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On Plato's Symposium
The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, this volume offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did. Given as a course in autumn 1959 under the title "Plato's Political Philosophy," these provocative lectures—until now, never published, but instead passed down from one generation of students to the next—show Strauss at his subtle and insightful best.
- GenresPhilosophyLoveNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Leo Strauss
163 books394 followersLeo Strauss was a 20th century German-American scholar of political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss authored books on Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi. In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory.
Trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss authored books on Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, and articles on Maimonides and Al-Farabi. In the late 1930s, his research focused on the texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 11, 2021
میگن چون ما تفسیر های خوب ندیدیم با تفسیر لئواشتراوس از افلاطون هیجان زده می شیم. خب اینکه ما تفسیر های خوبی در زبان فارسی در اختیار نداریم درسته. اما شرح اشترواس از ضیافت شگفت انگیزه...نه صرفا برای فهمیدن ضیافت، بلکه به نظرم برای فهمیدن معنای "دقیق خواندن یک متن" از این اثر اشترواس غافل نشید.
پینوشت: باید کلاه به احترام مترجم این اثر از سر برداشت. مشخصه که مترجم به زبان یونانی و فلسفه افلاطون هم تسلط قابل قبولی داشته.
پینوشت: باید کلاه به احترام مترجم این اثر از سر برداشت. مشخصه که مترجم به زبان یونانی و فلسفه افلاطون هم تسلط قابل قبولی داشته.
April 13, 2010
This book was my introduction to Leo Strauss, picked up on a whim at a used book shop in Seattle's University District. I was immediately struck by the depth of knowledge Strauss brought to his analysis - speaking of Athenian topics in strictly Athenian terms, with critical attention to the details of Athenian history and what we know of Athenian religious, political, and social practices. This was a most-refreshing change from most contemporary analysis of the Symposium, which seeks to contextualize the dialogue within late-20th century history and late-20th century religious, political, and social practices.
Highly recommended to all who seek wisdom without softness.
Highly recommended to all who seek wisdom without softness.
May 1, 2026
Great insight into the Symposium. Excellent as always.
July 30, 2026
# From Eros to Philosophy: Reading Leo Strauss’s *On Plato’s Symposium*
In his reading of Plato’s *Symposium*, Leo Strauss does not treat the dialogue as an elegant philosophical essay about “love.” He treats it as a carefully constructed drama. The starting point is simple: if Plato merely wanted to present a theory of eros, he could have written a treatise. Instead, the *Symposium* stages a series of speeches that differ from—and sometimes conflict with—one another. Socrates then gives the apparently authoritative account, only to be interrupted by the drunken Alcibiades. For Strauss, this structure is itself a philosophical problem. The truth of the dialogue lies not only in Diotima’s “ladder of love,” but also in the characters, silences, and comic or untimely moments.
The book’s most important contribution is to rescue the *Symposium* from an overly settled Platonism. It is often read as a path from bodily beauty to Beauty itself: eros becomes progressively purer until it reaches philosophical contemplation. Strauss warns that, if we treat this ascent as the dialogue’s final doctrine, we miss Plato’s dramatic form. He follows Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades one by one, not merely to summarise their speeches, but to ask what each understanding of eros reveals—and what it conceals.
The first three speeches show how easily eros can be subordinated to an external purpose. Phaedrus praises it for the courage and advantage it produces; Pausanias submits it to moral virtue and civic convention; Eryximachus absorbs it into art, medicine, and cosmic harmony. All three praise eros, but none lets eros appear on its own terms. It first has to become useful, lawful, or technically manageable before it can be praised. Strauss’s reading shows that these are not simply different Greek views of sexuality. They are basic human attempts to domesticate desire.
Aristophanes and Agathon mark a further turn. Aristophanes begins with human brokenness, ugliness, and incompleteness, presenting eros as a longing to recover an original wholeness. Agathon, by contrast, beautifies eros, depicting it as beauty, gentleness, and youth itself. Though one begins low and the other high, both reveal a force that cannot simply be disciplined: eros is both lack and a longing for wholeness and beauty. Socrates’ speech seems to surpass them. He defines eros as the lack of, and pursuit of, the good; he elevates it into philosophy, the love of wisdom. Eros is no longer merely sex, possession, family, reputation, or bodily continuity, but the source of humanity’s restless search for wisdom.
Yet Strauss’s deepest insight is that he does not allow us to settle too quickly into this ascent. Eros, as *metaxu*—that which stands between gods and human beings, wisdom and ignorance, mortality and immortality—makes philosophy possible. But it also means that human beings cannot possess wisdom directly. Philosophy is not a settled dwelling in eternal truth. It is love of wisdom, a pursuit driven by lack. In this sense, the *Symposium* is not a closed metaphysical system, but a serious acknowledgement of human incompleteness.
