Michael: Alright Kevin, we're diving into one of the all-time great philosophical texts on love. I asked you to boil it down to a five-word review. What have you got? Kevin: Okay, I’m ready. Mine is: "Ancient Greek Tinder was wild." Michael: That is… surprisingly accurate. Mine is a bit more earnest: "Love is a ladder, not a lock." Kevin: Ooh, I like that. A ladder, not a lock. That already sounds like we're going to disagree, which is perfect. So what is this book that has us talking about ladders and ancient dating apps? Michael: Today we are exploring Plato’s masterpiece, The Symposium. And what's amazing is how he wrote it. Plato composed this around 380 BCE, but the story is set way back in 416 BCE, at a dinner party he was too young to have attended. Kevin: Wait, so he wasn't even there? Michael: Not even close. He was a kid. He’s essentially writing historical fan-fiction, taking the biggest intellectual and artistic celebrities of Athens—Socrates, the playwright Aristophanes, and others—and imagining what they would have said about love after a few glasses of wine. Kevin: That’s hilarious. So it's not a historical record, it’s a philosophical "what if" scenario. He’s basically creating the ultimate intellectual crossover event. Michael: Exactly. The setup is simple. A group of brilliant men are at a symposium, which was a kind of formal drinking party, and they decide that instead of getting hammered, they'll each give a speech, an encomium, in praise of the god of Love, Eros. And the ideas they come up with have shaped how we think about romance for over two thousand years.

Kevin: Okay, so a philosophical debate at a drinking party. I'm in. Who goes first? What's the opening argument? Michael: Well, there are a few early speeches. The first, from a young man named Phaedrus, argues that Love is the oldest god and inspires us to be brave and virtuous. Another, from Pausanias, makes a distinction between a "Common Love," which is purely physical, and a "Heavenly Love," which is about intellectual connection. But the one speech that has echoed through centuries, the one that basically invented a core myth of romance, comes from a famous comic playwright, Aristophanes. Kevin: The comedian? I wouldn't expect the most profound theory to come from the funny guy. Michael: That’s the genius of Plato’s setup. Aristophanes tells a story, a myth, to explain the origin of love. He says that humans weren't always as we are now. In the beginning, we were spherical creatures. We had four arms, four legs, and two faces on one head, looking in opposite directions. We were cartwheeling balls of power. Kevin: Hold on, spherical humans? Like, we just rolled everywhere? That's a wild image. Michael: It gets wilder. He says there were three genders. There was the male-male, descended from the sun. The female-female, from the earth. And the androgynous male-female, from the moon. And these beings were incredibly strong, so strong and arrogant that they decided to attack the gods. Kevin: Oh, classic human mistake. Never attack the gods. What did Zeus do? Michael: Zeus didn't want to just obliterate them, because then who would offer sacrifices? So he came up with a clever, cruel solution. He decided to weaken them by splitting each one in half. He took his lightning bolt and sliced them down the middle, like you’d slice an egg. Then he had the god Apollo come down and tidy things up. Apollo turned their faces around to the side of the cut, and he pulled all their skin together and tied it in a knot at the front. That knot is our navel. Kevin: Wow. So my belly button is a scar from Zeus being angry at my round, cartwheeling ancestor? That's… a lot to process. Michael: It’s a constant reminder of our original nature! And here’s the heart of the myth. Once split, these two halves were consumed by a desperate, agonizing longing for each other. They would find their other half, throw their arms around them, and try to fuse back together into one being. They were so desperate to reunite that they would forget to eat or do anything else, and they started to die off. Kevin: That’s heartbreaking. So love, according to Aristophanes, is just this painful memory of being whole? Michael: Precisely. He says, "‘love’ is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness." We are all just symbols, broken halves of a whole, constantly searching for our matching piece. And that’s why, when we find that special person, that "other half," there's this profound sense of recognition and belonging. It feels like coming home, because you are literally finding the missing part of yourself. Kevin: That is an unbelievably powerful story. It explains so much about that feeling of 'completion' people talk about. It’s the origin of the soulmate. But it also sounds a bit tragic, doesn't it? It implies we're all fundamentally broken and our only cure is finding one specific person out of billions. What if your other half lives on another continent, or lived a hundred years ago? Michael: Aristophanes doesn't quite answer that. His story is more of a poetic explanation for the feeling of love—that intense, magnetic pull. It’s a beautiful, deeply human vision of love as a cure for our cosmic loneliness.

