How to Talk about Love

Explore the nature of love in this charming new translation of selections from Plato’s great dramatic work, the Symposium What is love? In poetry, songs, fiction, movies, psychology, and philosophy, love has been described, admired, lamented, and dissected in endless ways. Is love based on physical attraction? Does it bring out our better selves? How does it relate to sex? Is love divine? Plato’s Symposium is one of the oldest, most influential, and most profound explorations of such questions—it is even the source of the idea of “Platonic love.” How to Talk about Love introduces and presents the key passages and central ideas of Plato’s philosophical dialogue in a lively and highly readable new translation, which also features the original Greek on facing pages. The Symposium is set at a fictional drinking party during which prominent Athenians engage in a friendly competition by delivering improvised speeches in praise of Eros, the Greek god of love and sex. The aristocrat