The Symposium

"Plato is the founding figure in the Western philosophical tradition and the Symposium is one of his most charming books – you can read it like a novel. It’s set in the house of an Athenian, and he’s invited Socrates and some of his other friends around after a theatrical event for a drinking party. They’re chatting, and they each give a speech where they set out their concept of “Eros”. The one everyone remembers is the speech of Aristophanes, the comic playwright, who says that originally human beings had four legs, four arms, and two heads, and then Zeus broke us in two. So we’re all going around looking for our other half and when we find it, we will feel complete again. It’s a little twee, and I think it appeals to our romantic sensibilities, but it isn’t actually Plato’s idea of Eros at all. His idea is that it’s a desire for “the good” itself, and that we only desire an individual insofar as he appears to us to embody the good. Ultimately, sexual love is a kind of misdirection of this desire for the good, which we’ve got to transcend. I’ve become fascinated with this idea, because I think it explains a lot of problems to do with moral motivation. A lot of people think that in order to motivate somebody to behave morally, you’ve basically got to make it in their interest: by setting out some system of rewards and punishments. But what Plato seems to be saying is that moral education is not a matter of imposing principles on people against their natural bent, it’s more a matter of engaging with their desires and educating them ­– leading them towards the good. And that, I think, is very attractive and important."