More importantly, Strauss does not allow philosophical eros simply to abolish other forms of love. Diotima initially separates eros from love of beauty and love of what is one’s own, defining it as the wish to possess the good forever. Yet love of one’s own returns in her discussions of reproduction, children, honour, virtue, and political prudence. Parents do not love “the human species” in the abstract; they love their own children. Those who seek immortal fame are not motivated solely by public service, but also by a desire to preserve themselves. Here eros is both selfish and noble: it can produce vanity, but also virtue, poetry, law, and political prudence.
The *Symposium*, then, does not simply reject the body, family, city, and honour. It repeatedly detaches them, examines them, and then restores them in a different order. If Socrates’ speech is treated as the complete truth about eros, we overlook its limits as an encomium. Praise can be true, but only selectively true: it speaks of the most beautiful and praiseworthy aspects of its subject, while necessarily remaining silent about roughness, bodily desire, possessiveness, and political attachment. Alcibiades’ arrival at the end brings these excluded dimensions back into the room. He is drawn to Socrates, yet cannot truly submit to philosophy. His passion shows that philosophy can awaken eros, but may not be able to rule it completely.
Strauss’s interpretation also clarifies the difference between the *Symposium* and the *Republic*. The *Republic* must address civic justice, friends and enemies, boundaries, and the spiritedness required of guardians. The *Symposium* belongs more fully to a non-political sphere, asking how eros can move beyond what is one’s own. This does not mean that philosophy can escape politics. Precisely because philosophy itself lacks spiritedness, Plato as a writer must understand poetry, comedy, tragedy, and educational speech. He is more capable than Socrates of placing philosophical inquiry within the limits of human life.
This is not an easy book. Strauss often places considerable interpretive weight on a phrase, a character’s position, or a dramatic detail, and readers may not accept every inference. In particular, reading eros as the bond between the realm of Forms and what is not Form, or extending Diotima’s religious language into a general epistemology, is a powerful interpretation rather than an explicit statement of Plato’s text. But this is also the book’s intellectual value: it forces us to distinguish textual evidence from interpretive reconstruction.
Ultimately, Strauss’s *On Plato’s Symposium* matters not because it gives the one correct answer to Plato’s dialogue, but because it changes the way we read Plato. It makes us ask not only, “How does Plato define love?” but also: Why do these people speak in this order? Why must Alcibiades appear after the most elevated speech? When philosophy elevates eros into the pursuit of wisdom, what does it leave behind? The *Symposium* thus ceases to be a quiet ladder of ascent. It becomes a work about the entanglement of lack, becoming, poetry, politics, and philosophy.
In his reading of Plato’s *Symposium*, Leo Strauss does not treat the dialogue as an elegant philosophical essay about “love.” He treats it as a carefully constructed drama. The starting point is simple: if Plato merely wanted to present a theory of eros, he could have written a treatise. Instead, the *Symposium* stages a series of speeches that differ from—and sometimes conflict with—one another. Socrates then gives the apparently authoritative account, only to be interrupted by the drunken Alcibiades. For Strauss, this structure is itself a philosophical problem. The truth of the dialogue lies not only in Diotima’s “ladder of love,” but also in the characters, silences, and comic or untimely moments.
The book’s most important contribution is to rescue the *Symposium* from an overly settled Platonism. It is often read as a path from bodily beauty to Beauty itself: eros becomes progressively purer until it reaches philosophical contemplation. Strauss warns that, if we treat this ascent as the dialogue’s final doctrine, we miss Plato’s dramatic form. He follows Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades one by one, not merely to summarise their speeches, but to ask what each understanding of eros reveals—and what it conceals.
The first three speeches show how easily eros can be subordinated to an external purpose. Phaedrus praises it for the courage and advantage it produces; Pausanias submits it to moral virtue and civic convention; Eryximachus absorbs it into art, medicine, and cosmic harmony. All three praise eros, but none lets eros appear on its own terms. It first has to become useful, lawful, or technically manageable before it can be praised. Strauss’s reading shows that these are not simply different Greek views of sexuality. They are basic human attempts to domesticate desire.
Aristophanes and Agathon mark a further turn. Aristophanes begins with human brokenness, ugliness, and incompleteness, presenting eros as a longing to recover an original wholeness. Agathon, by contrast, beautifies eros, depicting it as beauty, gentleness, and youth itself. Though one begins low and the other high, both reveal a force that cannot simply be disciplined: eros is both lack and a longing for wholeness and beauty. Socrates’ speech seems to surpass them. He defines eros as the lack of, and pursuit of, the good; he elevates it into philosophy, the love of wisdom. Eros is no longer merely sex, possession, family, reputation, or bodily continuity, but the source of humanity’s restless search for wisdom.
Yet Strauss’s deepest insight is that he does not allow us to settle too quickly into this ascent. Eros, as *metaxu*—that which stands between gods and human beings, wisdom and ignorance, mortality and immortality—makes philosophy possible. But it also means that human beings cannot possess wisdom directly. Philosophy is not a settled dwelling in eternal truth. It is love of wisdom, a pursuit driven by lack. In this sense, the *Symposium* is not a closed metaphysical system, but a serious acknowledgement of human incompleteness.