Kevin: Okay, so Aristophanes delivers this absolute banger of a myth. The crowd must have loved it. Who could possibly follow that? Michael: Well, after a couple more speeches, the host finally turns to the main event: Socrates. And as one modern reader of the book hilariously put it, Socrates has to come in and "ruin the mood with too much philosophy." Kevin: I can already picture it. Everyone's crying about their lost other half, and Socrates is about to hit them with a lecture. Michael: Something like that. But he does it cleverly. He starts by saying he knows nothing about love himself, but he will share what he learned from a wise woman, a priestess named Diotima. This allows him to present a radical new idea without sounding arrogant. Kevin: A classic Socratic move. "I'm not smart, I just know a smart person." So what did Diotima teach him? Michael: First, she dismantles everyone's assumptions. She tells Socrates that Love, or Eros, is not a beautiful god. How can he be? Love is the desire for beauty. You only desire what you don't have. Therefore, Love itself cannot be beautiful. Kevin: Whoa, hold on. That’s a total mind-bender. Love isn't beautiful? That goes against every poem ever written. Michael: Exactly. Diotima says Love is not a god at all, but a daimon, a spirit, that exists between mortals and gods. He is the child of Poverty and Resource, so he is always needy, always striving, always in pursuit. And what he pursues is not just beauty, but the "giving birth in beauty." Kevin: Giving birth in beauty? What does that even mean? Like, having beautiful children? Michael: That's the first level, the physical level. But more importantly, it's about intellectual and spiritual creation. It’s the desire for immortality. We can't live forever, but we can create things that do: children, yes, but also great works of art, just laws, profound philosophical ideas. Love is the engine that drives us to create something lasting and beautiful, to leave a legacy. Kevin: Okay, I'm starting to see it. It's not just about romance, it's about a creative drive. But where does the other person fit into all this? Michael: This is where Diotima introduces her most famous idea: the Ladder of Love, or the Ascent. She says a true lover must progress through a series of stages. It starts simply. First, a young person falls in love with one beautiful body. Kevin: Right, your first crush. Got it. Michael: But then, the lover must realize that the beauty in that one body is related to the beauty in all bodies. So he moves to the second rung: appreciating all physical beauty. He becomes a lover of beautiful forms in general, not just one person's. Kevin: This is where it starts to get a little weird for me. It feels like you're already moving away from the person you fell for. Michael: It's a progression of understanding. The third rung is to realize that the beauty of a soul, or a mind, is far more valuable than any physical beauty. So you begin to love people for their character, their intelligence, their virtue. Kevin: Okay, that's a noble idea. Loving someone for who they are on the inside. I'm back on board. What's next? Michael: From there, the ladder gets even more abstract. The fourth rung is to see the beauty in laws, institutions, and activities that create virtuous souls. You start to love the concept of Justice, or the beauty of a well-ordered society. The fifth rung is the love of knowledge, the beauty of the sciences and philosophy. Kevin: Now I feel like we've left the original person completely behind. We started with a crush and now we're in a political science class. This feels so impersonal. Are you just using people as stepping stones to get to... ideas? Michael: That's the crucial question, and the common critique. But Diotima's point is not that you discard the person. It's that the love for that specific, beautiful person is the key that unlocks the door to a much bigger reality. They are the catalyst. They show you a glimpse of Beauty, and your love for them inspires you to seek the source of that beauty. Kevin: So they're not a rung you step on and forget, but more like the guide who shows you the path up the mountain? Michael: A perfect analogy. And the final rung, the peak of the mountain, is when the lover finally turns their gaze upon Beauty itself—the eternal, unchanging, perfect Form of Beauty. At that point, you understand the very essence of what makes all beautiful things beautiful. And by contemplating that, you give birth to true virtue, and achieve a kind of immortality.

