Right now I’m reading Plato’s Symposium. It’s one of the most famous dialogues, and for the first half I was like, what? Why is this important? It’s just a bunch of people giving really generic odes to Love (as personified by the god of love). I can get this on any pop radio station. But now Socrates has finally spoken up, and it’s like aww yeah, he’s here to wreck shit. I love Socrates. I understand why they tried and convicted him, though–he’s seriously annoying.

I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not, without regard to truth or falsehood–that was no matter; for the original proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that you should appear to praise him.