The thinker behind the “Republic” and other works of philosophy also played political adviser to a series of rulers in Sicily.

Socrates, agreeing with Plato and Aristotle, considered erotic pleasure fun and necessary, but it was to be handled carefully. Pure sex is meant for the beasts, or half-beats—the satyrs again.

Socrates tells his companion that, if he was at all able to improve Alcibiades, this was not through any knowledge or art that he possessed, but only by the force of the love [eros] that the youth ...

Abstract: Plato’s Symposium contains two accounts of eros which explicitly aim to reach a telos. The first is the technocratic account of the doctor Eryximachus, who seeks an exhaustive account of ...

Socrates says that Diotima taught him “the philosophy of love.” The ancient Greek female philosopher Diotima agreed to teach him and described to him the nature of love, which is different from what ...

For Socrates, eros is the “between,” not “beautiful and perfect but something that seeks for what’s beautiful and perfect.” Humans are similarly in the middle between ignorant animals and all-knowing ...

So the following night the partygoers, including the philosopher Socrates, decided that instead of drinking they would give speeches in praise of the god of love, Eros (whence comes the word ...

Instead of boozing it up again, the gathered legends decide to discuss the burning question of Eros. It is seen as the mainspring of noble deeds; as a universal, harmonising force; and, memorably, in ...

Find Your Next Book Thrillers N.Y.C. Literary Guide Nonfiction Summer Preview Advertisement Supported by Nonfiction In “Open Socrates,” the scholar Agnes Callard argues that the ancient Greek ...

During a symposium held in the house of the tragic poet Agathon, several of the most important men of Athens, including Socrates, Pausanias, Aristophanes, and the most powerful character of the moment ...

From that point on, each two-legged person sought and longed to find its other half. Desire, or eros, is the name of this longing. This is how Aristophanes explains the origin of love.