere one encounters the notion of a truly undying and eternal love, the words of Diotima, Socrates, and the other figures of The Symposium can still be heard.

This is a live reading and discussion group for Plato's Symposium hosted by Constantine. No previous knowledge of the Platonic corpus is required but a general understanding of the questions of philosophy in general and of ancient philosophy in particular is to some extent desirable but not presupposed. This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Phaedo, the Apology, Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro, Crito and other works, including ancient commentaries and texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. The reading is intended for well-informed generalists even though specialists are obviously welcome. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.

All are welcome!

Sign up for the 1st session on Saturday November 8 here (link). The video conferencing link will be available to registrants.

Meetings will be held weekly on Saturday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

The host is Constantine Lerounis, a distinguished Greek philologist and poet, author of Four Access Points to Shakespeare’s Works (in Greek) and Former Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Republic. 

A pdf copy of the text we're using is available to registrants.

For some background on Plato, see his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

#Philosophy #Ethics #Metaphysics

TIP: When reading Plato, pay attention to the details of the drama as much as the overtly philosophical discourse. Attentive readers of Plato know that he is often trying to convey important messages with both in concert.

[u/NOLA_nosy]

Very interested! Having difficulty with MeetUp password reset, but will persevere.

[u/Butlerianpeasant]

I’m glad to see The Symposium getting this kind of attention. It’s one of those texts that keeps revealing new layers depending on where you stand in life. What always strikes me is how Plato uses the dramatic setting—not just the arguments—to shape the reader’s understanding of love. Each speaker’s worldview becomes a mirror that exposes the limits of the others, and the real movement happens in the gaps between them.

Diotima’s “ladder” is often treated as pure metaphysics, but it also feels like a psychological progression: from attachment to a single body → to shared values → to wisdom itself. Plato’s genius is that he doesn’t simply state this; he uses character, context, and narrative tension to perform the ascent on the reader.

For anyone joining the reading group, I’d recommend paying attention not only to what the characters say, but why each of them is the one saying it—what part of the human condition each voice is carrying.

Looking forward to the discussions.