Plato's Symposium, Part 1: Love's Poetry, Bearing Individual and Universal Truths

In our first of three sessions on Plato's Symposium, the dialogue on love that occurs among a group of hungover Athenians, participants from the Toronto, Calgary, and Philosophy Meetup groups pointed to grains of truth in the poetry of love presented by three speakers at the symposium. On April 30, 2023 we met to read parts of the three speeches, each of which examines love from a different perspective, to look for a common thread. Is love a god that rules over us, or is love ours to fashion? Love, several members reminded us, is not just between people, but also between people and knowledge - thus the word philosophy, which means "love of wisdom." The path to wisdom is paved with knowledge, and there were some uniquely powerful expressions of knowledge that harmonized in our dialogue on the theme of love.