> Skip to content
  • Published: 7 April 2003
  • ISBN: 9780140449273
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

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: $26.99
Categories:

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
Njal's Saga
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
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.

penguin pop image
penguin pop image