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  • Published: 7 April 2003
  • ISBN: 9780140449273
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $26.00

The Symposium




Following the overwhelming success of Great Ideas' launch, with a million sold in the UK alone, Penguin now publish a further 20 short, astonishing works of non-fiction drawn from the most remarkable writing of the past two and a half thousand years of human thinking.

In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerge a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love - as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

  • Published: 7 April 2003
  • ISBN: 9780140449273
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $26.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Plato Plato

Plato (c. 427-347 BC) founded the Academy in Athens, the prototype of all Western universities, and wrote more than twenty philosophical dialogues.