Publisher's Synopsis
Where did our Western ideas of love come from? In Praise of Love is a conversation with Platoas Dialogue, The Symposium, the most influential literary and philosophical text on the nature of human love. In it Plato offers seven different views on the nature of love. The conversation starts from the question: Why did Plato put the speeches on love in the order we find them? Plato could not have put something this central to the dialogue in it without good reason. Most interpreters do not adequately account for the order of the speeches because they do not explain why it is not Socrates, the philosopher, but Alcibiades, a power politician, who is given the last word on love. The solution makes possible an illuminating and exciting interpretation of this classic work on the nature of human love.
