I don't really know what to make of this one. Several characters gather at a party and make speeches on love. Alcibiades crashes the party and tells the story of his love for Socrates. Socrates is presented as a stoic, eccentric superhuman. During Socrates' speech he told of the seer Diotima. Her thoughts are the basis for Platonic love: true love is a desire the Beautiful and the Good itself. We find manifestations of this in the souls of others. Loving relationships seek to bring one and one's lover closer to perfection. A key motivation for this is the desire for immortality. When one helps another to be more virtuous. He has made a lasting impression on the world and thus never dies.
This is a weird argument, and I'm trying to sort it out. It is difficult to say if Diotima's idea's are really those of Plato. It seems like they well may be, but Socrates likens something she says to sophistry at one point, which confuses the matter. More on this later.
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