184: Symposium by Plato
184: Plato. Symposium. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Kindle Public Domain E-book. Approx. 96 pp.
Dewey Breakdown:
- 100: Philosophy and Psychology
- 180: Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
- 184: Platonic philosophy
Plato’s Symposium is essentially a love story. The general outline is that a group of Greek thinkers are gathered together to a symposium by the poet Agathon to celebrate his recent victory in a dramatic competition. Phaedrus (an aristocrat), Pausanius (some sort of lawyer), Eryximachus (a doctor), Aristophanes (a comedian), Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades (a statesman) then take turns discussing the nature and types of love. They each offer valid perspectives on the topic while trying to surpass each other in the quality of their rhetoric (and trying to ward off a hangover from the previous night’s drinking). Socrates gets the upper hand quickly by undermining—piece-by-piece—each of their arguments about the nature of Love.