4.8 • 604 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
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A Christmas party is where humanity’s deepest truths can be revealed. It’s a space where profound questions like "How much gravy is too much gravy?" “What is partridge doing in a pear tree?” mingle seamlessly with "What is the meaning of life?" The very act of gathering to celebrate is a tribute to our existential longing for connection, love, joy, and embarrassing drunken dance moves. Plato might have envisioned it as a quest for wisdom, but let’s be honest, sometimes the real enlightenment happens while debating who gets the last Brussels sprout.
Today, we're stepping into one of the most intriguing parties in philosophy — Plato’s Symposium. A gathering of Ancient Athens’ most brilliant minds, lounging on couches, wine flowing freely, engaging in an intense yet playful exchange about the nature of love. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary party. Hosted at the home of the tragic playwright Agathon, this gathering is filled with laughter, drama and impassioned speeches. A celebration of intellect and pleasure, a blend of wit, wisdom, and revelry. As the night goes on, the conversation turns from the playful to the profound. What insights do our guests discover? What, indeed, is love? So, grab a seat at the table—because in Plato’s Symposium, the ideas are nearly as intoxicating … as the wine.
Links
Plato, The Symposium (pdf)
Thomas Cooksey, Plato’s Symposium: A Reader’s Guide (book)
Gregory D. Sadler, Plato’s Symposium (YouTube lectures)
Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete, Commentaries on Plato’s Symposium (book)
Pierre Destrée and Zina Giannopoulou, Plato's Symposium A Critical Guide (book)
Note
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0:00.0 | Pan |
0:02.0 | Pan |
0:03.0 | Psychist |
0:04.0 | Part 3 |
0:06.0 | The Ladder of Love Welcome back, dear listener, to part three for our interpretation and reading of the symposium. |
0:29.3 | If you haven't, you need to go back and check out part one. |
0:31.6 | You need to check out part two because everything in those two episodes is building up to this. |
0:36.0 | This is it. |
0:37.1 | This is the pinnacle of |
0:39.2 | Platonic philosophy you're going to hear right here. We're finally getting to Socrates's speech |
0:44.8 | in the symposium on the nature of Eros. So let's dive in. |
0:55.5 | When Agathon had done speaking, there was a general cheer, |
0:59.4 | and he had thought to be spoken in a man he worthy of himself, |
1:03.1 | and of the god of Eros. |
1:05.5 | Tell me, Erexomachus, was I not a true prophet |
1:08.3 | when I said that Agathon would make a wonderful speech and that I should go next? |
1:12.5 | The part of the prophecy which concerns Agathon appears to me to be true. |
1:16.2 | Why, my dear friend, I am stuck with the beauty of his concluding words. |
1:20.9 | Who could listen to them without amazement? |
1:23.3 | Say then, Fadres, whether you would like to have the truth about love spoken in any words. |
1:28.8 | Speak in any manner which she seemed best. |
1:31.3 | I will recall a tale of love which I heard from Dea Tema of Mantania, the Princess. |
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