Plato's Eros

Plato's Eros is an aspirational reading of Plato's Symposium. This thoughtful book examines the nature of consciousness and philosophy and explains the deeper meaning of Plato's concept of Eros. With its insightful and enriching philosophy, the book unfolds the multiple nature of Eros to illustrate how Eros inspires our hearts to feel, our minds to wonder, and our intellects to think. By examining and unfolding Plato's philosophical masterpiece, the book shows how Plato transforms storytelling into philosophy, asking readers to rethink the nature of consciousness and their own narrative practice. Rather than communicate moral messages, storytelling is a way to inspire wonder and self-consciousness in order to articulate the righteous truth of our own stories. Extract:

Plato's dialogues do not give us answers. They engage in a dialogue with concepts, examining how concepts are constructed from our narratives. On the one hand, concepts are created by persuasive narratives made up of words, phrases, and categorical beliefs. This has led us to see Eros as the most beautiful and therefore the one we love. But this makes Eros a great and deceptive happiness of what is the good, says Diotima. If we think of Eros as love, it is because historically, we have learned to love Eros as the most beautiful. On the other hand, we can learn to think with Eros.