More importantly, Strauss does not allow philosophical eros simply to abolish other forms of love. Diotima initially separates eros from love of beauty and love of what is one’s own, defining it as the wish to possess the good forever. Yet love of one’s own returns in her discussions of reproduction, children, honour, virtue, and political prudence. Parents do not love “the human species” in the abstract; they love their own children. Those who seek immortal fame are not motivated solely by public service, but also by a desire to preserve themselves. Here eros is both selfish and noble: it can produce vanity, but also virtue, poetry, law, and political prudence.
The *Symposium*, then, does not simply reject the body, family, city, and honour. It repeatedly detaches them, examines them, and then restores them in a different order. If Socrates’ speech is treated as the complete truth about eros, we overlook its limits as an encomium. Praise can be true, but only selectively true: it speaks of the most beautiful and praiseworthy aspects of its subject, while necessarily remaining silent about roughness, bodily desire, possessiveness, and political attachment. Alcibiades’ arrival at the end brings these excluded dimensions back into the room. He is drawn to Socrates, yet cannot truly submit to philosophy. His passion shows that philosophy can awaken eros, but may not be able to rule it completely.
Strauss’s interpretation also clarifies the difference between the *Symposium* and the *Republic*. The *Republic* must address civic justice, friends and enemies, boundaries, and the spiritedness required of guardians. The *Symposium* belongs more fully to a non-political sphere, asking how eros can move beyond what is one’s own. This does not mean that philosophy can escape politics. Precisely because philosophy itself lacks spiritedness, Plato as a writer must understand poetry, comedy, tragedy, and educational speech. He is more capable than Socrates of placing philosophical inquiry within the limits of human life.
This is not an easy book. Strauss often places considerable interpretive weight on a phrase, a character’s position, or a dramatic detail, and readers may not accept every inference. In particular, reading eros as the bond between the realm of Forms and what is not Form, or extending Diotima’s religious language into a general epistemology, is a powerful interpretation rather than an explicit statement of Plato’s text. But this is also the book’s intellectual value: it forces us to distinguish textual evidence from interpretive reconstruction.
Ultimately, Strauss’s *On Plato’s Symposium* matters not because it gives the one correct answer to Plato’s dialogue, but because it changes the way we read Plato. It makes us ask not only, “How does Plato define love?” but also: Why do these people speak in this order? Why must Alcibiades appear after the most elevated speech? When philosophy elevates eros into the pursuit of wisdom, what does it leave behind? The *Symposium* thus ceases to be a quiet ladder of ascent. It becomes a work about the entanglement of lack, becoming, poetry, politics, and philosophy.
July 18, 2021
نکتهٔ محوری در اندیشه اشتراوس این است که حقایق فلسفی زمانمند نیستند. یعنی سوالات بنیادین فلسفه در تمام زمانها مشترک است. از همین منظر است که اشتراوس با تاریخیگرایی مخالفت میکند. دیدگاه تاریخیگرایی معتقد است بستر تاریخی که هر شخص در آن زندگی میکند شیوهٔ اندیشیدن او را تعیین میکند و از آنجا که گذشتگان در فضای تاریخی بسیار متفاوتی زندگی کردهاند امکان دستیابی به نظرات واقعی آنها غیرممکن است.
January 25, 2017
I read half of it
February 14, 2021
หนังสือเล่มนี้ท้าทายสมองผมครับ ผมใช้เวลาหลายปีกว่าจะสามารถอ่านรวดเดียวจบได้อาจเพราะ 1.ครั้งแรกที่อ่านผมยังเด็กมากและไม่สามารถทำความเข้าใจเนื้อหาอย่างถ่องแท้ทั้งหมด 2. ภาษาและสำนวนที่ไม่ง่ายเลยโดยเฉพาะกับเด็กชาวไทยภาษาง่อยแบบผม แม้ผมจะอ่านทั้งสองภาษาไทยและอังกฤษ และพบว่าเฉพาะหนังสือเล่มนี้ผมมีความสุขในการอ่านภาษาแม่มากกว่า.
หนังสือดีครับ การโต้เถียงที่มีเหตุผล มักนำมาซึ่งปัญญาเสมอ ไม่มีการโต้เถียงก็ไม่มีคำถาม ไม่มีคำถามแล้วก็จะไร้หนทางออก แต่การโตเถียงที่ใช้เหตุผลและความรู้ นำมาซึ่งความเป็นไปได้ในการหาคำตอบที่หลากหลายมากขึ้น หาอ่านกันนะครับ
หนังสือดีครับ การโต้เถียงที่มีเหตุผล มักนำมาซึ่งปัญญาเสมอ ไม่มีการโต้เถียงก็ไม่มีคำถาม ไม่มีคำถามแล้วก็จะไร้หนทางออก แต่การโตเถียงที่ใช้เหตุผลและความรู้ นำมาซึ่งความเป็นไปได้ในการหาคำตอบที่หลากหลายมากขึ้น หาอ่านกันนะครับ
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