Kevin: This is fascinating, but it's incredibly high-minded. The Ladder of Love sounds like a spiritual discipline. Did Socrates actually walk the walk? Was he this detached, philosophical lover in real life? I need a story to make this concrete. Michael: Plato anticipates your question perfectly. Just as Socrates finishes his speech, the party is literally crashed. The doors burst open and in stumbles Alcibiades, the most famous, most beautiful, most brilliant, and most scandalous man in Athens. He's drop-dead gorgeous, a military hero, a charismatic politician—basically the biggest rockstar of his time. And he is very, very drunk. Kevin: Oh, I love this. The drama is escalating. What does he do? Michael: He plops down next to Socrates, and the host says, "Okay, Alcibiades, you're late, but you have to give a speech in praise of Love." And Alcibiades says, "No. I'm not going to praise Love. I'm going to praise Socrates." And what follows is not really a speech of praise. It's a raw, painful, and deeply personal confession. Kevin: He's going to spill all the tea in front of everyone. Michael: All of it. He tells the crowd that Socrates looks like a Silenus statue—one of those ugly, troll-like figures that, when you opened them up, contained a beautiful, golden image of a god inside. He says that's Socrates: ugly on the outside, but divine within. Then he tells the story of how he, Alcibiades, the most desired man in Athens, tried to seduce Socrates. Kevin: He admits this publicly? Michael: Yes. He describes how he invited Socrates to dinner, got him to stay over, and they were alone, under the same blanket. Alcibiades thought this was his chance. He believed that if he could trade his physical beauty for Socrates's inner wisdom, he would become a better man. So he makes his move. Kevin: And what does Socrates do? Michael: Socrates gently, and almost humorously, rejects him. He says, "My dear Alcibiades, if what you say about me is true, and I have some power to improve you, then you are trying to strike a very unfair bargain. You are trying to exchange the mere appearance of beauty for the reality of it. It would be like trading 'scraps of bronze for gold'." He completely reframes the situation from a physical seduction to a bad business deal. Kevin: Wow. So Alcibiades is offering him everything that Athenian society valued—youth, beauty, power, sex—and Socrates just calmly turns it down? Michael: He does. And Alcibiades says he woke up the next morning feeling like he had been rejected, but also in complete awe of Socrates's self-control, his moderation, his virtue. Socrates wasn't immune to beauty; Alcibiades says Socrates was always following beautiful young men around. But he wasn't a slave to it. He was already living on a higher rung of that ladder. He saw the physical beauty of Alcibiades, but he was more interested in the beauty of his soul, and the ultimate Form of Beauty that it pointed towards. Kevin: So Alcibiades's story is the ultimate case study. It proves that Socrates wasn't just talking philosophy; he was living it. He was the Silenus statue, and Alcibiades saw the gold inside. That's an incredible story.

Michael: It really is. And it brings the whole dialogue together. In the end, Plato gives us these two powerful, competing visions of love that are still with us today. On one hand, you have Aristophanes' vision: love as a search for completion. It’s about finding your missing piece, your other half, to become whole again. Kevin: The soulmate model. It's intuitive, it's romantic, and it's about finding a person who feels like home. Michael: Exactly. But on the other hand, you have Socrates' and Diotima's vision: love as a launchpad for transcendence. It's about using the love for another person as the fuel to ascend, to grow, to become something more than you were, and to get in touch with something eternal and divine. Kevin: The ladder model. It's more challenging, more philosophical, and it's about personal growth and aspiration, not just finding a partner. Michael: The two ideas frame the conversation perfectly. Is love about finding a mirror, someone who reflects you and completes you? Or is it about finding a window, someone who shows you a much bigger, more beautiful world beyond yourself? Kevin: That’s a huge question. And Plato doesn't really give a final answer, he just lays out the arguments in this brilliant, dramatic way. It really makes you think about what you're actually looking for in your own life. Michael: It's a question that has been debated for millennia, and it started right there, at that fictional dinner party. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Which idea of love resonates more with you? The soulmate or the ladder? Let us know what you think. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.