The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC. It is a discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a series of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at the house of the tragedian Agathon at Athens. Included in the chronicle are six relatively formal speeches, each representing an intellectual discipline, interspersed by discussion; followed by a seventh unplanned speech by Alcibiades. Thus the Symposium becomes a dramatized example of a time-honoured motif, seven sages at dinner.
It would seem that Plato regards love, recognized as a forms of beauty, as an essential ingredient of the philosophic path and the search for wisdom.
"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities, (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."
Sec. 212
It would seem that Plato regards love, recognized as a forms of beauty, as an essential ingredient of the philosophic path and the search for wisdom.
"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities, (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."
Sec. 212
