Socrates on the Nature of Love and Desire

In todays excerpt, we turn to one of Plato's most famous dialogues: the Symposium. Specifically, we look at an exchange between Socrates and Agathon. Socrates discusses the nature of desire with Agathon, and attempts to show him that to desire something, we must lack it or forsee our lacking it (i.e., one cannot desire what he already has). But this is a problem: because it means that if love is for beautiful and lovely things, then love itself must lack beautiful and lovely things. So does this mean love is ugly! Woah! What a conclusion that would be! Let's think through it together.

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