Plato

Alexander Nehamas

Among the most powerful and moving of Plato's dialogues, the Symposium is one of the greatest literary works on the nature of love in Western thought.

Symposium

Bianca Miller 

But when I hear other kinds of discussion, especially the talk of rich businessmen like you, I get bored and feel sorry for you and your friends, because you think you're doing something important, when you're not. Perhaps you regard me as a failure, and I think you're right. But I don't think you're a failure, I know you are. 

Plato, Allan Bloom wrote, is "the most erotic of philosophers," and his Symposium is one of the greatest works on the nature of love ever written. This new edition brings together the English translation of the renowned Plato scholar and translator, Seth Benardete, with two illuminating commentaries on it: Benardete's "On Plato's Symposium" and Allan Bloom's provocative essay, "The Ladder of Love." In the Symposium, Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal, where the guests include the poet Aristophanes, the drunken Alcibiades, and, of course, the wise Socrates. The revelers give their views on the timeless topics of love and desire, all the while addressing many of the major themes of Platonic philosophy: the relationship of philosophy and poetry, the good, and the beautiful.

A Translation by Seth Benardete with Commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete

Plato's Symposium

A beautiful mix of voices trying to define love...and failing in the best way.

Made me pause, reflect, and rethink everything I thought I knew about it.

Tanishq Khandelwal

A beautiful mix of voices trying to define love...and failing in the best way.
Made me pause, reflect, and rethink everything I thought I knew about it.

Symposium.

i’ll be real and say i liked alcibiades’ speech best by far 😭😭 yes, yes, the philosophy of love, but give me how you are all affected by this! give me it in practice! how do we treat each other based on our philosophies!!! ofc this would remain an essential text despite that, but alcibiades was indispensable to it. but anyway sharing knowledge as showing love, loving the people who you know will make you a better person, all very very beautiful ideals that i aspire to.

lauren

The Symposium (Penguin Classics)

Kendall McClain

Aristophanes, king of romance I love u. Everyone else was cool too I guess, but after I read his section I was ready to wrap it up and cry

— lae

great book. amazing book. the part about spherical humans, so good!!! very funny to read. socrates arrives fashionably late as always. he had better things to do, like pondering life, as one does. 

i didn’t read the translation for this book, but translated it myself, and that really helped in the experience of this book. breaking it down, annotating it, learning the history of the author and the time he lived in, all such an amazing journey.

cheers to socrates. you will forever be my lover.

Isabela H 

This might be my favorite piece of classical literature ever!
I loved hearing all of the different views on love and the nature of love. With each new philosophy, I kept getting more and more into the whole conversation. I love the idea of a whole bunch of people just discussing their thoughts on love while getting drunker and drunker, and with the theories getting deeper and deeper.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Plato's retelling of the discourses between Socrates and his friends on such subjects as love and desire, truth and illusion, spiritual transcendence and the qualities of a good ruler, profoundly affected the ways in which we view human relationships, society and leadership - and shaped the whole tradition of Western philosophy.

The Symposium

Evan Gusev

I had no idea Ancient Greece was so sexist&gay 😮
Yet here goes out boi Plato being secretly feminist. Or not. Can never know if these guys are serious or ironic.

Theo Beaumont (all pronouns)

Honestly wasn’t expecting this to be such a good read! It helped me with an essay but reading it didn’t feel like work as it is formatted as a dialogue. Misogynistic tone occasionally, though pretty mild compared to other writings in the era and it’s pretty much just subtext. It’s a discussion about love and it has so many interesting arguments. Highly recommend!

Donald

I wrote a paper about this attacking the logic in Socrates' speech and arguing that love could not be communicated about directly. Fun fun fun. I want to read 'Parmenides' next.

K. J. Dover

Plato's dialogue the Symposium with introduction and commentary.

Lakoma

I've now read this dialogue several times through in Greek. Dover's notes are helpful. The Cambridge Green & Yellow series is always good.

I'm teaching/leading a Symposium seminar in Philly this summer, which should be fun.

For serious readers, this is the best English edition of Plato's Symposium. The translation is brilliant. It is extremely close to the Greek (don't take my word for it, read them side-by-side), but it's still pretty readable in the English. If you care more about the reading being fun/smooth, the Yale and Penguin editions are probably better (see my review of Allen's translation), but this gives English readers the closest experience to reading the original text.

Also, the essays are fantastic! Bloom's essays is one of the great essays about Plato ever written, and Benardete's is compelling. There is a ton of scholarship about Symposium, and it's worth diving into it once you've read the dialogue. This dialogue might be the most bizarre and difficult of them all, despite also being the most popular and fun.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves � and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives � and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Plato�s retelling of the discourses between Socrates and his friends on such subjects as love and desire, truth and illusion, spiritual transcendence and the qualities of a good ruler, profoundly affected the ways in which we view human relationships, society and leadership � and shaped the whole tradition of Western philosophy.

Jade Flynn

"Love does not only occur only in the human soul; it is not simply the attraction we feel toward human beauty: it is a 
  significantly broader phenomenon
. It certainly occurs within the animal kingdom, and even in the world of plants. In fact it occurs everywhere in the universe." -Eryximachus 

Beautiful eulogies.

hajar

A translation that offers an introduction presenting both basic information and a sense of scholarly opinion.

Robert Vetter

Viet 

iamazoo

Niki Sotiropoulou-Nassika

Nica Rhiana

Chris Zhu

Lotus

"Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Plato's retelling of the discourses between Socrates and his friends on such subjects as love and desire, truth and illusion, spiritual transcendence and the qualities of a good ruler, profoundly affected the ways in which we view human relationships, society and leadership - and shaped the whole tradition of Western philosophy."--Publisher's website.