What is the meaning of love? What does love feel like? How does love come about? No one can truly explain it, yet somehow it's understood. In Plato's Symposium, a dinner party was held with the discussion of love as the main topic. Everyone was required to make a speech, an ode to Love, the spirit. The philosopher, Socrates gave his speech last, claiming that his speech was merely a repetition of what a wise woman named Diotima once told him. The speech was a powerful one, but before the night was over, a drunk Alcibiades entered. He was asked to make a eulogy for Love as well, but instead, talked about the nature of Socrates. The nature of Love and the nature of Socrates turned out to be extremely similar. In the Symposium, Socrates can be seen as the embodiment of Love itself.
The notion of love that was understood at the end of the Symposium came about gradually. It transformed from speaker to speaker over the course of the party, and could be compared to the whole process of understanding love that Socrates tried to explain in his own speech.
Its complexity was attained by taking small steps in a larger direction. Diotima explained to Socrates, that to attain the deepest love, he had to follow a certain order.
Much like stepping up on the "rungs in a ladder"(211c), love's nature started small, with Phaedrus and Pausinas merely stating that there was good love and bad love. This was the first step, starting with "beautiful things"(211c) and making those things "reason for... ascent"(211c) up the proverbial ladder. Next Eryximachus' speech compared love's importance to that of medicine's. He used the ...